Gaming

Article updated 2/29/08 to correct headquarters location.

We were stoked when Hands-On Mobile, a San Francisco mobile games company, announced Guitar Hero III Mobile for Verizon. On Friday, AT&T brings the portable version of the wildly popular console game to J2ME phones.

The game is expected to launch on 30 handsets today, including Motorola V3 RAZR and Sony Ericcson 810, with more handsets joining the fray. The staggered launch means there's no guaranteeing that your handset will be supported when the game goes live today, but Hands-On Mobile suggests that eager phone gamers check back … Read more

Over the past decade, video game popularity has grown at an exponential rate. Instead of being the niche market that only a select few cared about, the industry is now worth billions of dollars and has become mainstream.

But as that has happened, video game developers like EA and Take-Two Interactive have become far more business-savvy and done their part in ensuring that they can maximize shareholder value and create an environment where video games are an extremely profitable product.

In the process, the video game industry has been damaged by a slew of mergers and acquisitions and in the process, some of the most profitable genres (first-person shooters and sports games, for example) have been copied and refreshed so many times over that gaming has quickly become derivative and bereft of innovation.

And although the main culprit for the lack of innovation is obviously the Almighty Dollar, another culprit is lurking in the shadows and quietly damaging the foundation of gaming as we know it--acquisitions.… Read more

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the board of directors for video game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software, facing a buyout offer from Electronic Arts, approved new compensation packages for its management firm that would take effect with a merger or acquisition.

The new measures, approved within days of EA's initial offer, concern Take-Two's agreement with management firm ZelnickMedia. Under the revised terms, in the event of a takeover, ZelnickMedia would be awarded two restricted stock grants of 780,000 shares.

At EA's $26-per-share offer, that would be worth $20 million. Additionally, Take-Two's monthly management … Read more

If you're waiting for Sony to finally release its new rumbling DualShock 3 wireless controller here in North America, you won't have much longer to go. Today, Sony announced that the wireless DualShock 3 will be available sometime in April with a somewhat hefty $54.99 price tag (the current nonrumble wireless controller has a list price of $5 less).

Sony also had a few other PlayStation-related announcements. To coincide with the much-anticipated North American launch of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots in late Q2 2008, Sony said it will introduce a PS3 bundle that … Read more

Morgan Stanley is the banker representing Electronic Arts in its unsolicited buyout bid for rival game publisher Take-Two, the investment bank confirmed Monday.

While that news alone is no big deal, consider this: Morgan Stanley is also representing Microsoft in its unsolicited buyout offer for Yahoo, which was announced a mere 25 days ago.

That's two megabillion-dollar buyout bids the premier investment banking firm has agreed to handle in the past month. And both have the potential to get mean and nasty, should the target companies kick and scream all the way to the altar.

So, this raises the … Read more

Nvidia launched its new GeForce 9600 GT 3D graphics chip this morning, aimed at mainstream PC gamers. For $175, the idea is that it will let you play any PC game on the market with reasonable image quality settings without requiring you to pay as much as you would for a standalone game console.

According to our review of the Asus EN9600 GT, which uses the chip, Nvidia has achieved its goal. The only game that gave it some trouble was Crysis, perhaps no surprise. What is surprising is that Nvidia's new chip beats ATI's next two closest … Read more

Gamespot reported from the 2008 Game Developer's Conference that Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, and a collection of other PC hardware and software vendors have joined forces in a newly formed nonprofit organization dubbed the PC Gaming Alliance. Its goal, according to the press release, is "advancing the PC as a worldwide gaming platform." If this sounds familiar, Microsoft used similar language in its Games for Windows marketing campaign that saw a major relaunch last year. Let's hope the PCGA takes its mission more seriously.

If you're wondering why there's so much emphasis on promoting … Read more

Adobe next month will release Director 11, an update to its graphics assembly, that it hopes will lure game developers with its better 3D imaging.

Adobe is expected to detail the latest features of Director at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Director 11 is used to build games, as well as graphics-rich presentations, and learning applications. It uses the Shockwave plug-in to render 3D graphics.

The latest version includes physics, or movement between images, using the Ageia PhysX engine and support for DirectX 9, which can take advantage of recent graphics cards.

It will make it … Read more

Those of you hunting for the latest technology in Dell's 17-inch gaming laptop will be pleased to learn the M1730 has received its Penryn update. Since Intel announced its new 45-nanometer chips last month at CES, they've been ever so slowly making their way into systems. Dell is replacing the T7700 and the T7800 Merom CPUs with the T9300 and the T9500 Penryn chips, respectively. There will be no price differential between the older Merom chips and their Penryn replacements.

Dell's XPS M1730 laptop now lists two Penryn CPU options, the 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo T9300 … Read more