Welcome back gamers, we made it through another week and coming to the end of another month.  As we come to a close, the preparations of E3 is becoming evident.  That however, is a head of us; let’s, instead, look back at what happened this past week.

Young and old can enjoy the thrills of being a wizard.

WB Interactive announced that Harry Potter for Kinect planned for Xbox 360.  Harry Potter for Kinect  will take players through key events from all eight film and put them in control of those iconic scenes.  What is truly going to set this game apart is how the Kinect will be utilized.  One example of a game mechanic is during a wizard battle, players will use hand gestures and call out the name of spells, similar to those actions in the movies.  Another unique position the game will have is, it will take photos of the player’s face and apply it to the in game avatar.  ”Harry Potter for Kinect will engage Harry Potter fans old and new by bringing them into the wizarding world as truly active participants,” said WB’s Samantha Ryan.  ”Kids and parents will enjoy recreating their favorite Harry Potter adventures, from flying a broomstick in a Quidditch match, to battling pixies and duelling other wizards.”  Harry Potter for Kinect will release in fall.

38 Studios posted the untimely news that it is laying off their staff and are closing their doors.  ”The Company is experiencing an economic downturn,” read a layoff letter posted on WPRI. “To avoid further losses and possibility of retrenchment, the Company has decided that a company-wide layoff is absolutely necessary.  These layoffs are non-voluntary and non-disciplinary. This is your official notice of layoff, effective today, Thursday, May 24, 2012.”   The suspected reason for the layoff is Kingdoms of Amalur sold 1.2 million copies in a three month period, which is less then half of the sales needed by the developer to simply break even.  Best wishes to the employees and their families in the times to comes.

A revival of a classic

Sega plans to launch Jet Set Radio for the Playstation Vita.  The update coming to Vita will see the HD upgrades that the consoles received in addition to the new touch controls which will allow for spraying graffiti and camera integration for creating new graffiti tags.  Sega has been digging in the vaults for take their classics, been giving them a face lift then relaunching the titles on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network; Jet Set Radio will be the first of those re-releases that finds its way to the Playstation Vita.  Jet Set Radio HD is set for release this summer on PC, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and PlayStation Vita.

In-game view of Diablo 3

Blizzard‘s highly anticipated Diablo 3 found its way back to the headlines this week.  Despite the headlines it had previously, this time nothing but good news can be shared about the popular dungeon crawler.  Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 had become the fastest selling PC game of all times.  Within the first day, Diablo 3 had sold 3.5 million copies of the game, and brought in an additional 1.2 million players as part of the World of Warcarft annual pass promotion.  A week later, Diablo 3 has had over 6.3 millions gamers log in and explore the caverns and underworld of the game.  ”We’re definitely thrilled that so many people around the world were excited to pick up their copy of Diablo 3 and jump in the moment it went live,” revealed Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime.  Despite launch issues,  Morhaime wants to have an optimistic look at the game moving forward. ”I want to reaffirm our commitment to make sure the millions of Diablo 3 players out there have a great experience with the game moving forward, and I also want to thank them for their ongoing support.”

That’s it for this week, check back to Zero1gaming for news review and more!