Sony announced the winners of its 2012 "Gamer's Choice" awards (promotion) today. These will be the 10 games that you can claim steep discounts on for the next week, starting tonight when the PlayStation Store updates. Each one will be discounted 30%, or 50% if you're a PlayStation Plus subscriber.

Read more: The full list of winners »

It's that time of year again: the PlayStation Network "Gamers' Choice Awards" are opening tomorrow, letting your votes determine which games will get deep discounts. The nominees were announced today, across the 4 categories from last year and six new categories.

Read more: The full list of nominees and categories »

Video game lore: love it or loathe it, you have to admit there are people tedious enough to obsess over the minutiae of unspectacular stories. The latest monument to lore is the 256-page Assassin's Creed Encylopedia but fear not, gentle reader, it does also cover actual history too, and has plenty of pretty pictures to look at.

Watch: The Encylopedia explained »

E3 hasn't stopped the march of the PlayStation Store update, and now that it's back, the marketplace is getting pretty hefty loads of content.

New demos include El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron and Dungeon Siege 3. New game downloads featured this week include New Adventure Island and Soldier Blade for $5.99 each, and the fourth episode of Back to the Future. Read more »

Sony's weekly PlayStation Store update update kicks off this year's Spring Fever sale, adding more discounts to the ones from the Gamers Choice awards.

As previously reported, PlayStation Plus subscribers get an early crack at the Mortal Kombat demo this week. This comes alongside demos for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12, Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, and Explodemon. Read more »

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood finally has a PC release date, along with system specifications. Ubisoft sent word in a press release that the PC version will launch in North America on March 22, for all your stabby needs. This is a change from the previously announced March 17 date, which was a Thursday.

Ubisoft announced its first piece of paid downloadable content for Assassin's Creed Brotherhood today, a single- and multiplayer add-on called "The Da Vinci Disappearance." It will be available on the PS3 and Xbox 360 in early March and cost $10 (800 MS Points).

The long-awaited PC edition of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood will finally be released on March 17 in North America, Ubisoft has quietly announced on the open-world murder simulator's official forums.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood was released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 back in November 2010. The PC edition was initially expected to launch alongside the console versions, until Ubisoft revealed otherwise in September. Hopefully it'll be one of the PC games Ubisoft tones its DRM down for. Read more »

With word that Assassin's Creed Brotherhood has shipped a cool 6.5 million units since launching worldwide, it appears that Ubisoft isn't ready to put the franchise on a window sill to cool off. Read more »

Proving that a mixture of Renaissance-period drama and insane sci-fi nonsense pays off, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood has taken the top video game honors this year from the Writers Guild of America.

Some have criticized the guild for leaving out deserving games, leading WGA Videogame Writers Caucus (VWC) chair & steer committee member Micah Wright to defend the organization in an editorial published on GamesIndustry.biz. Read more »

Ubisoft has announced a new multiplayer map will be made available for free when the Assassin's Creed Facebook page hits one million fans.

When the Facebook page hits the one million mark, Ubisoft says it will release a new t-shirt commemorating the event; release a "Thank You" video featuring the dev team; execute a 24-hour, 15% discount on the UbiWorkshop; launch a giveaway on the Facebook page; and release the "Venezia by Night" multiplayer map for the most recent game in the series, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Read more »

Xbox 360 owners eagerly awaiting the second piece of free downloadable content for Assassin's Creed Brotherhood were given a brief scare last night, as a title update for the game broke online multiplayer on the eve of the Animus 2.0 update.

CVG reports that the Xbox 360 patch was sent out to prepare the game for upcoming DLC and "some major updates." But server issues caused a multiplayer glitch, which has since been fixed. Downloading the current patch should leave you error-free. Read more »

Although some companies achieved sales milestones in 2010, including Activision's Call of Duty: Black Ops and Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, sales throughout the industry were down "as much as 1 percent when compared to 2009," the NPD Group estimates.

Data is still preliminary for "total consumer spend on gaming content via all monetization methods, including new physical video and PC games, used games, game rentals, subscriptions, digital full-game downloads, social network games, downloadable content, and mobile game apps," however, the market research company puts complete spending between $15.4 and $15.6 billion. Read more »

Multiplatform Game: Red Dead Redemption

Shacknews loves it some cowboy-gaming and Red Dead Redemption was our definite pick for best multiplatform game, though we were a bit sad you PC gamers didn't get to play the game. Red Dead was all about the experience and the world it created. Through the use of random roadside events, Rockstar San Diego managed to make the game world feel alive and dangerous when close to towns. When out in the wilderness, Rockstar San Diego makes the game feel alive and extra dangerous through the use of random cougars. Read more »

Action-Adventure: Red Dead Redemption

It seems like beating a dead horse, but we keep coming back to Red Dead Redemption for 2010. With an expansive world, fantastic gunplay, and our 2010 Story of the Year, Red Dead Redemption is our pick for best action-adventure title of the year. Competition was fierce this year, but with so much to see and do in towns--and along the way--it was hard not to dust off our ponchos and ride again and again. Rockstar San Diego proved that there is more than one house within the company that can build an outstanding open-world adventure. While some of the in between stuff is removed from calm demeanor Rockstar was going for--as in killing dozens of peons while you attempt to bring in a bounty alive--the game doesn't go overboard unless players wish to be known as a ruthless gunslinger. There's so much to say about Red Dead Redemption but we'll leave it at this: it was the best Action-Adventure game of 2010. Read more »