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Surprise! It’s official. Modern Warfare 3 was the best-selling game in the industry last year. In the US, Activision’s shooter charted ahead of Just Dance 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in 2011, with Battlefield 3 and Madden NFL 12 rounding off the top five, according to data from sales tracker the NPD Group. …

According to research by TorrentFreak, Crysis 2 was the most pirated game of 2011 with nearly four million illegal downloads. EA’s sci-fi shooter was downloaded 3,920,000 times between its release in March 2011 and the end of the year, though we’re unsure whether the numbers include the build that leaked a full month before release …

Season’s greetings and all that. As is the tradition at this time of year, along with shopping trolley rage, trying to find parking spaces and drinking too much, Newbies Incorporated’s regurgitated default Christmas message follows. To all noobs, past, present and future, and our many readers I wish you all a Happy Christmas, Joyous Newton’s …

Another set of new NVIDIA drivers have been released (290.36), adding ambient occlusion support for Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3. Among the improvements in the drivers are screen flickering and triangular artefact fixes in Battlefield 3, and Nvidia also recommends the update to troubled Batman: Arkham City players. The update streamlines PhysX support, says Nvidia, …

Cloud gaming platform OnLive has unveiled a range of deals and special offers taking place over the next five days to coincide with the US Thanksgiving holiday. Kicking off at 11:59pm GMT today and running until 8:01am on Monday, November 28th, players can log into OnLive and play Homefront and Red Faction: Armageddon multiplayer games …

Cloud gaming service OnLive has launched with a much bigger UK audience than initially forecast, according to CEO Steve Perlman. He told MCV that September’s UK launch reached ‘millions’ of users and that OnLive’s worldwide audience is in the ‘tens of millions’, although he wouldn’t confirm exact figures. “The growth in the UK has been …

EA has stuck another two fingered salute up to anyone who enjoys their previous games, by announcing it is to “retire” online services for around a dozen oldish games between now and October 1st 2011. Titles impacted by the move include Need for Speed Most Wanted for PC and Xbox 360, Skate for PS3 and …

Google looks set to be making a big splash in the games industry with a brand new division called Games at Google. The search giant has put out a job ad for a product manager in the new business. The responsibilities of the role include driving feature requirements for “Google’s gaming platform.” Back in October …

Who’d believe it? A teenager suspected of being a key member of notorious hacking group LulzSec has been detained in Essex following a joint operation by the FBI and Scotland Yard. The group has since denied his key involvement, saying he’s just someone who ran their chat rooms. Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Central e-Crime …

EA has released a new Battlefield 3 behind the scenes movie filmed at developer DICE’s studio in Sweden, which in addition to showing exclusive new footage from the upcoming FPS, there are interviews with key team members including the game’s creative director, lead weapons designer and audio director, plus a look back over the history of …

We love it when video game companies cheekily sling mud at each other. This time rround we found ourselves tickled by what looks like a jab from Sucker Punch at Microsoft and the dreaded Xbox 360 red ring of death. In the latest gameplay video, the super-powered protagonist of Infamous can be seen giving out …

Activision signing a ten-year publishing deal with Bungie for the studio’s next franchise was one of the biggest news stories of last year. Having wrestled its independence back from Microsoft, some thought the Halo creator was perhaps heading into dangerous territory by getting into bed long-term with the Call of Duty publisher, which has received …

If like me you bought Fight Night Champion, you’ll have wondered where on earth the user manual was. I don’t even read the things, yet it somehow bothered me. All has now been revealed as EA has confirmed that it has quietly done away with printed manuals for its games, instead replacing them with poorly …

Batman: Arkham City maker Rocksteady and Mortal Kombat reboot developer NetherRealm will use Unreal Engine 3 exclusively on all projects until 2014, under the terms of a new licensing deal signed with Epic by parent company Warner Bros Interactive. Samantha Ryan, Warner’s senior VP development, called Unreal Engine 3 “a perfect fit” for both studios. …

Valve will never commit to a Half-Life movie unless it can base it on an “interesting idea” – but it hasn’t ruled the possibility out. The series’ filmic qualities have made the idea of a feature adaptation a fan favourite discussion point – but other than some impressive amateur efforts, nothing official has ever been …