No topic appeared in the rumor mill this year as much as the coming next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

At the beginning of January, British trade magazine MCV reported that the next Xbox and PlayStation would both debut at E3 2012. This did not actually end up happening, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was not slated to happen at one point. At E3, we did see next-gen tech demos for Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and Square Enix's Luminous Studio, as well as two major reveals sans any mention of specific platforms—Star Wars 1313 and Watch Dogs.

Microsoft's Next Xbox, Codenamed Durango

Two weeks later, IGN posted a rumor that pegged the next Xbox as being slated for a fall 2013 release and sporting a Radeon HD 6670-based GPU with graphics processing abilities six times that of the 360.

The very next day after the IGN story, Kotaku's own Stephen Totilo reported that industry sources told him the next Xbox will see a format upgrade to high-capacity Blu-Ray discs that work in tandem with some sort of anti-used game mechanism, and that a new, more accurate version of Kinect will ship with the console. Sources indicated IGN's estimate of a machine six times more powerful than the 360 was in line with Microsoft's intentions, but also cautioned that dev kits had yet to go out so any discussion of system specs was purely hypothetical. (Also of note: in early March, MCV's sources said Microsoft had moved away from Blu-Ray plans to some sort of disc-less console.)

A few weeks after that, sources told Kotaku that the next Xbox carried the codename of "Durango," which was seemingly confirmed by a late February tweet from a Crytek technical designer. This is possibly my favorite rumor of the year, if only for the reason that it taught me how fun it is to type the word "Durango."

In mid-May, a recruitment firm's postings appearing to divulge details of some of Microsoft's internally developed Durango titles were discovered. One posting, for a nameless South East England studio that was almost certainly Lionhead, described their next title as an "new IP" RPG that fuses single-player and multiplayer to create an nonlinear MMO-like experience wherein both manners of play influence a dynamic narrative. Another hinted that a Midlands studio that was almost certainly Rare is planning on exploring new action or shooter IPs in addition to continued Kinect Sports releases.

Much to Microsoft's chagrin, what might have been a two-year-old internal roadmap document for Xbox leaked roughly a week after E3's close. In addition to a holiday 2013 launch date for both the console and next version of Kinect, the document touted SmartGlass-esque capabilities, eventual cloud content accessibility, and most curiously, a set of virtual reality glasses codenamed "Fortaleza."

Sony's Next PlayStation, Codenamed Orbis

In mid-February, SCEA head Jack Tretton put a kibosh on any speculation of a 2012 PlayStation 4 reveal, explaining that it would be a distraction to his own business operations for the year.

On this PlayStation 4, in late February sources said that Sony would be abandoning the much-vaunted Cell processor, and opt for a AMD-developed graphics chip in the system.

About a month later, Kotaku heard the next PlayStation is slated for a holiday 2013 release and is codenamed "Orbis," which was a subdomain on Sony's developer site until slightly after the story was published. Sources also divulged that the system currently had a AMD Southern Islands GPU and a AMD x64 CPU, will not feature PS3 backwards compatibility, and will employ an anti-used games mechanism like that of the next Xbox. Portfolio sketches from a design firm that apparently worked with Sony on Orbis seemingly hinted at Kinect-y and Smartglass-y functionality.

IGN reported in early April that the Orbis' custom could be based on AMD's A8-3850 APU and Radeon HD 7670 GPU, suggesting performance parity between the Durango and Orbis if one is to believe previous rumors.

A few days prior to E3, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sony briefly considered abandoning any sort of physical media for the next PlayStation before ultimately passing on the idea. However, the company's acquisition of cloud gaming firm Gakai in July is certainly an overture to this ambition. (Sony's keenness for Gakai was, of course, a rumor circulating in late May.)

* * *

While neither Sony nor Microsoft have announced their next consoles, rumors of several cancelled first-party projects in development for those systems circulated in 2012. The studios closed by Sony this year-Zipper and Studio Liverpool-were apparently working on three now-canceled titles for the next PlayStation: a stealth game and new Wipeout from Liverpool, and a shooter from Zipper. In March, Microsoft apparently cancelled a next-generation title from Obsidian Entertainment codenamed Project North Carolina, which Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart vaguely described as an original open-world title in a recent interview with Kotaku.

Unless something changes in the very near future, Orbis and Durango will be on store shelves this time next year. It seems like a plausible conjecture to think a reveal might occur at special events in advance of E3 so that Microsoft and Sony could dominate their own tech news cycles with their announcements, rather than becoming another element in a media circus. Spring perhaps?

Prey 2

Hours after Bethesda announced Prey 2's delay in 2012, Shacknews posted a report with sources claiming that developer Human Head intentionally stopped work on the game in November 2011 as they were unhappy with the terms of their contract with Bethesda and hoped to use the work stoppage as leverage to get a better contract. (In light of this story, the cancellation of Human Head's Prey 2 talks at GDC suddenly made a lot more sense.)

That tactic did not work, and the game is very much still in limbo. And at this point, it appears extremely unlikely that Prey 2 will ever see release. However, Human Head did recently put up some job postings asking for candidates with experience with open-world games and "crafting stories in the mystery genre," suggesting something else is afoot at the studio.

XCOM—As Developed By Irrational?

In late September, a reader who took a marketing survey tipped Kotaku on 2K Marin's controversial XCOM shooter reboot, which has virtually disappeared following the announcement of Firaxis' turn-based XCOM: Enemy Unknown earlier this year. Screenshots and details sent by the reader suggested that the game had shifted from an FPS to a third-person squad-based tactical shooter a la SOCOM. Interestingly, survey takers were asked about their feelings on XCOM being sold as a $30 downloadable game rather than a traditional $60 retail title, perhaps showing that 2K wanted to minimize their losses from the long-in-development title like Ubisoft's approach with I Am Alive.

XCOM has been in development in some permutation since 2006, and word of an Irrational-developed revival (at the time, 2K Australia was still Irrational Games Australia) first leaked in February 2007—a full three years before the game was even announced. The Irrational studio in Boston was involved in the project around that time, and assets in a former Irrational Boston artist's portfolio of "a highly stylized early prototype" for XCOM hint that this early version of the game was stylistically cartoonish and seemingly steampunk-influenced. (It is unknown if Ken Levine ever worked on XCOM directly, but he did say in a recent interview that "[he and his team] played around with something else for a couple of months" after Irrational finished the first BioShock.)

In May, 2K had pushed back XCOM's release to the company's fiscal year 2014 (sometime between April 2013 and March 2014), indicating that there are still some development issues with the game. The head of 2K Australia—who were then the primary developer of the game—departed in January 2011, and 2K Australia stopped working on XCOM late last year to support Irrational in the development of BioShock Infinite. Additionally, narrative director Jordan Thomas has been working in Boston on BioShock Infinite for most of 2012.

Plants vs. Zombies—A Shooter?

One of the stranger rumors of the year was an item Kotaku heard in the summer about a Plants vs. Zombies shooter in development at a new PopCap Burnaby team consisting of former EA Black Box employees. This new PopCap team is said to be working on a PvZ console game akin to Team Fortress 2. At the time the story broke, the game was still a few weeks away from an official PopCap greenlight.

But that greenlight appears to have been granted. In early November, a job posting for the team popped up on EA's jobs portal in relation to a "AAA console title" that seemingly utilizes Frostbite 2, and a multiplayer designer opening appeared in mid-October.

Rocksteady's Next Game

Around the time of Comic-Con, famed Hollywood trade Variety reported that the Rocksteady's next game will be a Silver Age-inspired prequel to the previous two Arkham titles dealing with the Caped Crusader's first encounter with the Joker. The game also apparently features Batman teaming up with other DC superheroes, and the earliest possible release date is sometime in 2014.

Variety says the title is the "the next installment in Rocksteady Studios' gritty videogame series," hinting that the Silver Age inspiration will be narrative, not stylistic. Personally, I think is a shame because a blend of the bright iconography of Silver Age comics (the onomatopoeic bubbles particularly) and Rocksteady's refined combat system would be utterly sublime. I found Arkham City's grit to just be exhausting after a certain point, and I would totally welcome a solid, LEGO-less DC game based around something lighter.

Unannounced Games From EA

Early in February, French gaming site Hardgamers discovered what appeared to be a publicly accessible wiki for EA Partners' fiscal year 2013 marketing plans apparently authored by EA's Director of Marketing, Phil Marineau. The document discussed a number of titles, including some that were unannounced including Respawn's yet-to-be-seen game, a possible new Populous, and Insomniac's social game Outernauts.

Two of those aforementioned games obviously remain unannounced, and one could have very well been cancelled. We haven't seen anything else even suggesting that a new Populous is in development, and it would not be terribly surprising if the lackluster market performance of Starbreeze's Syndicate cooled EA's interest in externally developed Bullfrog revivals. Plus, the natural, logical extension for a Populous title in today's marketplace would likely be a freemium iOS or Facebook game—things that do not tend to have a long development cycle.

We also haven't seen anything of Respawn's debut title, aside from a cryptic blurry image or two last year. The most significant detail that we have about the game is an E3 2011 interview wherein EA's Frank Gibeau describes Respawn's game as a "sci-fi oriented shooter" designed to compete with Gears or Halo. Respawn's appearance on this wiki would suggest that, at one point, EA thought they would be kicking off the marketing campaign for Respawn's game during their 2013 fiscal year. (There are still three months to go in EA's fiscal year, but such a large announcement so early in the year seems unlikely.)

Shifts In The Rainbow 6: Patriot's Development Team

In early March, Ubisoft apparently removed the creative director, narrative director, lead designer and animation director from the upcoming Rainbow 6: Patriots. Ubisoft confirmed the removal of one of the aforementioned four leads-creative director David Sears-from the project, and it seems all those removed from the project have since left Ubisoft.

Given this apparent development, it probably is not surprising that we have not heard anything about the controversial title the entire year, suggesting there are some changes in store for the game. Between Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Splinter Cell Conviction and this, premature announcements and tumultuous development are basically a rite of passage for a Tom Clancy game these days.

Prince of Persia Reboot

Finally, what appears to be a still from early footage of a new Prince of Persia reboot popped up on that game's Ubisoft forum in August depicting what looks to be a black Prince in an Egyptian-y environment. The art style in the still resembles some mysterious images NeoGAF user Wario64 claimed to have received via Twitter in late May.

An early June story from a Russian gaming site Playground.ru claimed that Ubisoft accidentally showed a few journalists a new Prince of Persia trailer, which apparently portrayed a silhouetted heavily armed bald warrior, was intended to be shown strictly internally behind closed doors at E3. According to the site's source, the game is still at least a year and half away, and may crib influence from the God of War and Assassin's Creed franchises.

Everything needs a little dubstep in it. Okay, not actually. But this track by Soundcloud user Rig manages to mash a whole bunch of different reaper sound clips and put them together to make an awesome dubstep track. Check it out:

It's particularly impressive when you listen to what some of those sound clips sound like normally (video by YouTube user DanteAlehandro.)

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Kotaku is not responsible for any indoctrinated readers.

Via Ali Neyers

Old-school fans know that Howard Phillips used to be Nintendo's Games Master, immortalized in the back-page "Howard & Nester" comic strip of the recently cancelled Nintendo Power magazine. Phillips is a guy who helped the company on its rise to power in the United States. He probably has all kinds of cool stuff locked away somewhere, right? Yup, and now you can own some of it. Including an unprinted Nintendo Power comic with a cussword in it.

Phillips told Luke Plunkett about the comic—made for him as a farewell present when he left Nintendo in 1991—back in September. Mind you, the lucky eBay bidder won't be getting the original artwork but will getting a limited edition one-on-one print. Phillips is throwing a ton of other hard-to-find Nintendo Power collectibles in the mix, too. So, if you've got a chunk of Christmas cash burning a hole in your pocket, you might be able to make yourself the envy of every other Nintendo nerd out there.

(via Facebook)

One of those hardcore social games, Dungeon Rampage shows off just how hard it can get with this trailer for the new Red Ranger skin and its festive bonus outfit.

To tell the truth, I like this video mainly because it reminds me of what Christmas is like at my mother's house, only instead of narration it's a loud dialog. Hooray for the holidays, right?

Some Craigslist ads sound too awesome or crazy to be true. That's where the 'Best Of' page comes in: a Craigslist reader-nominated compilation of the best ads on Craigslist. Craigslist is already infamous for its ads, so you can imagine what sort of thing surfaces in a best-of list. I went through 'em and found a few eyebrow-raising gaming ones.

The Bachelor Party

Like a lot of dudes that are getting married, this guy wanted to throw a bachelor party. A D&D game to be exact. But here's the twist: he put out an ad looking for a topless female Dungeon Master.

Here is a snippet:

I ensure you that nothing else is expect of you other than an exciting adventure.

Requirements:

Dungeon Master experience in Dungeons and Dragons (preferably in 3rd or 3.5 Editions)
Must be able to provide a picture including the face and body (No nudes please.)
It is preferable that cup size be at least C or greater.
If books are needed it must be stated ahead of time however it would be preferable if the DM had her own.

Clientele:
There will be 5 "guys" that will be participation including myself.

Why is it "guys" in scare-quotes?

Seeking World of Warcraft Casual Fling

This woman knows what she wants, and she wants someone to have sex with her while she plays World of Warcraft.

Do you like to PvP in the World of Warcraft? Do you want to have sex with a girl playing arena in the eighteen-hundreds bracket? Do you want to have sex with me WHILE I play arena? Continue reading..

You'd have to be, err, versatile with what you're willing to do, including being okay with her friend listening in on you guys. But more importantly!

You must be familiar with the game.

FAKE GAMER BOYS NEED NOT APPLY.

Really, you should read the full thing. It's... descriptive in ways I probably shouldn't quote.

Not Your Average Date

This guy is tired of your typical dinner-and-a-movie date. Hell, he's tired of your typical woman. He needs someone special to let him 'lash out' in public. In an adult diaper.

I'm looking for someone who will allow me to "act out" in public and can react appropriately. I'm tired of dating boring, tepid, insipid politically correct women. I want a liberal woman in the most true sense; not your messenger bag carrying, bike riding, garden variety gender-defender. Can you call someone a cunt in a public place without changing your tone and use the word to refer to your vagina in the same sentence? Do you agree with the opinion that women are terrible drivers, bad actors, and even worse musicians? Would you enjoy getting fucked by a man in a diaper? If so,

He goes on to describe what an example of a date could be, including pretend incest, asking for "all the ice creams," pretending to discipline him, and

We will go to the video game store where you will "turn me loose" and pretend to talk on your phone absent mindedly outside of the store. I will harass the employees and ask them "OH! Can I have disth game?!" around a hundred times, once for each different game I see behind the counter. "Dat one" I will say as they try in vain to determine which product I am pointing out while staring at the ceiling or floor.

Ten minutes or so should be enough time for me. You will then come collect me, awkwardly apologize, and we will leave the store for the womens restroom where you will proceed to change my diaper in front of the changing station.

It gets even better. You should read it in full here.

Stop Pairing Me With Those Stupid Nerds, GOD

This woman is tired of the people Craigslist keeps setting her up with. This includes people who play video games.

I think we need to talk about our relationship. You've been a good friend to me in the past, we have shared some fun, some laughs, some deals. But Craig, I need to talk to you about the kind of guys you try to hook me up with.

I understand that finding two compatible souls is hard work. I respect your efforts, I really do. However, I think there is a fundamental flaw in your overall approach, Craig. Lets look at some examples:

In the past, I said I liked guys who are athletic and outgoing; you sent me boys who consider video games a sport and think that meeting new gamers in World of Warcraft is social.

By the end of the letter she guesses that Craigslist is trying to game her by only setting her up with the opposite of what she's looking for. So, here are her new requirements:

Craig: it has become obvious to me that you believe that extreme opposites attract. I see your game, and I raise you. Craig: please find me a short, bald, uninteresting, middle aged man with no sense of humor and a small penis who loves Classical Music and hanging out at home with his kids and cat.

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Ah, I love Craigslist. I wonder how many of these were real? ...all of them were, weren't they? Oh god, of course they're all real.

Good on them, though. It sounds like these posters are well in tune with what they want in their personal/sex lives.

If you're still busy working on the Holiday Tree in FarmVille 2, you'll be pleased to know that the "Third Week of Winter" quests are finally available for completion, giving you a real final goal to work towards (that being finishing the entire tree once and for all). There are four new quests to complete in this third section of quests within the Holiday Tree, and you can work on all of them at once. We're here with a complete guide to finishing this final four Holiday Tree quests, so let's get started!

The Marshmallow Mystery
• Harvest 20 Marshmallows
• Tend 10 Adult Sheep
• Perform 30 Neighbor Actions

The Marshmallows are a limited edition crop that's available to plant for 50 coins per square. The crop takes just four hours to grow, and will be available for the next 13 days. As for the Adult Sheep, these can be tended once every eight hours. Finally, you can do anything you'd like at your friends' farms, so long as you complete 30 actions overall.

Fox Mulled
• Feed 15 Adult Chickens
• Craft 6 Mulled Apple Cider
• Perform 5 Actions on Walter's Farm

If you head to Walter's farm while trying to finish the Marshmallow Mystery quest above, you'll earn five points of progress towards the neighbor action task, while also completing this Fox Mulled task at the same time. As for the Mulled Apple Cider, this is crafted using eight Apples and three Cloves. The Cloves are earned by asking your friends to send them to you directly.

Working the Workshop
• Craft 8 Wool Bolts
• Craft 2 Heavy Fur Throws
• Sell 2 Heavy Fur Throws

The Wool Bolts can be crafted inside the Workshop using eight Wool each. Once you make the Wool, you can combine it with Fur from deer to form the Heavy Fur Throws. A single Heavy Fur Throw sells for 2,660 coins, so you'll earn 5,320 coins for selling these two, along with the 20 XP and 400 coins you've receive for completing this quest.

Ornaments to Winter
• Collect 8 Jars of Clay
• Harvest 4 Wells
• Craft 4 Blue Wool Bolts

The Jars of Clay can be earned by posting a general request to your news feed for help. The Blue Wool Bolts, meanwhile, are created in the Workshop using one Wool Bolt and one Blueberry Dye. The Blueberry Dye itself can be crafted in the Workshop using eight Blueberries and two Flasks each, with Flasks being earned by asking your friends to send them to you.

When you complete this "Third Week of Winter" quest set (remember, the quests can be completed in any order), you'll receive a stone fire ring for your farm. If you can finish all 12 quests across all three sections in this event, you'll also receive the Winter Clydesdale for your farm. Good luck!

Play FarmVille 2 on Zynga.com now >

Check out the rest of Games.com's FarmVille 2 Christmas coverage right here >

More FarmVille 2 Coverage from Games.com

• Bubble Safari Ocean Promotion
• Second Week of Winter Quests Guide
• First Week of Winter Quests Guide

Have you already started working on these Third Week of Winter quests? Do you think you'll be able to finish all 12 quests within the 11 days we have remaining? Sound off in the Games.com comments!

Republished with permission from:
Brandy Shaul is an editor at Games.com

People who bitch about touchscreen games like to complain that "they're so simple." Those people need to shut up and play Finger Tied.

The lack of sticks or buttons may make it seem like players don't need much dexterity when playing games on a smartphone or tablet. Finger Tied from Streaming Colour Studios proves that this isn't true. The motion puzzle game sounds simple enough at first. Tap and hold on an icon in the starting point on the screen then slide your fingertip to the endpoint. You'll need to keep touching the screen the whole time and can't slide into the area outside of the black playfield. Easy, right?

But, of course, the rules of the game change the experience so that things don't stay that straightforward. More fingers come into play and the way to victory becomes ever more circuitous. All the black squares on a puzzle need to get filled in on the way to an exit but you can't double back on your path. Then you'll run into blocks where you have to enter and exit from specific directions. The puzzles where you'll need to figure out how to twist one finger around another on the same hand? They'll make you wish you had superhero stretchy powers like Reed Richards. Then you'll run into paths where only one icon can pass through.

Of course, the faster you do all of this, the better you'll score. The deeper you go in, the more intricate the puzzles get. And if you fancy coming up with some unique Finger Tied torments, you can use the built-in level editor to create and share puzzles of your own. One caveat that would-be players should know is that you'll need to turn off multitouch gestures in order to play. Finger Tied is best played on a flat, immobile surface. This isn't a game for your morning commute into the office. Other than that, Finger Tied shines as a clever exemplar of how a great design concept can create a altogether different kind of complexity and entertainment for dedicated players to wrestle with.

Finger Tied [$0.99, iPad only; Apple App Store]

A couple weeks ago, the SimCity gang at Maxis held an AMA at Reddit. That may not have been such a smart idea. They don't like DRM over there, for any reason, and SimCity's gonna require an always-on Internet connection to play it, in any mode. It's no surprise that this comment, a compendium of anti-DRM remarks, was the most upvoted question of the entire AMA. Or that it went completely unaddressed.

Well, Maxis' Lucy Bradshaw has responded to this DRM food fight, sort of. Earlier comments on the always-on connection attributed it to the fact Maxis is building what it considers to be a multiplayer game. To this, Bradshaw adds the always-on connection is necessary because there's an enormous amount of cloud computing required to power this game, billed as the most advanced in SimCity's history. It's not something your individual PC will be able to handle on its own, not when the cloud servers are handling up to 100,000 Sims inside each city.

Right. Gotcha. That's great. It's still an always-on connection, which exposes the game to a range of apocalyptic scenarios, such as ones faced by an MMO that no longer is profitable, and scheduled for termination. And it still makes Reddit throw a fit.

It may be that this is a city-building MMO—and server downtime notwithstanding, you don't hear people complaining about an always-on connection in that genre, right? Right. But SimCity isn't really an MMO, because games in that genre can only be played in a world populated by other connected players. Maxis makes a point of saying you may play SimCity solo in a private game, like Diablo III. Which had an always-on connection. Which everyone hated.

Bottom line, we're talking about Electronic Arts, an always-on connection, and a game utterly dependent on servers that the publisher could one day shut down. That's enough to kick up a stink no matter what the game is, even one as loved and anticipated as SimCity.

The Benefits of Live Service [SimCity Official Site]

Dead Space 3's demo version will be available via Xbox Live and PlayStation Network on Jan. 22, though a news release from Electronic Arts this morning says that a limited number of Xbox Live gamers can get access to the demo a week early.

Early access will be awarded through the site demo.deadspace.com. The news release said codes would be given out "while quantities last," up to Jan. 14, and that the early access code expires Jan. 22. An Origin account, or registering one, is necessary to get an early demo code. Oh, and you must be 13 or older, which is interesting, as this is an M-rated game.

Anyway, the demo will feature Isaac Clarke and new co-op companion Sgt. John Carver battling necromorphs on an ice planet, sounding similar to what EA showed off way back at E3 in June. Co-op play will be a feature of the demo, EA said.

The demo news accompanied this trailer, a recap of the events in the first two games. It still gets you current without giving away too much from them, but for those still playing through, I guess this gets a qualified spoiler alert.

There's some kind of preorder bonus at the end of the trailer. Skip ahead to 3:27 if you're interested in it but don't want to see the series recap.

Earlier this year the folks that brought us IndieDB and ModDB launched SlideDB, a site dedicated to giving indie mobile game developers a means to reach players beyond showing up on the iTunes or Google Play top charts. It's given attention to games that otherwise might have been lost in the crowd—games like Dream of Pixels and Knights of Pen & Paper, two of SlideDB's top five gaming apps of 2012.

I single those two games out because I wouldn't have discovered them if not for SlideDB. Two of my favorite titles of the year, and I might have never played them. That makes me wonder how many other amazing games I've missed. I nearly missed out on Gua-Li-Ne. That would have been a tragedy.

More than 4,000 votes were counted to come up with SlideDB's App of the Year and the rest of the top five. That might not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but when you consider that number includes some of the best and brightest indie talent working in mobile gaming today those votes mean more than a million Angry Birds downloads.

So check out the video, hit up the SlideDB App of the Year page, and go play five of the coolest games of 2012.

Click to view
App of the Year 2012 - Slide DB