NEWS: Saturday Roundup

Welcome to the Saturday Roundup, a weekly roundup of all the important news going on in the gaming world. If you’re sick of gaming websites' content turning more and more casual, or trying to pass off a single sentence and a link to a cool picture they saw on deviant art as ‘news,’  you've come to the right place. I aim to consolidate and summarize only the stuff that’s most important to gaming enthusiasts. It’s a mix of hard news, interesting features, and other tidbits that I feel like you guys would enjoy. Let’s see what’s been going on this week:

• Age of Empires Online will no longer receive future content updates. Gamemaster Trajan announced on their blog this week that apart from a few pieces of content that have already been finished and are awaiting roll-out, no new content will be made for the MMO/RTS... thing. Trajan assures fans that the game will still receive technical support and bug fixes.
• "Gamers want a reason to upgrade their hardware": Crytek won't be held back by consoles for Crysis 3. The original Crysis game quickly became known as the ultimate benchmark. Whenever building or outlining a new rig, people would be quick to ask 'Yes, but how well can it run Crysis?' The only problem with this was that the game sold well under Crytek's expectations  as people aren't too interested in buying a game that needs a PC from the future to run. Crysis 2 was 'held back' by consoles, in that it was shoehorned onto the Xbox 360 and PS3's ageing hardware in an effort to garner some extra sales. Now it looks like Crytek are going back to their roots, and making a game that is PC first, consoles second. Personally I feel that this is a good move. PC components are the cheapest they have ever been, yet developers trying to make games for console's outdated hardware means that very few PC games warrant the need for an upgrade.

Will Crysis 3 make you upgrade your PC?

• TellTaleGames would love to have a crack at the Star Wars or Half-Life franchises. Talking to Red Bull, the developers of popular point-and-click adventure revivals such as Sam and Max and Monkey Island speak at length about their latest out-of-nowhere hit The Walking Dead, and what their plans are for the future. I would love to see a Star Wars adventure game, in the vein of those old LucasArts adventure games of old. Or maybe a Half-Life adventure game, where you play as one of the lesser known Black Mesa scientists, trying to escape without a small arsenal and a H.E.V suit.
• Diablo III fans will have to wait a little bit longer for proper PVP. In a blog post, Diablo III's big cheese Jay Wilson talks at length about how the 'team death match' mode that was originally planned for the game is just not working out, and they're going back to the drawing board. In an effort to slightly appease the no doubt disappointed fans, he announced that Diablo II style duelling will be implemented very shortly.
• Animal Crossing for the Nintendo 3DS has sold over 2 million copies! Nintendo head honcho Satoru Iwata is dumbfounded by the game's success in Japan, estimating that 1 out of ever 110 Japanese citizens own a copy of the game. My street pass has recently been almost exclusively filled with people playing Animal Crossing, so I can believe it!

Animal Crossing 3DS sold especially well with the hard-to-reach crowd of 19-24 women.

So that’s the news for this week. Be sure to subscribe to my twitter for up-to-date news and blog updates, my youtube channel for gaming videos, check out my new digs over at non-fiction gaming for my regular Wednesday article, and check back here every Saturday for more news!