Fifteen years ago – on Sept. 9, 1995 – Sony changed
the course of the video game world.
This sounds like hyperbole – and maybe even the first line of a press release from the company – but it’s actually the spot-on truth. It has now been 15 years since the PlayStation hit retail shelves and the changes it brought were monumental.
Video game publishers aren’t fooling themselves. They
know August is going to be the latest in a string of awful months for the industry.
Sales numbers will be released roughly two hours after the market closes Thursday – and they’re expected to be grim. Michael Pachter, managing director of Wedbush Securities, predicts software sales will drop 6 percent compared to 2009 to $445 million. Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets is expecting things to be even worse – forecasting a 10-15 percent decline.
The Emmy Awards may be over for this year, 
but the door is already opening for 2011.
The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences today began accepting entries for the 2011 International Digital Emmy Awards. These are awards meant to recognize excellence in content that is created on non-traditional platforms, such as the Internet, mobile products and interactive TV. The content must originate outside of the U.S.
Microsoft’s Zune media player may not be 
making any noticeable impact on Apple’s dominance of the personal media player space, but it does have at least one corporate fan: United Airlines.
The Redmond-based tech giant and United are extending the Zune partnership they kicked off a couple months ago. On the Zune Insider podcast, product evangelist Dave McLauchlan noted that the airline will be providing Zune HDs to passengers on flights to Hong Kong and Australia as part of the expanded test.
It took nearly five years for James Cameron to bring “Avatar” 
to the big screen — but the Na’Vi have nothing on “Duke Nukem Forever.”
First announced in 1997, this videogame — featuring one of gaming’s best known characters — has been re-thought, re-booted and presumed dead multiple times. On Friday, Take-Two Interactive Software pulled off one of the gaming world’s biggest surprises, not only announcing a firm release date and expanded platform footprint — it will ship in 2011 for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 — but letting stunned gamers play it for the first time at last weekend’s Penny Arcade Expo, a fan-centric gaming event held in Seattle.
First announced during the Clinton administration, it
is a videogame title that has been declared dead time and again, yet always manages to come back. After what seemed a devastating (and final) blow in 2009—the disbanding of the game’s development team and a titanic legal battle—the game has surfaced again.
Now planned for a 2011 release on the PC, Microsoft Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation 3, “Duke Nukem Forever” was on display at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo on Friday. The 150,000 attendees got to play it themselves, something most gamers thought would never happen.
On Friday morning, Gearbox Software and 2K Games
dropped a bomb on gamers and industry alike at Seattle’s Penny Arcade Expo. Not only was Duke Nukem Forever alive once again, it was playable. On Sunday, they dropped another one.
3D Realms, the company that gave birth to the cigar chompin’, alien ass-kicking muscleman, had sold the rights to Gearbox. The story behind that is nearly as winding as Duke’s march to retail has been.
Apple might have shined its spotlight 
Wednesday on Apple TV and the new iPods, but at the same time, it had a clear message for the video game industry: We’re coming for you—and it’s going to be an ugly fight.
Over the course of the past three years, Apple has stumbled into a powerful position in the gaming world. The iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad were never designed as gaming platforms, but the app explosion that followed opened up the world of mobile gaming —and now the Cupertino-based company seems ready to capitalize on that.
Though the game has been presumed dead so many times you’d 
need an abacus to keep track, “Duke Nukem Forever” is very much alive – and he’s coming to store shelves soon.
Take Two Interactive Software pulled off one of the video game world’s biggest surprises Friday, announcing not only that the over-a-decade-in-development first person shooter was nearly finished, but backing that claim up by giving the 150,000 people attending the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle the chance to play the game.
Chris Morris: Journalist 