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The Best of 1UP 2011: News

We look back at some of the best news stories of 2011.

By: 1UP Staff December 19, 2011

Every year feels like it’s full of news for the video game industry, and looking back 2011 was no different. It was a year packed with plenty of highs and plenty of lows. While we saw no shortage of big stories in 2011, we don’t want to overlook some of the smaller ones — sometimes, they’re even more interesting than the headline-grabbers. So, for example, despite all the excitement that Nintendo’s new Wii U caused at E3, we were just as intrigued to learn why Project Draco won’t work with an Xbox 360 controller. Together, these extremes make for a healthy mix that puts everything that happened in gaming this year into perspective. Check out the full list below.

Jump to: Best of News | Best of Podcasts | Best of Blogs | Best of Previews

Best of Features | Best of Community | Best of Guides | Best of Video

Best of Reviews | Best of Retrospectives

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  Wii-U Reveal

  Nintendo’s reveal of its next home console, with a large touch screen that can be used in creative ways, was certainly the biggest news story of the year. It was so big at E3 2011, in fact, that Nintendo has said nothing significant about the console since and it’s still what
  everyone talks about when they think 2011 news. We have lots of questions about how it will work, how powerful it is, and what the game lineup will be, but the creative approach got people talking in a way few other announcements did this year.

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  Ken Levine on Making BioShock Infinitely Believable

  Ken Levine dishes
  on how developer Irrational Games crafts BioShock Infinite’s character-driven narrative and points out some of the studio’s philosophy and tech during the creative process.

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  Why Project Draco Doesn’t Support 360 Controller

  Director Yukio Futatsugi
  delves into all the reasons why upcoming Kinect game Project Draco — a game that’s reminiscent of the on rails formula from Panzer Dragoon — wouldn’t work using a regular Xbox controller.

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  Videogame Journalism Pioneer Passes Away

  The word “pioneer”
  is oftentimes thrown around with reckless abandon, but believe us when we say that Bill Kunkel was a true forefather of video games journalism. Without his creative vision, this site would not exist in its current form. As a co-founder of Electronic Games
  magazine, he saw the potential held within the enthusiast press long before it became a mainstream staple of our industry. Kunkel’s work influenced every single video game-related website, magazine, and blog that followed, and for that we are all immensely
  grateful.

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  3DS Price Drop, Early Adopters Get Free Games

  The last thing anyone
  expected from the DS’s successor was for it to hit the market with a resounding thud. But thud the 3DS did, in large part because the smartphone gaming market had disrupted Nintendo’s turf the way the DS and Wii disrupted Sony’s. To their credit, Nintendo
  worked quickly to reposition the system, beginning with a $70 price drop less than half a year after its launch. Early adopters weren’t forgotten, either, as Nintendo gave them 20 exclusive NES and Game Boy Advance games by way of apology.

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  Lack of Itagaki’s Trash Talk Saddens Tekken’s Harada

  In his closing comments
  during a 1UP interview at Tokyo Game Show, Tekken series overlord Katsuhiro Harrada lamented the absence of trash talk from former rival and Team Ninja general manager Tobunobu Itagaki — a man who selected the first five Tekken games as his most hated video
  games ever.

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  TGS’s Coolest Merchandise

  The size of the Tokyo
  Game Show in recent years can’t match the event’s former bi-annual glory, but the lines for strange merchandise seem just as long every year. We looked into this strange gathering and found Mario Dolls, $300-plus Bayonetta Glasses, and Resident Evil 5 gun
  replicas might land you in Jail should you sell them in the US.

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  PlayStation Network Compromised

  We usually associate
  security breaches with high level affairs such as Watergate or data theft that affected the banking industry. But in early April, the hackers hit our industry. After a sudden outage, which stretched into nearly a week, Sony Computer Entertainment America then
  admitted that there was an intrusion, and that user data — ranging names and addresses to credit card information — might have been compromised. It still remains as the largest and most public data breach in games, and a reminder that no one is safe.

• 
  
  

  Does a High-Powered Console Fit Nintendo’s Strategy?

  A month before the
  Wii-U’s official debut, news, rumors, and leaks about “Project Café” quickly surfaced. Again, since this was before Nintendo’s E3 press conference, all we had to work off of was “a Nintendo system with high-definition graphics.” Despite only having that morsel
  of information, we took a step back and examined what this possibility meant for Nintendo. And we also noted how — despite readers’ misgivings and theories about Nintendo abandoning its vision — such a system was indeed in line with Nintendo’s philosophy.

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  Hip Tanaka Shares His Thoughts

  In his closing comments
  during a 1UP interview at Tokyo Game Show, Tekken series overlord Katsuhiro Harrada lamented the absence of trash talk from former rival and Team Ninja general manager Tobunobu Itagaki — a man who selected the first five Tekken games as his most hated video
  games ever.