The games market went to Hell in May. Diablo III topping retail software sales for the month, according to the latest sales figures from NPD, and helped fuel a resurgence in the PC games space. Other top performers included Max Payne 3, which launched the same day as Diablo III, as well as Sniper Elite V2 and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.
While action titles continued their dominance of the top 10, 2K Sports' NBA 2K12 held the fifth spot for the second straight week. Blizzard continued to show its impact in the PC market with Diablo III at number 1, the first time since July 2010 that a PC-only title has accomplished that feat. The game that did it in 2010? StarCraft 2, another Blizzard mainstay.

Total video game sales continued to shrink, down 28 percent from last year. However, the PC market jumped 230 percent from the same time last year to $80 million, fueled by Diablo III sales. The overall spend in May, including digital sales and microtransactions was estimated to be $1.17 billion.

AMD just released the AMD Catalyst 12.6 Beta. With the release of the Catalyst 12.6 Beta driver, AMD would also like to announce that we are moving away from our Monthly Catalyst release plan. Our goal is to ensure that every Catalyst release delivers a substantial benefit to our end users; as we have today with the release of the Catalyst 12.6a Beta. We will still continue with the Catalyst naming convention; Catalyst: Year.Month., You just won't see a new driver every single month. We are confident that this will only benefit the end user; you'll only need to upgrade to a new Catalyst driver, when it makes sense.

We would also like announce the introduction of our new AMD Issue Reporting Form. We made a number of improvements to the older Catalyst Crew Feedback form, making it more comprehensive, ensuring we get the best feedback possible. Feedback is very important in every product company's life, especially in our fast paced environment. This is not just a check-box for us - we take these reports very seriously. We will review every report posted here and investigate every issue encountered. Please use this form whenever you encounter something worth mentioning.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 12.6 BETA | AMD Catalyst Windows 8 Feature Preview Driver

As Blizzard winds up to launch StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm later this year, it's also preparing to finally roll out some features fans have been asking for since before SC2: Wings of Liberty launched back in 2010. These include resuming multiplayer matches from replays, playing in other global regions, and watching replays together with other folks. These features and more should be patched in "at or around the launch of Heart of the Swarm," production director Chris Sigaty wrote in a blog post. Resuming from replays will help tournaments go smoother, as SC2's lack of a LAN mode means that problems with a Internet or Battle.net connections can spoil a match.

Rather than starting over from scratch or having judges rule on whether to award the win to one player, they'll be able to pick up where they left off. Global play will let you, as you can probably guess, play on other regional servers around the world, rather than being limited to your home region. Multiplayer replay viewing is a feature from the original StarCraft but cut from the sequel, for when you fancy watching a replay with some chums and discuss the game together. Multilanguage support, a clan/group system, and unranked matchmaking are also in the works.

PNY Technologies, Inc. ("PNY") will showcase the all new XLR8 GeForce GTX 680 2048MB GDDR5 graphics card, 2133MHz DDR3 desktop memory kit, Smart Active HDMI Cables, and a sneak peak at their brand new revamped line-up of XLR8 Solid State Drives at the PAX East 2012 exhibition.

PNY has once again partnered with Newegg.com at the 3-day gaming festival, being held April 6th - 8th at the Boston Convention Center. Visitors to PNY's booth (#613) will be offered the opportunity to take part in free play, live tournaments, contests, prize giveaways, and more. Attendees can enjoy the free play on the gaming stations -- built with PNY products, featuring games such as Street Fighter 4, StarCraft 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Beta and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Thermaltake Group with the most avant-garde innovation and creativity in delivering the corporate mission of the "perfect user experiences" is prepared to exhibit "Taipei Game Show 2012" from February 2nd to 6th. Together with Tt eSPORTS and Thermaltake, the 5-day event will host a series of exciting programmes to introduce an array of conceptual and technical innovations and offers an exciting glimpse of the brands' future design language with amazing stage shows, and well-known players － our own professional e-Sports Team - Tt APOLLOS and it's StarCraft2 player - SoftBall, the world-famous StarCraft2 players -Aleksey "White-Ra" Krupnyk from Ukraine, and MarineKing eSports Team from South Korea, together to present entirely new and creative innovations that comprehensively adapt to the cultures of "enjoyment of entertainment, e-Sports, technology, and lifestyle".

There is no one-size fits all for computer gaming peripherals. All gamers are different and we recognize that each and every one of you has different needs and preferences. Therefore it was only a matter of time until we would put our efforts into developing a mouse for competitive RTS gaming. The ZOWIE MiCO is developed for those of you who won't settle for second best - you want the best from your equipment and seek stability in a high quality mouse that you can trust to always perform flawlessly.

Developed together with the Korean powerhouse StarTale, ZOWIE MiCO is a reflection of the experience and expertise of some of the best and most recognized StarCraft 2 players in the world. During the development of the ZOWIE MiCO, we faced three major challenges we had to overcome.

SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today announced six SPARKLE GeForce GT 430 Graphics Cards, bringing unparalleled levels of price/performance to mainstream users. SPARKLE provides two thermal solution options beyond standard fan version of the SPARKLE GeForce GT 430 Graphics Cards.

GeForce GT 430 graphics card with one-slot cooling design to saves the chassis space. It uses the Aluminum Extrusion technology to form the heat sink of the cooler at once, so that the heat sink can transfer the heat with more continuities. The cooler use centrifugal fan structure, to make wind pressure more stronger and more concentrated to get quicker cooling effects.

NVIDIA's recently released GeForce 196.75 WHQL drivers are causing problems with some users reporting "intermittent low FPS", in the words of Blizzard's technical staff. It notes that the drivers have a bug in its fan-speed control that causes graphics cards to overheat when running applications such as Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Not only does bad fan control result in bad application performance, but can also damage the graphics accelerator. Blizzard on its part advised users to revert to older versions of the GeForce driver. Version 196.21 (older WHQL-signed driver) can be downloaded from here.

Update (3/5): NVIDIA has withdrawn the 196.75 WHQL drivers from its website. The company is working to resolve this issue.

Word got round that Blizzard's next installment of the award winning Star Craft strategy game is due to hit retail shelves on December 3, 2008. The report is everything but official, so don't get too excited.

Many froth-mouthed fans of Blizzard's intergalactic real-time strategy masterpiece Starcraft have anxiously been awaiting word on when the next installment of the series would land in their anticipatory laps. Blizz has been characteristically tight-lipped about the title's launch window, though we were recently informed that an online SKU search for Starcraft II on Best Buy, Circuit City, and Gamestop's web sites reveal the same supposed release date of December 3, 2008. With no confirmation from Blizzard, it's far from official

Blizzard today unveiled a new zerg unit, that will take place in the next StarCraft strategy game. Meet the baneling:

The baneling is a creature so bloated with fluid-filled sacs that it can barely walk; instead, it moves itself by tucking into a tight ball and rolling. However, this ungainly appearance belies the fact that the baneling is an extremely dangerous organism, one of several new zerg specialists recently seen on the battlefield. When a baneling gets close enough to an enemy, the creature triggers a reaction within its volatile chemical payload that causes it to explode with devastating force and shower the immediate surroundings with searing acid.

Blizzard has also added seven new in-game screenshots.

Blizard Entertainment has released new artwork and screenshots from the StarCraft 2 RTS game for your viewing pleasure. Blizzard also unveiled a "new" terrain unit, the Cucio Siege Tank. You can find more information about the armored vehicle here. I'll upload just a few screenshots in the news body, just to give you an idea, while the full list can be viewed on Blizzard's StarCraft 2 web page.

The Vice President of Blizzard, the esteemed creator of such popular games as World of Warcraft and Starcraft, recently divulged some information about Starcraft 2. The already famous sequel to Starcraft has already seen a multiplayer beta at BlizzCon, and has supposedly been in development since Summer 2003. The Vice President divulged in a forum post that Blizzard was putting plenty of focus on the development of Starcraft 2. Considering how long the game has been in development, as well as the amount of attention Starcraft 2 is receiving inside Blizzard, public betas and demos for Starcraft 2 may be "just around the bend".

Blizzard has just released a brand new StarCraft II gameplay video demonstrating the resourcefulness and sheer grit of the Terran forces. The movie shows some of the Terrans' new and improved designs in action as they adapt to and counter their enemies' strengths and weaknesses.

Download the StarCraft II Terran Gameplay Demonstration video now.

Everyone who's ever waited for a Blizzard game to be released knows just how long "when it's ready" is. StarCraft2 is no exception to this rule. Unfortunately for anyone waiting for StarCraft2, this game is not going to be "ready" for quite some time. MSNBC scored an interview with Rob Pardo, the VP of game design at Blizzard, which explains when we can see this game.

I can give you the old Blizzard mantra of: 'It'll ship when it's ready,'" said Pardo, "but it's something that historically, we've learned to keep release dates really close to the vest. I think all game developers are extremely optimistic, and we used to give optimistic dates and we'd disappoint our fans when we didn't hit them. So now, I think we've just gotten more gun shy. The only thing I can give you [that's] concrete is it's not going to be this year. Some people were hoping, because of how advanced the game looks, that we'd have it out by Christmas, but that's definitely not happening.

StarCraft2 started development in 2003, and full production started a year later. The team working on this game comprises of 40 people.

StarCraft2 will be available for PC and Mac "when it's done".

Almost ten years after the original, Blizzard officially confirmed today at the third Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, that a StarCraft sequel is in the works. Click here to watch the Starcraft 2 CGI announcement trailer, or here for the first ever posted in-game screenshots!

Visit the official Starcraft 2 website for more information.

StarCraft was by far the most popular game in Korea and the korean website thisisgame.com has some juicy information about the sequel. Apparently Blizzard will be announcing StarCraft 2 at the Blizzards World Wide Invitational which is held from May 19th to May 25th in Seoul. There will be developers of the game at the event and pictures of the 3D sequel will be shown. A new race has been added to the mix and the original units have gotten new upgrades. Teamliquid.net has a translation of the korean text here If you are able to read the language, follow the source link below for the original.

Starcraft: Nearly ten years old but still fun to play and the game has a huge community in Southeast Asia. But let's face it, it's time for a sequel.
And it seems like there is a Starcraft 2 on the horizon. A Korean website called Fighter Forum mentioned an interview with someone out of the eSports industry and this person said.

"...there will be a beta version of SC2 coming out end of the year..."

He adds there will be a fourth race and every race get's a couple of new units to play with. Get all the details from the direct translation at Team Liquid.