Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has told investors he feels "greatly accountable" for the company's dismal performance this year which has left it facing its first-ever annual loss in the videogame business, and outlined a programme of change in a bid to reverse the company's decline from the incredible profitability of the Wii and DS era.
In our Christmas 2011 issue, which is on sale November 22, our review will include a Post Script article on the role of storytelling in military shooters like Battlefield 3.
Sony has at last confirmed a release date for downloadable multiplayer shooter Payday: The Heist.
The game, developed by Overkill Software and to be published by Sony Online Entertainment, will be released on PlayStation Store next Wednesday, November 2 - the same day as the biggest PS3 game of the year, Uncharted 3, hits shelves.
The Sims 3: Pets is the new number one in the Nordic chart, which combines sales data from Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, in its first week on shelves.
Astoundingly the EA-published expansion has outsold Batman: Arkham City, which sold two million copies worldwide in its first week and, in the UK, topped the chart and enjoyed the fourth-best launch of the year so far.
Unity Technologies' 3D development platform Unity is to power a new virtual world to help soldiers to keep in touch with friends and family.
Billed as a "community hub," the Army OneSource Virtual World is set in a virtual army campus split into several areas in which soldiers and their loved ones can interact not only with each other, but with those in similar situations and develop emotional and physical resilience, dubbed Virtual Resiliency.
It was, you suspect, one of the industry's quicker pitches. A copy of Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, a calendar with the last day of October circled in red, a curt nod from across the table. Yet to dismiss Festival Of Blood as a straight copy of Rockstar's zombie-infested expansion would be disingenuous: it's equally happy pilfering from elsewhere. This is not the first game to borrow Batman: Arkham Asylum's detective mode, nor will it be the last, but drenching the screen in the same blueish hue is an obvious cue.
Games have been good to Halloween over the last couple of years. DLC packs have provided us with the likes of Borderlands’ Zombie Island of Dr Ned, and more recently, InFamous 2 has gotten in on the act with the slight but loveable Festival Of Blood. Then, of course, there’s Costume Quest, Double Fine’s equivalent of a Peanuts seasonal special.
Electronic Arts sustained a loss of $340 million (£212.2 million) in the three months to September 30, a rise of 69 per cent year on year.
The loss comes despite an increase in the publisher's net sales revenue of 13 per cent, to $715 million (£446.3 million). Among factors contributing to that discrepancy are sales and marketing costs, as well as R&D.
Nintendo is to give a thorough overhaul of the 3DS download service, eShop, with demos, sleep mode downloads, and a browser version of the store for PCs and smartphones.
Speaking to investors following its latest financial results, company president Satoru Iwata said: "We are aiming to accelerate our digital business, the importance of which is expected to become even higher in the future. Several new functions will be added to the Nintendo eShop."
As it continues to bring its flavour of the Japanese hardcore shooter to broader audiences with the release of Espgaluda II on iPad 2, we talk to Cave's CEO and lead programmer Tsuneki Ikeda and smartphone department head Yukihiro Masaki about its very personal revolution - one in which it's resolutely sticking to its roots.
It appears Xbox 360 owners continue to have a tough time with Battlefield 3, with European gamers picking up copies at midnight launches last night encountering server problems, and some unable to access the game's multiplayer component at all due to single-use, in-box codes being invalid.
Mike Morhaime, president of World Of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment, has apologised for homophobic comments made in a video shown on the closing night of last weekend's Blizzcon festival.
The comments came from Cannibal Corpse frontman George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, who was performing vocals for Blizzard's staff band Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain. While the video was censored, Fisher was clearly heard using homophobic slurs against members of WOW's Alliance faction.
The upcoming 3DS system update will add support for paid downloadable content through microtransactions.
Andriasang reports that Satoru Iwata said in his presentation to investors following Nintendo's miserable fiscal results that support for paid DLC would be part of the update.
Bethesda has suffered a further setback in the Fallout MMOG dispute with Interplay after its appeal against an earlier decision was denied.
Worldwide sales of Nintendo's 3DS handheld stood at 6.68 million at the end of the last month, the company has revealed.
Nintendo revealed the figure in its latest financial results. They show significant improvement in hardware sales, presumably driven by the global 3DS price drop which came in halfway through Nintendo's most recent financial quarter.
EA's nascent digital distribution platform EA Origin took a significant step in its bid to establish itself as a true Steam rival when three high-profile publishers signed up to sell their PC games through the service.
In a press release, EA reveals that Warner Bros, THQ and Capcom are now on board and that a selection of their games will be available from next month. Warners' Batman: Arkham City and THQ's upcoming Saints Row: The Third are the only games specified, though more are promised in the coming months.
It's also available digitally via Newsstand for iPad and iPhone.
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Blizzard is facing uproar over homophobic comments made towards members of World Of Warcraft's Alliance faction at last weekend's Blizzcon in Las Vegas.
The proliferation of powerful and easily accessed browser-based streaming game platforms like Gaikai poses no threat to Facebook's gaming audience, the company says.
"I think the role Facebook plays in games is an entirely different one," director of platform marketing Ethan Beard told us at Facebook's f8 conference this week. "It's not just about where you play, and it's not just about the technology. For us it's the social aspect of it – the fact that you're playing games with your friends."
Nintendo's results for the six months to September 30 are even worse than was feared, with a massive drop in sales revenue causing its losses to rise by a factor of 35. The company is now forecasting an annual loss for the first time in its history in the videogame business.
Sales of the 3DS rose by more than a third in Japan last week following the release of the new pink model, which will launch in Europe next month.
Nintendo's handheld was the best-selling hardware of the week, selling 73,933 units compared to the previous week's 55,025, according to Media Create data passed along by Andriasang.
Sony is to assume full control of its mobile partnership with Ericsson in a deal worth £915 million.
The New York Times reports that Sony is to pay its Swedish partner €1.05 billion for its 50 per cent share in Sony Ericsson, which was formed in 2001.
Sony chairman Howard Stringer said: "We can more rapidly and more widely offer consumers smartphones, laptops, tablets and televisions that seamlessly connect with one another and open up new worlds of online entertainment.
Edge was last night named Best Magazine at the Games Media Awards 2011 in London, the third time it has been recognised in the awards' five-year history.
The ceremony, at Vinopolis in London, was hosted by actor and comedian Greg Davies.
The full list of winners is as follows:
A memory card is "pretty much a requirement" for PlayStation Vita, according to Japanese magazine Famitsu.
Andriasang brings word that some games - apparently including Uncharted: Golden Abyss - will not even boot up without a memory card inserted into Sony's upcoming PSP successor.