Monthly Archives: December 2011

Two of the year’s most important events, a rapidly filling release calendar, probably the year’s biggest new IP and Epic’s farewell to the Gears of War trilogy. September 2011 was all go.

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Mastertronic managing director Andy Payne has been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s New Year Honours list, its been confirmed this morning.

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For a large percentage of our audience, August 2011 is the month their capital city went violently insane. For the rest of us, there’s this.

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A Persona spin-off baffled our US brethren; San Diego Comic Con went nuclear; Australia prepared to grow up; and EA coughed up a lung to buy one of the best-rated developers in the world.

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We’re half way there, and you know what that means? Revisiting E3 2011; a surprisingly crowded summer release schedule; and the continuing saga of Hackers vs The World.

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Chris Grant has left his role as editor-in-chief of AOL-owned Joystiq, with the McElroy brothers – Griffin and Justin – also exiting the site.

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The US industry hit a serious low; Sony stumbled through the new, hacktastic dawn; one of the year’s biggest games was finally revealed; and E3 excitement started to build. Let’s remember May 2011.

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There’s no getting away from it: despite several other notable occurrences, April 2011 will be remembered as the month the PlayStation Network was hacked.

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Paw over your memories of a major hardware launch, GDC, a rapidly worsening legal tussle, and the world’s most expensive natural disaster in modern gaming’s homeland.

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February was a crowded month, chock-full of financial reports and tailing off with the Japanese release of Nintendo’s 3DS. Head in for a full round-up of the month’s news.

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Trion Worlds announced today that its RIFT account database has been hacked, and private information such as: user names, passwords, birth dates, billing and email addresses, along with the first and last four digits of stored credit card information could have been compromised. However, the firm states that at this time, there is “no evidence” that such personal information has been accessed, and it has “no reason to believe, that full credit card information was accessed or compromised in any way.”

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This year was massive for games, and was VG247′s biggest to date. Join us every day over the holiday break on a detailed journey through the year’s most important and entertaining news.

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When developing Back to Karkand for Battlefield 3, DICE said that while looking at some of the popular maps from Battlefield 2 for inclusion in the pack, one it wanted to add but couldn’t was Dragon Valley.

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If you have a merrily on high, it’s time for the ding dong. We’re stopping the full-time news here, but we’ll have any major stories and monthly retrospective features every day throughout the Christmas break.

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Apparently there is a Grateful Dead game in the works, and while it’s unclear if the title is an MMO, or a social game at this point, there is at least a video out for it. Called “The Epic Tour”, it’s posted after the break. According to Kotaku, the game has players touring with the Dead and puts the player in the shoes of the band’s signature colorful dancing bears, travelling on a train through “time and space, forging relationships with other bears while dancing to the band’s classic tunes.” No word on whether purple microdot or sheets of four-way windowpane will be a prerequisite, but it sure sounds like a “virtual” acid trip to us.

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Razer has announced it’s secured $50 million from IDG-Accel Capital Fund, a venture capital firm in Beijing, and company is considering making an initial public offering. According to chief executive Min-Liang Tan: “Given our global reach, we wanted an institutional partner who didn’t just provide funding but could also help us scale. We remain opportunistic and going public is one of the many routes we can take. We’re focused on our products and design and ultimately believe that those are key to a successful business, and the IPO process will sort itself out.

The firm hasn’t set a date for its IPO, which is currently pending while consultations with its financial advisers are in the works. Via ABS-CBN.

“I like to compare it to a sport, in the beginning it’s an activity, like golf was an activity, then it became a sport. I think once people have played it more than 20 or 25 years you can say it’s here to stay, it’s a sport, it’s no longer a fad. Angry Birds is cute and everybody plays it for a while but they get burned out and move on and they will play another game. But Tetris is like Happy Birthday, it keeps on going. Everybody else has games that come and go, they make the hit parade, but these are all temporary. You have to work really hard to get your unknown game to be #1, but when we re-released Tetris it became #1 even though we didn’t do any marketing. We have an unfair advantage, I gotta say. I’d rather have the goose that lays the golden egg.” – Tetris Company’s manager Henk Rogers to IndustryGamers.

Big Huge Games has posted a new developer diary for its Inside Reckoning series on the creation of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. In it, lead combat designer Joe Quadara, animator Chris Cox, and lead animator Young Vo discuss the game’s hand-crafted animations, the various combo chains, abilities, hierarchy, and other lovely nuggets relating to combat. Check it our for yourself below the break. Reckoning is out next year on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

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GameStop has issued a statement apologising for concern caused after customers reportedly received pre-recorded messages announcing that their pre-order for The Last Guardian had been culled from the chain’s system and canceled.

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Square has announced it will release Doublesix’s four player, co-op game All Zombies Must Die! on PSN December 27 and XBLA December 28. It will run you $9.99/800 MSP for the top-down RPG shooter. Still no word just yet on the Steam release.