The Week in Gaming News

Our round-up of notable news from the world of gaming for the week of January 17th, 2011.

• Capcom has announced two more fighters for its upcoming Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. Akuma from the Street Fighter series and Taskmaster from the Marvel world, who has the ability to copy his opponents’ abilities and use them against them.

• Bethesda has revealed details about the game engine behind upcoming RPG epic The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The new “Creation Engine” comes from every major system powering the studio’s previous games being rebuilt for the new game.

• Producer David Anfossi debunked rumors that Deus Ex: Human Revolution would have dynamic scaling difficulty. He told PCGamer “No. We have three difficulty settings: Easy, Normal and Hard. There’s no adaptation of the difficulty at all, we don’t have anything like that.”

• Farmville and Cityville developer Zynga has acquired New York based social game developer Area/Code. The studio was responsible for some of the early Facebook social gaming success stories, such as the game Parking Wars.

• More than 13 years after its first official announcement, Duke Nukem Forever finally has a release date. After being resurrected by Gearbox studios, the game will appear on the 360, PS3, and PC on May 3.

And from Paste’s own news coverage:

• Trailers from a media-blackout Square-Enix event leaked to the internet, providing details about several Final Fantasy games, including Versus XIII, XIII-2, Type-0 (formerly known as Agito XIII), and Kingdom Hearts 3DS.

• An iPhone game built by a 14-year-old has bumped Angry Birds from the top spot on the free games app charts.

• A reality show based on Pac Man is being pitched to studios.

• A web series is being developed based on the awesome Mortal Kombat trailer that surfaced last summer. We can’t wait.

• The Nintendo 3DS got a price and release date. It will be out in the US March 27 for $249.99.

• Valve is bringing its popular gaming hub Steam to the PS3 with the release of Portal 2, allowing for console to PC cross-platform gaming for the first time.

• We listed seven awesome songs recreated in the world of Minecraft.

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