Big song and dance time! Figuratively, not literally. Kinect Sports picked up an award in the Family category at this year’s BAFTA Video Game ceremony, so we’re very happy with that. We will, however, spare you the highlights of the ‘staff members posing with trophy’ photoshoot.

A lot went on at Rare HQ this month. In addition to our new bling turning up, we had some management news with the appointment of Craig Duncan to Senior Studio Director – and we even finished renovating the reception area with a breezy new athletic theme. This was all well-documented on the website, where we also rounded off our Kinect Sports game guide series while cracking open the windows and letting the suspiciously warm March sun shine in on the rest of our flowering features and updates.

We’d be more than happy to see you amble over to the Rare site for a good mooch around. We’re also keen to hear your likes, dislikes and suggestions when it comes to these monthly mailshots, so give us a shout with any feedback. Now go! It’s springtime! Frolic in the fields!

Multiple nominations for the Viva Piñata series have kept our fingers in the BAFTA pie over the last few years, but it’s been a while since we won. So when Kinect Sports waded into the Family category and took home this year’s trophy, we wept tears of buff, manly validation.

The release of our Kinect Sports Football/Soccer game guide brought the series to completion this month. That means each of the six sports has been covered in both video and text form, with tips, advice and random header quotes all harmoniously packaged up together.

It made sense for us to build on the success of Kinect Sports by revamping the décor at Rare HQ. So we carefully relocated the vintage Rare memorabilia to elsewhere in the building, and this is how our reception area looks now, visualised in high-tech Photosynth form.

You know what they say: crazy sports footage one month, googly-eyed paper animals the next. Popular saying. So for this month’s early access subscriber content, here’s James from the Viva Piñata team with the Top 5 Homemade VP Things. (Password: vivavoom)