Blizzard Entertainment Inc. announced today the plans for its sixth edition of BlizzCon gaming convention, to be held at the Anaheim Convention Centre in Anaheim, California on Friday and Saturday, 21st and 22nd of October, 2011. BlizzCon continues the tradition of celebrating the player communities built around Blizzard Entertainment’s popular game universes such as Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo.

“We look forward to holding another exciting BlizzCon this year, filled with some great entertainment and competition, as well as the latest news about Blizzard games,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. … More

Whether they terrorize us and make us shiver under the blankets or they just make us laugh hysterically until we cry, zombies will always remain a great source of entertainment. Apparently video games industry veteran Jeff Strain feels the same way, as he has recently announced the formation of Undead Labs, a game development studio based in Seattle that will focus on online games. But not any kind of online games, but the definitive massively multiplayer online zombie game (MMOZ). So double undead trouble!

Strain left NCSoft last summer (we hear a roar of applauses in the background) with the declared goal of building from the ground up, together with a few of the most talented developers, a creative studio that targets a new breed of MMO for console gamers. … More

As announced by Activision Blizzard Inc yesterday the game continues its record breaking streak. Over a five day time frame Modern Warfare 2 registered sales worth an approximate of $550 million, according to internal Activision estimates. Such numbers shatter all previous held records:

- The largest reported five-day opening worldwide box office gross figures, held by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($394 million)
- The largest reported five-day opening domestic box office gross figures, held by The Dark Knight ($203.8 million) … More

At a first glance it would appear that you could easily extrapolate this into a matter of how much cynical juice flows into one’s body and that’s not really that far from the truth. As a simple equation, Profit is the amount gained minus the original investment and taxes. Profit is also the name of a god that is worshiped by most CEOs and that requires constant and painful sacrifices on altars such as marketing, quality control and last but not least, Progress. Why Progress? Because this little bundle of joy usually comes to life in the shape of a cute little furry animal we generally like to call “an Idea”. … More