Ben Schefers bought his first Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Xbox 360 console four months ago to play games remotely with his friends. But the 33-year-old database manager now spends more time using it to play movies, television shows and documentaries.

“It’s something that my wife and I can both agree on,” he says, adding that he plays Xbox 360 games only a few times a week–and often only after his wife is asleep. Each night, he and his wife, who live in Berkeley, Calif., spend an hour or two catching up on TV shows with the console. “It’s kind of taken over from our DVD player,” says Mr. Schefers.

Videogame consoles like the Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 were designed primarily to play games, but the gadgets are increasingly evolving into multimedia home-entertainment devices as manufacturers add nongame features.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Blowing away terrorists, apparently, never gets old.

The new videogame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, set to hit stores Tuesday, is a sequel spawned by sequels. But rather than following the frequent pattern of franchises fading as they age, Modern Warfare 2 is the most highly anticipated game of the season.

“It’s the biggest launch in our history, bigger than Halo 3,” said Tony Bartel, merchandising and marketing chief for videogame retailer GameStop, which has been taking pre-orders since April.

The manufacturer, Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI), has been advertising the first-person shooter game since March.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

At its media event in early September, Apple (AAPL) threw down the gauntlet to Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp. (SNE). Dedicated gaming gadgets like the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable “seemed so cool,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, but “they don’t stack up against the iPod touch.” Now an industry research firm has come out with numbers that back up Apple’s challenge.

A study by DFC Intelligence, released on Friday, predicts that games for the iPhone and iPod touch (an iPhone without the cellular capabilities) will be the principal drivers for growth in the overall portable and mobile gaming market in five years.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The smart-phone wars are heating up. Handset makers are releasing a wave of new devices backed by a flood of advertisements, as some fight for survival in the fast-growing but increasingly crowded market.

Companies such as Motorola Inc. (MOT), Palm Inc. (PALM) and HTC Corp. are hoping new phones will help them reclaim market share from the reigning iPhone and BlackBerry. To do that, they will need a mix of impressive devices, shrewd pricing and aggressive marketing, analysts say.

Motorola has bet its future on a lineup of new phones that run Google Inc. (GOOG) software. On Wednesday, it is expected to unveil a highly anticipated device dubbed the Droid on the Verizon Wireless network. Verizon (VZ) has been touting the phone in TV ads attacking the iPhone.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

When MTV Networks’ Harmonix Music Systems developed the videogame The Beatles: Rock Band, it made many small changes to some of the most beloved songs in rock history. All of them were made in consultation with Apple Corps, the Beatles’ management company, but some of the changes have come as a shock for fans.

One that is causing a particular stir is a change in “Her Majesty,” the final song on the final album that the Beatles recorded. In the album “Abbey Road,” the song starts and ends with distinction: a surprisingly loud opening and an abrupt end. To many Beatles fans, the unresolved ending conveys special meaning, a sense that the iconic band’s music has no end to it.

Well, not anymore.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

If iPhone app developers have one complaint about Apple’s (AAPL) App Store, it’s that the approval process for apps isn’t transparent enough. Apps have been known to be rejected, or worse, sent into a black hole without an explanation.

Some apps that one might think would be rejected are approved, while others that seem like no-brainers aren’t.

While the Cupertino, Calif., company has made some improvements, such as speeding up the approval process, it’s clear to developers Jon Myers and Chuck Hootman that Apple continues to work in mysterious ways–though they’re not complaining this time.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Apple Inc. (AAPL) said Thursday it will let iPhone application developers offer their users the option to buy additional content or features within a free app on its App Store.

App developers said they received an e-mail notice from Apple informing them that the in-app purchase feature was now available for free apps and that it would “simplify your development by creating a single version of your app that uses in App Purchase to unlock additional functionality, eliminating the need to create Lite versions of your app.” A spokeswoman for Apple confirmed the news.

The in-app purchase feature, which was first introduced in March, allows developers to offer fresh content for purchase within an app such as new levels in a game, additional books in an e-book app, or expanded capability in productivity apps.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Videogame publishers, pushing to expand their businesses, are making games that target girls and women a new industry battleground.

This holiday season, more games than ever are being geared toward female players. Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS) is releasing the latest installment of its “Littlest Pet Shop” game for young girls and introducing a series of fashion-themed games called “Charm Girls Club” for older girls later this month. Sony Corp. (SNE) in August packaged a lilac version of its PlayStation Portable device with a “Hannah Montana” game, based on the popular television show about a girl and her secret pop career.

Publishers also will target women with workout games. Ubisoft Entertainment SA is introducing “Your Shape,” a personal-training game, and “Just Dance,” a dancing game, in November. Nintendo Co. hit the market with “Wii Fit Plus,” a sequel to its popular fitness game, in September.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

When Jon Myers and partner Chuck Hootman created their first iPhone app, “Cornhole All-Stars,” their aim was to come up with a fun, casual game that would give them a foothold for their new game start-up JUFTi. The last thing they expected was to run into censorship troubles, which they did–in Canada.

Cornhole, also known as Bags or Baggo, is a popular game in some circles where players toss a bag–-traditionally filled with corn kernels–-into a round hole on a slanted board about 30 feet away. Myers’s iPhone app is a virtual version of the game, featuring cute animated characters in various settings.

Though the app was published on Apple’s (AAPL) App Store worldwide on August 1, the Canadian App Store would only list it as “C******e All-Stars.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The medical waistband is the latest front in the battle among smart-phone makers for the business customer.

Pagers have long reigned in hospitals, where they are prized for their dependability. But with doctors treating more patients and hospitals facing pressure to be more efficient, companies like Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) see an opportunity to peddle their devices.

Last month, Stanford Hospital & Clinics, in Palo Alto, Calif., started a trial with Apple and Epic Systems Corp., a provider of health-care information systems, to test software that will let medical staff access patient charts on Apple’s iPhone.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Stanford University was one of the first academic institutions to come out with an iPhone (AAPL) app last October. Now Stanford has debuted an upgrade, dubbed iStanford, which lets students search for courses, add or drop them and see their grades.

Previous versions only allowed people to conduct a simple search of courses, locate themselves on a map to navigate the campus, and check out athletic scores or other news.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Anybody who has read Penn & Teller’s “Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends” won’t be surprised to learn that the comedian-illusionist duo has come up with a new foolproof trick that anyone can do with their iPhone.

Though still pending approval by Apple (AAPL), Penn Jillette was in San Francisco at the TechCrunch 50 conference, talking up Penn and Teller’s new card-trick app, in which they appear to be able to guess cards remotely. Here’s the way it works: The app mimics the main iPhone screen. When you invite a friend to name a card, you press a simple code on that screen, which will pull up a fake SMS screen that will appear as if you know Penn & Teller and that you text with them regularly. You hand the phone to your friend and invite the person ask either Penn or Teller what the card is. After some randomly generated small talk, “Penn” or “Teller” will correctly guess the card.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

How does Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello see the videogame industry shaping up in the recession? He provided a glimpse of his viewpoint in an email to EA employees Wednesday that was obtained by The Wall Street Journal. EA has a strong product lineup for this holiday season, with the Need for Speed Shift racing game, FIFA 10 soccer game and The Beatles: Rock Band music game, so Riccitiello’s tone was positive overall.

But he also indicated that the industry continued to have a tough time in August as demand has slowed dramatically. “This week, market research for August will show that year over year, the industry was down in North America — and that August sales of Madden NFL 10 are down with that trend,” Riccitiello wrote.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Unflattering tales about lithium-ion batteries are once again making headlines, this time in Apple’s (AAPL) iPhones. In France, users have reported 10 cases of exploding or cracking iPhones, while similar claims have been reported elsewhere.

The last time such batteries broke into the news was three years ago, when Sony (SNE) voluntarily recalled millions of laptop batteries after they were found to cause laptops to possibly overheat and catch fire. Though Sony admitted issues with quality control, experts at the time blamed part of the problem on the increased demand that sophisticated portable devices are placing on lithium-ion batteries.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

As social networking services and multiplayer games have become more prevalent, it was only a matter of time before somebody came up with an idea that combines the two.

Booyah Society, a new social gaming app that launched on Apple’s App Store on Monday, puts a game-like twist to social networking by rewarding users for recording and sharing real-life achievements with other members as well as on Facebook and Twitter, with which it is integrated.

Booyah divides life into nine categories from food and dining to fitness and shopping. Every time users post an update that satisfies a goal, they earn an award.

Read the rest of this post on the original site