GameCenter officially launches

GameCenter, the new all-in-one gaming service from GameSpot, is now up and running, offering PC gamers a premium service that seeks to meet gamers' demands for gameplay and community needs.

Beyond preconfigured and custom servers (ranked and unranked) for top games like Battlefield 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, Counter-Strike: Source, and Half-Life 2: DM, GameCenter offers tournaments and events, multigame user rankings, leaderboards, fully integrated VoIP for voice chat, message boards, personal profiles, and high-speed download servers for patches and updates. Support for more games (like Call of Duty) is being added this week, with more server configuration options, admin tools, and other features are on the way.

Gamers can sign up now for a free 21-day trial period, and GameSpot Complete members can get an early bird bonus by adding GameCenter to their current subscriptions by August 17. Annual Complete subscribers can get a year of GameCenter service for $20 more, while monthly subscribers will pay an extra $2 a month. The regular subscription rate for the service will be $79.95 a year, or $9.95 by the month.