From the juicy-leaks-department comes a story of Sega and Sony’s secret love affair that is so scandalous that it might shock your pants off! Well, not exactly, but it’s still pretty cool. The accidental publication of a confidential talk between the two parties revealed a lot of things, the most important of which is the fact that downloadable PS2 games are coming to PS3.

Apparently, SCEA wants to sell all PS2 titles on the PlayStation Network. The company is also considering hosting a special Japanese import section that will offer up rare games from the region that the West is yet to experience. There is also talk of Dreamcast games coming to PSN, with Sega noting that it might be “exclusive” to PSN, though they didn’t rule out the possibility of appearing on Xbox Live.

Moving on, the document also reveals that Sony’s motion controller may be released during spring 2010, with a March launch in Japan; no pricing was given. Sega has expressed its interest in the controller, noting that it will offer titles for the platform.

The two companies also discussed the possibility of games heading to PlayStation Home, including the AvP and Iron Man franchises. There is also a Thor game-movie tie-in in the works that Sony wants to take a look at.

The two lovebirds talk more interesting stuff that you’d surely love to eavesdrop on. Hit the jump link and have fun!

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Reporting from GDC, Gamesindustry carries word that Blizzard executive Rob Pardo has revealed that the studio is in active talks with Microsoft regarding the successor to the Xbox 360.

It should be noted that Blizzard’s games sell like hot cakes on PC and that their last console release was of StarCraft way back in 2000 on Nintendo 64. However, with blockbuster titles in the making – Diablo 3, StarCraft 2 and an unannounced MMO – the company might be looking to expand its reach to consoles.

The Game Developer Choice Awards ceremony was conducted last night where they announced the winners. The game of the year award went to Bethesda’s open-world action-RPG Fallout 3. Check out the list of winners.

Game of the Year
Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks)

Best Game Design:
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)

Best Writing:
Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks)

Best Technology:
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)

Best Visual Arts:
Prince of Persia (Ubisoft Montreal)

Best Debut Game:
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)

Best Handheld Game:
God Of War: Chains Of Olympus (Ready at Dawn)

Innovation Award:
LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)

Best Audio:
Dead Space (EA Redwood Shores)

Best Downloadable Game:
World Of Goo (2D Boy)

Recipients for the evening’s special awards were:

Lifetime Achievement Award
Hideo Kojima

Pioneer Award
Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy

Ambassador Award
Tommy Tallarico

The Independent Games Festival winners have been announced. Check them out:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Blueberry Garden, by Erik Svedang

Innovation (Nuovo) Award
Between, by Jason Rohrer

Excellence in Visual Art
Machinarium, by Amanita Design

Excellence in Audio
BrainPipe, by Digital Eel

Technical Excellence
Cortex Command, by Data Realms

Excellence in Design
Musaic Box, by KranX Productions

Best Student Game
Tag: The Power of Paint, by DigiPen Institute of Technology

Audience Award
Cortex Command, by Data Realms

D2D Vision Award
Osmos, by Hemisphere Games

Gamesindustry.biz reports that Namco Bandai has upped its stake in publisher D3 to 95% and that it plans on acquiring the remainder of the company as well.

This includes D3’s development studio – Vicious Cycle – and the company’s US and European arms. Namco is doing this to bolster its position in western markets.

The site reports that D3’s operations will remain unchanged at the time and that development of its titles is ongoing and “will move forward as planned.”

UK-based writer and story designer of such titles as Overlord, Mirror’s Edge and Heavenly Sword, Rhianna Pratchett has announced that her professional website has gone live. The site will serve as a platform for Pratchett’s writing and narrative design services.

“After over a decade in the industry, I thought that it was about time that I had a little corner of the internet to call my own,” says Pratchett. “An online home where I could highlight the projects and teams that I’ve been lucky enough to work with.”

Pratchett most recently won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Best Videogame Script award for Overlord. She has worked with major video game companies, including Sony, EA, Sega, Codemasters and DC Comics.

Splatterhouse developer BottleRocket Entertainment was taken off the project by publisher Namco Bandai for “performance” reasons, according to the latter, but now the studio alleges that Namco was “inept” in its handling of the project.

BottleRocket has shot back, defending its performance record while accusing Namco of mismanagement.

"We too have to be careful of what we say since publishers have to worry about their ‘image’ and will sue small, independent studios who bark back at them too loudly," begins a BottleRocket statement issued to Gamasutra. It continues below:

Game development contracts are put in place to protect the publisher and their interests. Within these contracts are a series of defined game development objectives and goals called milestones. If a developer is under performing they tend to fail these milestones and have varying degrees of accountability placed upon them. Splatterhouse had been in development for over eighteen months and up to having the title taken away from us we had not missed any contractually defined milestones. So either there were no performance issues during that timeframe or Namco’s management of the title was inept.

Best known as the voice of Solid Snake to gamers, David Hayter has cofounded a new development studio called Dark Hero. The studio’s goal will be to produce a wide range of media, including television, film and video games.

Hayter has teamed up with producer Benedict Carver (Doomsday) to make projects in the action, sci-fi and horror genres. Their first project will be Demonology, a film about a student attending an international high school in Belgium. Hayter will write and direct the movie, which is said to be inspired by his time spent in an international school in Japan.

"It’s about an American kid who goes to one of these schools in Belgium, but it brings my own horrible experiences of school to life," he said.

Remember how Sony touted its 10-year lifecycle for the PS3? EA CFO Eric Brown has said that the longer lifecycle for current generation of consoles will mean more hardware price cuts in the future, which can only mean better business for the companies involved.

"We’ve seen one major price drop thus far in this console cycle," said Brown, referring to the last Xbox 360 price drop. "We feel that we have a long ways to go, and a lot more of the unit sales will occur at the lower price points."

He noted that once the Xbox 360 dropped below $200 in North America, hardware sales helped the company jump ahead of its competition.

As for the future, Brown said platforms will grow due to the delivery of content digitally, but that he is “not quite sure where we go from here.”

Variety reports that rights to create games based on The Lord of the Rings movies have quietly reverted back to Warner Bros. from EA as of the end of last year. The last game released by EA was The Lord of the Rings: Conquest; the story suggests that the quality of the game may have suffered in the rush to get it out before the deal expired.

The site also speculates that Warner will not license the property out again, but will rather develop the games in-house. Interestingly, the right to make games based on the books is a completely separate license, which is currently held by the Tolkien estate.

Warner currently has no plans to make a game based on the LOTR franchise.

This year’s BAFTA marks the first time that a film director has won a video game award, as Steven Spielberg claimed his third BAFTA mask for Boom Blox in the Casual category.

Other winners include Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which won two BAFTAs and the game of the year award. Dead Space took home technical achievements alongside LittleBigPlanet.

Quite a few games won BAFTAs, including Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution, Race Driver: GRID, Left 4 Dead and Fable 2. Full list of winners after the jump.

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Variety reports that Activision Blizzard has threatened to sue EA for publishing Brutal Legend, Double Fine’s upcoming heavy metal-themed action-adventure game.

The site’s sources claim that Activision Blizzard sees EA’s claims to pick up publishing rights as invalid due to a belief that it was still engaged in negotiations regarding the title.

The game has quite a publishing history – it was originally set to be published by Vivendi, which merged with Activision to form Activision Blizzard last year. Following the merger, the new company said that it would not publish quite a few titles, including Brutal Legend, Ghostbusters and 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, all of which have found new homes.

It is being speculated that Activision is seeking a cash payment for the publishing rights.

Microsoft’s closure of Ensemble Studios – home to the Age of Empires franchise – was one of the more surprising developments in the last couple of months. Time doesn’t stand still for anyone – other than the ones who stayed behind at Microsoft to support Halo Wars, studio veterans have formed a new studio.

Ensemble Studios co-founder Tony Goodman has formed Robot Entertainment. This comes from Gamasutra and LinkedIn profiles. It hasn’t been revealed what type of projects the studio will tackle, but many former Ensemble employees have joined the studio, so I’d expect nothing but quality RTS games from them.

Financially ailing publisher Midway has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US, citing an inability to repay its $150 million debt potentially due next week.

The company hopes to organize and conduct its business as usual. CEO Matt Booty noted that the company’s “solid fourth quarter sales… exceeded expectations in spite of a challenging retail and general economic environment” shows that there is still some fight left in them.

"This filing will relieve the immediate pressure from our creditors and provide us time for an orderly exploration of our strategic alternatives," he explained.

While Square Enix was courting Eidos, Namco Bandai is said to be making a play for D3 Publisher, according to a Japanese press release.

Namco has already secured 70% of D3 shares, and hopes to acquire the remaining 30% for full control of the company. The publisher hopes that the acquisition will allow the two companies to cooperate in their overseas expansion efforts, in addition to bolstering D3’s content with Namco’s toy, amusement, video and networking divisions.

D3 is known for publishing titles like Dark Sector, Puzzle Quest, Naruto and Ben 10.