The last time Harry Potter used the magic of Kinect, the results were less than magical. Now, WB and developer Eurocom are bringing the world of Hogwarts to Kinect with a much more "traditional" Kinect experience; minigames. It's called, of course, Harry Potter for Kinect.

The game follows the whole Harry Potter saga, with Harry, Ron, Hermione ... and you(r face scanned onto a player-created character!) You'll cast spells with gestures and voice commands, play Quidditch, choose a house, take part in duels, battle against Voldemort, and other Potterly activities.

Harry Potter for Kinect will be in stores this fall, where it will sell many, many copies.

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Most of us will never know what it's like to pilot a gigantic, bipedal mech in real life – that technology is years off – but the next best thing can be experienced if you've got an Xbox Live Gold subscription and a Kinect sensor.

A demo for Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor is available for download on Xbox Live right now. Perhaps you'll enjoy it as much as we did during our preview session back in March. If not, it's much easier to eject those gigglebites from your storage unit than it is to eject yourself from one of those massive machines.

Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor launches on June 19 in North America.

Last year Chris Vik modded a Kinect to play the Melbourne Town Hall Organ, and he did it with way more style than any of those sweet Dance Central moves we've attempted to throw down in front of our own little camera boxes. The Melbourne Town Hall Organ is four stories tall, but Vik used his own software, Kinectar, with the organ's MIDI connection to play the whole thing from one moodily lit spot on the stage.

Vik and vocalist Elise Richards composed Carpe Zythum and performed it in November, and finally the full video will be available next week, according to Kinect Hacks. The above teaser plays a clip of the performance and reveals the madness behind the music, waving arms and invisible instruments included.

Update: As a few of you have mentioned below, the full performance is available now on YouTube. Enjoy!

During the week of E3, on June 6, Video Games Live will take over the Nokia Theater L.A. Live arena. Being E3 and all, and L.A. being one of the most frequently played venues for Tommy Tallarico's live video game concert, this year he wanted to add some special scores – like Austin Wintory's Journey score, conducted by Wintory himself.

It's just one of the more recent audio accompaniments added for the June 6 show. There are also select tunes from Skyrim, which will be handled by a secret guest conductor; composer Russell Bower will conduct some Diablo 3 tunes. Donkey Kong Country, Star Fox and even a Street Fighter segment – to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Capcom's fighter – are planned. Akira Yamaoka will also play guitar at some point.

Finally, there's Earthworm Jim to consider, a game that Tallarico himself worked on. Apparently folks have been asking him to add it to Video Games Live for quite some time now, which we're totally in favor of – as long as we get that thrash metal remix of "Use Your Head" we've been waiting our entire lives for.

Crimson Dragon will careen into Japan on June 13 for 1,200 Microsoft Points ($15), Andriasang reports. Crimson Dragon is a Kinect exclusive created by Panzer Dragoon director Yukio Futatsugi that will allow players to ride six different types of dragons while shooting fireballs and laser-inspired projectiles.

Yeah, we think it sounds like pretty much the best thing ever, too. Unfortunately, there is no word yet on a western release date.

Porsche was not included in the launch of Forza 4 due to complications with EA, who had the license at the time. But Porsche makes its return to the Forza franchise today (as promised) with the Porsche Expansion Pack DLC.

The Porsche Expansion Pack is available to download right now for 1600 MS Points ($20) in Forza 4, and adds 30 new rides to the virtual garage and new Porsche events in World Tour and Rivals modes.

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Kung-Fu Superstar is a new Kinect game from Kinesthetic Games, a developer formed from former staff at "Codemasters, EA, Climax, Lionhead Studios and others." It's also a really good excuse to clean up your living room and perhaps send your kids to their friends' houses, lest they all be kicked.

Kung-Fu Superstar purports to teach you real martial arts techniques, which you use to play out the story of kung fu enthusiast Danny Cheng, who hopes to "discover the secrets of Kung Fu and become the most popular martial arts stuntman Hollywood has ever known."

The game is clearly made for Kinect, but studio head Kostas Zarifis tells Joystiq, "We're developing the game for multiple platforms (Kinect definitely being one of them). The game will have a very important controller component too!" Wii and PS3 are both listed among the tags for the YouTube clip embedded above.

The 1.5 update for the Kinect SDK has been released to developers, and it adds a solid list of new capabilities, including something called Kinect Studio (that allows developers to record user movements and play them back for the code later), a development kit for Face Tracking (which enables Kinect to track facial features), and new Human Interface Guidelines and other documentation improvements.

But the marquee feature here is that Microsoft has finally laid to rest the question of whether the Kinect works when seated or not. Now there's a full Seated Skeletal Tracking mode, which only tracks a person's head, torso and arms. Microsoft recommends this not only for when games players are seated, but for any application where the lower half of the body doesn't need to be tracked. Finally, there are also new language packs. In addition to languages like French and Japanese, you get Kinect support for regional differences in languages, like English/Canada and English/Australia. Crikey, devs will be well chuffed about that, etc.

What would life be like if you could fell entire civilizations with a flick of your wrist, crush hordes of men with a downward swat and destroy worlds with a ridiculous, wide-armed downhill skiing motion? You'd either be Lord Voldemort, or you'd be playing Babel Rising on Kinect, like the stylish young man in the video above.

Babel Rising is set to launch in June for PlayStation Move and Xbox 360's Kinect.

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Finally – FINALLY – Time Warner and Bright House cable customers have a way to watch HBO on their televisions. The HBO Go app for Xbox 360 previously only worked for Comcast and a variety of other services, but not TWC, so even if you were an HBO subscriber, you couldn't use the app. Which is terrible. Today, Microsoft announced Time Warner compatibility.

Celebrate by watching some Not Necessarily the News tonight, or some episodes of Fraggle Rock. Look, it's been a while since we've had HBO, okay?

Lionhead's latest job post brings up two salient points:

• That listing for a multiplayer level designer with "a deep understanding of online multiplayer games" may encompass more than a simple FPS title with online capabilities.
• Microsoft could be looking to bring MMOs to its console market in a big way.

The most recent want ad, spotted by Superannuation and since removed, described the potential game as an "MMO-like title" and an original IP for the "future generation of platforms." It "will be an RPG-based game with a radical new take on how co-operative and multiplayer gameplay feeds into the experience, while blending online and single-player into one complete experience," the listing read, as reported by MCV.

The title "will have a complex progression system, multiple routes through the campaign and an MMO-like multiplayer experience that will affect the outcome of the player experience, and many other attributes surrounding their profile (such as the environment and the outcome of certain actions)." Superannuation notes that it was labeled as a multithreaded RPG with four-player co-op.

Lionhead's specific use of "MMO-like" and the description's emphasis on a "radical new" genre leaves the game's direction open to interpretation, while nodding at the style of former creative lead Peter Molyneux.

MMOs can be a big gamble, even for an established studio, and especially if its audience is tethered to a single console unfamiliar with the genre as a whole. Good luck, Lionhead. You may need it.

THQ saw a net loss of $239.9 million for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012, $100 million more than the previous fiscal year's loss of $136.1 million.

"We have made significant changes to our business, and are on track to execute our strategy of delivering quality connected core gaming experiences, beginning with the sequel to the award-winning Darksiders in August," president and CEO Brian Farrell said in a THQ earnings statement.

THQ has seen a rough year, with plummeting revenue despite the success of Saints Row: The Third and WWE '12. THQ laid off 240 employees, slashed the salaries of its head honchos and cut its "kids' licensed video games" department earlier this fiscal year, following quarter losses of nearly triple the previous period.

THQ has sold through 84 percent of its shipped uDraw tablets and expects to sell its remaining inventory in fiscal 2013. The company's "future kids' license commitments" have been reduced by $30 million, THQ reports.

THQ describes its emergency layoffs, salary cuts and company rehashing as follows: "The company exited the traditional kids' licensed games business, and streamlined its product line, organization and cost structure to support a smaller company positioned for sustained profitability."

Ubisoft ended the 2012 financial year on the up, reporting a gross profit of €718 million ($917 million) and sales up 2.1 percent to €1 billion ($1.4 billion) year-over-year, according to its financial results for 2011-2012.

Ubisoft ended fiscal 2011-12 with net income of €37.3 million ($47.6 million), up from a net loss of €52.1 million ($66.5 million) in the 2011 fiscal year.

Sales from "core gamers" in Assassin's Creed Revelations, Rayman Origins, Driver San Francisco and free-to-play title The Settlers Online generated €578 million ($738.1 million) in revenue, Ubisoft reported. Casual games brought in €483 million ($616.8 million) in revenue, mainly from Just Dance, Rocksmith and free-to-play title Howrse.

Core and casual titles contributed to a 110.8 percent jump in online and digital sales, bringing that figure to €80 million ($102.1 million), Ubisoft reported.

Ubisoft's net cash position is down from €99.2 million ($126.6 million) in 2011 to €84.6 million ($108 million) in 2012, while current operating income rose 90 percent to €56 million ($71.5 million) year-over-year.

Joy Ride Turbo, the Kinect-free sequel to Kinect Joy Ride, will be released on Xbox Live Arcade on May 23, according to a new release schedule from Major Nelson. As previously revealed, Joy Ride Turbo features several different modes, including a new Stunt Park, and generally sounds a lot more like the Joy Ride Microsoft originally announced way back in 2009.

If your Kinect is feeling lonely as a result, this week's Xbox Live Deal of the Week revolves entirely around downloadable Kinect titles. You can grab Fruit Ninja Kinect for $7, while Hole in the Wall, Leedmees, Double Fine Happy Action Theater, Rhythm Party and Haunt have been knocked down to $5 each.

If your 360 controller is now feeling double-reverse lonely, next week will see discounts to some old-fashioned regular XBLA games. Specifically, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes will be reduced to $7.50, while Outland and Beyond Good & Evil HD will be available for $5 each.

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The Xbox 360 is the most popular non-PC device for viewing online video, beating out iOS and Android handhelds, according to a study by online-video ad company Freewheel. Freewheel measured "professional content" only, meaning video that runs with ads -- meaning it really conducted a study on how many online ads we watch -- from companies such as NBC, CBS, ESPN and Vevo. The study didn't account for Netflix or YouTube viewership.

Xbox 360 took 28.2 percent of all viewership, followed by iPad with 27.1 percent, then iPhone, Android and iPod Touch on a decreasing scale.

In March, Microsoft announced that Xbox 360 owners use the console more for its entertainment apps than for any actual gaming purposes, spending more than half of their Xbox time on Netflix and other music and video applications. Even though the Freewheel study doesn't include Netflix views, it does support the console evolutionary theory: One day our gaming consoles will have mutated so drastically that we'll have an entirely new species, called simply "entertainment consoles."

The results for April are in, and things are looking a little rough out there in consumer video-game electronics land. As a whole, the gaming industry (which for our purposes includes all hardware, software and accessories sales between April 1 and April 28, 2012) brought in $630.4 million, a 32 percent decrease over the same period last year, where its various machinations resulted in collective sales of $930.9 million.

Breaking the industry down into its three major components, hardware sales accounted for $189.7 million (down 32 percent year over year), while software sales contributed $292.1 million to the cause – a 42 percent decrease year over year. Accessories, on the other hand, posted a 1 percent increase year-over-year at $148.6 million in 2012, as compared with $147.8 million in 2011.

The average amount of money spent on hardware increased year-over-year, however, due in part to the 360 Star Wars Kinect Bundle, according to NPD analyst Anita Frazier. Generally though, the period's lackluster performance is due to the month's release schedule: "Last April, the top seven titles outsold the top-selling title this year, and, simply stated, there were notably fewer new market introductions. I think it's a simple as that because when we see compelling content come into the market, the games are still selling as well as ever – we just saw a lot less this April as compared to last."

The list of April's top 10 best-selling titles can be found after the break as per usual, with newcomers Prototype 2 and Kinect Star Wars leading the charge ahead of Modern Warfare 3, Mario Party 9 and Mass Effect 3.

Update: According to Microsoft's Major Nelson, the Xbox 360 sold 236K units during April.

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Good news: the Xbox 360 will finally have a web browser in the near future, according to a Verge source. Bad news: It's Internet Explorer.

The source tells The Verge that the new web browser is based on Internet Explorer 9, and features Kinect functionality, allowing users to search with voice input just like the Bing search tech used in the current dashboard. Users will also be able to browse the web without talking to it, reportedly.

Ubisoft and Marvel are partnering on an Avengers game for ... Kinect and Wii U? It's an unlikely pairing – the controller-free format and the format with a giant controller and an extraneous screen; but for a franchise that pairs a half-naked monster man with an armored plutocrat, perhaps it's appropriate.

Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth is in the works at Ubisoft Quebec, and will allow players to use motion controls to fight off the alien Skrull. "The idea that we're making a motion-control version of 'The Avengers' is a unique proposition if you compare that to superhero games of the past," said Ubisoft marketing VP Tony Key, as reported by the Washington Post. "This is the perfect type of game for that because these characters are very action oriented. They're always fighting and throwing things." Those rowdy kids.

As suggested by the Skrull invasion storyline, the game deviates from the movie, instead drawing from the "Secret Invasion" comic crossover event, which featured Skrulls posing as Earth superheroes.