Just in time for the blockbuster hit film adaptation of the popular book series, an official iOS game tie-in for The Hunger Games has hit the app store today, and if you have an iOS device, you should absolutely grab it!

And even though it’s a movie tie-in, it’s not a cash-in. The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire can be downloaded for the low, low price of free – so all you cheapskates and skinflints should sit up and take notice.

Developed most notably by Semi-Secret’s Adam Saltsman, the game feels like it could be a sequel to Canabalt, in that it is a runner that feels like Saltsman’s earlier success. But where Canabalt is just running and jumping, Girl on Fire takes things into a more complex direction. The game arms series heroine Katniss Everdeen with a bow and arrow which she can use with great efficiency, with which she can shoot down the game’s obstacles in the form of micro-bombs and human-sized robohornets known as ‘tracker jackers’. She can also leap back and forth between two different tiers in each level, in order to avoid the robotic drones or energy blasts that they fire.

It makes for a great evolution of the auto-runner genre, and certainly makes for not only more unique situations to consider, but certainly keeps the player on their toes.

While Saltsman is one of the key developers on the title, The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire sports loads of indie talent. Mark Johns and Kevin Coulton of Doomlaser headed up the design and programming, Paul Veer from Super Crate Box handled the art and animations, Danny Baranowski – one of gaming’s rising composers – handled the soundtrack and Ozone Sound & Music handled all the sound effects.

And yet, despite all the talent and polish on the game, plus the fact that it’s a movie tie-in, the game is totally free. So all you cheapskates can and should grab it now!

The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire is available now for iOS devices.

After all this time, Blizzard has finally announced the release date for the anticipated next chapter in the Diablo saga. Diablo III will hit Windows and Mac platforms in most territories this spring, on May 15.

Via announcement, Blizzard stated that players in the U.S., Canada, Europe, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau regions would get the game in mid-May. In Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, the game will be available as well but only digitally via Blizzard’s Battle.net service. Pre-orders for digital copies have started today.

It won’t be until June 7 that gamers in Latin America and Russia can get their hands on a copy of Diablo III. Blizzard claims that the game will be fully localized into Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portugese, French, German, European Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian, Korean and Traditional Chinese. They’re really not leaving anybody out of this one.

“After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we’re now in the homestretch,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We look forward to putting the final polish on Diablo III over the next two months and delivering the ultimate action-RPG experience to gamers worldwide starting on May 15th.”

Diablo III will sel at $59.99 both for a retail DVD copy or a digital version, and will run on everything from Windows XP up through Windows 7, as well as Mac OS X. The special collector’s edition, running $99.99, includes the full game on disc, a behind-the-scenes Blu-Ray/DVD two disc set, a soundtrack CD, a 208 page Art of Diablo III book, and a 4 GB USB ‘soulstone’ featuring full versions of Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction as well as a matching Diablo skull to put it in, plus exclusive in-game content for Diablo III, World of Warcraft and Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty.

Gamers not willing to pony up for a new game, but still want to play and are still denizens of World of Warcraft’s Azeroth can throw down for that game’s Annual Pass – it’s $14.99 a month, but will net you a free copy of the game and a special WoW in-game mount. This deal expires at 12:01 a.m. PDT on May 1.

However, the game will not ship complete, as many games tend to do, these days. Diablo III will only ship with the single-player game intact. The planned player vs. player arena mode will arrive as a free-to-download patch after launch. Blizzard developers have stated that the feature simply was not ready to be shipped along with the game.

However, despite all that, the wait is almost over. It’s almost like the summer of 2000 all over again! Are you excited to delve back into Blizzard’s idea of hell? Let us know in the comments!

Diablo III is slated for release on Windows and Mac PCs on May 15.

Eschewing the over-the-shoulder viewpoint and cinematic nature of the original games, Infinity Blade: Dungeons is a Diablo-esque dungeon crawl. Players will guide their warrior through various eponymous dungeons in search of the materials necessary to forge the titular Infinity Blade, using touch controls for both movement and real-time combat.

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According to a press release from Epic, the game is coming to “iOS devices” so it’s likely it won’t be a new iPad exclusive, but certainly it’s going to look pretty darn sharp on the super high resolution device. Take a look at the trailer and our image gallery and see what you think!

Apple just announced the new iteration of the iPad at their press event today, at the Yerba Buena Conference Center in San Francisco.

Details are still trickling out, but the device boasts its own version of the retina display. Apple’s Phil Schiller describes the screen as unmatched by anyone in the industry, boasting a 2048×1536 resolution – 3.1 million pixels, the most in any mobile device. Compared to a HD television, at 1920×1080 and only 1 million pixels, Apple is really going nuts with their display. They also boast 40% better color saturation than before, and 264 pixels per inch which is “enough to call it a retina display.”

The device also features a retooled version of Apple’s A5 processor, the A5X, designed to produce quad core graphics. They are claiming that the A5 is twice as fast as a Tegra 3 and  that the A5X provides “four times the performance.” We are calling citation needed here, but still. That is a bold claim.

The new iPad will also have an iSight camera, which is great since the iPad 2 camera sucked a fat one. This one is a 5-megapixel backside illuminated sensor on the back, 5-element lens, IR filter and ISP built right into the A5X chip. It’s basically the same camera as the iPhone 4S, but that is pretty darn good news. It can also handle 1080p video recording, for those who want to use their iPads as a camcorder.

Of particular note is software stabilization – looks like the new iPad has some image stabilization for video recording and reportedly it’s a big improvement. It also features some noise reduction tech as well.

New to the new iPad: Voice dictation. There’s a microphone key at the bottom of the new display, though it’s not necessarily full-on Siri. It will, at launch, feature US English, British, Australian, French, German and Japanese.

Next, the device will feature 4G LTE – huge news for the road warriors out there. iPad 2 can pull 3.1 Mbps on EV-DO, 7.2 on HSPA. The new iPad has 21 Mbps on HSPA+ and DC-HSPDA at 42 Mbps, with LTE topping out at 73 Mbps. All this is via AT&T, by the way. However, it looks like there will be Verizon outside the gate. Of course, there isn’t much LTE support outside the US – sorry, UK! To start with, the LTE partners will be Verizon, Rogers, Bell, Telus and AT&T.

Of particular note, as there are different bands of LTE, we’ll have different devices for AT&T and Verizon. Interesting. Also regarding carrier differences, the new iPad can now be a personal hotspot if the carrier allows it. And even without LTE, new iPad’s wireless capabilities are jucier than its predecessors, being world-ready 3G capable right out of the gate.

When it comes to battery life, the new iPad will give you 10 hours of battery life, or 9 if you’re running 4G. It’s a heftier device, though, weighing in at 9.4mm thick and 1.4 pounds, which is a tad bit heaver than the iPad 2.

“Everything has been updated,” Schiller said. “But as you remember when the iPhone 4 went to the retina display, developers didn’t have to do anything and their apps looked better. But if the developer takes a little bit of time, they can do little things with their apps that are mindblowing.”

On the gaming front, Namco and Epic Games showed off demos of their new projects. Namco unveiled a new fighter jet sim called Sky Gamblers, which Apple folks are excitedly calling console quality. Epic Games announced Infinity Blade: Dungeons, featuring HDR graphics and tone-mapping. It looks luscious.

In fact, Epic’s Mike Capps is making a real bold claim, that it has more memory and screen resolution than the PS3 or Xbox 360. Huh.

Finally, there’s the price – and it’s exactly the same as current models: A 16GB new iPad will run you $499. 32GB will run $599 and 64GB at $699. 4G prices are $629, $729 and $829 respectively.

Of course, this does cause the prices in the old models to drop. iPad 2 will continue to be available, at a $100 reduction, so $399 for a 16GB Wi-Fi only model.

“We have redefined yet again the category that Apple created just two years ago with the original iPad,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The new iPad will be available simultaneously on March 16 in the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan, with pre-orders starting today.

[image source] Engadget

Today industry legend and founder of both Bullfrog and Lionhead Studios Peter Molyneux announced that he will be leaving Lionhead and Microsoft when development of Fable: The Journey is complete.

Molyneux revealed via Twitter that he will be joining a new company called 22 Cans, which has just been established by former Lionhead CTO Tim Rance.

Microsoft said in a statement that it wishes Molyneux “the best of luck in his future endeavors,” and called him “one of our most passionate and influential developers for the Xbox 360 platform.”

Molyneux first became famous on his work with Bullfrog titles like Dungeon Keeper and Populous, and in 1997 left there to co-found Lionhead. It was at that point that Molyneux became more infamous than famous, with the way he hyped his projects like Black and White and Fable, but it remains unquestioned that he has been one of the hitmakers of the industry. Most recently, Lionhead was acquired in 2006 by Microsoft, at which point it was directed to focus exclusively on the Xbox 360.

There’s no word yet on what we’ll see from 22 Cans, but if we know Molyneux, we won’t have to wait TOO long.

[source] Twitter

Today Microsoft announced the game has a release date of April 4, in a slew of news blurbs via public face/mouthpiece Major Nelson, though not much else. But we do know that the game is an Xbox Live Arcade Game designed to make use of the Kinect peripheral, and your own bizarre sense of whimsy. Essentially, you control a baseball player who is pitching and batting balls at oncoming monsters.

Players can even team up with a second player, performing goofy-looking team moves and fending off those zombies two at a time.

Could it be the best baseball game ever? Maybe. Could it be the craziest baseball game ever? Absolutely.

We’ll know even more when the game launches April 4, on Xbox Live Arcade.

[source] Major Nelson

What do you think? Are you suitably piqued yet? Let us know in the comments!

Gamers have thrilled to the struggle between the Assassins and the Templars in the hit series, Assassin’s Creed. This week, Ubisoft set fans alight with the announcement of the next game in the series, Assassin’s Creed III.

The new installment eschews many of the earlier games’ familiar trappings, leaving behind the cities of the middle east or European continent and places the game’s new hero in colonial America, during the Revolutionary War. Is it cool? Yes, it’s very cool.

While we don’t know much about him yet, the new lead character is Ratohnhaké:ton, otherwise known as Connor, a half-English half-Native American Assassin who wields a tomahawk and bow with deadly efficiency. Will he stack up against Altair and Ezio, his predecessors? That much, we’ll have to wait and see.

Though not only does the game feature a new hero, and a new setting, but the game is built off a new engine and will even grace a new console, when it’s completed. In order to accomplish some of the technical feats Ubisoft hopes to accomplish, developers have crafted a new engine, called Ubisoft-AnvilNext, which promises “breakthroughs in visual quality, character models and artificial intelligence.”

And the game itself, aside from the familiar grounds of the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, will also make its debut on the Wii U as well.

“Assassin’s Creed III features the franchise’s most expansive setting so far, along with an exciting new hero and exponentially more gameplay,” said Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer at Ubisoft via official press release. “Whether you’re a longtime fan of Assassin’s Creed or if you’re new to the franchise, you’re going to be blown away by the scale and marvel of Assassin’s Creed III.”

Assassin’s Creed III is slated for release on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 31, with the Wii U version forthcoming.

While we don’t learn much from the trailer, we do know this much: For now, the game isn’t being called SimCity 5, but simply just ‘SimCity’ which lends more credence to the speculation that the game is a reboot of the venerable simulation. It’s being developed by Maxis, and is slated for release on the PC in 2013.

It’s also been let out that the game will feature social interactions with citizens and other cities, which we now know is termed “Social Flow.” It’ll determine how your city affects – and is affected – by other cities nearby. Finite resources, technological advancements and the decisions you make will all impact the development of not just your city, but those around you.

Via press release, EA has even already announced the game’s first bit of DLC, which will be free to Origin pre-purchasers: SimCity Heroes & Villains, which pits “a battle between Maxis Man and his longtime nemesis Evil Dr. Vu.”

On top of this, the game is slated to feature things like being able to talk to individual Sims, a full world builder and even the ability to customize individual buildings – super cool!

If you’ve been waiting on a proper update to the series, and not content with games hoping to fill the gap like Cities XL, this might be what you’ve been waiting for!

SimCity is slated for release on PC in 2013.

Are you as thirsty for more info on Firaxis/2K Games’ upcoming reboot of the turn-based strategy classic, XCOM? Well, you are in absolute luck.

2K Games has released this “Deep Dive” going into the game’s details with three of its team members – Jake Solomon – Lead Designer, Casey O’Toole – Lead Programmer and Greg Foertsch – the game’s art director. Find out how this XCOM team is working hard to bring you a game that is true to the original’s roots, while creating an even more compelling experience than the original!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is slated for release on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in the Fall of 2012.