HAWTHOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRNNNNNNN!

• Valve made the third of their three announcements on Friday, announcing a new controller for use with games on their Steam platform. The announcement caps off a week in which they also announced a new Linux-based operating system and hardware platform for the Steam service. The controller itself is unique in that it uses two touchpads rather than the traditional dpad/analogue sticks/buttons setup. A beta program is planned for later this year.
• The Verge are reporting that Microsoft are internally demonstrating a new game streaming service to compete with Sony’s Gaikai service. The service appears to be built on top of the cloud service already part of the XBox One experience, and will provide Microsoft with an important pillar in its next-generation console strategy.
• Yet again, video games have been implicated in a court case. In this case, a 9-year-old boy has been sentenced to home confinement after bringing a variety of weapons to school. According to his father, this was due to behaviour he learned from a video game. The video game in question? Minecraft. Uh, yeah.
• The very excellent rogue-like/platformer Rogue Legacy is coming to OS X and Linux. Not only that, but the patch that adds support for the two operating systems will also add multiple save slots, and additional content for the game.

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