A console version of the much-anticipated Diablo 3 has been rumored for quite some time, due in no small part to developer Blizzard admitting back in September that it was experimenting with a console version of the game. Now, according to a tweet from a Blizzard community manager, it looks like Diablo 3 on consoles is all but confirmed.

In response to an inquiry from a fan via Twitter, which asked simply "can you confirm or deny Diablo 3 coming to consoles?" community manager "Bashiok" responded "Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo console project." More specific details have yet to be announced.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mosqueira has been working as a lead game designer at Blizzard since last May, and prior to that worked on the unreleased Far Cry 3 at Ubisoft and served as a lead designer on games like Company of Heroes and Homeworld 2 at Relic. When Blizzard first revealed that it was looking at bringing the role playing game to consoles, director Jay Wilson said that the game actually felt better in some ways with a controller, as opposed to a mouse and keyboard.

"One of the reasons why we're exploring the idea of a console version of Diablo 3 is because we feel that the controls and the style of the game lend itself to a console," he said. "With some of our early experiments in putting a direct control scheme into the game via a 360-like analogue controller, I've [thought] 'Oh this feels even better, with direct control...'"

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Super Crate Box has been available for both the PC and Mac for a good while now, but the game has just been released on iOS devices as a universal app; a $1 purchase gets you both the iPhone and iPad version of the game. Some titles try to make an impression with expansive stories and complex mechanics, but Super Crate Box is a game that shows you everything it has within the first hour. You control a small character on the screen, you see the entire level instantly, and you need to pick up crates to score.

It may not sound like much, but each aspect of the game has been honed to perfection.

Mixed martial arts is a sport with an increasingly wide audience, and Microsoft's move to show UFC events on the Xbox 360 through a special app sounded brilliant at last year's E3. The app not only lets you purchase and watch pay-per-view events in standard or high definition, but you can also pick the winners of each fight, compare your picks with friends, and watch video of the weigh-in. Microsoft wanted to make last week's UFC 141 fight a big event, and the company gave away tens of thousands of free codes to watch it. As a member of the press, I got access to the fight to write a story about how well, or poorly, the app worked.

I told my buddies to cancel their plans at the sports bar we usually visit, my wife made large amounts of food, and I invited friends over to watch the fight and enjoy the interactive features Microsoft was offering. Well, that was the plan. The reality was that Microsoft learned the hard way what happens when a show that's treated as an event is used to hype a service. A service that was in no way ready.

Modern Warfare 3 earned $1 billion in sales in 16 days, proving the series has become an influential force in American entertainment. It sold millions of copies in its first day of release, and the sales of content packs have only just begun; the game is going to have legs at retail. But it hasn't been without a bit of controversy. The Atlantic recently ran a story claiming the game's television commercial "sunk to new lows," but the problem isn't the fact the live-action commercial cheapens war, it's that the commercial accurately depicts an immensely popular game. 

How do you look back on a year of gaming and try to find a common thread? I tried to look for something that connected the stories that are presented here as being some of the best—or most interesting—investigations into different aspects of gaming and the surrounding culture. Some stories were obvious, others were more obscure, and many were controversial. There is little connective tissue outside of the subject: video games. These days, those words encompass many subjects, disciplines, and businesses.

When a writer stayed up for two days to watch teams create a complete game under a crushing deadline, we didn't know what he would learn. When another writer began investigating the complex reality of game lengths, we learned a lot about how many people finish games and why shorter games may in fact be better... even if gamers don't want to admit it. We had no idea what it took to create an accurate Super Nintendo emulator until we read the findings of the creator of what may be the best Super Nintendo emulator. What's fun is that we had the time and resources to figure all this out, and present the stories to you.

The thing I love about these stories, and why I'm proud to have had a hand in them, is that each one began from a love of gaming, and a need to understand more about the art form. Let's take a look at our favorite gaming stories of 2011.

I'm often asked for advice when it comes to raising children around video games, mostly due to the fact that I have of three of the former and a few thousand of the latter. The truth is my kids don't play many video games, and what they do play is tightly controlled. I was older when I received my first video game console, around 12 or so, and I think that's about the right age. My kids are nine, eight, and two, and until they're a few years older I feel better with books, sports, and Nerf. My son is just beginning to get extensive time on portable systems and co-op games like Skylanders.

Then we received the Atari Flashback 3 system for Christmas, and I began to see this strategy bear fruit. My kids don't see blocky pixels and limited colors, they see entire worlds.