Even if you ignore the fact that two new consoles were announced and released, 2013 was a big year for the gaming industry. Gas Powered Games boss Chris Taylor bet the company on a Kickstarter project and lost, LucasArts was reduced to bones, and EA CEO John Riccitello, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada, Microsoft president Don Mattrick, and grumpy designer Warren Spector all lost their jobs.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced his retirement, id Software co-founder John Carmack jumped ship to Oculus VR, it was discovered that Infinity Ward and Respawn founder Jason West had quit the latter some time ago, and Fez creator Phil Fish rage quit the entire industry. In grimmer news, long-time Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, game-friendly author Tom Clancy, and Oculus Rift co-founder Andrew Scott Reisse all passed away.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though: a Danish news show thought a screenshot from Assassin’s Creed was present day Syria, Microsoft reluctantly purchased Xbone domains, people called phone numbers in The Last of Us only to find they were sex hotlines, a “disabled” gamer accidentally walked while on camera, and a man mistakenly paid almost NZ$900 for a photo of an Xbox One.

Microsoft Points were retired at last, Ubisoft and EA finally dropped their Online Pass schemes, and the latter won the worst company in America award for the second consecutive year (even though EA is apparently a great place to work).

It was also a year of pointless Android devices. Kickstarter darling the Ouya showed up in a parking lot at E3 but had a generally bad time elsewhere, and the Gamestick, Wikipad, and Nvidia Shield looked to cash in. Speaking of hardware, Sony ceased production on the beloved PlayStation 2 and decided that what the Vita is missing is a TV requirement, Nintendo released a version of the 2DS for those who cannot be trusted with hinged objects or three dimensions in general, Nvidia's G-Sync tech blew hats off, and some company called Valve entered the hardware market.

Locally, PAX came to Australia, and Auckland folk got to watch Kim Dotcom annihilate 99 per cent of his Modern Warfare 3 opponents at Digital Nationz. Grinding Gear Games released Path of Exile to much acclaim, PikPok's Turbo Racing League was runner-up for Apple’s Game of the Year, and Majic Jungle's The Blockheads and NinjaKiwi's Bloons Tower Defence 5 both tore up the charts. DayZ creator Dean Hall casually climbed Everest, and indie developer Michael Brough was named as one Gamasutra's Top 10 Game Developers of 2013.

However, amongst all the clatter, a few stories stood out as particularly significant or noteworthy. We pared those down to just nine, and will present them to you over the next two days as The Nine Biggest News Stories of 2013. And so, without further ado...

9) Australia treats adults like children, US adults act like 'em

In February, Queensland became the final Australian territory to approve an R18+ rating for video games, but the country’s censors remained stuck in their old ways. In June, Saints Row IV was refused classification due to the appearance of an anal probe weapon and “alien narcotics”, while State of Decay was turned away due to the boost the player character received from stimulants.

Both were later classified after edits were made, but then South Australian Attorney-General John Rau called for the Classification Board to review the MA15+ ratings awarded to a dozen other titles. Interactive Games and Entertainment Association CEO Ron Curry called the review “unwarranted and costly”, and all prior classifications were upheld anyway, at a cost of an estimated AU$336,000 to the taxpayer.

Over in the US, the perpetual debate regarding video game violence raged on, fuelled by last December’s Sandy Hook shootings. Representatives from the video game industry met with US Vice President Joe Biden, and US President Barack Obama funded research that will look into the effects of violent video games on children, but several US Senators discarded rational thinking and instead attempted to derail the whole conversation.

Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander’s comment that video games were more of a problem than guns indicated the level of discourse in the White House, but sadly, a poll showed that nearly three-fifths of adult Americans believed that video games contributed to violent behaviour in teenagers.

Several news stories tying the actions of children to video games certainly didn’t help. Exposure to Gears of War 3 was cited by police as a factor in a 13-year-old boy’s decision to cut his friend’s throat, an Iowa jury heard that a 14-year-old boy killed his mother because she stopped him playing a Call of Duty title, and the fatal shooting of an elderly woman by an eight-year-old in America was blamed on his exposure to Grand Theft Auto IV.

Former Arkane Studios developer Joe Houston called for sanity from both sides, saying “it’s important as gamers not to simply retreat to the easy reaction, that games aren’t a part of the problem”, and Spec Ops: The Line writer Walt Williams said while violent games weren’t bad or wrong, “creatively they're too easy".

However, Warren Spector attacked MachineGames for its Wolfenstein reboot. “Did we need a generically dark, monochromatic, FPS, kill-the-Nazi-giant-robot game?” he asked. “Uh. No. The world did not. I am so tired of stuff like this...” He quickly apologised for singling out that particular team, but stood by his comments.

8) Living rooms get Steamy

This year Valve expanded Steam’s Greenlight service, allowed players to purchase and play in-development titles via Steam Early Access, and launched Steam on Linux, but its biggest news came in the form of an official hardware unveiling.

In September, Valve officially announced Steam Machines, a series of living room PCs optimised for gaming and the living room, which all run on the Linux-based Steam OS. As expected, multiple partners will help bring a variety of Steam Machines to the market during 2014. Valve also unveiled the Steam Controller, a hackable gamepad that features two circular trackpads and a touch screen rather than analogue sticks. According to Valve, it makes genres previously only playable with a keyboard and mouse accessible from the sofa.

The company pledged that it would not develop exclusive titles for SteamOS. “We believe that, in maybe five years from now, folks will find it a quite antiquated notion that you should assume that when you change devices or platforms, that you lose all of your other games and friends,” said Valve designer Greg Coomer. “We’re hoping to unify, to get Steam to be as platform and context agnostic as possible. You shouldn’t have to shed that every generation, or even slightly shed it.”

7) The Internet has a polite discussion

Discussions about diversity and gender representation in video games are hardly anything new, but they were much more widespread than ever in 2013. That was partially due to the fiery debate sparked by the release of Anita Sarkeesian’s first four Tropes vs. Women in Video Games videos and the #1ReasonToBe Twitter campaign, but also thanks to the continued work of others in the industry keen to push things forward.

There was certainly no shortage of heartening stories. A petition managed to get female characters included in Aliens: Colonial Marines, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 featured female golfers for the first time in the franchise’s history, and awesome parent Mike Mika hacked his NES copy of Donkey Kong so his three-year-old daughter could play as Pauline and rescue Mario.

Even the big players got in on things, with Sony Online Entertainment threatening to ban those who harass other players via social media from its games, and Microsoft announcing that Xbox Live’s upcoming Smart Match system will take a player’s reputation into account when populating lobbies.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a shortage of depressing stories either. Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann revealed that female testers had to be specifically requested for The Last of Us, and Dontnod Entertainment said that a number of publishers passed on cyberpunk action-adventure title Remember Me because its protagonist is female.

Apple continued to remove socially-conscious games from its App Store, and the International Game Developers Association lost board members Brenda Romero and Darius Kazemi after the inclusion of what were described as “scantily clad” female dancers at one of its events.

Elsewhere, the representation and treatment of women in games like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Dragon’s Crown drew both praise and criticism, but regardless of one’s opinion on those games, few would argue that more discussion rather than less was a bad thing. Here’s to more in 2014.

6) A hi-def WII CONFUSES the PUBLIC

There are no two ways about it – 2013 was a rough year for the Wii U. It undersold but out-earned the Wii in its first full month on the market, but estimates of its second month’s sales were well below those of most other consoles' worst-ever months. Nintendo president Saturo Iwata cited limited software releases and a marketing failure for the slump, admitting that "it was difficult to instantly understand the appeal of Wii U".

He was right – especially about the games. The Wii U’s outdated specs, tiny install base, and touchscreen GamePad were driving developers away in droves. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 and Crysis 3 both skipped the console, and were quickly joined by Tomb Raider, Dead Island: Riptide, Need for Speed: Rivals, and all of Bethesda’s upcoming games.

Nintendo was forced to revise its sales targets for the device, and things only got worse from there. In March – four months after launch – the Wii U was outsold in Japan by Sony's ailing PlayStation Vita handheld. From May to July, it shifted a miniscule 160,000 units worldwide.

In May, EA confirmed that it was not making any more games for the device until it sold more units.

Ubisoft quickly followed suit, noting that ZombiU was the platform’s best-selling third-party game but that it “wasn’t even close to profitable”. That same publisher then drew the ire of Wii U fans and its own developers by delaying the release of Rayman Legends for seven months so it could see a simultaneous release on other consoles.

In August, mere months after insisting a price drop was not coming, Nintendo knocked fifty bucks of the console’s US retail price. Astoundingly, the Wii U would later go on sale in New Zealand at just over a third of its original price.

“I don’t know why Iwata is still employed,” said outspoken games industry analyst Michael Pachter earlier this month.

Throughout the turmoil Nintendo remained stoic, even as it contradicted itself. Iwata asserted that the usual Nintendo first-party titles were the way forward and that his company “just don't care too much about what other companies are doing or are trying to do", while Nintendo of America executive Scott Moffitt remained confident that a strong third-party line-up would materialise before Christmas.

The Wii U did close out 2013 with some quality exclusive titles under its wing – notably Super Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3, The Wonderful 101, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD. However, Nintendo will need to reach deeper and more frequently into its vast bag of IP if it is to have any hope of turning the Wii U’s fortunes around.

Coming tomorrow: the five biggest news stories of the year.