South Park: The Game, also known as South Park: The Stick of Truth, and referred to by me as “that one South Park game that’s going to come out” has been pushed back until 2013. Originally, the game was potentially slated for launch sometime during the second half of 2012.

As revealed in a recent financial report from THQ, it looks like that won’t be happening anymore, though, and South Park is now set to release during the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013. In other words, the game will be available sometime in early 2013.

Obsidian, the developer behind South Park, had a number of layoffs in March. Numerous employees who were let go were actually from the South Park team, so it’s possible that the delay could be related to the layoffs.

South Park seems like it could potentially be pretty awesome, so if it takes a delay to ensure that gamers get a great product, there won’t be any complaints from me. Watch out for the game sometime next year.

The PlayStation 2 is one of the most successful video game consoles of all time. Not only did it sell like crazy, but it had a library that was practically unmatched. That’s not to say that the GameCube and Xbox didn’t have some stellar games, but as far as the sixth generation in video games is concerned, the PlayStation 2 was king.

That’s why it’s strange to see how Sony has fallen from its throne with the PlayStation 3, a platform that former Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division President Robbie Bach states helped the Xbox 360 manufacturer reach great heights. “Some of the success of Xbox was due to the fact that Sony did some really not so smart things,” Bach told GeekWire. “They mismanaged their 70 percent market share. It’s a long conversation. The transition to PlayStation 3 was really, really bad. And really hard. They mismanaged their partners, they mismanaged their cost structure. They made their next platform so complicated that developers couldn’t develop for it.”

I’m a fan of Sony’s gaming platforms, so it goes without saying that it was a bit distressing to see the PlayStation 3 fail to perform at the same level as its predecessor, which easily qualifies as many gamers’ favorite console. The PlayStation 2 is certainly one of my favorites, and though I game a hell of a lot on my PlayStation 3, I would still say I’ve had far more fond memories with Sony’s previous machine.

Despite some bad failures, though, Sony continues to stay in the console race, capitalizing on its brand name and incredible exclusive IPs. Here’s hoping the company stays in the game, learns from its mistakes, and continues to give gamers content to look forward to, all the while avoiding making the same errors.

The Xbox 360 adaption of Minecraft has already proved itself a hit on Xbox Live, selling more than any other title in the first 24 hours of availability. On top of that, it was also profitable in its first hour of release. Now Microsoft has taken the opportunity to gloat some more, announcing that the title has tipped one million in total sales – one week after release.

Additionally, Microsoft PR guru Major Nelson reveals that a whopping 5.2 million hours have been spent in the game, with a total of 2.4 million hours going towards the multiplayer component. To date, 4 million multiplayer sessions have been created. Impressive statistics all around.

Clearly, console gamers were frothing at the mouth for Minecraft. Here’s hoping 4J Studios deliver on their promise to bring the Xbox edition up to parity with its PC brethren, which can look really nice with a few graphical enhancements as shown in the screenshot above.

The Xbox 360 adaptation of Mojang’s sandbox hit Minecraft looks to be well on its way towards shattering Xbox Live sales records. Company boss Markus “Notch” Persson tweeted earlier today that the title was profitable in the first hour of availability.

Well then. Saw the official sales numbers for the first 24 hours of Minecraft Xbox 360, and it’s very, very good. Profitable in an hour.

Impressive, to say the least. It was smart of Microsoft to nab exclusivity rights. While the 360 version is fairly bare-bones right now, the developer responsible for the port — 4J Studios — plans on bringing it up to parity with the PC equivalent with future updates. Mods, texture packs and skins are coming at a later date.

It’s been over a year since the infamous PlayStation Network debacle angered a lot of gamers and didn’t allow anyone with a PlayStation platform to enjoy online play for a lengthy period of time. Since then, things have gotten better for PlayStation 3 owners, but dirtbag hackers have continued to annoy people, going so far as to target a few Xbox 360 users, too. Despite the fact that the days of the PlayStation Network outage are behind us, EA cites that incident as one of the major factors behind the lack of support for digital distribution, reports Gamasutra.

At the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2012 Global Technology Conference, EA COO Peter Moore stated that gamers are far keener to go into actual retail stores to purchase digital download cards as opposed to buying games online. He also made a hard-to-believe claim that most gamers don’t own credit cards. “A lot of our consumers don’t own credit cards,” said Moore. “A lot of our consumers are still afraid of what happened to the PlayStation Network when 77 million accounts were accessed by Anonymous in 2011.”

Moore went on to say that EA is a big supporter of retail. While I’m personally a fan of both retail and digital content, it’s what the COO said next that kind of bothered me: “The other key thing is selling digital content on the day of launch … When we sold Mass Effect 3 back in March, we saw a 40 percent attach rate that first week to DLC at GameStop in the United States. Not only are you selling a $60 game … you’re selling $20 DLC, so the sale becomes $80.”

In other words, gamers are paying $80 for one game, which is kind of a messed up thing to do. And while Mass Effect 3 already offered a ton of content to gamers for $60, there are other titles out there that seem to charge the standard $60 fee, only to release small DLC packs that feel like they should have already been included in the game to begin with. That’s kind of rotten when you really think about it.

Also, it’s totally hilarious that both EA and Bank of America are mentioned here considering they took the top spots in The Consumerist Worst Company in America 2012 awards.

With its striking art style and back to basics gameplay, Rayman Origins felt like a breath of fresh air in the platforming space. Fans clamoring for more might have a sequel to look forward to if a recent marketing survey is any indication.

Ubisoft’s reportedly throwing around the idea of sequel that delves into a mythical setting, with castles, dragons, ghosts and Greek gods. The survey, outed by a Kotaku reader, also included video footage of what the game might look like.

A screencap above depicts Rayman climbing up on a dragon’s tail. Given that this doesn’t appear to be a mock-up that was quickly thrown together, it seems Ubi is seriously considering a sequel.

As frequent visitors to our gamercard page may have already noticed, today we’ve rolled out Xbox Live profiles and Xbox 360 Achievement tracking on eXophase. Going forward, all gamercard users will have an automatically updated XBL profile on the site, similar to our PSN equivalents. We’ve also added leaderboards to show the top tracked users on XBL. Here’s an example.

The profiles give you a run-down of your latest games, sorted by last played. Opening up the game detail page on a profile will show you the list of achievements that user has collected, along with associated unlock dates.

This feature is still in beta, so some areas may be a little rough around the edges right now. Please report any bugs or anything that looks out of place on our forums. We’ll have more updates to share in the coming weeks. Happy achievement and trophy hunting!

A beloved classic from the PlayStation era may be poised for a return, if a VG247 report is to be believed. The site has it on “good authority” that Crystal Dynamics is bringing back its long dormant, vampire-laden Legacy of Kain franchise with a reboot of Soul Reaver.

Reportedly, the title is a “full reworking” of the action-adventure classic, boasting a fresh new art direction. Additionally, an E3 unveil is looking unlikely, which means development may still be early on.

The last entry in the series, Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 2 Legacy of Kain: Defiance, debuted on PC, Xbox and PS2 in 2003. While unrelated, parent company Square Enix announced last year that Crystal Dynamics was working on a new IP.

Over the weekend 343 Industries published the first video documentary of Halo 4, the first title in the series to be developed by the newly created studio. The video shows off the first in-game footage of the new title, including the redesigned battle rifle (again!) and more detailed Master Chief.

In addition to the added graphical prowess of the title, 343 Industries is also taking a new look at the multiplayer maps. No longer will we be able to recognize maps from the campaign as Halo 4′s maps are designed specifically for multiplayer  and will not make cameos in the campaign.

Will 343 Industries be able to continue the massive success and acclaim of the Halo series? We’ll have to wait until the 2012 holiday season to find out.

Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 isn’t the only middleware on the block that will be vying for attention at GDC this month. Crytek’s announced that significant improvements to its CryEngine 3 will be shown off during the event, including “next-generation DX11 graphics and tools upgrades.”

Enhancements to the areas of  AI Systems and UI Actions will be demonstrated as well.

Currently, Crytek’s production efforts are centered on a sequel to THQ’s Homefront and RYSE, a Kinect-controlled hack and slash that apparently moved over to Microsoft’s next Xbox. It’s unclear if either will make an appearance at GDC, though it’s more likely we’ll see non-product specific tech demos.