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This trailer for Artificial Mind and Movement’s Naughty Bear sets up the story, depicting the social slight that turns the title animal toward thoughts of revenge. Which means that this trailer..

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Naughty Bear trailer features pre-Naughty Bear

After years of rumors and an encouraging statement from Netflix’s CEO, it appears to be official: the Nintendo Wii will gain the ability to stream content from Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” selections…. Visit Grevs.com for more info

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Netflix streaming available on Wii this spring

The Tiger Woods scandal has cost the great golfer his once pristine image.

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EA Sports Second Guessing Tiger Woods? [Tiger Wood]

If the small number of booths at this year’s Tokyo Game Show is any indication, the Japanese game industry has seen better days. Even large Japanese companies are hurting.

The company behind the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, Square Enix, is rumored to be trimming down its workforce. Apparently, somewhere between 200 and 300 Square Enix Japan employees will lose their jobs.

If true, this could simply be a corporate reorganization after the acquisition of Eidos Interactive, which is schedule to be renamed Square Enix Europe. Taito is also under the Square Enix Japan umbrellas, so these rumored lay-offs could also be Taito-related.

Square Enix recently released Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS. The game has sold over 3.7 million copies in Japan.

We are following up with Square Enix regarding this lay-off rumor.

Joystiq has learned that at least a couple dozen employees of EA’s Maxis studio were laid off today. EA confirmed that the publisher had reduced the workforce, telling Joystiq in a prepared… Visit Grevs.com for more info

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EA confirms Maxis layoffs, publisher still committed to Spore

Here at Joystiq, we endeavor to have something for everyone. For example, we thought you real-time strategy fans would be interested to hear that the fourth installment of Command and Conquer had..

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Command & Conquer 4 subtitled ‘Tiberian Twilight’

Now that Warner Bros. owns Midway, there’s not much need for Midway’s corporate offices in Chicago. Warner Bros.’ offices can handle that sort of stuff just fine. So all 60 employees there have been laid off.

As per the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, the employees were given 60 days notice on Monday. Those among the casualties include Midway Chief Executive Matthew Booty, along with “other senior executives”.

These cuts aren’t related to Midways’ Chicago development studio, where 100 employees have been offered jobs at Warner.

For reference, the 60 employees given notice constituted 20% of Midway’s entire workforce.

Midway Games lays off all 60 at corporate office [Chicago Tribune]

Publisher THQ announced in February that it would be cutting back substantially, axing jobs and shuttering studios after losing $191.8 million last quarter. Today, we learn that developer Big Huge Games is due to close.

Sources close to the studio say that Big Huge Games, developer of the Rise of Nations series and Catan for Xbox Live Arcade, has been given notice by THQ, which has intentions to close the studio within 60 days. Official response from THQ is that the publisher informed the Timonium, Maryland-based Big Huge Games that it plans to close the studio if a buyer is not found “in the near future.”

Big Huge Games was working on an unannounced Wii game and a role-playing game designed by former The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion designer Ken Rolston.

THQ also notified two other development studios that they will be “spun out as independent companies.”

California based Heavy Iron in Los Angeles and Incinerator in Carlsbad were let go by the publisher today, part of THQ’s previously announced cutbacks. Both studios were responsible for creating titles based on Pixar properties, including The Incredibles and Wall E from Heavy Iron and Cars from Incinerator Studios.

THQ reps call the actions “unfortunate but were necessitated by the difficult economic environment.” It has plans to layoff nearly 600 employees or about 24% of its total workforce, in order to cut costs by $220 million in its fiscal 2010.

The publisher confirmed earlier this month that it had laid off approximately 100 employees at its Champaign, Illinois quality assurance facility.

In January, Microsoft started “reviewing” a few things. Cut some jobs, that sort of stuff. That “review” now shines its light on Rare, where belts are to be tightened, and jobs might be lost.

In comments released to the British press today, the company stated a number of aims going forward that seemed a tad redundant, since they outlined a goal to do…exactly what Rare have been doing for the past 2-3 years. Expand the Xbox userbase, work on Xbox Live stuff, yada yada yada.

Of more intrest are these comments from studio manager Mark Betteridge:

As the entire industry struggles to address the increasing scale and cost of development, we too have felt a need to restructure our current approach so we can speed development and better manage the scale required to create high quality games.

Sound ominous? Could well be, as he continues:

In order to achieve these goals, the company is reviewing the current composition of its development teams and there is the possibility that a small number of current positions could be lost as a result of these changes.

So job losses, probably, but it also sounds like a project or two may have been canned as well.

Rare restructures to simplify development process [GI.biz]