The 2010 timeline

1. Jan26
   GamingVerified

   Mass Effect 2 is released

   BioWare's acclaimed space opera opened the year's run of major game releases and went on to win many game-of-the-year awards.

1. Feb4
   GamingSupported

   Robot Unicorn Attack is released

   Adult Swim released the rainbow-trailing Flash runner set to Erasure's Always, which became the browser game of the year.

1. Mar16
   GamingVerified

   God of War III is released

   Sony's PlayStation 3 spectacle sold more than a million copies in its first week.

No events recorded for April in this category.

1. May12
   GamingSupported

   Steam launches on the Mac

   Valve brought its Steam store to Mac OS X, gave away Portal for two weeks to celebrate, and introduced Steam Play so one purchase worked on both platforms.

2. May18
   GamingVerified

   Red Dead Redemption is released

   Rockstar's western became one of the year's most acclaimed games and a frequent game-of-the-year pick.

1. Jun14
   GamingVerified

   E3 2010: Kinect, PlayStation Move and the Nintendo 3DS

   Microsoft named its motion camera Kinect, Sony dated PlayStation Move, and Nintendo revealed the glasses-free 3DS, the show's biggest surprise.

2. Jun30
   GamingSupported

   Minecraft enters Alpha

   Markus Persson's Minecraft moved from Infdev to Alpha, sold from his website for about 10 euros, and began its word-of-mouth climb through forums and YouTube.

1. Jul27
   GamingVerified

   StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is released

   Blizzard's long-awaited sequel sold three million copies in a month and relaunched competitive real-time strategy and esports streaming.

No events recorded for August in this category.

1. Sep14
   GamingVerified

   Halo: Reach earns $200 million on its first day

   Bungie's final Halo game had the biggest entertainment launch of the year until Black Ops two months later.

1. Oct15
   GamingSupported

   Angry Birds arrives free on Android

   Rovio released Angry Birds free with ads on Android; demand crashed the GetJar app store that hosted it, and the game passed 50 million total downloads by December.

1. Nov4
   FeaturedGamingVerified

   Kinect launches in North America

   Microsoft's controller-free camera for the Xbox 360 sold eight million units in 60 days and was hacked into open-source drivers within a week.

2. Nov9
   GamingVerified

   Call of Duty: Black Ops sets a $360 million launch record

   Black Ops sold about 5.6 million copies in the US and UK in 24 hours, the biggest entertainment launch in history at the time.

1. Dec2
   GamingSupported

   Zynga launches CityVille

   CityVille reached 20 million monthly players within two weeks, the fastest-growing Facebook game yet.

2. Dec7
   GamingVerified

   World of Warcraft: Cataclysm sells 3.3 million copies in a day

   Blizzard's third WoW expansion set a PC sales record weeks after the game hit 12 million subscribers.

3. Dec20
   GamingSupported

   Minecraft enters Beta

   Minecraft moved from Alpha to Beta on 20 December after selling hundreds of thousands of copies, with Mojang now a company of several employees.