A Gamer's Week: January 9

It's the first week of a gaming year and things are pretty quiet at the moment as most people are still looking back on the best games of 2010 and going through their backlog while awaiting to see how the first titles that came out this year perform in late January.

For those who like to look forward, we have a Weekend Reading piece about how video game might evolve in the coming 12 months and an EndWeekGame detailing out most recent gaming obsessions.

And, as always, we have a selection of the most interesting news of the last seven days.

On Monday, the much-lauded Angry Birds mobile based game has finally made the move to home consoles, being launched on the PlayStation 3 for Sony, but also on the PlayStation Portable for those who move around a lot.

On the same day, the people at Epic Games issued a sort of apology for the delay of Gears of War 3 until the fall of this year, saying that the launch of a beta stage should make up for it.

On Tuesday, we were able to take a direct look at the upcoming Nintendo 3DS handheld, which is set to be officially released on February 26, while taking in a statement from BioWare, talking about how cinematic elements in Star Wars: The Old Republic will affect the experience of the player.

Wednesday offered us a chance to look at more screenshots of the rebooted Lara Croft game, which will see her move into a more survival direction, with gritty taking the place of over the top in the franchise.

On the same day, EA Sports talked about the upcoming Tiger Woods PGA 12: The Masters, which will for the first time in the franchise include the Augusta National golfing experience, long awaited by those who follow the series.

On Thursday, rumors sprang up that Infinity Ward, now rebuilt after earlier scandals, is set to create a prequel to the Modern Warfare series which will focus on Ghost while the group of hackers that penetrated the security of the PlayStation 3 sought to provide justification for their actions.

On Friday, we found out about the system requirements for Total War: Shogun 2 and we saw more images of the rumored PSP Phone.