Rocksteady Studios co-founder and game director Sefton Hill shared his recipe for making Arkham games at DICE 2012. Beyond the basic ingredients listed, all you'll need is a major license, a supportive publisher and millions to fund the project.

Sefton's Arkham recipe:

• Make the game instantly fun and accessible. "We believe it's our job to entertain," Hill said, adding that the free-flow combat of Arkham was meant to instantly convey the feeling of being Batman.
• Deep core mechanics, with a contant, incremental challenge to maintain engagement. "We developed combat by introducing new enemy types ... it keeps giving you more, it keeps challenging you."
• Complementary Orthogonal Design. Boiled down, it's that systems like navigation, combat and story "all have their own distinct and strong uses." Essentially, he encouraged designing complementary design elements that don't step on each other.
• Authenticity. "The restraints of the character define the character." Hill said certain elements may seem like a pain the ass, but that one must embrace those constraints. The fact that Batman can't kill anyone was something the team had to maintain at all times. "It stops us from falling back on a lot of game cliches." Takeway: Celebrate and explore the limitations of characters and what makes them unique.

So, there you go. Oh, you'll also need an engine. We're sure if you write a really nice letter to the guys at Epic, they'll let you license the Unreal Engine at a good price.

We expect Mass Effect 3 to have action, a rich story, customizable weapons, co-op mode and intelligent enemies -- but that doesn't mean we don't want to see these things in action, right now. With the launch of a new website, Mass Effect 3 is showing off some of its core features in five new videos, with "Adrenaline Pumping Gameplay" shown above, and the other four below.

If you weren't expecting Mass Effect 3 to have things like "a story" or "enemies," maybe don't watch the videos and save the surprise for the game's release. Also, retroactive spoiler alert.

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The world hasn't converted entirely to a Kickstarter-based economy yet -- Activision's fiscal 2011 earnings are up again, with net revenues at $4.76 billion dollars (vs. 2010's $4.45 billion), exceeding its most recent outlook. Activision claimed the number one console and handheld publishing spot in both its fiscal Q4 (ending December 31) and the year of 2011.

What drove this success? Like you don't know, but: Call of Duty. Modern Warfare 3 was the best-selling game in terms of dollars, and Black Ops was #5. Skylanders also contributed, as it was the #8 best-selling game in the fourth quarter, and best-selling kids' game of 2011.

Digital revenue broke records again, with over 34 percent of that $4.76 billion net coming from "digital channels." No, you aren't forgetting some breakout XBLA hit from Activision -- those digital channels are COD map packs and WoW.

Both hardware and software video game sales were down by a great deal in January, according to the latest report from NPD. Both categories dropped 38% year over year in the US, and video games sales in total dropped from $1.14 billion in January of 2011 to $750 million this past month. NPD's Liam Callahan attributes the drops to a lack of new launches: Last January, Microsoft's Kinect propped up hardware sales, and Dead Space 2, LittleBigPlanet 2, and DC Universe Online did the same for software, but there weren't equivalent launches in the market this year.

The full list of the top ten titles is after the break. Just Dance 3 held down the number two spot, again landing in front of the very popular Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Zumba Fitness 2 also made it into the top ten, but Activision's Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is likely the most important game for January.

In addition to landing on the list at 8th, Skylanders is seeing huge sales in the accessories category, making up 22% of total accessory sales overall. The game's single character pack was also the best selling accessory during the month of January, and these numbers should bode well for the series and its future iterations.

Finally, despite that big drop in hardware sales, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg points out that the Xbox 360 has remained the highest-selling console on the market, selling 270,000 units with a 49% market share.

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The signs of a good interface aren't always visible. An elegant in-game display susses out the sweet spot between education and economy, making it an art that is often overlooked by design. And when games aim, claim or clamor to be cinematic, life bars and scores tend to be the first things tossed out as distracting clutter. The traditional HUD is fading from view.

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier occupies the same fictional space as Call of Duty, adding a glossy veneer to war and sexing things up with tantalizing gadgets. But Ubisoft's take on modern warfare isn't about seeing -- it's about reading. Oh, there's no shortage of cover-based shooting and GET-TO-THE-RPG-ing in here, but those actions are informed throughout by a busy interface. In comparison to many "immersive" blockbusters, you're getting a library and not a pamphlet.

In practice, this means Ghost Recon is about learning to decipher information quickly, and drafting attack blueprints on the fly. Despite being on the action-heavy -- pardon me, streamlined -- spectrum of console games, Future Soldier uses its hologram-heavy premise as an excuse to fill the screen with data. Warning: It requires reading comprehension, which is a rather extravagant demand when some of the most popular games just want you to strap in and see the pretty sights whizzing by.

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As far as the first part of that headline goes, yeah, we know -- truly gasp-worthy. Activision head honcho Bobby Kotick revealed plans for a new Call of Duty in the company's quarterly financial report, and that Activision is aiming to grow the Call of Duty Elite service year. Activision is "hard at work on Elite 2.0 with several features to be included in the next Call of Duty release," Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg added.

Kotick also reiterated that Diablo 3 would launch this year -- though we're assuming it won't make its previous "early 2012" date, unless Activision's idea of early in the year is within the first six months. Diablo 3 has undergone a substantial beta run, and it's still underway.

"Our extraordinary employees around the world are focused on making 2012 another great year for our audience and stakeholders," Kotick said. "Blizzard Entertainment plans to have multiple highly-anticipated titles to release, including Diablo 3, and Activision Publishing expects to release a new Call of Duty game. In addition, Activision Publishing expects to continue to grow Call of Duty Elite and launch Skylanders Giants."

Update: A slide in Activision's presentation (seen above) shows the company is aiming for a Q2 launch for Diablo 3.

Call of Duty Elite, the community portal for Activision's perennial shooter is apparently doing gangbusters, according to the publisher's 2011 earnings report. The report states that Elite has pulled in over 7 million members as of January 31.

Even more impressive: over 1.5 million of those are premium subscriptions, available as part of the $100 Hardened Edition of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or as a separate $50 purchase. Paid membership grants a few benefits, most notably a free pass and early access to Modern Warfare 3 DLC.

We'd say the service probably qualifies as a success at this point, at least from Activision's perspective.

Super Meat Boy has seen success on Xbox Live, PC and Mac, but as is often the case while playing SMB, Team Meat have decided that's not good enough. Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes of Team Meat announced via Twitter today that they're rebuilding Super Meat Boy from scratch for a potential launch on mobile touch devices.

In a six-part tweetfest, Team Meat disclosed the following details: The touch title will be remade from scratch and won't play like Super Meat Boy; it will be a larger, more traditional game, unlike titles such as Doodle Jump; and they promised it won't use "shitty touch controls."

"if you liked SMB im sure you will enjoy this (if its good enough to continue on :) ) we just had a few cool ideas and wanted a challange," one of Team Meat's tweets reads.

Team Meat said that if the project fails and turns out to not be any fun, they'll scrap it and move on to the next idea, which we can only assume is a Super Meat Boy live-action point-and-click adventure title in 3D. Those adventure things are all the rage these days, we're told.

The latest patch has been applied to the wide open world of Skyrim on Xbox 360. The 1.4 update -- out on PC since last week -- squashes some bugs and fixes issues with a number of quests. You can find a full list of fixes and changes right here.

Bethesda is still awaiting word from Sony regarding the PS3 patch. It will hopefully go live today as well.

Remedy believes in a future for Wake.

Matias Myllyrinne, CEO of Remedy, told us at DICE 2012 that the studio isn't done with its literary protagonist after launching Alan Wake on PC and Alan Wake's American Nightmare on XBLA later this month.

"We're crowd pleasers, we'll do what the audience wants, 'cause usually that's the good business move as well," Myllyrinne responded when we asked what's next for Wake. He also reconfirmed the studio owns the IP, so the future of Wake is theirs to write.

"Hopefully, we'll have one or two surprises. I don't know, I'm loving the digital [distribution] side and we'll see how that evolves, but just being able to give people quick access to bite-size chunks of gaming is maybe more fun than working for years and years -- taking the phone offline and closing the shutters-- at least, this way, you're able to react much more quickly to people's desires and wishes."

With Remedy directly publishing Alan Wake on Steam, we wanted to know if the studio had an internal figure for sales that would dictate resources being put into a full-blown sequel.

"I don't know. I don't know if that would dictate it. If it bombs [laughs], then that's certainly a signal, but we're fairly confident that it'll do well. We'll certainly continue with Wake. Right now we're focusing on getting the PC out next week, then getting American Nightmare out. And it's too early to talk about what our next move is, but we've obviously put things into motion."