gaming

Kitty Kilobyte is off to Europe for her annual vacation abroad. Like many of us, she loves travel but hates flying. When she asked Power Downloader if he had any advice--such as a program that was so boring it would put her to sleep for 10 hours--he came back with an alternative plan.

Instead of boring herself to sleep, Power Downloader suggested Kitty try a brain challenge--an engaging game that would take her mind off the pre-flight horrors of the TSA and the in-flight trauma of getting stuck with the middle seat. Power D's recommendation this week is MahJong Suite 2008. … Read more

If hoards of Batman and Joker fans have their way, one booth may be getting some extra attention at Comic-Con, the annual comic book conference that kicks off in San Diego today.

Following the success of the newest Batman flick and Sony's E3 announcement of a new massively multiplayer online game (MMO), DC Universe Online, DC, Warner Brothers, and Sony Online Entertainment are treating some of their biggest fans to a sneak peek of the virtual world that will be offered on PlayStation 3 or online.

But for those who can't attend the everything-comic conference, DC Universe Online'… Read more

This is the lawsuit we all knew was coming: Hasbro, which sells the Scrabble board game, has sued to shut down the wildly popular knockoff on Facebook called Scrabulous.

Hasbro on Thursday filed a copyright and trademark lawsuit in New York against the creators of the ad-supported Scrabulous application, which boasts an astonishing half-million daily users.

Mark Blecher, general manager for Hasbro Digital Media, said in a telephone interview that his employer's goal is to promote its authentic, legitimate Facebook application. "This is theft of intellectual property," Blecher said of Scrabulous. "It's really no different … Read more

Unless Nintendo complies with a federal judge's order by Thursday, the company will be faced with a ban on several of its controllers, Bloomberg reports.

A judge for the U.S. Court in the Eastern District of Texas failed to overturn a verdict entered against the Japanese video game maker on July 18. The company had been previously ordered to pay $21 million to Anascape, a Texas company that holds a patent on motion-sensitive controllers.

After declining to order a new trial as Nintendo had requested, Judge Ron Clark instead is scheduled to issue a ban on the sale … Read more

Q&A If you missed our earlier post on Microsoft's announcements from the GameFest 2008 conference, here's a brief recap:

We had a chance to talk to Kevin Unangst, Microsoft's Senior Director of Global Gaming, and he provided some more details.

What was the deciding factor that lead Microsoft to drop the … Read more

On Monday, video host Vimeo announced it would no longer allow video game-related content to be uploaded to its site. According to the post on the company blog, this includes "game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs. player battles, raids, fraps, or any other video gaming videos that simply depict individuals playing a video game."

The post goes on to mention that the reason for the new ban is twofold: one, for the sake of the company's servers which have slowed to a crawl having to transcode all of this content, as well as what … Read more

Update:

The release also features the official announcement from Microsoft of DirectX 11. Features include support for GPU computing, and better use of multicore CPUs, among others.

Original post:

We have an interview with Microsoft's Kevin Unangst in a few hours, so … Read more

Microsoft offered up a few more details on Tuesday about its upcoming online video game marketplace for aspiring game developers.

Originally announced in February, Microsoft will allow user-generated games to be sold on its Xbox Live service this fall. On Tuesday, the company said it will let the developers keep up to 70 percent of the revenue generated by their games.

The scenario is similar to Apple's App Store, which sells applications for the iPhone created by developers that pay a fee to put their creations for sale in the online store.

Game developers will have to pay $99 … Read more

Spleak Media Network, the San Francisco-based start-up focused on creating "interactive content communities," announced Tuesday morning that it would be moving into three new content categories: fashion, television, and games.

Spleak's concept is a bit unusual: users read, rate, and create content entirely via instant messaging platforms (AIM, MSN Messenger, and Google Talk), though there's also an opportunity to embed a Spleak widget into your MySpace or Facebook page. The content--in 250 characters or less--comes from readers and from Spleak's official content partners, such as CosmoGirl and Fox Sports. Users can vote each element up … Read more