With the Game Developers Conference firmly in the history books for 2011, lets look back at some of the best moments for the gaming industry.

1. Best Tease: Super Mario 3DS

Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President and CEO, walked an attentive audience through a keynote full of interesting tidbits about the quality of mobile games, the company's plans for social gaming, and the upcoming release plans for Nintendo 3DS.

2. Best Party Crasher: iPad 2

Apple revealed an update to iPad. Dubbed the iPad 2, the new tablet boasts a handful of new features: a dual core processor, rear and front-facing cameras, and a body that's 33 percent thinner than the original iPad. While it wasn't a ton of news, the news still dominated the Internet all day.

3. Best GDC Reveal: Infamous 2 user-generated modes

Sony and Sucker Punch Productions threw the gaming press for a loop when they revealed user-generated content at their Infamous 2 event last week. For a franchise that's so heavily focused on gritty combat, explosions, and action, it was a bit of shock to see such an inventive addition to an already expansive game.

4. Best GDC Session: Are Social Games Legit?

Margaret Robertson of Edge Magazine and Zynga's Nabeel Hyatt were among a group of seasoned professionals moderating a panel at GDC that asked a loaded question right in the headline -- "Are Social Games Legitimate?" The panel members reasonably and patiently discussed as difference of opinions on social gaming and its validity in the industry as a real gaming experience. If only all debates in the industry could be so orderly.

5. Best Award Winner: Minecraft, IGF

Minecraft's storybook rise to game fame felt complete with a pair off well-deserved wins at the 13th Annual Independent Games Festival last week. Claiming both the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize and the $2,500 Audience Award, Minecraft was top dog at this year, while other awards also went out to games like BIT.TRIP RUNNER, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and Desktop Dungeons.

6. Best Swag: Google's Motorola Xoom Tablet

Google presented stuff that made everything else look cheap by comparison, including Nexus S smartphones, laptops, and even free Motorola Xoom tablets. Plenty of gaming developers walked away from GDC with one (or all) of these during the show, making the rest of us non-developers incredibly jealous.

7. Best GDC Surprise: Resistance 3's new multi-player

Usually, the goal of first-person shooters is to have bigger multiplayer, but Insomniac Games is apparently going with quality over quantity. As revealed during their GDC demo last week, Resistance 3 is going with a 16-player cap on their multiplayer mode, a total of eight human players taking on eight Chimerans. Along with this updated mode is a handful of new abilities and improvements, including items and weapons customization, as the developers aim to make the online combat more refined than the 60-player mayhem of Resistance 2.

Source from here