Video-Game News For Families On 25th April

The big news this week is that Activision and Disney have both broken their silence. In two events they reveal the next step for their franchises. Well worth paying attention to for parents keen to get the best value from these games.

Update: Skylanders Trap Team and Disney Infinity 2.0 confirmed.

Fansite SimsVIP has spotted that the June issue of The Sims Official Magazine in Germany will have a big The Sims 4 cover story. The issue is due out on June 13th, so info should start to appear online soon after the first fans get their hands on it. For now,you can at least see some more The Sims 4 screenshots if you check out the slides for another talk from this year's Game Developers Conference.

On a Reddit thread to accompany a live-streamed panel from the Minecraft: Pocket Edition team (to celebrate selling more than 20 million copies of the game),one of the developers has said that they hope the big 0.9.0 update will be out in May but that it may not be ready until June.

Amazon has announced a set-top box called the Amazon Fire TV,described as a "Streaming 1080p media player with voice search,Netflix,Amazon Prime Instant video,games,and more". Among the games already announced are The Walking Dead,Monsters University,and Minecraft: Pocket Edition. The Fire TV is not out yet in the UK but is available in the US for $99.

Last year, Sony announced its own alternative to the popular Nintendogs games called PlayStation Pets, from the development team behind EyePet. It has pet sim features but also an adventure, and the dogs talk. A recent blog post on the PlayStation website expands on the more game-like aspects like using your dog to find buried treasure and gives a release date: 4th June.

Those who can't wait might be interested in the PlayStation Vita Pets: Puppy Parlour app,which is available now for Android and will be on iOS soon,and allows you to unlock costumes for the main game.

World of Warcraft creator Blizzard Entertainment has just released a mobile version of its collectable card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. If you already have the PC version,your cards and progress are linked to your account and so shared across versions