Hey there everyone, just dropping you a line to say that we have launched a brand new mobile version of TheNPCs.

What’s more, you don’t need any fancy URLs to access it. When you visit our main site (http://www.thenpcs.com) on your mobile device of choice, we will automatically detect what browser you are using and send you to the appropriate site. There’s no tricky re-directs to stupid “m.sitename.com” addresses  or dodgy steps to raise hits, it just works.

It’s a sleek and rapid process designed to make our site run as quickly as possible on your phones whilst using much lower bandwidth than non-mobile optimized websites. This is the case for whatever phone you want to use, from the latest Android behemoth, to Apple’s unsightly iPhone and even good old dumb-phones. It might even work on Windows Phone 7′s unconvincing Internet Explorer, but that could be wishful thinking on our part.

Things like our innovative Disqus comment system work perfectly and look right on mobile devices too, even with these new changes.

So, wherever you are and whenever you are, you can access your favourite site on the web. Also, for now it’s ad-free. Just our way of saying thank you for your support over this past year. We will be making more tweaks and improvements across the site to mark our first (official) birthday, including some competitions. For now though, enjoy yourselves and namaste.

The summer release drought has been a permanent fixture in the gaming industry. However, this year there’s been a different drought: a Spring one. The only notable releases over the past few months have been overly expensive map packs, which were normally free back in my day.

“But Chris, there’s loads of games coming out in the next two months!” I hear you cry. True, but what exactly are they outside of Portal 2? Homefront is a rubbish brown FPS like everything this gen, Crysis 2 is destined to disappoint going by its multiplayer demo and the 3DS has a shockingly bad launch line-up.

How did it get this bad? Well, let’s not delude ourselves here. The DS launch lineup was fairly basic, with the usual array of shovelware and Mario 64 being just about the only options for gamers. However, shouldn’t system launches be accompanied by something appropriately epic?

Moreover, should games that were supposed to be out at Christmas be pushed to spring just to avoid the heavyweights? These types of titles get pushed further down the line to summer or even towards the end of the year. Homefront and Crysis 2 are two such examples. They got pushed to now just to avoid getting roasted in the pre-Christmas sales mania ruled by Call of Duty: Black Ops.

From what we can tell with Homefront, it doesn’t like the extra time was actually used to improve the game. Instead, THQ got carried away and believed their own hype and commissioned a bizarre array of DLC. Crysis 2′s multiplayer demo showcased a game that was just as shallow. Crytek has betrayed the fans of the Crysis series by essentially making the game Call of Duty: Future Warfare.

It appears that developers are now questioning themselves whether all this hassle is worth it. If your game doesn’t have space marines, warfare or some form of retarded motion control it will struggle to sell. So many studios have closed over the past year because they haven’t managed to adapt to this now stoic mainstream, whereas others have been neutered to appeal to this frankly shallow demographic (Rare, for example).

So, what can we do to stop this madness? We must stop buying average games and support those that innovate and really try for our time. Stuff like Portal 2 should be ruling this industry. You know the type of game: titles with actual characters and at least a valid attempt at story-telling. Games will never be art, but they can at least be intelligent and challenging in different ways. This used to be the type of thing gamers loved. Metal Gear Solid was draped in madcap plot twists and equally weird characters, but this quirky side to our traditionally quirky industry is being challenged by the “faux-quirky” (waggle, motion tosh) and the new mainstream: shoddy warfare rubbish.

So how does this fit into our starting thesis? To stop the drought, we need to get back to our old gaming mindset and remember we now have more ways to have a dialogue with publishers. They must understand we want games all over the year, not just when its most profitable for them in relation to their competition. Just look at what happened with Activision, they eventually got the message and cancelled Guitar Hero and the Tony Hawks series.

Publishers are beginning to wake up and realise we have a voice and we need to show them that we should still be their target audience. We are loyal folk in an industry now dominated by people that identify Mario as a character in a sports title as opposed to his magnum opus: Super Mario 64 and this is wrong. To defeat the drought, we must defeat the non-gaming and “faux-gaming” (Call of Duty playing) hordes that are content to blindly screw up our once great industry.

This year’s BAFTA Game nominations have been announced today. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood has been nominated for six awards, closely followed by Call of Duty: Black Ops and Super Mario Galaxy 2. The list has one important title missing – Red Dead Redemption. That’s not BAFTA’s fault though, as Rockstar Games decided not to enter the game into the competition. The winners will be announced on 16th March at the London Park Lane Hilton. The full list of nominations is available after the jump.

Here’s the list:

Action

* Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft)

* Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (EA/DICE)

* BioShock 2 (2K)

* Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision/Treyarch)

* God of War III (SCE Santa Monica Studio)

* Halo: Reach (Bungie)

Best Game

* Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft)

* FIFA 11 (Electronic Arts)

* Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream & XDev Studio Europe)

* LIMBO (Playdead Games)

* Mass Effect 2 (EA/BioWare)

* Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo)

* Toy Story 3 (Disney/Avalanche Software)

Gameplay

* Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft)

* God of War III (SCE Santa Monica Studio)

* Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream & XDev Studio Europe)

* LIMBO (Playdead Games)

* Mass Effect 2 (EA/BioWare)

* Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo)

Multiplayer

* Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft)

* Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (EA/DICE)

* Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision/Treyarch)

* Halo: Reach (Bungie)

* Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (EA/Criterion Games)

* Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (Blizzard Entertainment)

Original Music

* Alan Wake (Petri Alanko, Remedy)

* Fable III (Russell Shaw, Lionhead Studios)

* Heavy Rain (Normand Corbeil, Quantic Dream & XDev Studio Europe)

* James Bond 007: Bloodstone (Richard Jacques, Bizarre Creations)

* Mass Effect 2 (Jack Wall, BioWare)

* Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Koji Kondo, Nintendo)

Technical Innovation

* Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft)

* Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision/Treyarch)

* Halo: Reach (Bungie)

* Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream & XDev Studio Europe)

* Kinectimals (Frontier Developments Ltd)

* Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo)

Artistic Achievement

* Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (Ubisoft)

* Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard/Treyarch)

* God of War III (Sony Computer Entertainment/SCE Santa Monica Studio)

* Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream & XDev Studio Europe)

* LIMBO (Playdead Games)

* Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts/BioWare)

Family

* Dance Central (MTV & Harmonix)

* Kinect Adventures (Microsoft Games Studios/Good Science Studio)

* Kinect Sports (Microsoft Games Studios/Rare)

* Kinectimals (Microsoft Games Studios/Frontier Developments)

* LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment/TT Games)

* Toy Story 3 (Disney Interactive Studios/Avalanche Software)

Handheld

* Cut the Rope (Chillingo/Zeptolab)

* God of War: Ghost of Sparta (Sony Computer Entertainment/Ready at Dawn)

* LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment/TT Games)

* Professor Layton and the Lost Future (Nintendo/Level 5 Games)

* Sonic Colours (SEGA/Sonic Team)

* Super Scribblenauts (Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment/5th Cell)

Social Network Game

* Bejeweled Blitz (PopCap Games)

* Farmerama (Bigpoint)

* FIFA Superstars (EA Sports/Playfish)

* My Empire (Playfish)

* Zoo Mumba (Bigpoint)

* Zuma Blitz (PopCap Games)

Sports

* F1 2010 (Codemasters)

* FIFA 11 (Electronic Arts)

* Football Manager 2011 (SEGA/Sports Interactive)

* Gran Turismo 5 (Sony Computer Entertainment/Polyphony Digital)

* International Cricket 2010 (Codemasters/Trickstar Games)

* Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 (Konami/Winning Eleven Productions)

Strategy

* Civilization V (2K Games/Firaxis)

* Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda Softworks/Obsidian Entertainment)

* FIFA Manager 11 (EA Sports/Bright Future)

* Napoleon: Total War (SEGA/Creative Assembly)

* Plants vs. Zombies XBLA (PopCap Games)

* Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (Blizzard Entertainment)

BAFTA Ones To Watch Award in association with Dare to Be Digital

* Mush – Henry Hoffman, Ahmed Zaman, Matthew Dennis, Katherine Killick, Greg O’Brien (Angry Mango)

* Sculpty – Druhin Mukherjee, Fabien Roussot, James Long, Fraser Littlejohn, Ronan Suess (Team Tickle)

* Twang! – Jocce Marklund, Annette Nielsen, Linus Nordgren, Marcus Heder, Thomas Finlay (That Game Studio)

GAME Award of 2010

* Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard/Treyarch)

* Dance Central (MTV/Harmonix)

* FIFA 11 (Electronic Arts)

* Halo Reach (Microsoft Games Studios/Bungie)

* Heavy Rain Quantic Dream & XDev Studio Europe)

* LIMBO (Playdead Games)

* Mass Effect 2 (Electronic Arts/BioWare)

* Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (Electronic Arts/Criterion Games)

* Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games/Rockstar San Diego)

* Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo/Nintendo)

Treyarch have unveiled some interesting Black Ops facts. They said that the three most-picked perks are: Marathon, Sleight of Hand and Lightweight. The most popular guns are the Famas, the AK-74u and the Galil. The deadliest Killstreak is the RC-XD surprisingly, with the Attack Helicopter, Napalm Strike and Chopper Gunner behind.

There has been 242 million knife stabbings in Black Ops, and over one trillion shots have been fired with projectile weapons too. There have been nearly 600 million executions and 10 million paybacks too. One million cars have been destroyed and 1.3 million planes have been shot down as well.

Moreover, Black Ops players have travelled the distance of the Earth’s circumference 129,069 times. 3.4 billion crossbow bolts have also been fired, with a staggering 28 million deaths caused by the infamous tomahawk axe. Furthermore, if Black Ops was real the population of the world would have been killed nine times over. Over five billion of those would have met their end by a bullet to the face. People have captured a lot of those deaths in over 43 million videos as well.

id Software and Bethesda have announced that QuakeCon 2011 will take place on August 4th-7th 2011 at the Hillton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas. QuakeCon will once again host North America’s largest bring your own computer LAN party with thousands of gamers hooking up their systems to play against world class opposition apparently. Also expect hardware and software showcases from other companies as well as contests, entertainment, announcements, panels and parties.

Sony has announced that the PlayStation 3 is going on tour next month in the UK; in a new campaign they’re calling “PlayStation Access”. It allows people to try new PS3 games before they’re released. The first event is on Friday 4th February in London, and that goes on until Sunday 6th February.

After that, the event goes on to Glasgow and a few other places (more details are on the event’s Facebook page). Expect developer sessions, FIFA tournaments and Gran Turismo 5 time trials. If you set a good time you could win tickets to the Champions League final at Wembley in May.

Sony has broken their silence over the recent hacking of their PlayStation 3. The company were remarkably quiet after the system’s security measures were completely defeated this week. Hackers have now got complete control over the system, and can sign their own software as genuine. Despite the system crumpling to the hackers and the groups obtaining the security keys, Sony has issued this nonsensical statement:

“We are aware of this, and are currently looking into it,” Sony said. “We will fix the issues through network updates, but because this is a security issue, we are not able to provide you with any more details.”

That would be fine, except this issue can’t be fixed with “network updates” as the console has been completely compromised. There is no way back, as the hackers have the keys to everything. The only way for Sony to stop the flood now is to release brand new hardware. Sony incurred the wrath of the hacking community after they removed the “Other OS” option from the PS3’s firmware last year.

The system was first cracked with the PSJailbreak towards the tail end of the year, and homebrew has been rolling on since then. Unfortunately, piracy has also become incredibly easy and Sony will no doubt be wary of this situation following the fall of the PSP but they’re going to have to wake up to the problem if they are to combat it.

Activision has announced that Call of Duty: Black Ops has generated more than $1 billion for Activision in just six weeks on sale. Players have spent a combined 600 million hours playing the game’s online multiplayer mode. Microsoft says the average player jumps on once a day for more than an hour.

“In all of entertainment, only Call Of Duty and Avatar have ever achieved the billion dollar milestone this quickly,” Bobby Kotick, Activision CEO, said. “Our ability to provide the most compelling, immersive entertainment experience, and enhance it with regular, recurring content that delivers hundreds of hours of audience value, has allowed Call Of Duty to continue to set sales and usage records.”

id Software has reminded us that their first ever game is now 20 years old. That title was the good old-school side-scroller Commander Keen. It was released on 14th December 1990, a whole two months before id Software was officially founded.

“My childhood was pretty much made up of Mario games on the console, and Commander Keen on the PC,” said id Software’s Mike Rubits.

“I was only three years old when the game was originally released, but I still must have played the first level in each game hundreds of times, not being talented enough to get much further. I didn’t even realise until well after DOOM that the same people were responsible for both games; I just knew that I spent far too much time on both.”

id’s Shawn Casey contributed: “I remember always being jealous of the NES crowd because they had a cool platformer, and it wasn’t until Commander Keen came out that I could finally enjoy my own platformer on the PC. Playing it with the Gravis gamepad was a blast, even with a snapped off stick.”

Civilization V has made history by becoming the first videogame to be nominated a Grammy Award. Composer Christopher Tin received the nomination for the Baba Yetu track. It’s featured in Civ V’s opening theme and includes the Soweto Gospel Choir. The nomination is for the “Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists” category.

It’s up against loads of stuff no one cares about, including: Roger Treece’s “Baby”, Vince Mendoza’s “Based On A Thousand True Stories”, Geoffrey Keezer’s “Don’t Explain” and Herbie Hancock and Larry Klein’s “Imagine”. A winner will be crowned on 13th February, at the Grammy awards ceremony.

An interesting mystery-solving gang has finally solved the riddle of the Call of Duty: Black Ops mannequin easter egg riddle. We won’t spoil what happens when you shoot the mannequins’ heads in record time, but it is a fun little hidden secret if a little disappointing.

Microsoft has announced that the global total of sold Xbox 360 consoles stands at 44.6 million. The game-per-console attach rate has also risen to 8.9. From the beginning of July until the end of September, Microsoft sold 2.8 million Xbox 360s worldwide. That’s 38% more than during the same period last year.

It looks like Halo Reach was the reason why they made so much money. The game managed to generate $350 million for Microsoft in just two weeks. The 360 platform managed to generate $409 million for Microsoft, which is nearly a quarter of the Entertainment and Devices Division’s total $1.8 billion.

However, expenses rose. Research and development was up $65 million over the past three months, so it looks like Microsoft is up to something interesting. Microsoft’s entire company made $16.2 billion from the July to September period.

Keiji Inafune has decided that he will be quitting Capcom at the end of the month. He has been with the company for 23 years. He became the Head of R&D Management Group, Consumer Games R&D Division and Contents Management Division during his time there. Inafune said: “I’m leaving Capcom with the intention of starting my life over.”

Xbox Live Game Room developer Krome Studios is on the verge of collapse. All of the Brisbane studio’s staff have been let go and the developer will finally shut up shop on Monday. Once upon a time, Krome was the biggest development house in Australia. However, the studio axed 60 members of staff in November 2009, 50 in April 2010 and 100+ in August 2010.

Krome’s games were never that great, but we hope everyone affected by the studio’s closure goes on to find new jobs. We know how difficult times are at the moment and we wouldn’t wish anything like this on anyone.

Disney has canned Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned. The game was going to be an action-RPG title taking on the key elements of the movie series. As a result of the game being cancelled, developer Propaganda Games is now in trouble. Disney has restructured Propaganda Games, with as many as 100 members of staff let go. One of the studio’s two teams has been given the axe. The other is still working on TRON: Evolution and that game’s post-release DLC.

Panasonic has announced the “Jungle”, a pocket-sized (apparently) MMO/Online game player. The device features a display (obviously), a touch pad, QWERTY keyboard and a few other buttons scattered about. Also expect a mini HDMI port, a micro USB port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The system’s OS will be a custom Linux build.

It will support the browser based Battlestar Galactica Online MMO from SyFy and BigPoint at launch, as well as RuneScape. Panasonic is also working with Machinima.com to deliver a new show called “Online Underground”, that’ll deliver “news and information in the world of online gaming”. A release date and price for the Jungle are yet to be confirmed. We have a small video of the device after the jump.

Tim Schafer has hired Ron Gilbert to work on a new game with him over at Double Fine Studios. The duo created the Monkey Island games for LucasArts back in the day. Double Fine have a lot of things in the pipeline, with four games being developed for THQ. The first of that little lot will be Costume Quest.

Gilbert’s title isn’t one of those four and doesn’t have a publisher yet. Gilbert has recently worked with Hothead Games on DeathSpank, but he left before the game was released. A sequel to that (DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue) was released last week.

Peter Molyneux is one of those despicable people in the games industry who has a reputation for promising the world and giving underwhelming results. He’s also one of the masterminds behind what seems to be a paedophile simulator for Kinect. Yet this – in my opinion – pales under what his latest stunt has been. In a video posted today, which has been called anything from ‘adorable’ to ‘cute’, Peter’s son Lucas has asked the Valve team to hurry up and make Half-Life 3:

A lot of people will troll this based on the mistake in the title – it’s Half-Life 2: Episode 3 the kid should be begging for. However, my issue here is with the blatant disregard for common sense shown by Peter.

Look at his son. He’s got no front teeth, putting him around the age of nine at a sensible guess. In Britain, Half-Life 2 is rated 15 by the BBFC. Whilst Half-Life 2 is hardly the most violent of modern FPS games, it does have its fair share of harrowing moments (Ravenholm, anyone?) and its themes of politically downtrodden populations are hardly fitting for a nine year old. The world over, the games industry comes under fire from parents and politicians claiming how violent games should be banned .ect .ect, and yet here we have a seasoned game developer publically flaunting his child who he freely allows to play a game where you CAN SAW ZOMBIES IN HALF WITH A GRAVITY-MANIPULATING DEVICE.

If this was not enough, there’s also enough talk about his dad’s games in this video to suggest that he’s played the Fable games; games where you can ENGAGE IN SEXUAL GANG ACTS WITHOUT THE USE OF CONTRACEPTION.

Lucas may seem a fairly normal kid who probably will never go on a rampage and cut some other boy’s head off simply because he stole his pencil. However, Peter is clearly doing no favours to the industry by announcing that he allows under-aged children play mature-rated videogames.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish Nintendo a very happy 121st birthday. The company was founded on September 23rd 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. Back then, Nintendo was making playing cards before taking on toys to taxis. In the 1970s they settled on making video game consoles and software. Fortunately for us, they haven’t looked back (even through the wobbly GameCube period). Unfortunately for us, they created the Wii.

King of Kong legend Steve Wiebe has taken back his Donkey Kong high score record from ultimate villain Billy Mitchell. The epic battle for the Donkey Kong arcade record has been raging across time and space for a while now. Recently (July) Mitchell took back the record, (probably through some dodgy videotape) and the world wept. The smug and boastful force had beaten the everyman. Now however, Wiebe has taken the record back with a score of 1,064,500. Whether or not he can keep it remains to be seen, but if he doesn’t eventually win this battle I think society may as well end it all.