For immediate release to all media outlets: Screwusoft introduces DRM to market; seeks partners.
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the UK number one for the fourth week in a row.
Sales of Activision's shooter rose 2 per cent week on week, the first weekly increase since its launch on November 8. FIFA 12 climbs three places to number two thanks to a 30 per cent rise in sales.
Nintendo's 3DS racer Mario Kart 7 debuts in eighth place, and is the only new entry in this week's top ten. Abba: You Can Dance, from Ubisoft, enters the chart at number 30, ahead of Zumba Fitness 2 at number 34.
Our January 2012 issue, which is on sale December 20, also features full reviews - including in-depth Post Scripts - of Minecraft, Mario Kart 7 and Need For Speed The Run.
Nintendo is offering 3DS owners a free download of a 3D remake of NES classic Kid Icarus.
To qualify for the offer, users must register two titles from the below list of 3DS titles between November 1 and January 31. 3D Classics: Kid Icarus will be available to download from the 3DS eShop from January 5.
Square Enix is developing an action-RPG for PlayStation 3 and Vita using the Unity platform.
The project, revealed in job listings spotted by Andriasang, is in development at the publisher's 1st Production Department, responsible for the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts games.
Day 1 Studios, developer of FEAR 3 and MechAssault, has reportedly laid off 95 per cent of staff that were working on a new version of Silent Scope after Konami backed out of a publishing deal.
Gamespot reports that the Chicago-based studio has laid off around 100 staff, leaving only a small team who are working on another project, and is now facing closure.
If the 360’s new dashboard, which was announced during E3 in June and launches tomorrow, has any particular watchword, it’s consistency. The fresh design, called Metro, brings it in line with the UI conventions of Windows Phone 7 and the forthcoming Windows 8, being built from media-rich tiles.
This week, members of the Edge forum have clubbed together to raise money for charity Child's Play. If you'd like to donate something, details can be found here.
Monolith Soft's Xenoblade Chronicles will be released in the US on April 3, 2012.
A Neogaf forum member has posted what they claim to be a shot (see below) from GameStop's database which lists the Wii RPG release date and also states that it will be a GameStop exclusive.
We contacted GameStop which confirmed the rumour but stressed that Nintendo will be issuing details on the exact nature of Chronicle's US release shortly.
Brendon Chung knows a lot about failure. The Californian game designer of one-man indie studio Blendo Games has whole hard drives full of his screw-ups. “Honestly, I fail like 90 per cent of the time,” he confesses. “My hard drive has all these aborted foetuses of games that are just bad, broken and not even close to looking done. The other ten per cent of the time you hit something that’s pretty ugly and terrible, but you see some potential there and you file it away, hopefully to bring it back and use it in some fashion in a later project.
Markus "Notch" Persson, the charismatic head of Minecraft developer Mojang, is no longer lead developer on the game that made him a millionaire, after he passed the reins to Jens Bergensten.
Writing on his blog, Persson explains that the move means Bergensten "will have the final say in all design decisions, so he will kinda sorta become my boss, I guess.
Epic Games says it is at work on a fix an issue affecting Infinity Blade II, which was released for iOS devices this week.
In a post on the Epic Games forums, co-founder Mark Rein pinned the blame for the problem, which affects iPad 1 and iPod Touch users, on users having too many apps installed on their devices.
Microsoft-owned Kinect Sports developer Rare has announced the appointments of four senior members of staff that have joined the Twycross-based studio from other UK developers.
In the past month, Andrew Dennison has joined as software director from Codemasters, where he had spent ten years as lead programmer. Jon Vincent has given up his audio director role at Ubisoft Reflections for the same position with Rare.
A trio of Minecraft players have painstakingly recreated the first level of Game Boy platformer Super Mario Land.
Engadget reports that James Wright, Joe Ciappa and a third player known only as Tempusmori spent six to seven hours a day for four straight weeks recreating Super Mario Land's opening level, using more than 18 million Minecraft blocks in the process.
Zynga has priced its shares at between $8.50 and $10 apiece, valuing the company at around $7 billion.
TechCrunch reports that the social gaming titan has updated its S-1 filing with the SEC with pricing information. With 100 million shares on offer, the company hopes to raise over a billion dollars.
The company is heading out on a pre-IPO "roadshow" next week in which it will present to investors in the hope of stimulating interest, which in turn would push up the share price.
If you’ve been playing a lot of The Legend of Zelda recently, Blueprint 3D is probably going to give you a slight sense of déjà vu – and the reason for that is all to do with keys.
Nvidia's new quad-core mobile processor, Tegra 3, offers only a modest improvement over Apple's A5, according to early benchmark tests.
TechCrunch reports that Nvidia's long-standing boast that Tegra 3 would leave the likes of A5, the processor used in the iPad, trailing in its wake appears to be wide of the mark.
Sony has said that it is in negotiations with Adobe in an attempt to ensure the PlayStation Vita supports Flash.
Last month Adobe revealed that it was to cease development of mobile Flash, after apparently giving up in its attempt to create a stable version of its technology for portable devices.
SpellTower is the word game rebuilt as survival horror. Its spare playing fields may suggest a world of innocent puzzling fun rather than gothic dread, but don’t be fooled: they’re battlegrounds as tense as any Resident Evil mansion. When the tiles start to build up, the ceiling inches closer, and the high-scoring moves just won’t present themselves, take a panicked moment to reflect on something. Mechanically, this isn’t that far removed from Scrabble. So how come it’s so much more exhausting?
Recently, I tried to replay GTAIV, but it felt too dated. Not the graphics, which are fine. Some of it is the controls, which are bizarrely maximal (hold A on foot to run, tap A to sprint? Hold X while driving to toggle high beams? You couldn’t ship anything more elegant than that?). Mostly it is badly directed, and given its success, it would seem direction isn’t a thing our medium cares much about yet.
Recently, I tried to replay GTAIV, but it felt too dated. Not the graphics, which are fine. Some of it is the controls, which are bizarrely maximal (hold A on foot to run, tap A to sprint? Hold X while driving to toggle high beams? You couldn’t ship anything more elegant than that?). Mostly it is badly directed, and given its success, it would seem direction isn’t a thing our medium cares much about yet.
Bethesda Softworks will next week release an "incremental update" for the PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, with console versions to follow, that fixes issues introduced in the patch it released earlier this week.
Electronic Arts has confirmed the acquisition of social RPG developer KlickNation, and made it part of the BioWare label.
In a press release, EA confirmed yesterday's reports that it was to buy the Sacramento-based developer. The studio will now join BioWare's existing San Francisco social team to form a new business unit, BioWare Social.
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is number one in the Nordic chart, which collates sales data from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.
Last week it was pipped to top spot by Assassin's Creed: Revelations, but Ubisoft's game slips back to fourth behind Skyrim and Battlefield 3.
There's just the one new entry this week: Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7, which makes its debut at number six.
Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment has revealed that it is working on South Park: The Game, an RPG for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
The studio is collaborating with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who are writing the script, performing the dialogue and overseeing the development of the game which will be published by THQ.
Players will be cast as a new kid in the town of South Park and will have to defend it from various threats. Further details on the game will be revealed in the January issue of Game Informer.