Mike Sorrentino, aka The Situation from MTV's Jersey Shore, doesn't just fancy himself as a man who struts about a reality show doing...stuff. He also fancies himself as, of all things, a video game developer. Or at least a consultant.

While it'd be great if he and his family/company (which is mentioned an awful lot in the release) were teaming up with Ubisoft for a series of Xbox 360 blockbuster flexing and fake tanning simulators, but sadly - if not predictably - his talents and face are going to be employed on "apps and social games".

Note the below is a real thing, written by either Sorrentino or his management. I did not make this up.

Not only am I very proud to introduce Jersey culture into the social gaming and mobile application industry, but also very excited that my family is a part of it too. I love the games and applications that my family and I have been working on with Apps Genius, and I know Jersey Shore viewers and my other fans will love them too.

Apps Genius signs Jersey Shore deal [GI.biz]

While there have been a few lines of gashapon pieces coming out of Japan, there hasn't been a proper action figure from the Legend of Zelda series for years. Until now!

Unveiled over the weekend at the Winter Wonder Festival in Japan, this Figma from Max Factory is based on Link's Skyward Sword appearance, and as with all Figma figures, has an emphasis on posing all his bits.

This is obviously the unpainted prototype figure; hopefully when the colour is added it still looks this good.

@2tohei [Twitter, via Plastikitty]

Kotaku was at the New York Toy Fair this weekend in full effect, snapping photos, taking footage and just generally gawking at all the awesome new video game toys that'll be lining up for your disposable incomes in 2012.

The highlight for me? NECA's Valve gear. Including the Gordon Freeman action figure to end all Gordon Freeman action figures.

You can check out a sampling of the stuff NECA had on show in the gallery above, including Team Fortress 2 plushies, Portal guns, Left 4 Dead figures and the Freeman himself. Who is looking glorious.

If you're wondering why all their legs are missing, these are actually stills from our video footage of the event, most of which will be going live tomorrow. I just figured this stuff was too good to wait for!

Duke Nukem's on a Roll | A games store employee applying price tags supplies this zinger. Not sure I'd pick that up used. (via Reddit.)

Bruticus Leads Transformers: Fall of Cybertron's Toy Store Invasion

Only four of the sexy robot designs from Transformers: War for Cybertron ever made it toy store shelves, a tragic missed opportunity. To ensure they don't miss a second time, Hasbro and High Moon Studios are planning a much bigger toy line for Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. How big? Combaticons, transform and form Bruticus. That big. More »

Star Wars: The Old Republic Has Invaded Lego Land

We saw a lot of Lego sets at the New York Toy Fair on Sunday. Sadly, Minecraft Legos did not make an appearance, but we did get to play around with figures from Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Lord of the Rings, and a whole bunch of superhero franchises. More »

Having Made This Bed, Will MLB 2K Lie In It Next Year?

There's another unhappy dice roll to come, one that MLB 2K12's development team has no control of: Whether they're even working on this game next year. 2K Sports' license with Major League Baseball expires this year, something that's been brought up every year since MLB 2K9 landed with such a gut-churning thud three years ago. More »

Start Your Engines for a Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Sequel

Sega will release a sequel to Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing this holiday season, Kotaku has learned. Toys associated with the franchise were displayed in a booth at the Toy Fair in New York this Sunday, where an attendant confirmed that Sega is making a sequel to the franchise-crossing kart racing game. More »

"This is Crap," Sony's Chief of Development Said, After First Playing Demon's Souls

We've heard (as far back at 2010) Sony admit that it blundered big time by not publishing Demon's Souls in North America. Now we know why they passed. Shuhei Yoshida, Sony Computer Entertainment's head of product development, told Game Informer that he played two hours of the game as it was close to final, and walked away convinced it would be terrible. More »

This Skyrim Mod Literally ... Well, See For Yourself

This is an update to the Portal Core Space mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and it references the Meme Who Must Not Be Named. But it does so quite hilariously—and loudly. Turn your volume down before playing. It's not NSFW, just loud.
More »

We saw a lot of Lego sets at the New York Toy Fair on Sunday. Sadly, Minecraft Legos did not make an appearance, but we did get to play around with figures from Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Lord of the Rings, and a whole bunch of superhero franchises.

Two Lego sets based on The Old Republic will be available for sale this August. There's the Sith Fury-Class Interceptor (above), retailing for $90. And there's the Striker-class Starfighter (second pic above), retailing for $45.

These may seem a bit pricey, but hey, at least they don't charge monthly.

Don't mind the detached plastic faces in front of them. These action figures, seen today at the New York Toy Fair, are totally precious.

From left to right, you can see Final Fantasy X's Yuna, Final Fantasy VII's Cloud, and Final Fantasy VIII's Squall. Not pictured: the souls of Square Enix executives that had to be sacrificed in order to craft these wonderful dolls.

The reboot of the car combat standard-bearer Twisted Metal arrives on Valentine's Day for PS3. Also, though you can't play them until Feb. 22, many of the launch titles for the PlayStation Vita become available in North America this week. UFC Undisputed 3 for Xbox 360 and PS3 also arrives Tuesday.

Monday

• Rhythm Heaven Fever (Wii)
• Warp (PC, PS3)

Tuesday

• Asphalt: Injection (PS Vita)
• B-Units: Build it! (DS, Wii)
• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend (PS3, PS Vita, 360)
• Dungeon Hunter: Alliance (PS Vita)
• F1 2011 (PS Vita)
• FIFA Soccer (PS Vita)
• Grand Slam Tennis 2 (PS3, 360)
• Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom (PSP)
• Lumines: Electronic Symphony (PS Vita)
• Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games (3DS)
• Michael Jackson The Experience HD (PS Vita)
• Rayman Origins (PS Vita)
• Tales of the Abyss (3DS)
• Tekken 3D Prime Edition (3DS)0
• The Sims 3 Hidden Springs (PC)
• Twisted Metal (PS3)
• UFC Undisputed 3 (PS3, 360)
• Virtua Tennis 4: World Tour Edition (PS Vita)

Wednesday

• Ben 10: Galactic Racing (PS Vita)
• Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational (PS Vita)
• Little Deviants (PS Vita)
• ModNation Racers: Road Trip (PS Vita)
• Pinball FX2: Epic Quest (360)
• Reality Fighters (PS Vita)
• Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (PS Vita)
• Uncharted: Golden Abyss (PS Vita)
• Warp (360)
• WipEout 2048 (PS Vita)

Thursday

• Alan Wake (PC)

Each week throws off several new video game lists ranging from the humorous to the trivial. What's better? A list of those. Here's a roundup of the rundowns out there.

•Top 10 Hilarious Physics Fails in Skyrim [GamingBolt] Aggregating glitches in Skyrim is kind of like discharging a firearm upon aquarian lifeforms packed inside a wooden cylinder. But I could watch that troll tumble down the mountain 24/7. Fuck you, troll.

•Top Ten Overshadowed Characters [Megabits of Gaming] Here's another Megabits roundup for you guys to nitpick. I'll get things started by saying, Ishi Sato? From Bulletstorm? The only thing overshadowed in Bulletstorm was my face by his useless robot ass getting in the way all the time.

•The 13 Hottest Video Game Voice Over Actresses [Ranker] Question: If the talent is voice only, why does her hotness matter? This is like a list of the 20 Best Phone Sex Operators Who Look Like Abraham Lincoln.

•Top 10 Banned Video Games [EgoTV] Most of these names are familiar; the list reads mostly like a setup to the punchline at No. 1, which is indeed strange.

•Five Awesome Skyrim Mods that Make Bethesda's HD Texture Pack Look Like a Joke [Gamespy] Coming full circle, here are five mods that make watching that troll tumble down the mountain 24/7 even more enjoyable. Fuck you, troll.

[Update 3:58 p.m. EST] On the Steam forums and via Twitter, Valve has said that a power failure in their data center's uninterruptible power supplies was responsible. "The power is back on now and we're working to get service restored as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

[Update 3:06 p.m. EST] An 80-minute outage of Valve's principal web presences, valvesoftware.com and steampowered.com, appears to be over. The Steam client's community and multiplayer features still seem to be knocked out. We'll update as warranted. We've asked Valve for a comment on what happened.

The company earlier this week said it was possible that hackers had obtained credit card transaction data in an attack carried out last November. No word if this outage is related to or inspired by those events.

On the Valve forums, which are now back up, a community manager said the outage began around 1:30 p.m. EST.

Original post follows.

Many of you have noticed Steam is down—your PC/Mac clients, the store, the URLs steampowered.com and valvesoftware.com, everything. The official Steam Twitter feed said about 2:36 p.m. EST that "We are investigating reported outages." We have asked Valve for a comment.

The human eye can only perceive 72 frames per second. We've been seeing games at 60 frames per second for some time. And as graphics approach photorealism with current computing power, some suggest that the days of giant leaps in visual quality are past us, and we'll be seeing smaller refinements going forward.

Not so, Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games, said in a talk at DICE 2012, estimating that a complete approximation of "perfect" visual quality requires computing power about 2,000 times greater than today's hardware.

A "good enough," approximation of visual reality, Sweeney said, is 5,000 trillion floating point operations per second, or teraFLOPs. By comparison, the much-noticed "Samaritan" demonstration of Unreal Engine at last year's Game Developers Conference, required just 2.5 teraFLOPs.

By comparison to that, an Xbox 360 can handle 0.25 teraFLOPs. That means "Samaritan," which was the latest demonstration of Unreal Engine 3's capabilities, would require an Xbox 10 times more powerful than it is today. For Unreal 4, who knows what it'll take. But it suggests that the next console generation will be have to be as conspicuously more powerful in its processing capabilities as the 360 and PlayStation 3 are next to their predecessors.

As to Unreal 4, the last word we heard is that the engine would be ready sometime in 2014. Now, Epic's vice president, Mark Rein, has told G4 that we can expect to see some sort of reveal this year. "People are going to be shocked later this year when they see Unreal Engine 4 and how much more profound an effect it will have," Rein told G4.

So when Sweeney says "expect rapid visual advances in computer graphics," he probably means business.

Tim Sweeney's Crystal Ball - D.I.C.E. 2012 [GameSpot]

Unreal Engine 4 To Be Revealed In 2012 According To Epic's Mark Rein [G4TV]