Speaking at the Game Developers Conference, Sid Meier has declared that 2011 is “the year of Civilization”.

He made the statement during the Q&A session which followed his keynote speech. When asked what he’s looking forward to playing this year Meier said, “In the immediate future I think this is the year of Civlization.

“But looking further out, there’s so much energy and dynamism in this industry… Every day there’s something new, and that’s a big part of being excited about being in games,” he added.

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Nintendo’s Hanabi Festival returns today, making NeoGeo game Iron Clad and NES game Lode Runner available in Europe for the first time.

That’s so brilliant that Nintendo has bumped up the price, raising Iron Clad from 900 to 1000 Wii Points (£7/€10), and Lode Runner from 500 to 600 Wii Points (£4.20/€6).

On WiiWare today is Military Madness, a moon-based, turn-based, hexagonal-grid strategy game that requires three hyphens to describe. This costs 1000 Wii Points (£7/€10). There’s a website.

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BioWare has singled out 2nd February 2011 as a significant date for the Dragon Age series.

The numbers “02.01.2011″ were printed on a leaflet inside the US Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening retail box, above a familiar blood-red dragon. 1UP took a picture.

There was no accompanying explanation, but this appears to be the “Dragon Age Title TBA” mentioned in EA’s Q3 financials in February.

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Various hints dropped by Peter Molyneux and Lionhead point to a PC version of Fable III.

“There are some things we haven’t seen,” Molyneux told GameSpot. “We still haven’t talked to the world about Natal. We still haven’t talked to the world about co-op and what we’re doing with co-op.

“We still haven’t really talked about, ‘Are there any other platforms for Fable that we should be talking about now?’”

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Realtime Worlds has told Eurogamer that its long-term roadmap for APB will see the game change considerably over its lifespan.

“We have a three-year plan for it,” David Jones said in an interview published today. “For me it’s like GTA to GTA III. It takes time, you can’t do it all on day one.

“We have a plan, we’ll actually build that into the storyline as well. There are some very unique long-term metagames coming that are much more in line with the style of game we are.”

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Stylish co-op crime caper Monaco has won top honours at the Independent Games Festival 2010.

Pocketwatch’s creation was hailed as Best Independent Game and took home the $20,000 Seamus McNally Grand Prize. Monaco also scooped Excellence in Design.

The other games nominated for the Seamus McNally Grand Prize were Joe Danger, Trauma, Rocketbirds: Revolution! and Super Meat Boy!.

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Blizzard senior engineer Dominic Fillion revealed the extent of the developer’s perfectionism at GDC today. During a presentation on programming StarCraft II, he quipped that the vast majority of the developer’s effort goes into the final polishing stages of the game.

“They say that the last 20 per cent of your effort gets you 80 per cent of your game,” Fillion said, quoting the the common game development maxim.

“With us it seems to be the other way around. 80 per cent of our effort goes into the final 20 per cent of polish.”

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Sony je objavio da će se Playstation kontroler osetljiv na pokrete zvati PlayStation Move. Citajte dalje

EA objavljuje da će 18. marta Need for Speed: Shift biti proširen za 7 novih vozila i jednu stazu. Citajte dalje

The OnLive cloud gaming service is set to launch in the US on 17th June.

The service allows players to access PC games from 2K, EA, THQ, Ubisoft and Warner Bros. The games run on OnLive’s beefy servers and players control them remotely through the OnLive client.

OnLive will initially charge a subscription fee of $14.95 per month and special offers and longer subs deals are also planned.

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