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On the face of it, Blizzard has been slow to adapt to the rise of mobile and free-to-play, just like parent company Activision. Fellow industry leaders EA and Ubisoft moved quickly to embrace emerging platforms and business models, but for Activision Blizzard ‘mobile’ often meant companion apps for World Of Warcraft and matchmaking platform Battlenet, or the now free Call Of Duty subscription service, Elite. Hearthstone: Heroes Of Warcraft, a collectible card game set in the World Of Warcraft universe, is Blizzard’s first free-to-play game. Soon after its launch on PC and Mac, it will become its first iPad game, too.

Yet Hearthstone should not be seen as a rushed bid to hitch the studio to two lucrative bandwagons. It’s been in development for over two years, and is being made by Team 5, a new 15-strong unit of multidisciplinary staff assembled specifically to make games like this. Its mandate is to make smaller projects that can be iterated on rapidly and released in distinctly un-Blizzard-like time frames. CEO Rob Pardo promised his PAX East audience that when he said the game would be on iPad soon after PC and Mac, he meant this year, not ‘Blizzard soon’. Pardo made it quite clear that his studio’s love of collectible card games predated the rise of mobile and free-to-play, his claim backed up by some grainy photos of badly coiffed developers sitting cross-legged on office floors playing Magic: The Gathering.

“When we’re making a game, we try to figure out what the business model is and the platforms are after we know what kind of game we’re making,” Eric Dodds, the game’s lead designer, tells us. “We’re excited about card games, so free-to-play makes a lot of sense. One of the things we wanted to capture with this game is for you to feel like you’re touching the cards, and of course, for an iPad game that makes a whole lot of sense.”

Both the early iPad build shown behind closed doors at PAX and the PC version playable on the show floor have a tactile quality to them, meaning everything looks, sounds and feels like it has weight. Cards aren’t just played, they’re slammed down, kicking up little dust clouds as they land. Send a card out to attack another and it moves towards its target, pausing above it for a split second before lunging in to strike, the resulting damage counters enveloped by cartoonish hit sparks. Move a card from left to right before playing it and it tilts slightly; it’s barely noticeable, but adds to the sense that you’re playing with a real, physical deck.

When you meet game developer Michael Brough (it’s pronounced to rhyme with frog), his timid demeanour might give the impression of a lifelong pacifist. It’s surprising, then, to learn that he shot putted a computer off a first-floor balcony during his final year of high school back in New Zealand.

Brough’s attack combo didn’t end there. Unimpressed with the damage inflicted, he went in search of a sledgehammer. Then he blasted the machine’s corpse with a blowtorch and dragged it around by its entrails. He concluded the exercise with a flourish to make the most seasoned of crime novelists swoon: painting a picture of his victim.

Even today, recounting the tale of his final high school art project elicits a mischievous chuckle from the 27-year-old developer. “I was very into the work of Dali, so I tried to imitate his stuff a bit,” says Brough. “I guess it was a fascination with decay and destruction of technological artefacts. I think I still have similar ideas going through the stuff I’m making now, with my obsession with making things look like they’re an error in the game – glitches and so on.”

One of the games to which he’s referring is Corrypt, which initially seems like a conventional Sokoban box-pushing puzzler with a few cosmetic oddities layered on top. The game’s purple-headed protagonist encounters a crippled miner NPC who begs for help in settling a debt of seven mushrooms with some magicians who “do not accept delays”. Like in Super Mario Bros, the speckled mushroom motif seems to quietly vindicate the surreal nature of the premise.

Ninja Theory is partnering with Chillingo to release its new free to play mobile game Fightback.

The DmC: Devil May Cry studio described the game as a “thrilling free-to-play action game with a striking 80s action movie vibe and a revolutionary touch-based combat system.”

The game will be released on the App Store and Google Play, and will be playable at E3.

“Mobile and tablet gaming is a phenomenon that we just couldn’t ignore as a studio,” said Ninja Theory product manager Dominic Matthews. “Ninja Theory has always strived for the highest production values and that absolutely remains the case in this exciting new space.”

Microsoft has already signed deals with Sky and Canal+ to bring European TV content to Xbox One.

As part of this week’s reveal event, Microsoft focused on its new console’s TV offering, announcing a major partnership with the NFL which will bring exclusive, interactive content to Xbox One. It also announce a partnership with Steven Spielberg, who will be involved in a new Halo TV series.

We asked Microsoft Studios boss Phil Spencer what the platform holder’s plans are for Europe.

“We have partnerships with Sky, with Canal+ in France, and we’ll continue to grow our international expansion,” he told us. “We’ll put a worldwide face on the platform because Europe, in particular, is especially important to us this generation.”

Hello Games’ Joe Danger games are coming to PC via Steam, and will arrive with extra game content and editing tools.

The UK studio has also added support for Steam’s Big Picture Mode and integrated Steamworks in Joe Danger and Joe Danger 2 on PC. Ghost recording will allow players to compete with each other from within the game.

“I think we have some kind of OCD at Hello Games,” said founder Sean Murray. “We have a rule that whenever we put our games onto a new platform we have to add something. We can’t just do a quick and dirty port. We have some more surprises to announce for the PC editions of Joe Danger as we lock them down.

Sony has seemingly confirmed that PS4 will be launched in Europe this year.

An advertisement in this morning’s Metro, as spotted by CVG, says that Sony’s next console is ‘coming 2013’.

The associated hyperbole reads: “Now is the time. The world’s greatest players are going to entertain, create and amaze on the ultimate stage. This year a new generation will push the boundaries of play and share in moments of wonder. This year players will become legends. PS4. Coming 2013.”

We saw the next gen Xbox, new super-advanced Kinect and a new pad. We learned that Xbox One is built on cloud technology, designed to deliver ‘intelligent, interactive’ TV and we even saw Steven Spielberg, ready to helm a Halo TV series.

And yet the majority of the debate around Xbox One right now has little to do with that highfalutin stuff. The games playing public has rather earthier questions: what does the new console do that my 360 doesn’t? Which new games will I be playing on it? Can I play second-hand games? Will it be backwards compatible?

Games sites tied themselves in knots reporting on the Xbox One event, because Microsoft fumbled all of the answers. Hours later, when the press had the chance to ask the questions that the games playing public wanted to ask, Microsoft executives’ clammed up. It appeared as if they’d barely even considered these fundamentals – the strength of the reaction around second hand games and always-on in the last few days has surely brought this oversight into sharp focus at Microsoft HQ.

The questions Microsoft did answer during its reveal event were obscure, and entirely of its own invention. Can I search for something on the internet and watch a movie on the same screen, at the same time? Can I interact with TV shows through my Xbox? Is switching between inputs with Kinect as fast as using a remote control?

Bungie has gone live with a new Destiny trailer, which also confirms that the shooter will be fully revealed at Sony’s E3 conference on June 10.

The new trailer is called ‘Law of the Jungle’ and was created ‘in collaboration’ with Breaking Bad actor Giancarlo Esposito, and director Jon Favreau. You can watch it below.