Technology: Video Games

PLAYA BONITA, Panama (Reuters) - Japan's Nintendo plans a more aggressive marketing campaign in Spanish to corner Latin America's growing games market and tap growing appetite for fitness and sports titles.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - U.S. video game sales rose 28 percent in July from a year earlier, boosted by continued strong demand for Nintendo Co Ltd's (7974.OS) Wii console, according to data from research firm NPD on Thursday.

LOS ANGELES - Gamers with a hankering to watch music videos will have more choices after Warner Music Group Corp. announced Thursday it is adding its library of videos to Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 game console.

NEW YORK - Even in a seasonally slow month and with the economy in the doldrums, U.S. sales of video game hardware and software soared 28 percent in July, hitting $1.19 billion.

As always, when video game industry research firm The NPD Group puts out its monthly numbers, each of the big hardware companies--Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony--find their own unique positive spin, regardless what the numbers show.

Cynical Peak Software on Thursday announced the release of Rivet 1.2, an update to its application that helps Mac users stream content to an Xbox 360 video game console on the same network. A free update for registered users, Rivet 1.2 costs $18.95.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Electronic Arts, one of the world's top two video game publishers, expects industry revenue to grow by at least 20 percent this year in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, a top executive told Reuters.

Lian Li announces what may be the first replacement chassis for the Xbox 360. This is a warranty killer, obviously, but will it help defeat Red Rings of Death?

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Take a group of scientists and a video game designer and what do you get? Spore, a game that can help teach players some evolutionary biology.

NEW YORK - Looking at its size, shape, white wrist strap and B-button on the bottom, it's easy to compare the Stix with the Wiimote, the wireless controller for the popular Nintendo gaming console. Except the Stix is for your PC.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - At 70 million units sold and counting, it's the most important sports franchise in video game history, so Electronic Arts pulled out all the stops for its newest release.

Parents are more concerned about their children's exposure to video games than alcohol, violence and pornography, according to recent polls.

At age 2, Zameen Rashid is well acquainted with Lucky, the leprechaun who lists the marshmallow clovers, moons, and stars in boxes of General Mills' Lucky Charms cereal. Maybe too well, says his mother, Fahmida Rashid, who frets that too-frequent exposure to food ads in video games, TV shows, and the Web will foster unhealthy eating habits. "Just as you wouldn't expect to see a tobacco ad on a kids' site or show, there shouldn't be junk food ads there either," says Rashid, a 31-year-old resident of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Advanced Micro Devices, which needs a spark, could rack up points with video game players and others with a hot graphics card it plans to roll out on Tuesday.

It's the year 2409 in the upcoming Star Trek Online massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), which was previewed at the annual Star Trek convention in Las Vegas.

When Electronic Arts announced the retired Brett Favre as its 20th anniversary cover boy, it looked like the notorious "Madden" curse — which had mangled the careers of Michael Vick, Donovan McNabb and Shaun Alexander — was finally broken.

LOS ANGELES - It's a puzzle worthy of The Riddler: Why is there no video game based on "The Dark Knight"?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Global retail giant Wal-Mart said Thursday its US sales chilled in July as bargain-hunting consumers focused on food and entertainment items like flat-screen televisions and video games.

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - If 24-hour coverage of the Olympic Games in China isn't enough for fans, Sega has rolled out the official video game of the 2008 events in Beijing for PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and mobile phones.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Warner Music Group Corp, the world's third-largest music company, said on Thursday that video game makers will need to pay more to license songs for music-based video games like "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band."