With games like Everquest, World of Warcraft and Second Life having already convinced gamers that spending real money on virtual items is a perfectly sane proposition, Electronic Arts cashed in on the concept with the launch of The Sims 2 Store on Monday. The store will allow players to buy everything from desks and bookshelves to TVs and clock radios for their in-game characters.
The store’s initial offerings includes more than 1,000 items in categories like fashions, furnishings, décor, ente

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Source: Digital Trends – Video Games

After more than a year working on the problem, Microsoft has finally released a simple tool that enables Xbox 360 users to transfer licenses for games they purchased via the Xbox Live Marketplace to a new console—and play them without having an active Internet connection. Previously, if users attempted to play a purchased game on a new Xbox 360 console, the games would only work so long as Microsoft’s DRM system could validate the licenses over the Internet. Without an active Internet connection, the games would revert to demo mode. The new tool enables gamers to fully transfer their licenses to a new

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Source: Digital Trends – Video Games

Video game franchises like Madden Football, FIFA Soccer and Tiger Woods PGA Tour may be building blocks of EA’s sports video game empire, but the company will tweak the tried-and-true formula for these mainstay titles when it brings them to the Nintendo Wii for 2008. EA announced on Thursday that five of its popular sporting titles would fall into the newly created “All-Play” line on the Wii, a label created for easy-to-play sports titles.
Given the unique nature of the Wii’s controls, “All-Play” won’t just be a sticker – EA

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Source: Digital Trends – Video Games

World of Warcraft gamers can get pretty possessive of their online characters—after all, they’ve put countless hours (and we mean countless hours) into crafting their online alter egos, building up experience and treasure, and (of course) paying a subscription fee for the privilege.

Blizzard makes reasonable efforts to make sure World of Warcraft accounts are secure, but in a world of keyloggers, network sniffers, Trojan horses, and plain-old bad passwords, it’s not exactly uncommon for a WOW player to have his or her account accessed without permission, then find that everything their in-world character had that was remotely sellable was…go

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Source: Digital Trends – Video Games

Game studios’ love of licensed games has turned out some pretty bizarre titles over the years, but spinning the Guinness Book of World Records into a playable game has to be one of the stranger propositions the industry has churned out. Warner Bros. Entertainment and TT Games will do it this fall though, with the release of Guinness World Records: The Videogame on Wii and Nintendo DS.
According to the developers’ brief press release, the new title will allow playe

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Source: Digital Trends – Video Games

It’s not easy being green, but these days it’s important. That’s why the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics is important. It ranks 18 electronics companies each quarter on the “greenness” of their products and production process.

Now Greenpeace has brought in new guidelines, and as a result, most companies have seen their rankings fall, but none more so than Nintendo, which scored below all others in the new survey.

And that’s caused a bit of claim and counter-claim.

According to the

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Source: Digital Trends – Video Games

There are 81 video games degree courses now offered at British universities, according to games industry campaign group Games Up?, but only four of them are accredit by the government body Skillset. And that, they say, is one reason why universities are failing to equip graduates with the skills really needed by the games industry.

David Braben, chairman of Frontier Developments and a spokesman for "Games Up?", told the BBC:

"95% of video gaming degrees are simply not fit for purpose. Without some sort of common standard, like Skillset accreditation, these degrees are a waste of tim

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Source: Digital Trends – Video Games

Business consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is making some forecasts about the future of the video game industry—and the picture is a rosy one. According to the company’s upcoming report “Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2008–2012,” video games are poised to jump from a $41.9 billion global industry to a $68.3 billion industry by the year 2012. And here’s an interesting tidbit: neither PC-based games nor the United States will be leading the way.

PricewaterhouseCoopers sees the U.S. falling behind other parts of the world in terms of the overall growth rate of its video

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Source: Digital Trends – Video Games

Entertainment industry publication Variety reports that director Len Wiseman has signed on to helm Gears of War, a movie based on the video game from Epic Games. New Line Cinema nabbed the film rights to the game last March and tapped Australian screenwriter Stuart Beattie to write a screenplay. According to Variety, writer Chris Morgan (Wanted, Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) will write the next draft of the screenplay. Game desig

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Source: Digital Trends – Video Games

The release of Electronic Arts’ highly anticipated Spore may still be months away, but the company got the hype wheel turning early on Tuesday with the release of Spore Creature Creator. Essentially the first part of the game, Creator will allow players to tweak and customize creatures usable in the full game in the dead time before it launches.
After playing around with different options for their creatures, players can take them on test drives, snap pictures, and make movies of them that can even be uploaded automatically to Spore channel on YouTube. The o

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Source: Digital Trends – Video Games