Upcoming Xbox Live Arcade platformer Fez was last night named Best In Show at the IndieCade 2011 festival in California.
Polytron's game, due early next year, also won the award for story/world design, Joystiq reports. PlayStation Move music title Johann Sebastian Joust also took home two gongs, for best technology and impact on the community.
Wizorb is the latest in a relatively long line of titles that have chosen to reclaim arcade gaming’s past by turning the classics into something that looks a little like an RPG. This time it’s Breakout getting the fantasy treatment – and it’s a template that handles the imposition extremely well.
Indie darling VVVVVV is headed to the 3DS eShop, publisher Nicalis has announced.
The puzzle-platformer, developed by Terry Cavanagh, will sport 3D visuals, six new levels, and a map on the bottom screen.
"I'm VVVVVVery excited about it," Cavanagh said. "This is the first time anything I've made has been on a console."
Over the last few years, the London-based designers at Nitrome have built a reputation for themselves as a team that works quickly and cleverly. With little fuss, the studio’s created a stream of pretty Flash games, all of which hinge on smart mechanics and elegant implementation. Mega Mash, the developer’s latest offering, is one of its most ingenious to date – not that you’ll notice the effort, of course.
Download service Green Man Gaming has removed Electronic Arts games from sale in all regions except for the UK.
In a blog post, GMG's community manager explains: "Bad news folks, we very unfortunately have to pull down EA products from sale in all regions except for the UK.
"We're currently in talks with EA to see if this can be changed, however I can't give any kind of guarantees aside from saying as soon as I know something I will let you know too."
DICE, Swedish developer of the upcoming Battlefield 3, has confirmed that PC players of the eagerly-awaited shooter's multiplayer beta will be able to play on a second map, Caspian Border, this weekend.
Unity Technologies says that it is not concerned that Epic Games has followed its lead by supporting Adobe Flash in its Unreal Engine.
"My advice to God: Don't argue with Steve Jobs." Monkey Island maker Ron Gilbert remembers meeting Steve Jobs at Pixar and arguing over whether games can tell stories.
Its design might harken straight back to Id's days of yore, but you knew that Rage would pile in the Doom Easter eggs. Sure enough, as well as the Doom marine bobbleheads, there's this, too.
The British Academy Of Film And Television Arts (BAFTA) has announced that it is to expand its annual videogame awards this year with the creation of four new categories.
This year's British Academy Videogame Awards will, for the first time, include awards for Debut Game, Online Browser Game, Online Multiplayer Game, and Performer.
Team Bondi owed over a million Australian dollars to its own staff, we can reveal, with unpaid wages or bonuses accounting for over 75 per cent of the debt that ultimately brought the LA Noire developer to its knees.
Sony is nearing a deal to wrest full control over Sony Ericsson, the 50-50 joint venture created a decade ago, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The PlayStation maker hopes to integrate its smartphone business with its gaming, tablet and PC units to cut costs and better synchronise its product development strategy, sources supposedly familiar with the matter told the paper.
According to analyst estimates, a buyout of Sony Ericsson, which is the world's sixth-largest mobile phone manufacturer, could cost between $1.3 and $1.7 billion.
FIFA 12 is the new number one in the Nordic chart, which collates sales data from Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark.
The sight of EA's latest football title at the summit is no surprise after FIFA 11 occupied top spot for seven weeks out of ten over the summer. Last week's number one, Gears Of War 3, falls to number two.
OnLive was recently released in the UK. Its key feature is the ability to stream gameplay from a central server to players in realtime, offering an entirely new way to experience videogames. But what experiences, precisely, does OnLive offer?
Square Enix has confirmed a European release for Vita launch title Army Corps Of Hell.
The game casts players as the King Of Hell, tasked with reclaiming his throne by controlling a hundred-strong army of goblins with assorted classes and abilities. It sounds like Pikmin, and with good reason: the developer is Entersphere, the company formed by Motoi Okamoto, writer of the Gamecube classic.
Hilmar Pétursson, CEO of Eve Online developer CCP, has shouldered the blame for the most turbulent few months in the game's history.
In a heartfelt post on the Eve Insider blog, a contrite Pétursson accepts responsibility, admits ignoring the concerns of players and staff alike, insists he has learned his lesson, and promises a brighter future for CCP, Eve Online, and its players.
Nintendo has unveiled the Ice White 3DS, the fifth colour model of its glasses-free 3D handheld.
The new model, pictured below, goes on sale in Japan on November 3. The Misty Pink model, announced last month, will be on shelves on October 20. There's no news on a European release, but the Metallic Red model launched last Friday.
Four years is an uncommonly lengthy development for an iOS game. Fittingly, Magnetic Billiards, the App Store debut from the Pickford Brothers, developer of SNES platformer Plok and PC turn-based strategy Naked War, prizes slow, methodical play. The object is to clear a series of tables by firing like-coloured balls into each other to form clusters, but shot efficiency is frowned upon: the fewer turns you take, the lower your score and associated rank is likely to be.
Crytek has confirmed to us that it has been looking into supporting Flash in its development platform CryEngine, saying it will announce a "truly cross-platform solution" in the near future.
Earlier this week Epic Games announced that its Unreal Engine 3 now supports Adobe's Flash, with CTO Tim Sweeney showing Unreal Tournament III running in a Flash-based environment during his keynote at Adobe Max 11 in Los Angeles.
Not all of the 40 TV and entertainment providers who are bringing their content to Xbox 360 later this year will do so for free, and it appears that voice and gesture control using Kinect will also be restricted to Xbox Live Gold members.
Microsoft has announced partnerships with almost 40 companies who will bring live and on-demand TV and video content to Xbox 360, controlled by Kinect, later this year.
The news means UK Xbox 360 owners will be able to view content from the likes of BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, Blinkbox and movie streaming service Lovefilm. Those in the US, meanwhile, get HBO Go, Bravo, Comcast's Xfinity, Crackle, Epix, Syfy, TMZ, The Today Show, UFC, and Verizon FiOS.
We may look back on 2011 as the year of Vita – the rumours, the reveal, the Japanese launch – but it’s a journey that Sony began some years earlier. “Since Kaz Hirai took over as Sony Computer Entertainment president and CEO [in 2006], he instructed SCE’s hardware group to work closely with Worldwide Studios’ creative and tech talents to develop future PlayStation platforms,” says SCE Worldwide Studios (WWS) president Shuhei Yoshida.
Legend Of Heroes Ao No Kiseki is the new number one in the Japanese all-formats software chart.
Falcom's PSP RPG sold 127,938 units in its first week on sale, according to Media Create data translated by Andriasang, a comfortable lead from second-placed Dynasty Warriors 7 Xtreme Legends, which sold 82,901 units.
Last week's number one, Dark Souls, slips to third place. From Software's punishing RPG sold 34,718 units, having sold almost 280,000 copies last week.
Steve Jobs, co-founder, chairman and former CEO of Apple, has died at the age of 56.
Apple confirmed that Jobs died yesterday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. "Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," reads a statement on the company's website. "Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor.
Yakuza: Of The End will be released in the west in March 2012 under the name Yakuza: Dead Souls.
The game is a spin-off from the main Yakuza series, a thirdperson shooter starring protagonist Kazuma Kiryu and cohorts as they try to survive in a zombie-infested Kabukicho.
Gary Knight, senior vice president of marketing at Sega, said: "We know how much people love Yakuza in the west and with Dead Souls being the latest and greatest in the franchise it's only right we bring it to them closer to the Japanese release than ever."
Market research firm NPD Group has today revealed that revenue from sales of new games at retail fell behind other channels in the second quarter of 2011.
Sales of new, boxed products in the three months to June 30 totalled $1.44 billion, while revenue from other channels - including second-hand, full-game downloads, subscriptions, rentals, DLC, social and mobile - reached $1.74 billion.
With hardware sales included, the US videogame market was worth $4.5 billion during the quarter, an increase year on year of one per cent.