I’m pulling my finger out, giving it a thorough wash,  and getting back to the grind off providing short news bites from the world of gaming for your, something to read while you have a coffee, pleasure.

Read on and be amazed. Or at least interested, passingly interested even.

Resident Evil 6 has been announced, looking to setup a bit of an end of the world type Zombieland scenario for the Biohazard universe. I’m surprised it took this long. While this might put me on every American no fly list out there, it’s pretty cool that you’ll get to shoot a zombified generic US president, or at least more zombified than normal. I can’t think of a game before where you get to shoot POTUS, so that’s pretty cool. If you wanted to play the game a little earlier Capcom fantasy game Dragon’s Dogma, releasing in May, will include a demo of the game.

Dust 514, the console shooter set in the EVE Online universe, will support USB keyboard and mouse play on the PS3. This may draw snooty PC gamers away from their desks, loosen their cravats and set aside their brandy to deem the console title worthy of a passing fancy.

Meaningless Xbox rumours about a new Xbox at E3 this year have moved to meaningless rumours about Microsoft working on a new GPU towards the end of 2012 with a possible announcement and releases in 2013. This comes from a slightly more reliable source, the French marketing manager for Xbox, who says 2012 will see nothing new and don’t hold your breath for big E3 announcement. The official stance is still ‘no comment’.

In other Xbox news, for the first time in the history of this generation of consoles the number of units sold in financial quarter has changed places. Fourth quarter 2011 saw the Xbox 360 jump ahead of the sliding Wii, while the PS3 continued in third place. With price cuts to the beefier consoles and everyone all ready owning a Wii you can expect a continued slide for the Nintendo console. Lifetime sales still put the Wii several million units in front of the competition.

EA’s Syndicate reboot has a rather excellent multiplayer demo available for download on PSN and Xbox 360. Don’t look for it though, banned remember. Yep even the demo is rejected for us dangerous and incorrigible aussies. Apparently it’s a pretty damn good demo and very challenging forcing people to play the game as a team strategy title rather than a shooter. Sounds good to me.

App copycats are feeling the ban hammer. Following app end web game developer Spry Fox successfully filing suit against a copycat developer for basically stealing their game and changing the name Apple have slashed and burned through the app store, removing clone games of popular titles such as Angry Birds, Temple Run and Fruit Ninja. Nice to see Apple taking some responsibility and protecting gullible consumers from overpriced sham games.

Sleeper hit coop tower defence game Dungeon Defenders has hit a million paid downloads across Steam, PSN and Xbox Live. Not too shabby for an indie title. I like to think its proof that quality can sell well without a bloated marketing budget.

Your Playstation Network Account will be renamed a Sony Entertainment Network Account starting tomorrow. The goal is to unify all network logins for Sony products. Expect some Sony branded iTunes service in the next year, and also expect it to be hacked by Anonymous the day of launch.

THQ are having a tough time of it. They posted a quarter loss of 56 million US dollars and many of their long shot bets, such as the UDraw, have collected dust on shelves.  Their major MMO Dark Millenium, based on the Warhammer 40,000 universe, is going to need 50 million and possibly a partner company lending a hand to get finished. You have to imagine the company suits are getting nervous about putting so much stock in a paid subscription MMORPG that’s not even finished yet and there’s been almost zero news about for over a year.

Mass Effect 3 is going to be pretty damn big, and as if you needed to be told, EA want to remind you to keep your save files, you’ll ‘need’ them after you finish the game. The Mass Effect marketing spam has stretched to Facebook as well, a Mass Effect social game unlocks content in the full retail game. And still on Mass Effect, the recent novel Deception has been lambasted by fans for being full of inaccuracies about the ME universe including alien races being incorrectly portrayed, character aging at different times to their established continuity and events that occurred in the first game and established as canon being described incorrectly. While that might make some people scream ‘neeeeerd!’ while crushing a beer can against their forehead, for ME fans it looks like the writer just phoned in his book without paying any attention to what had gone before.  While some have pointed to EA claiming Mass Effect, being an RPG with branching story lines, has no set canon, other have pointed to the author, previously famous for a very badly received Halo novel, as just being a crap writer. It seems the issues were canon enough though; further printings of Deception will have corrections to fix the list of mistakes.

Game of Thrones the game will launch in May, a month after series 2 of the hit HBO show premieres. If you’re not watching Game of Thrones you are seriously missing out. It’s got everything, violence, gore, boobies, dragons, sword fighting, boobies.

If you’re a parent chances are pretty good you bought a Skylander unit and figures for your drooling smelly offspring this past Spendmas, I mean christmas (don’t look at me like that, I have three I know what they’re like). You’ve likely also endured weeks of requests for new figures and stood patiently while dour faced shop staff checked the computer and informed you again that there was no stalk. Seriously, these Skylanders things are impossible to find. Well this week sees a release of new figures and new packs, basically physical expansions to the Skylanders games, so get them quick. They tend to sell out pretty damn fast.

Before they began work on their haunting, end of the world road movie of a game, The Last of Us, developers Naughty Dog considered producing another Jak and Daxter game. I love Jak and Daxter! So now I irrationally hate The Last of Us and everything about it, stupid pretentious game.

Next time you feel like cheering the ESA, the American organisation that fights on behalf of companies against violent video game bills, be aware that over a quarter of their expenditure in 2011, over 1 million dollars, was spent lobbying (a political word for bribing) congress members to pass the SOPA and PIPA bills. They don’t really care about you getting to play Mortal Kombat, for the ESA it’s all about the cheddar. That still means money right?

Fans of satirical political news pundit Stephen Colbert (massive fan right here) may be surprised to learn that the single largest contributor to his Super PAC was a game developer. The CEO of Harmonix Music Systems Alex Rigopulos donated $9,600 to the Colbert Super PAC to make America a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow. The Super PAC, which is a real and legally approved organisation, is currently valued at over a million dollars, and has been used to finance hilarious attack ads against members currently running in the Republican primary to contest Obama in the 2012 elections. The purpose of the Colbert Super PAC is basically to lampoon Super PAC’s financed, but not controlled by, US politicians, taking advantage of a massive legal loop hole in how candidates receive and use funds for campaigns. Not clear exactly what Rigopulos specific intentions are, maybe he just likes a good laugh.

Website Good Old Games has been quick to provide a number of classic titles that people are still rattling on about in downloadable format. Hits of yester year such as Thief: The Dark Project, and every Quest game imaginable, Space, Kings and Police, are available on their website for the nostalgic, or people who want to punish their children.

First screenshots of the new Amazing Spiderman movie tie in game. You know what would be really cool though? An Ultimate Spiderman game that kills of Peter Parker early and replaces the character with Myles Morales, the new Ultimate comics Spiderman. Well, I think that would be cool.

Witcher 2 is finally, FINALLY coming to Xbox, there’s a trailer and everything. The developers are also promising some surprises and new content for console gamers.

Iron Brigade (formerly Trenched) was one of my favourite games from last year. A new expansion, Rise of the Martian Bear has just launched and I feel compelled to inform you that it includes a sombrero for your Trench pilot. There’s also five new levels, a new boss battle, lots of new weapons and equipment to customise your Trench and your avatar can now salute with his left hand, so those freakish mutants we call left handed people won’t get offended or something.

The ominously named Family Research Council (ominous because from past experience I know that any group with the word ‘family’ in it is always supremely evil website, like a chemical weapons manufacturer called Happy Time Farm Company) recently set it’s puritanical and evangelical sites on Star Wars The Old Republic. Their ‘research’ has just turned up a message in the SWTOR forums from prior to the games release that same sex marriage would be possible in a later patch of the game. This lead to FRC president Tony Perkins making a total dick of himself with the comment that:

"in a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side”,

on the council’s website. The rest of his message is standard think of the children, erosion of family values, veiled references to homosexuals being in league with the devil kind of stuff. It’s the usual gibberish of a sad old mad man, but that dickish opening line is too classic not to mention

Hopefully normal broadcasts should continue next week, now get gaming.