Ed Vaizey is the UK’s minister for culture, communications and creative industries, a remit that just happens to cover some of the world’s best game developers. Vaizey has been instrumental in raising the profile of games behind the high walls of the Houses of Parliament but, it turns out, he’s equally happy playing Plants Vs Zombies on the Tube.
Viacom, former owner of Harmonix, has begun legal proceedings in its bid to recover what it claims were miscalculated earnings-related payments made to shareholders of the Rock Band developer.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Viacom is seeking $131,827,980 of the $149,770,149 that was paid to Harmonix for the Rock Band franchise's performance in 2007, something it has been threatening to do since February last year.
Viacom, former owner of Harmonix, has begun legal proceedings in its bid to recover what it claims were miscalculated earnings-related payments made to shareholders of the Rock Band developer.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Viacom is seeking $131,827,980 of the $149,770,149 that was paid to Harmonix for the Rock Band franchise's performance in 2007, something it has been threatening to do since February last year.
Zynga has announced a sequel to its 2008 social game Mafia Wars. Platforms are yet to be revealed - the original is a rare breed of Zynga game, playable not just through Facebook but other social networks and a native mobile app - but the developer promises to take "one of our longest running and most successful franchises to a whole new universe, introducing a vast 3D world where being bad never felt so good."
Upcoming action-RPG Diablo III has entered closed beta, developer Blizzard has announced. The beta features part of the games first act, with players able to choose from any of the game's five classes: barbarian, witch doctor, wizard, monk or demon hunter .
CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime said: "This closed beta test is an important milestone for us as we enter the final stages of development on Diablo III. We hope players enjoy participating in the beta test and we look forward to hearing their feedback."
After last week's screenshots comes this first footage of the collaboration between Level 5 and Capcom, which shows Wright defending a woman at a witch trial when Layton enters the courtroom. There's no confirmation of a western release but, given the mainstream success of the Layton games and Phoenix Wright's cult following, it seems a safe bet.
Warner Bros has announced that the PC version of Batman: Arkham City has been delayed, and will now be released in November.
No reason for the delay was given, and no revised release date was specified. Arkham City will be released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 21.
The much-loved Zen Pinball will be released for 3DS this autumn, developer Zen Studios has revealed.
The game, which has been released for PlayStation 3 and iOS, will be available through the 3DS download store, eShop, and feature four tables: Earth Defence, Shaman, Excalibur and Eldorado.
Zen's Mel Kirk said: "Releasing Zen Pinball on a Nintendo platform marks an amazing milestone for Zen Studios. Playing pinball in 3D is killer, it’s like the game has been totally reinvented, and a whole new world opens up right before your eyes.”
Today, let's look at transformations of Nintendo consoles into handheld versions. First, a step-by-step photo guide to making a N64 portable. We particularly like how GoldenEye is displayed on the new LCD screen while the guts of the machine powering it are left splayed out.
Capcom has confirmed that Street Fighter IV - which made its arcade debut back in 2008, and was released for iOS early last year - is headed to Android devices.
A deal with LG means the game will be exclusive to the company's smartphones for the first three months, and the release has been timed to coincide with the release of LG's upcoming HD handsets.
Zynga's latest Facebook game, Adventure World, draws no little inspiration from the Indiana Jones films, and the developer has now announced plans to add Lucasfilm's iconic adventurer to the game next month.
"Time to hold onto those fedoras," reads a post on the company blog. "We have a runaway boulder of excitement to share.
EA has announced that an open beta test of Battlefield 3's multiplayer mode will begin on September 29.
Those who have pre-ordered the game through EA's distribution service Origin, or who bought the limited edition of last year's Medal Of Honor, will be able to access the beta on September 27.
The beta, which will be available to download from the Xbox Live Marketplace, PlayStation Store and Origin, features a single map, Operation Métro in Paris, and runs until October 10.
Humans see faces everywhere – two dots on paper, a man in the moon, or Jesus in a bagel. This is known as pareidolia, and an interesting part of it is the corollary: it gets grim when you think about things like talking bacilli. Tiny Invaders is about an army of alien germs infesting human bodies, grinning and making goo-goo eyes every squelch of the way.
THQ has confirmed that development of the sequel to its multiplatform shooter Homefront have been passed to Crysis developer Crytek.
The news comes as a huge surprise after THQ's closure of New York-based Homefront developer Kaos Studios. At the time, the publisher said the franchise would be passed to its Montreal studio, headed by Assassin's Creed creator Patrice Désilets.
As recently evidenced, some people just can't deal with deck-building card games – or their players. But Ascension: Chronicle Of The Godslayer may be just what they need: an easy-to-learn and self-contained original designed by former Magic pros. The only thing going against it is the title, which looks awfully like Gameloft's take on El Shaddai.
Social gaming site Hi5 has confirmed to TechCrunch that it has reduced its headcount by 28, saying improvements to its infrastructure meant the company needed fewer staff.
Square Enix unveiled Vita RPG Lord Of Apocalypse shortly before last week's Tokyo Game Show kicked off. For some reason it declined to mention that Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro, creator of quirky 2010 adventure Deadly Premonition, is the game's director.
Mac support is the principal addition in Epic Games' latest update to its Unreal Development Kit (UDK) beta, with the company promising developers "easy cross-platform distribution."
In a statement seen by Gamasutra, Epic said: "UDK games can now run on Mac OS. Every UDK game's potential userbase has now increased dramatically yet again.
"The development process is virtually identical for games to be run on the Mac platform, but the packaging and deployment process does require some additional steps."
EA has confirmed reports that it is to close Visceral Studios, the Australian developer which worked on Dead Space, The Godfather 2 and Dante's Inferno.
According to InnoGames, the online publisher's German players spend on average 32 per cent longer playing its games than market leader Bigpoint's. InnoGames' release highlights ComScore data which showed that while Bigpoint had approximately 2.4 million players spending 7.4 million hours across the publisher's 71 games during June 2011, InnoGames 1.1 players spent 4.1 million hours across just five games in the same period.
Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford is on record as saying that June's Forever wouldn't be the last we'd see of Duke Nukem, and the studio is now seeking feedback on the game, presumably as part of its planning for Duke's next outing. You don't even need to have played the game to give your feedback - it appears Gearbox is as interested in why you didn't - and the survey only takes a few minutes. We'd fill it out ourselves, of course, but we assume Gearbox already knows our thoughts.
Mobile market research firm Distimo looked at the 300 most popular apps on Apple's App Store and found that downloads of free apps had grown 34 per cent since last year. Downloads of paid apps, however, have grown by just 7 per cent.
Despite just 4 per cent of apps on the download service using the system, 72 per cent of all App Store revenue comes through in-app purchasing, up from just 28 per cent in 2010. Of that figure, 24 per cent was through paid apps, and double that through free apps.
This year, eleven of the hundreds of games on the Tokyo Game Show floor were honoured with a Future Game Award by organisers the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association. The sole foreign recipient of an award, according to Andriasang, was EA's upcoming shooter Battlefield 3.
According to Joystiq, Ubisoft's initial shipment of Assassin's Creed: Revelations for PlayStation 3 will also include the 2007 original. Ubisoft has just confirmed that the offer applies to the European, as well as the North American, release of the game.
In 2008, Harmonix announced that it was working with Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment to bring the Rock Band franchise to Japanese shores. More than three years later that is yet to transpire, and at last week's Tokyo Game Show CEO Alex Rigopulos explained why.