Technology: Video Games

Now that "Spore" has been released with digital-rights-management attached, how does Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello feel about the uproar? Ambivalent, evidently.

Sick of the advertisements for the presidential election? Thought unplugging your phone, ignoring television programs, and avoiding the newspaper would protect you from advertisements featuring Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain? Think again.

As part of its plan to improve the efficiency of all of our gadgets, the Environmental Protection Agency aims to expand its Energy Star program to include gaming consoles.

We've been able to see trailers, interviews and special features on the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 for a while now. Now Sony wants to take the idea a little further, and they're enlisting YouTube to help.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has opened up a new front in his battle with Republican John McCain for the White House: videogames.

NEW YORK--This may be the last year that video game giant Electronic Arts releases a title that doesn't log on to the Internet, CEO John Riccitiello said in a keynote address at the Media & Money Conference here Tuesday.

HONG KONG - Electronic Arts Inc. is turning to online games to boost its limited presence in Asia, the regional president of the U.S. video game maker said Tuesday.

While other categories struggle in the slow economy, video game sales have been getting high scores.

You'd think the man who laid the groundwork for Nintendo, who pioneered and changed the video game industry forever, would breeze through his keynote.

The Tokyo Game Show is, to put it mildly, a noisy event as game manufacturers crank up the volume on their latest racing or military combat products. But the loudest sound may have come from Kazuo Hirai, president and group chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment, who told the Financial Times that Sony has no plans to cut prices on its gaming consoles for the holiday season.

There's a lot to look forward to in the upcoming New Xbox Experience -- set to launch on November 19 -- but for those who own Xbox 360s without a hard drive or a 256MB memory card, you may have to go through a few headaches before you can download it.

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AFP) - American millionaire video game guru Richard Garriott followed in his astronaut father's footsteps Sunday, blasting off aboard a Russian rocket to become the world's sixth space tourist.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Wannabe rock stars will have a greater choice of instruments and songs to choose from as videogames like "Guitar Hero World Tour" and "Rock Band 2" introduce new features.

Crystal ball-peering transhumanist Ray Kurzweil has recently unveiled the world's first massively multiplayer online forecasting game, Superstruct.

On November 18, Codemasters and Turbine will release Mines of Moria, the first expansion to The Lord of the Rings Online. But only a dedicated fan is going to have time, given that its chief competitor, World of Warcraft, releases its own expansion a few days earlier.

We recently got a chance to grab a controller and play around with the latest in-development version of the Microsoft Xbox Live Experience at a demo here in San Francisco. The highlights? Revamped avatars and a "party system".

Microsoft is raising Xbox 360 forecasts in Japan amid rumors Sony might drop the price of its PlayStation 3 even more. Meanwhile, Microsoft is planning to release an Xbox 360 with a Blu-ray drive, putting it on more equal digital-media footing with its main rival.

TOKYO (AFP) - Sony said Thursday it will launch a beefed-up version of its PlayStation 3 in Japan this month at the same price as the current version but with double the storage capacity.

MAKUHARI, Japan (AFP) - Willpower is set to replace fast fingers in a new video game in which players move characters through a headset that monitors their brain waves.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Wannabe rock stars will have a greater choice of instruments and songs to choose from as videogames like "Guitar Hero World Tour" and "Rock Band 2" introduce new features.

CHIBA, Japan - Video game rivals Sony and Microsoft are going head-to-head in virtual worlds for their home consoles later this year.

(Reuters) - Google Inc on Wednesday launched technology to insert advertisements into online video games and boost revenue from the booming gaming sector.

CHIBA, Japan - Microsoft Corp. will be releasing games developed by top Japanese designers for its Xbox 360 console, a senior executive said Thursday, the latest effort by the U.S. software maker to make inroads in a market where it has long struggled.

CHIBA, Japan (Reuters) - Japan's Sony Corp said on Thursday it will launch PlayStation 3 game consoles with an 80 gigabyte hard disk drive, bigger than previous models, in Japan at the end of October for 39,980 yen ($398).

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Microsoft's research arm and a set of US universities are creating a first-of-its-kind institute devoted to using videogames to teach math, science and engineering to school children.

In the world of sports video games, not much can really change year to year. The game at its core is the same, but it's what video-game developers add that makes it worth spending the cash.

NEW YORK - On a recent evening, the backstage of a rehearsal for the new Broadway musical "Billy Elliot" looked like summer camp. The show features 21 child actors and dancers, some of whom were sprawled out with handheld video games as a gaggle of tween girls in dance clothes trooped past.

Google is adding click-to-buy links to its YouTube video-sharing site. The new feature will let customers purchase songs and video games they like while watching videos on the site.

For a self-effacing, portly little plumber, Mario may be the most ambitious guy in video games. It's not enough that he has the most recognizable face in the industry; his parents at Nintendo have promoted him everywhere, from T-shirts and lunchboxes to cartoons and cell-phone ringtones. He's probably more familiar to kids of a certain generation than Mickey Mouse.