Tonight is the night that Sony will make some sort of announcement about the future of the PlayStation brand. Some speculate that it will be more details on their next system, commonly referred to as the "PS4." Hopefully there will be some other surprises like game announcements, new features for the technology they already have on the market now and - with any luck - a price cut to the North American and European versions of the PS Vita hand-held - which currently cost as much as a brand new PS3.

Blizzard Entertainment today announced plans for its seventh BlizzCon gaming convention, to take place Friday, November 8 and Saturday, November 9 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. You may recall that Blizzard canceled last year's event, much to the chagrin of fans.

Electronic Arts announced that it will host the first-ever EA Hackathon at the EA headquarters in Redwood City, California on March 16. Teams will compete against each other for a chance to win a (what we assume will be) tasty and informative lunch with EA CTO Rajat Taneja, a selection of unnamed EA products, and $1,000 in cash for each participating team member of the winning team (of course).

EA describes the challenge as follows:

Alloy Digital, the new owners of the popular gaming site The Escapist has confirmed today that The Escapist Expo will be making a triumphant return to Durham, North Carolina from October 4-6.

Last year nearly 6,000 gamers attended the inaugural three-day video gaming lifestyle and culture event. Like last year's event The Escapist Expo will once again team up with Global Spectrum (the management company for the Durham Convention Center) to bring a variety of fun activities, exhibitions, discussions, and events related to gaming.

This year's East Coast Games Conference is set for April 24-25, 2013 at the Raleigh Convention Center in Raleigh, N.C. The event dedicated to game developers on the Eastern Coast of the U.S. is being co-produced by the IGDA and the Triangle Game Initiative. This year’s conference will include a new Writing for Games track, an expanded Serious Games track and a Game Careers track for people that want to get into the industry, the return of the Unreal University, as well as an Expo and Career Lounge.

CCP Games has informed us that the EVE Fanfest 2013 event to celebrate all things related to its popular space MMO EVE Online sold out last week. The event held once a year in Reykjavik, Iceland will see about 1,400 attendees - about 50 percent more than last year's event. The Fanfest offers attendees three days of EVE Online and CCP-related activities that include panels, local Icelandic excursions, presentations from the game's developers, PvP tournaments, a developer-lead pub crawl, game reveals, and the general joys of camaraderie.

The National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR) today revealed the nominees for the 12th Annual 2012 NAVGTR Award nominations. Since 2001, a panel of over 600 trade voters have chosen the best games in over 50 categories, recognizing interactive entertainment industry achievements in the fields of art, technology, and production.

The organizers of the Boston Festival of Indie Games have announced that September 14 will be the magical date for this year's event to be held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Ma. The event, which is free and open to the general public, is a celebration of the very best indie games. The second annual event is presented and facilitated by MIT Game Lab and Boston Indies.

Update: An earlier version of this story erroneously named Chris Vizzini (who own Gaymer.org) as a party in a licensing negotiation related to GaymerCon. The rights holder in question, who Gamer X organizers do not wish to name, was not Vizzini. We apologize for the confusion and have rewritten the story below to reflect the facts.

Gallery Nucleus announced that its very first event for 2013 will be an awesome showcase of Blizzard's art from various games. On January 12 and running until February 3, Gallery Nexus will host "The Art of Blizzard Entertainment Book Launch and Art Exhibition." The opening reception will be held on Saturday, January 12, 2013 from 7:00pm – 11:00pm. The Nucleus exhibition will feature over 50 pieces of artwork from various Blizzard game universes such as Diablo, StarCraft, and Warcraft.

While Blizzard decided not to run a BlizzCon fan gathering event this year, the popular event that celebrates StarCraft, Warcraft, Diablo, and World of Warcraft will return in 2013 and will be the place to see to Blizzard Global Finals 2013. Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime confirmed this news during a press conference at the Blizzard World Championships held in Shanghai, China.

Morhaime also said that he wants to see some fixes to the current challenges that face specators and participants of e-sports.

The two-day conference, The Law of Digital Games kicks off today at the Seaport Boston Hotel in Boston, MA. The event explores the intersection of video gaming and the law and how each can have an impact on the other in both positive and negative ways. Topics include everything from free-to-play games and hiring and agent to user privacy and protections.

The Australian government this morning officially announced what we already knew - that the Penny Arcade Expo would be taking place in Melbourne, Australia from July 19-21 at the Melbourne Showgrounds. The announcement was made by Victorian Minister for Innovation, Services and Small Business Louise Asher and Penny Arcade president Robert Khoo.

Riot Games announced that it has rescheduled the remainder of the Season 2 League of Legends World Playoff matches for October 10 starting at 5:00 PM Pacific Time (that's 8:00 PM Eastern). The matches will be streamed live and free in high definition on Twitch and Own3D, and will feature player cams, replays, interviews with players and more.

The matches will be played in the following order, starting at 5:00 PM Pacific Time:

Match 1 - Team WE vs. Counter Logic Gaming EU quarterfinal match

Match 2 - M5.BenQ vs. Taipei Assassins semifinal match

While we already know that a Penny Arcade Expo event is planned for Australia (July 19 - 21, 2013) in Melbourne, Australia, at Showgrounds, new documents from the organizers of the event offer even more details on what activities will be available to attendees.

Mark Methenitis, proprietor of the wonderful Law of the Game blog, will be crossing the pond to attend the International Bar Association Annual Conference in Dublin, Ireland (Sept. 30 - Oct. 5).

GaymerCon, the gaming and tech convention focusing on LGBTQ culture (set to take place early next year in San Francisco), announced that the convention has gained the support of Electronic Arts. EA is the first game publisher to announce participation in the event.

"EA believes that to be truly innovative, you must be inclusive. We are proud to be a part of this event," said Ginger Maseda, Global Diversity and Inclusion for EA.

Engage Digital announced that three different divisions of The Walt Disney Company will take part in The App Conference by providing a "unique and powerful keynote" at the event. The App Conference takes place October 18-19, 2012 in Santa Clara, California.

In its second year, the App Conference focuses on application development, marketing and revenue generation on mobile and tablet devices. The conference program features two tracks covering the important elements of product and business strategies in the mobile space.

Games Industry International announced today that it has acquired the GameHorizon Conference and business network, with plans for the launch of a new event in December of 2013. GameHorizon is a leading business network for UK-based games companies including developers, publishers, and middleware makers. GameHorizon is in its fifth year.

Episode 18 of the Super Podcast Action Committee sees host Andrew Eisen team up with GP Managing Editor James Fudge, who sat in for E.

The Kickstarter for GaymerCon closed, raising $91,389 from 1,531 backers. When organizers launched the crowd funding appeal they were looking to raise right around $25,000. Thanks to the generous support of the gaming community, North America will see its first GLBT gaming event ever August 3 - 4, 2013 in San Francisco. Details on the venue will be revealed at a later date.

A new video from members of Microsoft's Xbox Live team throws its support behind GaymerCon, the first GLBT friendly gaming event to take place in early 2013 in San Francisco, California. Obviously organizers of the event are glad to have the support of Xbox Live.

You can watch the video to your left. At the time of this writing the GaymerCon Kickstarter has managed to raise $75,000. The Kickstarter campaign ends Friday, August 31 at 11:43 pm EDT.

The organizers of GaymerCom passed along an update to let us know that the Kickstarter campaign for the first-ever GLBT gaming event (to take place in early 2013 in San Francisco) has managed to raise nearly $70,000 from 1,209 backers with just three more days to go.

Last week the 2012 Game Developers Conference Europe had a final attendee count of 2,100 industry professionals, up from last year's event. The event also hosted more than 100 speakers, over 65 exhibitors and saw more than 290 media representatives attend.

More than 275,000 people attended this year's Gamescom in Cologne, Germany according to the event's organizer. Those numbers are in line with last year's attendance of the European gaming expo open to the public and press. Last year's attendance was "about 275,000," according to show officials. Organizers say that next year's show will take place August 21 - 25 in Cologne, Germany.

Update: We asked GaymerCon co-founder Benjamin Williams what the next stretch goal would be for the event and what organizers planned to do with the money if they manage to raise it before the deadline:

CD Projekt RED's DRM-free role-playing game The Witcher 2 has swept the European Games Awards. The game won awards for Best European Art Direction, Best European Character Design, Best European Gameworld, Best European Game Design, Best European Game, and Best European Special Edition.

Battlefield 3 did pretty well too, scoring awards for Best European Action Game, Best European Multiplayer Game, Best European Console Game, and Best European Sound.

When we last checked in, the GaymerCon Kickstarter had managed to raise $28,471. Nine days later the crowd funding drive has managed to raise $48,102 from 921 backers with just 16 more days to go. GaymerCon promises to be the first "all-inclusive" fan-focused gaming event to provide a friendly, fun, and safe atmosphere for gamers and geeks to get together for two days in San Francisco (August of 2013).

The Gaming Alliance Middle East (which is made up of Microsoft Xbox Gulf, Sony Gulf - PlayStation Division, Pluto Games and Red Entertainment Distribution, among others) announced this week that its fifth annual GAMES event will take place in Dubai on September 20 at the Dubai Festival City. Admission for the event is free.

League of Legends maker Riot Games announced that, beginning in early 2013, it will kick off the League of Legends Championship Series. The new professional gaming league will feature teams from North America, Europe and Asia, taking part in multiple regular season matches each week, all streamed in HD broadcasts available globally for free.

More importantly, players will actually be paid like the professional gamers that many of them are.