Activision C.E.O.: Labels Should Owe Guitar Hero, Not Reverse

Guitar Hero, Rock Band and other music-oriented videogames are the latest hotly contested licensing battleground for music, as executives on both sides of the equation question the deals that allow songs to be used in the games. Last month,...

Sep 30 2008

Activision: Driving EA Crazy; Upcoming CEO Interview

Electronic Arts is used to being the big cheese in the exploding video game industry. But in the past year or so, Activision has been driving EA nuts. First it came out with Guitar Hero, which turned into one of...

Feb 25 2008

Activision-Vivendi Merger May Get Done Today

Kevin Maney writes: It's looking like Activision will get approval today to merge with Vivendi Games, creating a videogame giant that's expected to shake up the industry. Earlier this year, I had a long interview with Activision CEO Bobby Kotick...

Jul 08 2008

Take Two Locks Up Rockstar Talent

Ars Technica reports: Rockstar may be a controversial developer, but it sure can bring the rain: Grand Theft Auto IV enjoyed $500 million in first-week sales across the PS3 and Xbox 360. Take-Two simply can't afford to lose that level...

Dec 18 2008

PlayStation Comes Home Tomorrow

Ars Technica reports:Sony's Home service for the PlayStation 3 has suffered delay after delay, but it finally looks like gamers will finally get a chance to try this virtual world. Today, the company announced that Home will be launched worldwide...

Dec 10 2008

Advice to Over-40 Crowd: Start Playing Videogames

Kevin Maney writes: Maybe it's time to stop being surprised when studies show that videogame fans are normal, sociable, successful -- and in fact are the future of business. Like, duh -- most of the population under A Certain Age...

Oct 23 2008

The Sorry State of Videogames

Ars Technica reports: It has become popular to say that the gaming industry has become recession-proof, simply because the overall sales for 2008 are up year over year... but those numbers only tell part of the story. Other sources are...

Jan 05 2009

Nintendo is Trouncing Its Competitors

Ars Technica reports: Nintendo has been dramatically outselling its rivals in the video game business since the Wii was released, but this month's NPD numbers can be considered the company's victory lap in America. While the recession has yet to...

Dec 12 2008

How About a Massive Multiplayer Wii Baseball League?

Just reading this morning about Electronic Arts' Madden football videogames adding yet more real-life content from ESPN and the NFL. Which I suppose has a certain appeal to people who want to pretend they live inside the body of Peyton...

May 29 2007

First Bytes: Comcast, iPhone, Microsoft, Activision

-- There's a new phone out. Gizmodo has unlocked it. [Gizmodo]-- Comcast will get its comeuppance for arbitrarily blocking internet access when the FCC chief today pushes for a vote against Comcast and its practices.  [AP]-- Microsoft is hating on the...

Jul 11 2008

Where Yahoo's AOL Idea Might've Come From

Just a hunch here, since board members aren't talking. But the structure of the allegedly proposed deal between Yahoo and AOL looks suspiciously like...the deal about to close merging videogame company Activision with Vivendi's game unit. Just last month, I...

Apr 10 2008

EA to Play in Knights of the Old Republic

N. Evan Van Zelfden in Los Angeles warns, watch out World of Warcraft. In an interview at E3 this week, Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello said that EA is working on the next version of Star Wars game Knights...

Jul 17 2008

Last Bytes: Google, World of Warcraft, Intel, Cisco

Google finally gets it: YouTube to let advertisers buy search terms on videos. [Cnet]New edition of World of Warcraft draws iPhone-like pre-release lines. [SAI] Intel cut Q4 forecast by a lot, citing slowing demand. [Business Wire]Cisco is canceling its annual...

Nov 12 2008

Beatles, MTV 'Come Together' For Video Game

Sam Gustin hums: It's been a long and winding road, but it looks like the Beatles -- the last, biggest holdout from the digital music scene -- are finally embracing Rock Band, the video game phenomenon.Word broke late Wednesday that...

Oct 29 2008

Gibson and the Guitar Games Patent Suits

Amazing how success brings out the patent fights -- which as of now are raging full on between Gibson Guitar and the makers of guitar simulation games. It also doesn't help that the whole history of the Guitar Hero and...

Mar 24 2008

ABC News Appearance

I took a spin on ABC News Now to talk about my Q&A with Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and the interest it generated in how Activision will expand Guitar Hero. Kotick has been particularly busy lately. He's on Yahoo's board....

May 06 2008

First Bytes: Video Games, Nortel, Lycos, Smut

Video game sales growth slowed in November. [NYT]Nortel may be delisted by the NYSE if it can't get its stock price over $1.00. [Reuters]Lycos Europe liquidates. [Paid Content]FCC and White House fight over smut-free wireless broadband. [Ars Technica]Is targeting specific...

Dec 12 2008

Microsoft and the Ivy League: Videogame Makers?

Andrea Chalupa reports: At a presentation at New York University today, Craig Mundie, Microsoft's head of research and strategy, paced back and forth in front of a PowerPoint presentation. It was a pretty flat display for the fast-moving, multidimensional product...

Oct 07 2008

Video Games Are Outperforming the Economy

Ars Technica reports: September's NPD numbers on game sales were the focus of a lot of speculation, as everyone was looking for answers to two questions: will the gaming industry continue to perform well in the face of a struggling...

Oct 17 2008

Celebrity Blog: Bob Rice on Portfolio.com Thursday

Bob Rice, this week's Playa, has had many careers. He was an attorney with the U.S. Justice Dept., a partner at law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy, a CEO of tech startup and now runs merchant bank Tangent Capital, which he founded in 200

Aug 27 2008

First Bytes: Yahoo, Google, Electronic Arts, Windows Azure

Yahoo opens up and invites developers to start creating.[eFluxMedia]Is Google playing chicken with the Justice Department?[BoomTown]Earnings: Electronic Arts, the leading video game producer, cuts workforce 6 percent as losses widen.[PaidContent]Windows Azure--a matter of trust.[eFluxMedia]--Andrea Chalupa...

Oct 31 2008

EA's 2008: Spielberg, Sports And Screaming Ducks

There may, within days, finally be some further information shaking loose from Electronic Arts and collaborator Steven Spielberg as to the nature of the three video game titles--one almost a complete mystery thus far--that they've been cooking up for...

Jan 30 2008

The Ad Game Merges With a Real One

Brace yourself. A new and alien (for Baby Boomers) form of advertising is gaining momentum. But don't worry if it's not to your taste. It may already be edging toward passe. After all, how edgy and authentic can a...

Oct 12 2007

Take Two Takes Too Long

Investors in Take-Two Interactive might have thought that this spring's board purge was enough to fix the mess of problems plaguing the company. Take-Two, but the hits just keep on coming. On Thursday the videogame maker announced that the release...

Aug 03 2007

Amazon Selling Music on Grand Theft Auto IV

Here's an interesting twist on music marketing: Gamers who play the new Grand Theft Auto IV will be able to easily (well, sort of easily) buy downloads of the music they hear through Amazon.com. Although, it seems like a pretty...

Apr 29 2008

Go Ahead, Son, Play World of Warcraft Instead of Going to Business School

IBM tomorrow will come out with what seems to be a self-serving study about how massive multiplayer games -- a la World of Warcraft -- are terrific training for managers. But really, such observations are becoming about as obvious as...

Jun 15 2007

First Bytes: Music Industry, Video Games, Yahoo, Oracle

The music industry will stop suing big groups of people for downloading music illegally. [WSJ]Online buzz is the key to a video game's long term revenue. [Ars Technica]Yahoo invests in an Indian telephone information service. [Tech Crunch]The stronger dollar hurts...

Dec 19 2008

Atari Boss: Music Games Could Spawn New Art Form

Music has officially become bigger than sports in the recession-resistant videogame market, giving gaming executives cause for optimism. And as the music games genre develops, we could see new levels of integration between the two create an entirely new...

Dec 12 2008

Jimmy Cayne's Latest Own-Goal

Jimmy Cayne has been speaking at length with Fortune's William Cohan, and has now managed to tell his side of the story. No wonder people don't like him much: he comes across really badly even here. After reading the...

Aug 04 2008

Let the Games Begin. And the Gadgets. And the Robot Dog . . .

You've waited all year for it. Now it's here—and I'm not talking about the new ABC sitcom Cavemen. This weekend, about 60,000 tech geeks, gadget nuts, and the people who love them, are expected to congregate at the Jacob K....

Sep 26 2007