Games

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that approximately 600 employees will be made redundant following the results of an internal review.

The Irvine, California-based developer has revealed that 90 percent of those affected will come from departments unrelated to game development, and will include staff from around the globe.

The World of Warcraft development team will not be impacted by today's announcement. "Constant evaluation of teams and processes is necessary for the long-term health of any business." said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment.

Steve Kordek, the pinball machine pioneer whose creations had fuelled the coin-op industry for decades, has died aged 100.

Chicago-born Kordek is widely believed to have designed the iconic two-flipper pinball machine. He passed away on February 19th.

Nintendo said Monday that it has sold 5 million 3DS handheld game consoles in Japan, which it says makes the device the fastest-selling game platform ever in the country.

The Kyoto-based firm said the console reached the landmark Sunday, less than a year after its launch on Feb. 26, 2011. It said the number was based on estimates from data it obtained directly from its domestic distributors.

It's a confusing time in the world of mobile and portable gaming. Consumers seem to be moving away from the idea that they need an entirely separate device to play games on the go, settling for cheap, generally simple touchscreen games on their cell phones and tablets. Nintendo, following up the insanely successful DS system that rested on a seemingly gimmicky double screen design, added a newer glasses-free 3D gimmick to its Nintendo 3DS—only to see extremely slow sales force it into a premature price drop.

We reported last year about the Steam hack, but it has now been reported that the hack was actually quite a lot worse than previously thought. The server hacked did contain data such as usernames, hashed passwords, game purchases, e-mail addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card numbers, but Valve didn't find any evidence that led them to believe that any personal information was stolen, until now.

It seems like the recent release of Kinect for Windows has caused a resurgence in Kinect hacks over the last few days. The official Microsoft SDK makes it easier than ever to come up with interesting new uses for the depth-sensing camera system, and now there's a Kinect hack you can play with from the comfort of your own home without even buying a Kinect.

Remember Razer's slightly mad Project Fiona? Still in its infancy, it is an attempt to transfer proper gaming internals to a tablet designed specifically for that very task.

Speaking to Alienware product manager Eoin Leyden, it appears the high-end PC manufacturer could be looking into something similar. We asked Alienware what it thought of Razer's efforts.

Today has been named as Safer Internet Day. On this occasion Microsoft has decided to take some time to talk to Xbox 360 owners and Xbox Live subscribers about how the company is trying to handle reports of Xbox Live accounts being highjacked. It's an issue that Microsoft and a number of Xbox Live users have been dealing with a lot lately. So far, Microsoft has insisted that the Xbox Live service itself has not been attacked and has blamed the account hijackings on phishing scams and other methods.

After his Xbox Live account was stolen, Josh had to file a Better Business Bureau complaint in order to make MIcrosoft pay attention to him and restore his account access. After three months, he was delighted to log back in to his account, but surprised to learn that he had been banned for a "code of conduct violation." What did his account do to get banned? It was trying to steal other accounts. Imagine that.

Music industry chiefs must have been pleased to hear that the maker of pig-squishing iPhone game Angry Birds has learned from its mistakes in combating piracy.

Contrasting the music industry's ignore-then-crush approach to piracy to his own softly-softly approach with Angry Birds, Rovio chief Mikael Hed told assembled music insiders at the Midem Music Conference in Cannes that things could have worked out better if they had only chilled out.