I’m off to recharge my 
batteries for a week and see just how much sun this Irish-descended body can handle. Because I’m not the type who can unplug easily, I’ll be doing this in an area that has no good Internet coverage, so posting will be light this week.
Look for a couple of features and product reviews – things that I’ve been meaning to do more of, but the steady flow of news this year has kept my focus elsewhere.
Having established partnerships 
with both Netflix and Hulu on the Xbox 360, Microsoft might be gearing up to compete with them.
The company is reportedly planning to roll out a streaming video service of its own under the Zune brand later this year.
After hitting a few speed 
bumps, the big screen adaptation of Sony’s blockbuster Uncharted is moving forward once more.
Director Neil Burger, best known for Bradley Cooper’s “Limitless” and the Edward Norton film “The Illusionist,” has taken over the directorial reins after David O. Russell walked away from the project due to “creative differences”. And fans of the game are breathing a big sigh of relief.
We certainly have no problem getting 
caught up in the fun of playing games, but the people who create them have their pocketbooks to worry about, too. In this column, finance expert and GameSpy contributor Chris Morris guides you through the tricky corridors the gaming industry’s financial side, touching on big-time business decisions and how they matter to the common gamer.
After being subjected to political and legal attacks for years, the gaming industry got one hell of a shield last month as the U.S. Supreme Court definitively stated “Video games qualify for First Amendment protection.” It was cause for celebration — for investors, for developers, and for gamers. But it hardly meant that the attacks were over… or less dangerous. For several publishers, a new fight is already looming.
“I don’t think this puts an end to it, ” says Dan Offner, a partner with law firm Loeb & Loeb, who specializes in the video game industry. “It may put a pin in it for a short period of time, but I see the regulation of mature content with respect to minors as a hot-button issue for the Federal Trade Commission and the various state governments. It’s the end of round one, but round two is about to start [and] I don’t see the industry getting a big breather.”
[Dennis Durkin, COO of Microsoft’s IEB, 
tells Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris, “Not only has gaming usage gone up [on Xbox 360], but non-gaming has as well,” as the company evolves the console into a do-it-all entertainment box.]
When Elijah Wood first showed the world the Xbox 360 on MTV in 2005, the system was laser focused on games. But as the industry has evolved since then, so has the 360.
These days, while games are still at the core of the system, other entertainment options have elbowed their way into the spotlight – and, with the addition of live television to the offerings planned by the end of this year, games will have even more competition for people’s attentions.
Pokemon – one of the biggest guns in 
Nintendo’s franchise arsenal – is coming to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. But don’t expect Mario and Zelda to follow suit.
The company behind the addictive role-playing series announced plans this week to develop a free Pokemon-based rhythm game for iOS and Android smartphones. And that, somewhat understandably, has led to speculation that Nintendo might be tempering its opinion about mobile gaming and considering making games for other systems.
Comics are a big part of Disney’s empire, so their 
entry into the eComic market was inevitable. Thankfully, they added a Disney touch to Disney Comics, making it useful and entertaining. Readers can flip through the comics at their own pace or enable a slideshow that focuses on one frame at a time, letting people see enlarged images and words. Some comics come with sound effects, as well. And the controls let people set the pace of the slideshow — as well as choose whether they want to hear sounds.
The selection of free comics is minimal, but they’re meant as an appetizer. The selection of comics that can be purchased inside the application is decent, but not complete. Disney plans to add two books per week, it says. Some users have complained about bugs and other errors, but updates to the app are intended to addressed this. It’s a good comic app with plenty of reasonably priced comics — though the ones at $2.99 and $3.99 are harder to justify.
A little over a year ago, Electronic 
Arts and Legendary Pictures announced an agreement to make a live-action, big screen adaptation of the BioWare’s Mass Effect. Since then, though, things have been pretty quiet.
It looks like the silence will be broken on July 22nd.
A good arcade kart-racer is a 
rare thing, and Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is a bright light in the iDevice world. The game is universal, letting you play on iPad or iPhone/iPod Touch and has all the necessary elements of a fun kart racer — colorful characters, winding courses, mystery boxes that contain power-ups to either help you speed up your kart or slow down an opponents, and even a good online mode. The game has four single-player modes with plenty to unlock, giving it a longevity that’s rare in apps, and a good brief tutorial that never wears out its welcome. It’s a wonderful addition to the App Store, but we would have preferred it kept its initial $1.99 promotional price instead of the $4.99 charged at the time of this review.
Originally a flash game for the PC, iStunt 2 
has transitioned well to the iOS world. While it’s hardly advanced, the game can be a fun for players with patience, offering a wide number of challenges and checkpoints (so that when you inevitably fail at one of those challenges, you don’t have to start over from the beginning). The difficulty is a factor, though — as the game gets hard fast. And the violence levels increase dramatically (and unexpectedly) as you get further into the game. It all looks great, is easy to control and is loaded with over 40 levels, which is a bit more heft than you might expect from a title like this. Paying for a game that can be played for free online might seem a little odd, but consider it a tarriff for being able to play while you’re on the go.
Chris Morris: Journalist 