Halfbrick will open a whole new studio just for the Fruit Ninja sequel

In this case, it's 100 percent OK to let out a ninja cry like this dude. Those around you will understand once you tell them it's because you found out that Fruit Ninja creator Halfbrick plans to open a whole new studio just for the sequel to the iconic mobile game. The Brisbane, Australia-based game maker announced that, after a $3 million funding injection into the industry by state officials, it will open a new studio in Sydney and hire a new team to make the long-awaited second Fruit Ninja game.

"The new Sydney team will develop the next evolution of the Fruit Ninja games franchise," New South Wales deputy prime minister Andrew Stoner told Develop. "It will involve players launching a series of fruit to knock ninjas off their towers in a 3D world, with each fruit having special powers." In short, it will be remarkably different from the first game.

That's a relief, considering Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots did enough to flesh out the classic fruit-flaying gameplay to be worthy of the word "sequel". According to Stoner, the game is due out in 2012 for iOS devices initially. Though, we're sure Halfbrick will go platform crazy with this version as well, slapping the game onto Android, Facebook and even Xbox 360 Kinect. This news almost gets us excited enough to act like this guy ... almost (NSFW):


[Via Pocket Gamer]

Are you psyched to hear that a new Fruit Ninja game is in the works? What do you think of the premise so far?

Why are we so hooked on Angry Birds? It's science [Infographic]

We already know that Rovio and its Angry Birds are poised to do battle with Zynga for global gaming domination. The iPhone-game-turned-everywhere-game has become millions' preferred time-waster on the run. But there's one thing we just can't seem to put our finger on: Why? An infographic put together by Ask Your Target Marketing attempts to answer this question with two forms of science (though, the latter of which is debatable in some circles): psychology and sociology.

But before we get into that, some basics. According to 1,000 surveyed Angry Birds players, men are 35 percent more likely to buy Angry Birds than women, and 18 to 24-year-olds are 33 percent more likely to buy the game than those 25 or older. Here's an interesting finding: gamers collectively play Angry Birds an average of 200 million minutes per day--that amounts to 16 collective years of flinging agitated avian creatures every hour of every day.

While just 15 percent of players feel addicted to the game often when playing and an even smaller 13 percent say they feel addicted always, a whopping 54 percent say they feel addicted occasionally. OK, so we get it: We're hooked by their angry talons. Now, how in the world did this happen? Simply put, it makes us feel good.

Out of 1,000 people who played Angry Birds 25 or more times, 32 percent of them felt "somewhat relaxed" after an Angry Birds session, while 23 percent said to have felt "very relaxed" after launching the birds into the amorphous green pigs. But generally speaking, 58 percent of Angry Birds players reported their mood to be improved after playing the game, while 37 percent said their mood was unchanged.

This is thanks to an amazing strange little thing called dopamine, which our brains put out on overdrive in anticipation of reward, according to the infographic. This massive release of dopamine makes us want to know just what will happen after letting that next bird careen into some wooden planks.

For 12 percent of players, the addiction has been so bad that they were forced to delete the game from their phones, while another 12 percent have merely considered that drastic measure as an option. The other 76 percent just keep playing, apparently. Good idea, you not-so-jovial bird junkies. Find the full infographic below, and click it to make it larger.