Nintendo takes a knock

Nintendo has suffered its first fall in annual profits for six years after sales were hit by drastic price cuts, a strong Yen, and a downturn in the global gaming market, says The Guardian.

The world's biggest maker of video game machines says its net profit fell 18% to yen228.6 billion in the year through to the end of March, from a yen279 billion profit the previous year. Annual sales fell 22% to yen1.4 trillion.

The firm, which has been locked in battle with rivals Sony and Microsoft, and more recently Apple, for a decisive stake in the global gaming industry, said operating profit had fallen 36% to yen356.5billion in the 12 months to the end of March.

World of Warcraft maker Blizzard is aiming to make its games more social by integrating them with Facebook, writes BBC.

The merging will involve Blizzard's Battle.net online gaming service which many use to stay in touch with friends they play with or against. The long-awaited Starcraft II will be the first Blizzard game to have the Facebook features built in.

Players of the Starcraft II beta will be able to add people they play against on Battle.net as friends on Facebook.

A casual gaming arm of RealNetworks has released a social gaming platform called GameHouse Fusion at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, reports PC World.

This set of services is designed to help game developers bake social features into their products.

They include everything from simple social stuff like leaderboards to special trophies gamers can create themselves; virtual goods; hosting and ad-sales services; and more.