entertainment

Gaming trails video viewing, music listening on Xbox Live

What keeps Xbox 360 gamers engaged? It's the media more than the hardware, a new report indicates.

According a Los Angeles Times interview with Xbox marketing and strategy chief Yusuf Mehdi, the typical household spends 84 hours each month using Xbox Live to play games and access content. Over half of that time, according to the Times, is spent watching videos and playing music.

"What we're seeing is that people are turning on the Xbox to play games and then keeping it on afterwards to get other types of entertainment," Mehdi told the Times.

Microsoft has … Read more

Angry Birds maker buys game studio

Angry Birds maker Rovio has added another studio to its lineup.

The Finnish company announced today that it's bought Futuremark Games Studio, the gaming unit of benchmarking software developer Futuremark. Creating games for a variety of platforms, Futuremark Games Studio has developed such titles as Unstoppable Gorg, Hungribles, and Shattered Horizon.

"They are an incredibly talented and experienced team, and we are thrilled to have them on board," Mikael Hed, Rovio Entertainment's CEO, said in a statement. "Rovio's success is founded on the excellence of our team, and Futuremark Games Studio is going to … Read more

Rawr! 'Jurassic Park 3D' due next year

As Samuel L. Jackson's "Jurassic Park" character Ray Arnold says, "Hold on to your butts." Universal Pictures has announced that "Jurassic Park 3D" hits theaters on July 19, 2013.

When "Jurassic Park" arrived nearly 20 years ago, it served as one of the definitive visual spectacles of my generation (like "Star Wars" in the '70s).

The movie features many of the necessary ingredients in the ultimate-blockbuster recipe: Spielberg directing, solid acting, great script, and majestic orchestra pieces by John Williams. One could even say the animation and graphics hold ground to this day. … Read more

Diablo III raging May 15

The wait for Diablo III is nearly over. Blizzard Entertainment today attached a May 15 release date to the long-awaited action role-playing game. Gamers can prepurchase the title today on Battle.net.

Beginning on May 15, gamers can purchase Diablo III at brick-and-mortar retailers throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Additionally, players in those regions--as well as in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil--will be able to purchase a digital copy of Diablo III via Battle.net.

Read more "Diablo III raging May 15" at GameSpot.

Sony's Music Unlimited service lands on Vita

Color me unsurprised that Sony's PlayStation Vita just got its own app for the company's cloud-based Music Unlimited subscription service, since a similar offering for the PSP already exists.

Nonetheless, the first version of the app for Vita features excellent aesthetics with the complement of intuitive and thorough controls (see if you agree with me after watching the demo video below). Album art and channel listings clearly pop on the large OLED screen. I found it easy to scroll around, explore music, and save tracks "from the cloud" to a storage card.

Overall, the experience seems very mature for a service often left out of the music service conversation.

Speaking of saving tunes, the Vita Music Unlimited app supports offline playback through playlist/channel caching. Users of the Android version of the music service can now listen to music offline through Music Unlimited as well. … Read more

Meet a retired World of Warcraft server

A game like World of Warcraft requires several thousand servers to operate the hundreds of online realms within its ecosystem. Earlier this year, Blizzard Entertainment auctioned off several of those server blades "used during World of Warcraft's early days."

A Reddit post brought up the subject again recently, and contains a few pictures of a server blade used for the European server Sunstrider from February 27, 2005 to August 24, 2010. There's little doubt that countless gamers spent thousands, if not millions, of hours playing during that time frame. A special clear enclosure reveals the innards of the server, which contains 6 gigabytes of RAM (DDR-400MHz). It did not come with the original hard drives. … Read more

Tablets finding work as electronic babysitters

Looking for a new way to keep your unruly kids occupied? Apple, Samsung, and a bunch of other companies may have just what you need.

Polling a host of families with kids under 12, the people at Nielsen found that tablets are a great way to to keep those kids quiet. A full 55 percent said they serve their children tablets as entertainment while stuck in the car, while 41 percent do the same in restaurants.

So which activities will keep your kids busy so mommy and daddy can get some peace?

Among the parents polled, 73 percent said their … Read more

Insiders skeptical of Sony's 'mistake' on Houston music prices

Sony Music Entertainment says the price hike in the United Kingdom on Whitney Houston albums following the singer's death was a "mistake," but some industry insiders are skeptical.

On Sunday, a day after Houston was found dead in a Beverly Hills hotel, prices for two of her albums: "The Ultimate Collection" and "Greatest Hits" jumped in price in the U.K. iTunes store. In dollars, the prices rose from $7.80 to $12.50.

Right away, Sony and Apple came under fire from consumers who believed one or both of the companies were … Read more

Dispense with the pretense: Google's gunning for Apple

C'mon, Google, admit it: You're getting into hardware, and you're gunning for Apple.

With more signs pointing to a Google entertainment device of some sort somewhere over the horizon, the company's recent FCC filing offers the latest hint of what's become an inescapable conclusion. The document echoes what Google has hinted, announcing in black and white that the company iis developing a prototype "entertainment device" of some sort.

As to the details:

Testing will include functional testing of all subsystems, including WiFi and Bluetooth radio. Users will connect their device to home WiFi … Read more