The 27th annual Golden Joysticks Awards were announced in London earlier today, giving props to the games that shaped the industry in the past year. Sitting on top of them is Fallout 3 (PS3, Xbox 360, PC) receiving top honors as the Ultimate Game of the Year. Read up and find out who else made it big in the awards.

The much-anticipated NPD software sales for June 2009 have finally been released, but while it's easy to be overwhelmed by the numbers in the thousands, they are, actually, underwhelming. in fact, the analysts have been proven right in their prediction that it will see the fourth consecutive sales decline -- and more. The newly-released sales numbers are now described as the "largest drop in nine years."

If the analysts turn out right, then we just might see the fourth consecutive sales decline in the June results of NPD, and then we'll see that price cut happen. Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan and Jesse Divinich of EEDAR are synonymous in saying that sales will most likely be down by around 20-23%.

Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith has revealed that they have now set their sights on breaking into the action genre with a brand new IP. Details about the IP are still scarce, but Griffith did share with Develop why Activision, which has become decidedly restrictive when it comes to new IP, made the decision. I bet you guys can guess why.

E3 is back and bigger than ever! ... is what I want to say. But you get the next best thing. E3 is back and it's bigger than last year! Restrictions on attendance will be lessened this year, and Activision Blizzard, the company that started the studio exodus from the ESA, is back.

More details after the link.

Activision Blizzard confirmed during the Massive Inc upfront that they will be making Guitar Hero 5, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and that the rumors about the upcoming Tony Hawk being "different" were true. Admittedly, nothing terribly surprising, but it's good to know all the same.

After hearing the story of the Swede teen collapsing after 24 hours of playing Wrath of the Lich King, this news comes to no surprise for me. World of Warcraft's second expansion pack has sliced its way to second place in the UK charts, topped only by fellow newcomer, Call of Duty: World at War. In other news, LittleBigPlanet shot down form fourth place to 19th place. Ouch.

The rest of the top UK games after the link!

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick explains why they decided not to retain all of Vivendi's games when the two companies merged. The reason? The games just weren't "exploitable" enough. More in the full article.

If you failed to catch it online, the 26th Annual Golden Joystick Awards has just handed out honors. Activision owned as it picked up Publisher of The Year, and Call of Duty 4 (PS3, Xbox 360) racked up four other awards for them as well. Find out how the others fared in the full article.

Eight games were left rolling with the tumbleweeds after Activision Blizzard dropped them to make way for its merger.

Now we can all heave a collective sigh of relief for at least two of them. Atari has picked up the publishing rights to Ghostbusters and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena.