Handheld announcements, the launch of 3DS and the first of many hack attacks made for an eventful start to the year.

The early months of 2011 gave the world its first glimpse at what would become the PlayStation Vita, its first chance to take 3DS home, the launch of a new Apple tablet and even the end to those long-running rumours of a PlayStation Phone.

Elsewhere, Activision called an end to the struggling Guitar Hero franchise and GAME called out to consumers everywhere with the announcement of GAMEfest.

JANUARY

NOTABLE RELEASE
Dead Space 2 – The sequel managed to top the charts on release, and was just another notch in a long year of success for EA.

IN THE NEWS

VAT rises from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent
HMV plans to close 60 stores before Christmas
Sony seeks legal action against PS3 hacker George ‘geohot’ Hotz
Football Manager boss Miles Jacobson awarded OBE
3DS given March 25th date for the UK, retailers price it at up to £230
Sony announces PSP successor, tipped for Christmas release
Activision closes Bizarre Creations
Sky Sports presenter Andy Gray is sacked after making off-camera remarks about female referees


FEBRUARY

NOTABLE RELEASE
Killzone 3 – The acclaimed sequel was the second of Sony’s two No.1s this year – following LittleBigPlanet 2 the previous month. It was part of a breakthrough period for PS3.

IN THE NEWS

Livingstone-Hope Review calls for academic change
Sony announces the long-rumoured PlayStation Phone, Xperia Play
Blockbuster US and its international assets are put up for auction
The Dead Island teaser trailer takes the internet by storm
Guitar Hero franchise is canned, later said to be ‘on hiatus’
3DS debuts in Japan, sells 400,000 in first two days
Reports suggest Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut will buy HMV? Group – keeping Waterstone’s and selling HMV’s stores and live division
The ban on product placement in British TV shows is lifted


MARCH

NOTABLE RELEASE
Homefront – Controversial, hyped and the target of a critical drubbing but nevertheless this new IP was still a huge statement of intent for THQ.

IN THE NEWS

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata claims industry is ‘drowning’ in a sea of apps
Apple unveils and releases iPad 2
Nintendo 3DS launches in UK and US
Xperia Play, aka the PlayStation Phone, is released
GAME announces GAMEfest
Angry Birds tops 100m downloads
Popular games blog UKResistance closes down
A tsunami devastates the East coast of Japan


APRIL

NOTABLE RELEASE
Portal 2 – The critically acclaimed sequel to Valve’s highly innovative first-person puzzler once again won over consumers and critics alike.

IN THE NEWS

PSN is shut down as Sony suffers from the first of many hack attacks
Michael Rawlinson steps down as UKIE’s director general
UK PlayStation boss Ray Maguire departs after 17 years
Tabloids report 3DS causes dizziness
Sony discontinues the download-only PSPgo
Nintendo confirms its new home console will be unveiled at E3
Microsoft, Ubisoft and EA win big at the MCV Awards
Prince William marries Kate Middleton

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/2011-...y-april/088914 ...

Hacking has been one of the hottest stories of the year. From Wikileaks uncovering Government documents, to News of the World journalists breaking into the phones of celebrities, the story of security breaches has dominated the headlines.
But A-listers and political bodies weren’t the only victims – the games world was rocked by hackers throughout 2011.
In April hackers retrieved the login data and passwords of 77m users of Sony’s PlayStation Network. It was the most high profile hacking, but there were multiple security breaches that hurt the industry this year.
Anonymous hacking group LulzSec took responsibility for a host of security-breaching distributed denial-of-service attacks, which besieged notable platform holders and publishers, including Nintendo, Bethesda, Epic Games and BioWare.
Websites, forums and even video games themselves were affected. Popular online titles such as Minecraft and EVE Online were taken down in an instant, and millions of usernames and passwords were snatched at the click of a keyboard button.
But LulzSec insisted it was hacking some systems with good intentions. It highlighted security gaps in the NHS’ online infrastructure and handed the stolen details of 200,000 Brink players back to Bethesda.
Still, try telling that to Codemasters, whose website is still down. Or Valve, who just last month confirmed that its Steam network was hacked and a database of personal user information was obtained.
Eventually, the police moved in and LulzSec ended its activities. But this was a warning to the global games industry. And it was all too easy for hackers.
The games industry is moving towards digital and online business models. COD Elite and EA’s Origin service the latest to join the fray.
It’s now down to games publishers and companies to act to ensure their online infrastructures and the security systems that protect them are watertight. Because today, the safety of user information is more important than ever before.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/2011-...ked-off/088829 ...

We all know which games you liked the most this year – we only have to look at the charts to figure that out. But what about the people that make up the games industry?

MCV asks a number of recognisable games from publishing and journalism what their top picks were over the last 12 months?

SIMON BYRON - Director of Games, Premier PR

Skyrim (Bethesda)
I really didn’t like Oblivion. Having enemies level up as you did was the oddest game decision of all time. It seemed needlessly fussy in places, and is the only game to unintentionally have ever encouraged me to skip through fields with no trousers on – a feature, I note, which was absent from the Game of the Year edition box. I think I did about three Oblivion Gates before I decided I wasn’t having much fun and moved on – putting my trousers on first, of course.
I thought Fallout was pretty bad too. Yeah, brilliant, it’s all non-linear and that – but I prefer my games more focussed. I don’t want to walk to the horizon just because I can, only to find myself attacked by a mutant dog who wasn’t expecting me until I was 100 levels up or something. Plus, you know, almost by definition, a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland isn’t exactly an escapist’s dream, unless you’re sick of pretty things and people with faces.
I once had a debate with Warren Spector about linearity over non, which concluded when I forgot to respond to him again, proving conclusively that I won. I had to stop playing Demon’s Souls because I couldn’t decide which areas to level up in. I am a man who can get paralysed by choice.
So on paper – particularly if that paper contained the words above, maybe concluding with “Skyrim is not for me” – Skyrim was not for me. Well what do you know, paper? No wonder print is dead.
Skyrim is, I think, the first game I have actually fallen in love with. I think about it a lot. I have had dreamt about it. I would absolutely get off with it. It’s the first game to where I’ve been happy to spend hours literally doing nothing. The main quest? Yeah, I’ll get round to it. But I’ll just pop in here to see – OH HELLO, YOU WANT ME TO DO ANOTHER FETCH QUEST? TOTALLY FINE BY ME SEE YOU AT HOME LYDIA. Its bugs – and there are many – don’t matter. I genuinely think it’s the best game ever made (soz, Ocarina). And the thought of what Bethesda does next actually terrifies me.

Batman: Arkham City (Warner Bros)
This is true: I went to school with Christian Bale (well, he was a couple of years below me). Also true is this: when my careers advisor asked me what I wanted to be, my first answer was “a super hero”. So if anyone should have grown up to be Batman, it should have been me. I knew I should have taken Latin.
So Arkham Asylum was the game I waited 37 years to play. Sure, it benefitted from a low level of expectation (the last licensed game to be actually any good was Robocop 3), but it was an absolute triumph, bettering at-the-time-best Batman game (The Adventures of Batman And Robin, SNES, Konami). Given the frequency of good super hero games, Arkham Asylum would, I believed, remain the best superhero game ever for longer than three years.
I was wrong. Arkham City literally expanded every aspect of Asylum. Far from diluting (it was a concern of mine, I can tell you now), it presented a world in which, finally, I am Batman. A brilliant main mission peppered with stacks of stuff to do around it, Arkham City is the first game I have gone back to after I have completed it. It seems now I finally am Batman, I clearly can’t stop.
Just as you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, so you shouldn’t judge a game by its Metacritic score – unless it is one you agree with. Anyone who dragged its average down to 96 per cent should be hounded from the games industry.

Pullblox (Intelligent Systems)
If you’re tired of the 3DS, you’re tired of life. That’s what I used to say. Now I say: if you’re tired of the 3DS, you haven’t played Pullblox, and you’re also an idiot.
It’s an odd one. The game was released without much fanfare – plus it’s digital only, so no-one cares. But it’s probably the most inventive block-based puzzle game since Tetris.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know 3DS games shouldn’t actually rely on three dimensions, because that would discriminate against people with the average number of eyes (average, not mode) but Pullblox is unquestionably the best use of the gimmick. The mechanic is so simple – pull a two dimensional shape into a three-dimensional one to create a route to the goal – that any actual game designers reading this should be utterly ashamed they didn’t come up with it. And that, of course, is its beauty – loads of levels, no time pressures or achievements, just enjoy the ride. Add a level editor – which they did – and you’ve got probably the most accomplished 3DS title to date.


JIM STERLING - Reviews Editor, Destructoid.com

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda)
It's terribly predictable to name a game that nobody can shut up about, but I cannot deny the truth. Skyrim is just that damn good, and is easily my most played game of 2011. ...

Got some Kindle hardware burning a hole in your pile of festive gifts? Well, British bookworms have been given some extra yuletide joy courtesy of Amazon UK which has also started a 12-day sale, focusing on its e-book wares. The site vows to add more digital reads each day and it looks like all the additions will stick with their shrunken price tags for the extent of the sale. Head to the source below for some one-click literary gratification.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=1503253031 ...

Worried that an OTA update will put a crimp in your Nook Tablet modding activities? Then you may want to follow the lead of xda-developers member Indirect, who has managed to tweak the tablet to block all OTA updates and kindly provided the means for you to do the same. That involves installing a few files on your device (another method is also available that involve tweaking some files), but Indirect says that the process "holds no risk," and that it won't prevent you from buying books from Barnes & Noble. Complete details can be found at the source link below.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/25/x...t-ota-updates/ ...

It was supposed to be the fight that would define the year. Call of Duty had met its match. For the first time ever, the game was to go up against EA’s long-running Battlefield series.

Although both have had similar lifespans, they had until this Q4 never launched head-to-head.

EA entered the fight with typical over-confident swagger. It kickstarted the PR battle with an early March reveal and snipes from all execs – Riccitiello even said he wanted Call of Duty’ to ‘rot from the core’.

Keen to loosen Activision’s yearly claim of having the world’s most revenue-generative game, EA aimed to halve CoD’s share of the market. It claimed to have retail and media on its side, it cosied up with PlayStation to match the CoD-360 alliance, it even decided to launch two week’s before MW3.

Then Battlefield came out. Critics said they weren’t as keen as they’d hoped, the game briefly topped the charts before nestling in a low Top Ten slot… then Activision turned up with the now typical lavish launch and claimed the title of ‘fastest selling game of all time’.

SO WHAT HAPPENED?

What really happened was that both games won. But they also both lost.

Battlefield 3 showed that you can take on Call of Duty. It shipped out 12m units. The PR storm alone helped raise the profile of the game, franchise and publisher. It truly questioned whether CoD can conquer forever.

At the same time Modern Warfare 3 wowed fans, retailers and non-gamers. The juggernaut crashed through sales targets and estimates to just about top 2010’s Black Ops.

Yet here’s the other side of the argument. Although Activision broke the $1bn barrier faster than ever (just 16 days), it’s still just the ultimate retail game. The franchise is built on a foundation of hype, pre-orders and day one sales. Elite’s additions, although exciting, have yet to be proven. So right now, Call of Duty remains a video game in the very traditional sense.

That’s fine for Activision today. It has always focused on safer bets and quickly cuts its losses (it ditched Guitar Hero earlier this year). But not necessarily fine for Activision tomorrow. No doubt its best minds are working on how it will survive in a world where the console might not exist or where a game has to deploy across browser, mobile and console all at once. If they aren’t, they really should be.

Battlefield has done well but never lived up to the promise – nay, threats – that it would upset Call of Duty. Activision’s title didn’t even blink. Momentum for Battlefleld 3 dropped off early on, retailers and other industry nose-tappers tell us. If you want to judge it on market status right now, Battlefield has been resurging, but only thanks to a price cut and bundling. MW3 has – and will, as all CoD’s do – held its price at around £45. EA’s missile made the ground rumble, but didn’t shake Activision’s foundations.

The bigger lesson is that it’s tough even at the top. Activision and EA had similar games locked up in a pointless battle to gain or protect market share. And in the end, little changed. If that’s all the big boys could manage, think how punishing it would have been if lower-tier publishers were caught in the same battle.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/2011-...-market/088828 ...

Just a quick note to say Merry Xmas to each and everyone, may you get all you wish for.

MERRY XMAS ...

It's probably a little late to start your holiday shopping, but GameStop is there for you if you're late to the consumer party. Starting today, the retailer is offering a buy two, get one free special on all pre-owned products. That includes both hardware and software, so there's plenty to choose from. The sale runs through December 28. By the way, if you start your Christmas shopping after Christmas, you're really doing it wrong.

GameStop is also offering an in-store sale on the Skyrim Collector's Edition, knocking the usual $150 price down to a (slightly?) more palatable $100. Finally, you can snag Rage for$30, though we'd be remiss in our duties if we didn't mention it's currently available forjust under $20 on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Rage-Xbox-360/...4655731&sr=8-1

http://www.gamestop.com/INTL/choose_site_all.html ...

A study of online gamers in the Steam community finds that those who are friends with cheaters are more likely to begin cheating themselves. From the article: 'First up, cheats stick together. The data shows that cheaters are much more likely to be friends with other cheaters. Cheating also appears to be infectious. The likelihood of a fair player becoming labelled as a cheater in future is directly correlated with this person's number of friends who are cheaters. So if you know cheaters, you are more likely to become one yourself. Cheating spreads like flu through this community. Finally, being labelled as a cheat seems to significantly affect social standing. Once a person is labelled as a cheat, they tend to lose friends. Some even cut themselves off from friends by increasing their privacy settings

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/1...-is-infectious ...