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.

Well, that temptation may have cost up to 1 million users of Microsoft’s Xbox Live the ability to use that service. According to a report in InformationWeek, Microsoft has banned as many as a million players from Xbox Live for altering their consoles in order to play pirated versions of games.

This week, Activision’s new Call of Duty was released, and InformationWeek speculated that because pirated versions of the game appeared on various sharing sites in advance of the release, the game’s developer may have exhorted Microsoft to enact the bans.

“Xbox 360 consoles are equipped with digital rights management technologies designed to detect pirated software,” InformationWeek wrote, “but some players have successfully ‘modded,’ or modified, their machines to circumvent DRM protections.”

Even if someone has been banned, their Xbox will still play offline games, InformationWeek said. But it’s not at all clear if the bans are permanent or if Microsoft will allow those who have been booted from Xbox Live to return at some point down the line.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But in a statement received by InformationWeek, the company said, “All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live.”

And on the Xbox support page, Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, has addressed some of the circumstances that could lead to a player’s being banned.

“Players who find their Gamertags banned from Xbox Live have wound up in that situation due to violations of the Xbox Live Terms of Use,” Major Nelson wrote. “The Xbox Live team monitors players for not just cheating, but also for things like threats, racism, profanity, and just being an all around poor sport and ruining the game for others.

“When a Gamertag comes up as violating our policies for online behavior, the person who owns that Gamertag is punished by being banned from the service. Keep in mind, this isn’t just a ban on a particular game. This is a ban on the Xbox Live service as a whole, so you won’t be able to go online at all during your ban. Initially, you may be banned for a day, a week, or depending on severity, permanently! Kiss that $50 goodbye.”

Copyright ©1995-2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Facebook Wednesday threw its software developers a bone, releasing a “roadmap” of forthcoming features to help them plan their products. They include new ways for software applications, like games, to messages Facebook users when their friends want to play Scrabble, for instance.

The company also said it will be releasing a new navigation menu to allow users to gain quicker access to hundreds of thousands of applications from the left-hand side of their screens.

At the event at its Palo Alto, Calif. headquarters, the company also snuck in some news of a slightly different flavor. The social networking site said that it plans next year to release a tool that will allow any Web page to show up in Facebook search results.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Ever since Atari paid $21 million for the rights to make a videogame based on “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”–and then gave a programmer just six weeks to make it–there’s been a disconnect between Hollywood and the videogame world.

Sure, Hollywood makes movies out of games, and vice versa. But rarely do the two worlds meet in a collaborative way.

French game publisher Ubisoft–which has worked with John McTiernan on the “Tom Clancy Splinter Cell” games, Peter Jackson on the “King Kong” game and, most recently, James Cameron on the “Avatar” game–is moving to change all that.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Earlier this year, games publisher Midway collapsed, plunging the staff of its Newcastle studio into a desperate struggle to find a buyer. They failed. This is what happened next…

Read the rest of this post on the original site

A new executive team at MySpace is trying to reignite the brand by focusing on areas like music, videos and games as users abandon the social-networking site for cooler destinations.

MySpace, which is holding a conference this week for its global ad-sales staff, needs to lure visitors back and kick-start advertising revenue, ad executives say. Research firm eMarketer estimates U.S. ad spending on the site will be $495 million this year, down 15 percent from $585 million in 2008.

The basic challenge is similar to the one facing big Internet companies, such as Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL and Yahoo (YHOO), that are under pressure to reinvent themselves for fickle audiences.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Video games and learning exercises form the core of a new public school curriculum

Games have long played a role in classrooms, but next month marks the launch of the first U.S. public school curriculum based entirely on game-inspired learning. Select sixth graders can look forward to playing video games such as “Little Big Planet” and “Civilization,” as well as non-digital games ranging from role-playing scenarios to board games and card games.

Read the rest of the post at the original site

Here’s Sony’s Jack Tretton, speaking to Chris Morris at CNBC, on leaks:

People don’t respect confidentiality in this industry. It’s tough enough to keep a secret within your own company, much less when you speak to third parties.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

U.S. sales of video game hardware, software and accessories were down 23 percent in May to $863.3 million, according to market research firm NPD. It was the first month with sales under $1 billion since August 2007.

Hardware sales were hit the worse, down 30 percent. Software sales were off 17 percent, while accessories were down 25 percent. For the year to date, sales overall are down 7 percent, with hardware off 6 percent, software 8 percent and accessories 5 percent.

Among the consoles, the Nintendo Wii sold 289,500 units, down from 340,000 in April and 601,000 in March. That was followed by the Microsoft (MSFT) Xbox 360 at 175,000, flat with April.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Satoru Iwata is not your typical Japanese company president. When he talks about the games his company produces, the 49-year-old Nintendo CEO’s eyes positively twinkle with mischief and excitement.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Apple (AAPL) is about to remove the shackles from developers of applications for the iPhone.

While iPhone users have mostly praised the steady stream of games, guides and other programs released thus far, many developers have been frustrated by their inability to do more, such as allow users to purchase digital content within an application. Until recently, Apple Inc. has been slow to give them the tools or a blueprint with which to make that possible.

Now the company says it is on the verge of launching a new iPhone operating system — and a toolkit to help developers of new applications for the handsets. Apple says the new operating system itself will add more than 100 features, including the ability to cut and paste text, and a virtual keyboard for use when the phone is turned sideways, making it easier to type emails. The toolkit is expected to add about 1,000 functions to help developers come up with new applications.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

When it comes to the type of applications iPhone owners use most, ones for checking the weather trump games, music, news and everything else.

According to an upcoming report on smartphone usage by online market research firm Compete, 39% of iPhone users cited weather-related apps as one of the three kinds of applications they use most frequently.

Read the rest of this post

THQ (THQI) shares are posting a fat gain today after the videogame company announced that it has completed a previously announced cost-reduction plan designed to chop its annual spending by $220 million.

THQ CEO Brian Farrell said in a statement that the company’s goal is to return to profitability and generate positive cash flow in the March 2010 fiscal year, and to position the company for long-term sustainable growth.

The company said March quarter results will include $45 million in “realignment expenses,” including $4 million in cash costs. The restructuring includes cutting its SKUs by about 20 percent and closing or selling four of its game development studios. The plan: producer fewer, better games.

Kaufman Bros. analyst Todd Mitchell this morning pounded the table on the stock, repeating his Buy rating and $6 target price, and asserting that there are near-term catalysts ahead for the stock. Weirdly, the note actually says that the company will “soon announce its restructuring is complete,” and of course they announced exactly that this morning. (He should have issued the note a day earlier, I’d say.)

Read the rest of this post

For the last two decades, human cognitive superiority had a distinctive sound: the soft click of stones placed on a wooden Go board. But once again, artificial intelligence is asserting its domination over gray matter.

Just a few years ago, the best Go programs were routinely beaten by skilled children, even when given a head start. Artificial intelligence researchers routinely said that computers capable of beating our best were literally unthinkable. And so it was. Until now.

“It’s a silly human conceit that such a domain would exist, that there’s something only we can figure out with our wetware brains,” said David Doshay, a University of California at Santa Cruz computer scientist. “Because at the same time, another set of humans is just as busily saying, ‘Yes, but we can knock this problem into another domain, and solve it using these machines.’”

Read the rest of this post

Games are starting to catch up with movies in this respect: Low-budget titles from indie studios have the same chance to succeed as blockbusters. And the indie game makers are about to make their biggest strides yet as Microsoft (MSFT) prepares to sell user-generated games on the Xbox 360 game console.

The launch of the Xbox Live Community Games Channel on Nov. 19 represents the biggest step yet toward embracing games made by professional independent developers, amateurs, students and ordinary gamers. The games launched on the channel, which will start in the dozens, will be available for 14 million-plus Xbox Live gamers to purchase for fees ranging from $2.50 to $10. The game channel is a part of a big makeover for the Xbox Live online gaming service.

Anyone who uses Microsoft’s $99 XNA Game Studio Express tools can create games that run on the Xbox 360 or the PC. More than a million tool sets have been downloaded.

Read the rest of this post

When PJ Haarsma wrote his first book, a science fiction novel for preteenagers, he didn’t think just about how to describe Orbis, the planetary system where the story takes place. He also thought about how it should look and feel in a video game.

Read the rest of this post