Technology: Video Games

When Sohu.com, a leading Web portal in China, announced plans last year to spin off its fast-growing online games business, investors balked.

What's worse than paying $50 a year more than Games For Windows Live gamers, just to play Xbox 360 games online?

LOS ANGELES - Chima Simone couldn't think of a better place to spend the recession than the "Big Brother" house.

Eidos life president Ian Livingstone has declared it's "all or nothing for new releases in 2009," painting either a blithely Machiavellian or cynically gloomy picture of the video games industry this year, depending on your vantage.

Upcoming real-time strategy Windows game StarCraft II will ship without Local Area Network multiplayer support in an effort to combat piracy, says Blizzard, in an official statement sure to annoy if not outright confound series fans the world round.

When it comes to the PlayStation 3, it's apparently easy to confuse the game blogs. They've picked up on an incidental story by a tech site that communicates in fragments concerning Sony's recent filing to patent emulation of its legacy PS2 Emotion Engine vis-a-vis its "cell" processor. The cell processor, you'll recall, is the cerebral cortex of the PS3's multi-processing brainpan.

Electronic Arts (EA) on Tuesday announced the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a video game based on the upcoming movie. It debuts simultaneously on multiple platforms including the Mac. It costs $30.

SEOUL (AFP) - South Korea's normally publicity-shy intelligence agency is creating a stir among liberal groups with a "spot the spy" flash video game offering a variety of prizes.

In a move to compete with Apple's iPhone and iPod, Sony may develop a hybrid cell phone-video game handheld with the PlayStation Portable device at its core.

The Sony rumor that just won't die has reared its potentially beautiful head again: a PSP phone may be in the works. The latest back room rumblings come courtesy of Japan's Nikkei Business Daily, which says Sony is about to open up a new department that will explore a "cell phone-game gear hybrid," according to Reuters. Sony's secret department could begin work as early as July, and so far the PlayStation maker is declining to comment on the rumors.

When it comes to console price drops, especially when it involves the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, most of the rumors have gotten it wrong, so echoing another one's a bit like strapping yourself to the mast of the Titanic. We know Sony and Microsoft will, but the when's about as accessible as a crystal ball locked in a safe sheathed in cement at the bottom of a well.

LONDON (Reuters) - More than a million French users of Microsoft's Xbox 360 will be able to watch films on demand, premium drama and soccer from Canal Plus on their games console thanks to a deal between Microsoft and the pay-TV group.

TOKYO (AFP) - Sony Corp. remained tight-lipped over reports that it may combine its PlayStation Portable game console with a mobile telephone into a new gadget to challenge rival Apple's iPhone.

FRESNO, Calif. - A former criminal law student has been sentenced to life in a California prison for killing one man and wounding two others in a dispute over a Sony PlayStation console.

An undisclosed source has apparently told VG247 that Sony's PlayStation 3 is in for a radical interface overhaul in an upcoming pre-holiday firmware update. PS3 Firmware 3.0 (v2.8 was just released--see pic above) will be "a completely new system," writes the site, citing its source as calling the update "a huge overhaul," comparable to Microsoft's New Xbox Experience "in some respects."

Just what your brand new iPhone 3GS needs--Cloud Strife's super-deformed spike-do bristling at hundreds of frames per second. PlayStation emulation amped up to supersonic? Oh yes you can, writes Engadget, and with Game Boy Advance stuff too. All you need is a pre-jailbreak hack called psx4iphone, which you can request a copy of here, and one of Apple's newly supercharged iPhone 3GS's (check out our review) and you're in business.

Musicians using GarageBand, Logic and other loop-based apps with a bent towards the fuzzy sound of 8-bit computers and video game consoles have a new tool in their arsenal, thanks to Sony Creative Software: 8-Bit Weapon: A Chiptune Odyssey. The new loop and sample package costs $40.

Yazsoft on Thursday announced the release of Playback 1.0, an “Extreme Media Server” for Mac OS X. It costs $15.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Videogames were once blamed for rising obesity rates but are now being championed by the medical industry and for use by government departments for their health benefits.

WASHINGTON - Rhianna Pratchett has a fantasy writer's genes: Her father is Terry Pratchett, author of the "Discworld" novels. But the daughter has pursued her muse in a different medium, as one of the most respected scriptwriters in video games.

Best Buy has decided to enter the used games market, taking on rival games retailer GameStop in the process.

Don't look now, but consumer electronics giant Best Buy plans to extend its Canada-based used video games pilot program to the U.S. First stop, Dallas and Austin (Texas) where, already this week, you'll be able to tinker with kiosks that scan your preowned games and feed back a voucher that puts dollars on a Best Buy gift card.

The alien invasion has begun, and Washington is its epicenter. One guy, Secret Service agent Michael Ford, is apparently the only earthling who can save the planet. At the behest of a shadowy organization called The Trust, Ford is given this directive: If it moves, shoot it.

A weeks-long World of Warcraft server outage in China has driven masses of players there to the Taiwanese server or to other games while a new operator takes the reins of the Blizzard Entertainment blockbuster in China.

What's slate gray and phosphate green and slow as a stack of plates wrestled through radioactive ooze? If you said the Xbox 360's dashboard, 10 points. 15, if you specifically invoked the word "guide." That's because the dashboard--the space where you kick around the Xbox 360's colorfully cool little panels on vertical or horizontal axes--is actually pretty consistently breakneck.

Known for making adrenaline-pumping action games for young men, video game companies now are getting in touch with their feminine side.

Digital distribution may be picking up steam (pun intended) but don't tell GameStop. The video games retail behemoth with over 6,000 stores in some 17 countries worldwide seems determined to play down the relevance of downloadable games at all costs. Citing Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia, IndustryGamers reports that GameStop doesn't expect digital distribution to be a threat to stucco-and-rebar-retail until 2014.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is coming to Sony's PlayStation Portable. Rockstar Games said the Nintendo DS game will be adapted to the PSP platform and be available this fall.

Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Bobby Kotick said in a published report on Friday it may stop making video games for Sony's PlayStation 3, the No. 3 console in the United States, due to high costs and poor sales.