Technology: Video Games

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - French videogame powerhouse Ubisoft will have a virtual fitness coach whipping Wii users into shape starting Tuesday.

Microsoft wants you on Xbox LIVE for the weekend with, of course, a view toward forever, and it's prepared to temporarily waive the cover fee to grab your attention.

San Francisco - Vapor was in the air this week as rumors swirled around two products that exist only as pixels, not molecules: the Google Phone and the Apple Tablet. In its war over 3G ads, AT&T fired back at Verizon (and missed); Twitter got dissed; and Activision dodged a Kalashnikov bullet with its wildly popular Modern Warfare 2. Can you hit the bull's-eye with this week's quiz? Give yourself 10 points for each correct answer. Now: ready, aim ... fire!

BEIJING (AFP) - China has vowed to tighten supervision of its fast-growing online games market, saying some games contained content that was "harmful" to players.

GRAPEVINE, Texas - GameStop Corp., the world's largest video game retailer, said Thursday that sales of new hot-selling games helped boost its third-quarter profit nearly 12 percent and offset a sales decline for video game hardware.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp (6758.T) pushed back an elusive profit margin target to March 2013, after narrowly failing to meet the goal last year, but it aims to make its video game and TV operations profitable next year.

Italian crime families have become a staple of video games over the last few years, starring in such hits as "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," "The Godfather" and "Mafia." And don't get me started on "Mafia Wars," the browser game that's consuming half of my Facebook friends.

After years of third-stringing it, Sony's beleaguered PS3 may finally be rallying, according to sales data cited on Sony's US PlayStation blog. The company's American division reports year-over-year October hardware sales lifted nearly 70 percent, and says its online PlayStation storefront clinched record revenues, with downloads up 60 percent over the same period last year.

Sony is hoping to return its PlayStation business to profitability next year with the help of new hardware devices and expansion of its network-delivered services platform, it said Thursday.

Online games in China should move away from "lowbrow" content such as monster hunting, Chinese regulators said late Wednesday, highlighting the uncertain regulatory conditions faced by game operators in the country.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China said it will tighten regulations in its rapidly growing online games sector, requiring game operators to enhance socialist values in their games and hire specialized staff to monitor content.

The Government of Singapore Investment Corp. (GIC), a sovereign wealth fund, has taken a sizable stake in Shanda Games, an online gaming spin-off of China's Shanda Interactive Entertainment.

SAN FRANCISCO - Chinese online gaming company NetEase.com Inc. said Wednesday that its third-quarter profit rose on higher revenue from online games.

NEW YORK - You might call him the Mickey Mouse of video games. He's reminiscent of a doughnut, round and sweet and comforting. He's also a vessel, devoid of a real personality so you can live vicariously through him.

Flying in the face of recessionary cautions about the video-game industry, Activision Blizzard is shattering record after record with its latest release. Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 continues to break box-office and sales records for a five-day worldwide sell-through.

NEW YORK - The video game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" is blasting its way into entertainment history.

NEW YORK - Users of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles can now brag about their achievements on Facebook as both systems integrate the social network this week.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," the new videogame from Activision Blizzard, keeps blowing away sales records.

NEW YORK - "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves" has seized a leading eight nominations for this year's Video Game Awards, Spike TV announced Wednesday.

It's entirely possible, and reasonable, that the controllerless Project Natal technology Microsoft is developing will replace a remote control on Xbox 360-powered TVs, Marc Whitten, the general manager responsible for Microsoft's Xbox Live service, told attendees at the Streaming Media West show.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Activision Blizzard Inc said its video game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" scored record sales of $550 million in its first five days, but the company is still concerned about weak consumer spending.

Before you ask, no, the PS3 isn't getting an Xbox 360-equivalent Facebook interface in today's version 3.10 Facebook-angled firmware release. That's the bad news. The good news, if you're PS3-do-or-die, is that it actually adds a few bits Microsoft's implementation doesn't support yet.

NEW YORK - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Tuesday unveiled weekly savings starting this Saturday on popular toys and video games that it is pitching as comparable to the sales blitz the day after Thanksgiving.

What kid of the ’80s didn’t see himself as Luke Skywalker, valiantly manuevering his X-Wing fighter down the Death Star trench, the fate of the whole galaxy resting upon him and his loyal astromech droid? Seeing as most of those ’80s kids probably have an iPhone now, we imagine that THQ Wireless didn’t even consider the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field when producing the $5 Star Wars: Trench Run (iTunes link).

Fire up your Xbox 360 later today and you'll discover your social network just broadened by a factor of two. Microsoft teased Xbox 360 Facebook and Twitter integration at E3 this summer and rolled it out to beta testers several weeks ago, and it's finally available to everyone starting today.

Nintendo says a high-definition upgrade for the Wii remains a distant future endeavor, dismissing criticism that the system needs a visual boost to be creatively competitive.

What mythical product will simultaneously kill off the Kindle, iPod, Zune, iPod, Nintendo DS, and a whole slew of cheap netbooks? Oh, and during recharges, it'll save newspapers and magazines, reinvent TV viewing (and maybe deep-six the cable guys), and make mobile Web browsing a lot more enjoyable with a lot less finger dragging and pinching.

BEIJING - Online games maker Perfect World Co. said Monday its profit rose 45 percent in the third quarter on higher sales of expansion packs for existing games.

Even before it refined family fun with the Wii, Nintendo was dedicated to creating satisfying multiplayer experiences. Games like "Mario Kart," "Super Smash Bros." and "GoldenEye 007" encouraged everyone to join in, and you missed the real action if you played them alone.