Games

The PlayStation version of Diablo III appears ready to hack 'n' slash its way into living rooms.

Game maker Blizzard Entertainment showed off a new trailer and let gamers play the game at the PAX East conference taking place in Boston this weekend. While there's nothing too surprising about the footage shown, it's clear there are a few tweaks here and there to make things easier and faster for someone using a Dualshock controller.

Blizzard didn't comment or show off any footage of Diablo 3 for PlayStation 4, nor did it reveal the release date for the PS3 version. Interestingly, a company representative at the expo told Penny Arcade Report that the game isn't a PlayStation exclusive, but kept mum on an official announcement. Could Diablo III be in the works for the Xbox 360 and/or Wii U?… Read more

Mackenzie Wilson, 9, may just be the youngest Kickstarter rock star to date, and if all goes as planned she'll be a coding superstar one day as well.

Wilson teamed with her mom, Susan Wilson (to respect Kickstarter's official ban on minors owning crowdfunding projects) to launch a campaign to raise $829 to cover the cost of attending a weeklong role-playing design camp for 9- to 12-year-olds.

"I love computers, video games, apps, and role playing games - especially Magic the Gathering and Borderlands 2 that I get to play with my Dad (because my 15 & … Read more

BOSTON--World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment today announced HearthStone: Heroes of Warcraft, a free-to-play collectible card game for PC, Mac, and iPad.

Gamers can sign up to beta-test the title today. The beta will launch this summer, with the full game due out sometime in 2013.

"We wanted to do something a little different," a Blizzard representative said while explaining the game during a presentation at gaming conference PAX East. The game, described as "really small," was built by a team of 15 developers at the Irvine, Calif., developer. … Read more

Education becomes more difficult by the day.

Kids have their heads buried in gadgets and bongs. For them, virtual communication is the only real communication there is.

So how can you get them to think about the wider world? One game developer, Littleloud, thought it would be stimulating to create an iPad game called Sweatshop HD.

This tasked the young players to maintain, yes, a sweatshop. It was, indeed, helpful during the game to ignore human rights and hire frightfully young employees. Just as in real life.

Apple, though, felt it was too much like real life. According to Pocket Gamer, … Read more

Microsoft's next Xbox won't allow gamers to play titles from an optical drive, according to a newly leaked document.

The folks over at VGLeaks recently released what they claim is the Microsoft documentation for its next console, code-named Durango. In the long-winded document, which makes mention of enhanced graphics and an improved Kinect sensor that will be sold with the console, Microsoft notes that only hard drive-based game playback will be offered.

"Every Durango console will have a hard drive, although its exact capacity has not been chosen," the company wrote in the documentation. "It will be large enough, however, to hold a large number of games. All games will be installed on the hard drive. Play from the optical disc will not be supported."… Read more

Valve's Team Fortress 2 will be the first game to work with the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset.

The game will receive an update over the next few weeks to enable support, dubbed VR Mode, for the Oculus Rift. Users will be able to play in public servers using the headset. The Oculus Rift is only available for the Windows platform, with Mac and Linux support in the pipeline.

The first developer kits for the Oculus Rift -- the product of a very successful Kickstarter campaign -- is expected to ship to backers soon. The $300 headset was initially scheduled to ship by December. … Read more

EA has detailed the list of Origin games it will offer to customers affected by the disastrous launch of SimCity.

All copies of SimCity registered on Origin before March 25 will give applicable customers a chance to pick one free game from the following list: Battlefield 3; Bejeweled 3; Dead Space 3; Mass Effect 3; Medal of Honor: Warfighter; Need for Speed: Most Wanted; Plants vs. Zombies; and SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition. … Read more

Electronic Arts Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello will resign from his position at the FIFA and Battlefield publisher after six years effective March 30, the company announced today. In addition, he will no longer be a member of the game publisher's board of directors.

The EA board of directors has appointed longtime EA executive Larry Probst as executive chairman of the company while a search is conducted for Riccitiello's permanent replacement. Probst has been in a leadership position at EA since 1991 and was CEO from 1991 to 2007. The board will consider internal and external candidates, the … Read more

According to an official invitation sent to GameSpot, Electronic Arts and DICE plan to "celebrate a new era of Battlefield" at an upcoming Battlefield 4 event in San Francisco on March 26 at 7 p.m. PT. The event occurs during the 2013 Game Developers Conference that takes place from March 25-29.

For those craving more information about the upcoming shooter, well, there isn't much to work with at the moment.… Read more