For the most part, 2011 
has been a pretty crummy year for video game sales.
Other than April, every month has shown declines. For the year, the industry is 10 percent behind 2010’s pace. That puts video games retail on track for its third consecutive year of negative growth — the first time that has ever happened in the gaming world.
As retail sputters, more and more publishers are looking to downloadable games to help fill the gaps.
Though it’s a Facebook exclusive, Pig Up! 
is a game that could easily be played on any platform. And that, in itself, is an incredible achievement. But the game’s real strength is its utterly addictive nature. It’s the video game equivalent of a potato chip: Playing just once is nearly impossible. Fighting to top your friend’s scores adds a fun, safe competitive edge to the game. It also motivates you to improve, since a special flapple is deployed — giving you thousands of points and three extra flaps — whenever you pass the most recent high score set by your friends.
The game is still in preview/beta mode and PopCap will likely be adding new power-ups and perhaps new enemies, but even in its incomplete state it’s one of the best games on the social network site.
Passenger 57 has 
taken up a new hobby.
As he serves out a three-year prison sentence for failure to file federal income tax returns, actor, producer and all-around butt-kicker Wesley Snipes is adding ‘game developer’ to his resume. The man filmgoers know best as the vampire hunter Blade has teamed with Finnish developer Lapland Studio to release ‘Julius Styles: The International.’
Netflix rolled the dice two 
weeks ago, announcing a significant change – and price increase – to its members. Now, it looks like a lot of those members may be planning to cut their ties with the service and embrace the competition.
A new survey from Wedbush Securities of 1,098 people finds that 22 percent of Netflix subscribers say they plan to discontinue their subscription with the company, and substitute its content with a combination of services, including Redbox, Hulu, Amazon’s streaming video initiative and traditional cable pay-per-view.
Grimm’s Red Riding Hood ~ 3D Interactive 
Pop-up Book is a mouthful of a title, but it’s also a rich storybook app that children will enjoy tremendously. The app takes a few liberties with the traditional story, but that makes it a bit more accessible by kids, and like other apps by the developer, it’s wonderfully illustrated and filled with fantastic interactive pop-up pages. This time, though, those activities are integrated into the story, making kids feel like they’re part of the tale being told.
Users can have the story read aloud to them (with them choosing the pace of the page turns), read it themselves, or watch the story in autoplay fashion. It has more violent elements than other children’s stories, but they’re muted enough that kids won’t be frightened.
No one has doubted that Bioware’s 
upcoming massively multiplayer game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, was going to be, well, massive. But the unusual — and baffling — pre-order experience for the game is causing a disturbance in the Force.
Typically, pre-orders are pretty simple: You put down a deposit, you wait for the game to come out and you’re guaranteed a copy on day one. But with The Old Republic, it’s a bit more complicated.
The 3DS is slowly fulfilling 
its destiny as a 3D multimedia device.
Nintendo has rolled out its 3D video service, giving owners of the handheld gaming system another option beyond games. The service will feature clips and videos selected by the game publisher – generally music, comedy, animation and trailers for Hollywood films.
Gamasutra Editor-at-large Chris Morris 
takes a look at THQ’s use of adult entertainment stars in the promotion and voice talent for its Saints Row games, seeing risks for the franchise in the publicity stunt.
I know my way around the world of pornography.
One of the perks of being an editor-at-large at several publications is you often pick up some interesting assignments. Among the ones I’ve been handed were a series of stories about the business side of the adult entertainment industry. It’s actually an industry that reminded me a lot of the video game field – one that’s very easy to judge on the surface, but one that’s a lot more complex once you peek behind the curtain.
This is the droid you’re looking 
for if you’re a “Star Wars”-loving gamer.
Microsoft has unveiled a new “Star Wars”-branded Xbox 360 – with a console body that looks like R2-D2 and a C-3PO gold colored controller – that will go on sale this holiday season.
Owain Weinert is nine years old
— and like countless children his age, he plays lots of video games. He wants to make them, too, so he conceived and designed a title on his own.
For most kids, the story would end there. But Owain has leukemia. And with the help of the Make-A-Wish foundation, he got to spend some time with the developers at PopCap Games (Bejeweled, Plants Vs. Zombies) earlier this year, impressing the game makers so much that they developed the game he had conceived.
It went live on the App store Thursday.
Chris Morris: Journalist 