Welcome back gamers to the end of yet another week.  News has rumbled about this week all around the gaming industry, let’s go take a look at where those rumbles came from.

Rumors keep springing up about the next gen Kinect which would be available on the upcoming and unannounced Xbox console.  A picture that was leaked from a dev kit indicates that the new kinect will determine the difference in clothing and can pick up individual fingers.  So far, the new Kinect  has been rumored to include being able to feature high definition playback, better play space, improved tracking and to be accurate enough to the point that it will be able to read lips.  What will continue to drive this rumor fire is the next gen Xbox could be released within the next 18 months; if it turns out that this is correct more news and rumors will spring up regarding the new Kinect.

Valve this week announced that it plans to expand their digital distribution platform, Steam, in it’s biggest expansion since its conception.  Starting September 5, Steam will begin to offer computer software that is non-game related.  Valve said “The software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity. Many of the launch titles will take advantage of popular Steamworks features, such as easy installation, automatic updating, and the ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud space so your files may travel with you”.  “The 40 million gamers frequenting Steam are interested in more than playing games, they have told us they would like to have more of their software on Steam, so this expansion is in response to those customer requests”.  Software developers will be able to submit additional software after September 5 via Steam Greenlight.

Assassin’s Creed fans everywhere, that choose PC as their gaming source of choice, rejoiced everywhere with the announcement that Assassin’s Creed 3 has a release date finally.  Those cheers were quickly muffled after learning release date will come more then three weeks after the console version.  Assassin’s Creed 3 will be available on PC November 23.   Set against the backdrop of the American Revolution in the late 18th century, Assassin’s Creed IIIintroduces a new hero, Ratohnhaké:ton (more commonly known as Connor) of Native American and English heritage.  Connor becomes the new voice for justice in the ancient war between the Assassins and Templars.  Despite the wait for PC gamers, Assassin’s Creed 3 will be available for consoles October 31.

Blizzard issued a statment confirming that Battle.net was hacked this week.  The attack was noticed during the times spent fixing the security vulnerability and determining what exactly was compromised.  ”This week, our security team found an unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard,” the company said in a statement. ”We quickly took steps to close off this access and began working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate what happened.”  Blizzard confirmed that North American servers were accessed, and the hackers were able to access personal security question answers as well as mobile and dial-in authenticators on North American servers.  Further into the statement Blizzard commented on their security measures, ”We use Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP) to protect these passwords, which is designed to make it extremely difficult to extract the actual password, and also means that each password would have to be deciphered individually.  At this time, we’ve found no evidence that financial information such as credit cards, billing addresses, or real names were compromised. Our investigation is ongoing, but so far nothing suggests that these pieces of information have been accessed.”  As per the usual in digital compromises, users are encouraged to change their passwords to ensure account safety.  Additionally, if that password is used on any other online services, it’s recommended to change it there as well.

That’s it for this week, check back to Zero1Gaming for the latest news, reviews, and more!