Like a well-placed power-up, the right gift can light up the eyes of that video gamer in your life.
For video gamers, the fall season is both a blessing and a curse. While many high-quality titles debut around this time each year, there are only so many dollars to go around.
It's oh-so enticing: you find a copy of a brand new game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on a pirate site and the temptation to download it is too strong.
The early hours of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" take gamers around the world and back again, but the new game's story hits close to home.
Given the extraordinary anticipation swirling around "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," the follow-up to the 13 million-unit-selling military shooter game from 2007, living up to the hype might seem like an impossible mission.
He may not be a household name, but to poker followers, Phil Ivey is a god. The 33-year-old pro player is widely considered the best in the world, a rare consensus for the sport.
"Hotel Rwanda" star Don Cheadle got a first-hand view of horror when he traveled to the devastated Darfur region of Sudan in 2005.
Those on the fence about which video game console to buy might be tempted by Sony's recent introduction of the higher-capacity and slimmer new PlayStation 3, with a $100 price cut to $299.
Two new sci-fi video games cast you in the futuristic role of a space marine who must face off against deadly creatures.
It's been a busy few years for Dan Rosensweig. As president and CEO of the Guitar Hero division of game publisher Activision Blizzard, he's watched the music-genre video game industry explode.
Like a well-placed power-up, the right gift can light up the eyes of that video gamer in your life.
For video gamers, the fall season is both a blessing and a curse. While many high-quality titles debut around this time each year, there are only so many dollars to go around.
It's oh-so enticing: you find a copy of a brand new game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on a pirate site and the temptation to download it is too strong.
The early hours of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" take gamers around the world and back again, but the new game's story hits close to home.
Given the extraordinary anticipation swirling around "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," the follow-up to the 13 million-unit-selling military shooter game from 2007, living up to the hype might seem like an impossible mission.
He may not be a household name, but to poker followers, Phil Ivey is a god. The 33-year-old pro player is widely considered the best in the world, a rare consensus for the sport.
"Hotel Rwanda" star Don Cheadle got a first-hand view of horror when he traveled to the devastated Darfur region of Sudan in 2005.
Those on the fence about which video game console to buy might be tempted by Sony's recent introduction of the higher-capacity and slimmer new PlayStation 3, with a $100 price cut to $299.
Two new sci-fi video games cast you in the futuristic role of a space marine who must face off against deadly creatures.
It's been a busy few years for Dan Rosensweig. As president and CEO of the Guitar Hero division of game publisher Activision Blizzard, he's watched the music-genre video game industry explode.
Nintendo said it is cutting the price of its popular Wii video-game console by $50 to $199.99.
Nintendo on Thursday announced the first price cut for its Wii games console following declining sales and price competition from Microsoft and Sony.
To thank him for letting them spend the last two hours of their workweek playing video games on the company dime, Kevin Grinnell's employees often single him out and shoot him in the head.
Imagine taking the best characters and elements of your favorite fictional universe and weaving them into a new story that captures the imagination of fans.
LAS VEGAS -- By day, I talk poker; by night, I play poker. This came as quite a surprise to Toni -- a.k.a. She Is The One (And Then Some) -- who assumed I just impersonated a poker player on TV to allow us to eat at Outback Steakhouse once a month.
With the big three gaming-system makers all previewing new or upgraded motion-sensing controllers this week, a new arms race is under way in the video game industry.
They've revolutionized music for nearly five decades. Now, some of the Beatles songs are about to hit video-game consoles.
Millions of people download 99-cent games for their iPhones. An increasing number of Web sites offer free online games. And consumer spending is down amid a global recession.
Microsoft Corp. on Monday unveiled its answer to the Nintendo Wii.
Millions of people download 99-cent games for their iPhones. An increasing number of Web sites offer free online games. And consumer spending is down amid a global recession.
When Navy snipers rescued an American cargo-ship captain last month from Somali pirates, it sounded like something from a movie.
It took a while but video game sales might finally be feeling the effects of the slow economy. The industry that's often been hailed as recession-proof has posted some dismal sales numbers recently.
Even when consumers curb their spending, they have a hard time letting go of their favorite vices. Sales of guilty pleasures such as chocolate, cigarettes, and alcohol usually stay strong during downturns. Now it might be time to add videogames to the recession-proof roster: Last year the industry's overall U.S. sales jumped 19% to $21 billion, according to NPD Group.
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, look out. Your traditional video game console business model may be in danger.
Kellee Santiago wants to tap into the kinder, gentler side of gaming.
Most fans picturing rapper 50 Cent operating a joystick would probably envision the hip-hop star blasting away opponents in his latest video game release, "Blood on the Sand."
Be excited, but be scared. A world of mind-blowing possibilities is suddenly being thrust upon the world of video gaming.
When the name of the game is escape, one gamer's boredom is another gamer's boon.
Many Americans are finding ways to trim their holiday budgets this year, but reports are showing that buying video games is one place consumers are not cutting back.
Most adults still think you have to go to Target for a deck of trading cards if you want to play a hit game like "Magic: The Gathering." Their kids know better.
There's general agreement that Sony stumbled out of the gate with the PlayStation 3.
Google Inc., the leader in online search and advertising, is muscling in on video game territory -- though it won't exactly be in the form of a shoot 'em up game
Katherine Graden doesn't really like shoot-'em-up video games. She prefers games on her Wii system that test her fitness and agility --the ones her guy friends tease are her "sissy games."
In the early morning hours last Sept. 11, a black Town Car pulled up to the entrance of New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Inside the sedan Jimmy Cayne, the CEO of Bear Stearns, was close to death. At dawn Cayne's wife had placed an emergency call to his physician, Dr. Jay Meltzer, and when Meltzer arrived at the couple's Park Avenue apartment, Cayne, then 73, was drowsy and desperately weak and had no appetite. His blood pressure was dangerously low. He was breathing very rapidly and deeply. Meltzer suspected sepsis. Rather than call an ambulance, Cayne asked for a car, in part because he feared that a public disclosure about his health could further damage the firm - a firm whose stock price had already dropped close to 27% (from $143 to $105 a share) since two of its highly leveraged hedge funds had imploded in June.
After making a ton of money in the advertising business, Michael Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni decided six years ago that it was time to goof off. How did these two guys, then in their late 20s, pass the time? They played a lot of "Halo."
While inmates in jails across New York pass the time by playing card games -- poker, gin rummy and solitaire -- they may also be helping crack cold cases.
For over a decade, chess and bridge enthusiasts have lobbied the IOC to allow them to compete in the Games. Will they ever succeed?
After Facebook took down their rogue application, the brothers behind the popular game reveal their next move
The rogue Facebook application has finally met its doom. But the official Hasbro version has Josh Quittner at a loss for words
The maker of the classic word-based board game Scrabble has sued the makers of the wildly popular online knockoff, Scrabulous
"Are you ready?" shouts Josh Ball, manager of GameStop No. 1,782 in Euless, Texas, near Dallas. He's standing before more than 100 fidgety young men and women lined up in the strip-mall parking lot outside his store. They've been here for hours in the warm spring air, waiting for midnight when the latest version of Grand Theft Auto - the ever controversial hoodlums-and-pimps videogame - goes on sale. It's getting close to the appointed hour, and these people can barely contain themselves.
Looks like Take Two Interactive Software co-founder Ryan Brant, the video game industry's enfant terrible, is launching his second act. And it sure looks like an interesting one.
The reviews are in for "Iron Man," and they aren't great. One critic calls it "unmoving." Another says it's "crappy." Then there is the one who argues that the superhero saga offers only "aneurysm-inducing frustration."
It's official. Grand Theft Auto IV is a video game blockbuster, with gamers around the world buying up more than 6 million copies of the gritty, urban action title in its first week of sales.
Who would win in a fight: a police-killing, rampage-driven thug or a superhero encased in a technologically superior suit of armor?
Matt Selman grabs an early copy of the new videogame and is enthralled
The fourth installment of the controversial video game "Grand Theft Auto" goes on sale worldwide Tuesday with expectations that it will break sales records.
The fourth installment of the controversial video game "Grand Theft Auto" goes on sale worldwide Tuesday with expectations that it will break sales records.
The biggest story in the videogame business this year has been the way Activision and Electronic Arts, the industry's two dominant powers, are gobbling up smaller competitors that have developed hot-selling games. Activision, publisher of the billion-dollar Guitar Hero series, is seeking approval to join forces with Vivendi Games, maker of the bestselling World of Warcraft. Meanwhile, giant EA, purveyor of Madden NFL and other sports franchises, is making a $2 billion hostile play for Take-Two, which owns Grand Theft Auto.
The uncertainty that confronts consumers and investors in the U.S. is staggering. There's the price of gasoline, which creeps higher almost daily; a housing market that month after month gets gloomier and gloomier; and the conflict in Iraq that has cost the U.S. an estimated $3 trillion.
On a Tuesday night in a San Francisco nightclub, Torrie Dorrell makes a very personal revelation to the gathered crowd: "I'm a full-on gamer, and my husband hates me."
Ted Owen, CEO of Santa Monica-based GGL Global Gaming (GGL), has told Fortune he has signed a deal to make video gaming an official welcome event of this summer's Beijing Olympics. A Chinese official confirms it.
A gray-and-red-spotted lizardlike creature with two heads peers at me from the computer screen through eyes located, Cyclops-style, in the center of each forehead. It lets out a howl and bounds off its marbleized perch into a prehistoric forest. That was probably a howl of embarrassment. This poor creature has arms stuck around its ears, raised up and flapping comically in the wind, like a Hell's Angel riding a chopper with impossibly high handlebars. So much for intelligent design.
Three critically acclaimed first-person shooters won top honors at the video game industry's most prestigious awards show
Chess master Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest chess players in history, has died, a spokesman for the World Chess Federation confirmed to CNN Friday. He was 64.
On Friday, January 18, 2008, chess master Bobby Fischer died at age 64, the same number, CNN.com reader Susan Polgar points out, as the number of squares on a chessboard.
About six years ago, sportscaster Dick Schaap was visiting Wilt Chamberlain in Wilt's celebrated California mansion when Schaap got the idea of trying to get in touch with his old friend Bobby Fischer. Schaap had known him since the 1950s, when Fischer was a rising chess star in New York and Schaap was a young magazine reporter assigned to cover him.
Chess champion Bobby Fischer has died in Iceland, the BBC is reporting. According to his rep, Gardar Sverrisson, Chicago-born Fischer, 64, died on Jan. 16 from an undisclosed cause.
Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. He was 64
The $19 billion merger announced Sunday of Activision with the gaming division of French media company Vivendi creates a company that Bobby Kotick, soon to be its CEO, says is unlike any that came before.
Garry Kasparov has defeated the world's greatest chess players and battled a supercomputer for supremacy. Now, he's facing his toughest opponent, but trying to check the power of Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn't been easy.
Sick of children's games? If you're looking for something that's not on your kids' list, these are some of our favorite games that have come out this fall.
A Russian judge sentenced opposition leader Garry Kasparov to five days in jail Sunday, a day after the chess champion-turned-politician and other protesters were arrested at a pro-democracy demonstration in Moscow.
The Russian presidential election will take place on March 2, the upper chamber of Russia's parliament, the Federation Council, announced Monday, as opposition leader Garry Kasparov continued his five-day jail term.
(The Bag is back for its second decade -- god, we're feeling old -- and you know what to do. Send in your probing questions, quirky comments and any other subversive suggestions, crackpot theories or parlor games dealing with the world of college basketball. For the love of Alan Ogg and Aminu Timberlake, we're even back to taking Where Are They Now nominations. So get to it!)
LAS VEGAS -- Traveling with Jamie Gold has its perks. A flight to Las Vegas, for example, isn't simply a one-hour trip from San Francisco to Sin City; it's a theatrical production worthy of a casino showroom.
Nintendo, thanks to the Wii, its groundbreaking game system, is not just the toast of the video game industry. It has also been a hot stock on Wall Street.
Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne fired back Thursday at criticism of his leadership and allegations of inappropriate behavior published in the Wall Street Journal.
"The Simpsons Game's" most notable trait is that it's funny, so funny that I can't believe how often I actually laughed out loud at the wonderfully produced cutscenes that have been made for the game, despite how weird it is seeing Simpsons animation in HD.
When Bobby Kotick took over Activision in 1991, the once-thriving videogame company was nearly bankrupt. Kotick, a college dropout and serial entrepreneur, threw himself into resuscitating the business. He shored up the company's balance sheet, selling furniture to pay down debt.
The country has long lagged behind in Olympic sports. And that's why grandmaster Viswanathan Anand is a national hero
For all the hype about Microsoft's Halo 3 video game, 10 times as many people have played the hit online game Diner Dash.
Not only is Microsoft Game Studios' "Halo 3" the most eagerly anticipated video game of the year -- it achieved a milestone of a million preorders two months ago -- but this action sci-fi series has become a cultural phenomenon, spawning novels, comics, action figures and a top-secret project with Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson ("The Lord of the Rings. The Return of the King").
Some people might call 17-year-old Joshua Hanson one the luckiest people on the planet. Others might call him crazy.
In yet another embarrassing delay for Sony, the company is delaying the launch of its "Home" virtual world for the PlayStation 3, initially planned for later this year, until next spring.
As Alexander Pichuzkin goes on trial, observers are waiting to find out if the self-confessed multiple killer achieved his goal: becoming the grandmaster of murder
Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday it will pipe advertisements into a slate of popular sports video games from Electronic Arts Inc., including its best-selling "Madden" football franchise.
Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday the head of its gaming business, Peter Moore, would leave the company to join Electronic Arts Inc., the world's biggest video game publisher.
Remember the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- that action-packed madhouse of a video game conference that was once the industry's biggest event of the year? It took place again this week, only this time it was much smaller, tamer and, overall, a big snooze-fest.
Sony Corp.'s $100 price cut for the PlayStation 3 is not enough to turn the fortunes of the game console, which has suffered a slow start, an executive of game software maker Konami Corp. said.
Cadillac tried a novel approach last year to get young male car buyers excited about its tricked-out V-Series Collection luxury vehicles. Rather than make its pitch through magazines, TV commercials, or online display ads, the automaker took its campaign to the Xbox 360.
Fresh from their Father's Day vacation in Hawaii, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck reunited in Las Vegas for some grownups-only fun - for a good cause.
Christmas really does come in July for video game geeks. The industry's biggest event of the year, the E3 Media & Business Summit, will take place during July 11 through July 13 in Santa Monica, California.
Just because you're good at something doesn't mean that something isn't really, really random.
The generation that grew up with "Pac-Man" and "Pong" are now having children of their own. And across the nation, fathers and their kids are finding the virtual worlds of video games a popular place to bond
If you listen closely, you might just be able to hear a confused video gamer struggling to find the single-player story mode in "Shadowrun," the latest video game published by Microsoft Game Studios.
With the video game version of "Spider-Man 3" and its theatrical counterpart hitting the United States on Friday, we're not just seeing the continuation of a hugely successful movie franchise.
A year ago it looked like game over for Nintendo's storied console business. The Kyoto-based gamemaker--whose Nintendo Entertainment System ushered in the modern age of videogames--was bleeding mar...
Apple's popular iPod mobile media device, with 100 million units sold since 2001, has evolved from a music machine to a digital photo album, video player and podcast platform.
Take-Two Interactive Software, the troubled maker of the popular Grand Theft Auto series of video games, has said that it might consider a sale.
The Internet has made poker into an international phenomenon played by millions around the world. By the nature of the game, most will be losers, but "Texas hold 'em" and the other variations of poker has a professional face, too, not just that of pasty-faced gamblers staring passively at computer screens.
The boss battle at Take-Two Interactive Software is over - with the leaders brutally squashed, then discarded. It sounds like a storyline straight out of "Grand Theft Auto," but in this case, it was corporate Darwinism at work.
Bracing for a shareholder revolt, the maker of the "Grand Theft Auto" video game said Monday it is considering new corporate strategies, including the sale of the company.
Strange things are afoot in the land of Azeroth. The most powerful humans, orcs, and night elves have grown restless, for many among them have explored all the known kingdoms, from the city of Tyr'...
Poker may not seem as hip as it was just a few years ago. And nobody's feeling that more than shareholders of WPT Enterprises, operator of the World Poker Tour.
Paul Wasicka is sitting in front of a pair of computers in the corner of his quaint hotel room searching for a pen. It wouldn't be so hard to find if he wasn't sharing the room with two of his friends and there weren't suitcases and clothes sprawled everywhere, but he is and it's making it hard to find anything in these cramped quarters.
The hot-button topic of used video game sales is moving toward center stage once again, as Circuit City has begun selling previously-owned titles online and in select stores.
Cingular appears to be grabbing the lion's share of smart phones. In the last few months, the carrier has stocked its lineup with the Nokia E62, the HP iPaq hw6925, and the 3G-enabled Cingular 8525.
Chess is a challenging game at the best of times. But try playing it in Trafalgar Square, with huge pieces carved from ice -- on a relatively balmy British day that threatened to turn pawns to puddles.
In the gaming world, being first to market has its advantages, but it also has some downsides. With its Xbox 360, Microsoft has staked itself a year lead over archrival Sony in the next-gen gaming wars and, just as importantly, the battle for living-room dominance--these powerful minicomputers also do double duty as digital media hubs. In those 12 months, Microsoft has managed to sell several million consoles, work through some hardware glitches, upgrade the system's internal software, and bring out a full selection of accessories as well as a few signature games, including the company's own smash hit, Gears of War. But that year has also given Sony time to polish its more ambitious--and pricier--PlayStation 3.
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