SAN FRANCISCO – The Game Developers Conference (GDC 2012) is officially in the record books. The world’s largest and longest-running event serving professionals dedicated to the art and science of making games held to its title of “largest” with a record-breaking 22,500 game industry professionals making the trek to the Moscone Center in San Francisco. That’s a 17% increase in attendance over the previous year’s event.  Following the success of the show, organizers have announced that GDC 2013 will return to the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco from Monday, March 25 to Friday, March 29, 2013, – with a call for lecture submissions to open this summer. 

Players of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), Rift, set the world record for the most in-game marriages in a 24-hour period. Officially recorded for the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition, 21,879 marriages were confirmed between 9am PST, Feb. 14 and 9am PST, Feb. 15. Trion Worlds now adds this record to its record-setting online fantasy game, which has already earned over $100 million for the publisher.

LAS VEGAS -- The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has officially put the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) into the record books as the largest in the show's 44 year history, with 1.861 million net square feet of exhibit space. The previous record was 1.857 million net square feet of space at the 2008 International CES. Owned and produced by CEA, CES 2012, the world's largest tradeshow for consumer technology, runs January 10 through January 13 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Major League Gaming (MLG) had one heck of a year.  The 2011 Pro Circuit season was the largest season in e-sports history reaching more than 3.5 million unique stream viewers during combined Pro Circuit weekends.  The recent 2011 Pro Circuit National Championships held in Providence, Rhode Island, November 18-20, drew an all-time high of 241,000 peak concurrent online viewers and more than 3.6 million hours of video were consumed over the weekend.  Viewers from 175 countries tuned in to the final tournament, the highest numbers of countries to date.  The top five countries watching included USA, Germany, Canada, Sweden and United Kingdom.  Over the 2011 season, more than 15 million hours of video were consumed during Pro Circuit weekends.

It’s over for Harry Potter. The final film’s record box office opening was shattered by Activision’s launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The new game from Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games beat out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (now out on Blu-ray) as well as the reigning game champion, Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops. Modern Warfare 3 sold over 6.5 million copies in just the US and UK and generated over $400 million in its first 24 hours at retail, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information.

Electronic Arts has sold through 5 million copies of Battlefield 3 worldwide in its first week according to internal numbers, making the sequel one of the big games of 2011. That makes the new shooter from DICE the fastest-selling game in the history of EA. The outstanding retail performance is driven by critic’s reviews averaging above 85 on console and above 90 on PC. Word-of-mouth from gamers is also driving sales – Battlefield 3 now has more than 2.5 million “likes” on Facebook and 200,000 followers on Twitter.

Who needs competition? Electronic Arts had a record-breaking launch for NHL 12 with 2K Sports off the ice for good. Based on internal estimates, NHL 12 had its biggest launch week in franchise history with more than $27 million generated at retail worldwide.  First week unit sales of NHL 12were up 19 percent across Europe and North America.  The game launched Sept. 9 in Europe and Sept. 13 in North America. 

Cologne -- The world of interactive entertainment has once again descended on Cologne, Germany for Gamescom 2011. Over 250,000 gamers have flooded the city in search of hands-on with some of the biggest games of this year and beyond. For the third year running, the trade show and event highlight has increased its exhibitor numbers and international flavor by a wide margin. Over 550 exhibitors (up from 505 in 2010) from almost 40 countries (up from 33 countries in 2010) will be presenting their new products and innovative developments on Cologne's trade show grounds. The proportion of foreign companies at gamescom is now 50 per cent (up from 45% in 2010).

Carrie Swidecki, a 35 year old public school teacher from Bakersfield, CA, got her exergaming groove on and broke the Guinness World Record for Longest Marathon on a Dance / Rhythm Game playing DanceDanceRevolution (SuperNova 2 arcade game) in Charleston, West Virginia. Swidecki broke the previously held record of 13 hours 33 minutes 56 seconds, set in the United Kingdom in October, 2010, with a time of 15 hours, 17 minutes and 44 seconds.

The third Transformers film showed no ill effects from the horribly reviewed second movie in the franchise. Transformers: Dark of the Moon has broken all sorts of records in its first six days. The 3D movie became the number one single-day opening of 2011 right out of the gate with over $37 million. It also broke an IMAX 3D record for its haul $22 million. Then it earned $97.4 million on 9,300 screens at 4,013 locations domestically through Sunday, topping Spider-Man 2’s record haul.

The 2011 Stanley Cup Final, won by the Boston Bruins over the Vancouver Canucks in a dramatic seven-game series, set numerous viewership milestones and records, including the highest North American viewership for any Stanley Cup Final in history – 11.5 million viewers (records go back to 1994). Game7 of the series led the way, averaging a record 18.3 million viewers in the U.S. and Canada, also a North American viewership record for any NHL game on record. That's good news for EA Sports, which now has the sole rights to NHL video games. But 2K Sports did get a lot of mileage out of its last NHL cover athlete, Ryan Kesler, who speaks about the game in the video below.