One 
of the tentpole events of E3 won’t be taking place this year.
Nintendo shocked the gaming world late Wednesday by announcing that it has decided not to hold its annual E3 press conference. Instead, the company said, it plans to focus on smaller events and will address the gaming world through a series of Nintendo Direct broadcasts, essentially cutting out the large, noisy middleman.
If 
there was any remaining doubt that the Wii U has been struggling, Nintendo erased that in its latest earnings report.
The company reported that in the past three months, it has sold just 390,000 units of its next generation console. Life to date sales for the Wii U are under 3.5 million. That’s more than 500,000 less than the company had predicted in January, a figure that had been revised downward from initial forecasts of 5.5 million.
Contrary 
to popular opinion, video games can be good for your eyes.
Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have found that puzzle games, especially the classic block-dropper Tetris, are effective in helping treat patients with amblyopia, better known as lazy eye.
High 
tech is going high fashion.
With Google distributing its first sets of Google Glass eyewear and observers eagerly awaiting confirmation that Apple is working on a smartwatch, proponents of wearable technology are looking further down the road. And they’re pretty excited about what they see in terms of the potential for profit and disruption to the personal technology world.
In 
2003, Nokia had a plan.
Recognizing the enormous market the Nintendo Game Boy Advance was attracting—and being cognizant enough to realize that mobile games at the time were, frankly, terrible— the company unleashed the N-Gage, a cellphone capable of playing video games that had a graphical quality previously unseen on mobile devices.
The idea was sound—but the reception wasn’t exactly what they expected. The N-Gage was jeered by gamers (its intended audience). Web pages mocking its taco-shaped design quickly became an Internet sensation. And reviews were harsh. A redesigned model came out a year later, but it was too late. The N-Gage eventually became yet another disruptive technology that failed to connect with its audience.
With 
the successor to the Xbox 360 likely to hit stores before the end of the year, you’d think people might hold off on things like an Xbox Live subscription at this point in the console cycle. But apparently the online service is more popular than ever.
Microsoft reports Xbox Live subscriptions hit 46 million worldwide in the most recent fiscal quarter. That’s up 18 percent from a year ago.
Female 
characters have had a rather dubious run in the video game world. When they aren’t damsels in distress, they’re oversexualized stereotypes meant to titillate rather than foster a sense of empowerment in players.
There have been exceptions, of course — Half-Life 2’s Alyx or Samus from Metroid — but progress has been slow. In the past year, though, the exceptions are starting to become … well, if not the rule, less of the exception.
New 
Mexico residents might want to grab their shovels.
Those long buried copies of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, the infamous Atari 2600 game that many believe contributed to the great North American video game industry crash of 1983, might be worth digging up thanks to a hacker who has seemingly fixed its biggest bugs.
If 
there was a beacon of hope for the video game industry in the first half of 2013, it was Bioshock Infinite. The hotly-anticipated game, currently the top-rated title of the year, was the best chance for retail sales to rebound and return to positive territory.
As it turns out, Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth couldn’t quite live up to that pressure — even with Lara Croft, Kratos and the Gears of War crew backing them up.
Not 
too long ago, many people believed Facebook was the Next Big Thing in gaming. Developers debated it — sometimes ferociously — at conventions, while venture capitalists couldn’t fund the companies making those games fast enough.
But over the past few months, the air seems to have been let out of Facebook’s tires. Major publishers are withdrawing their support. Pop culture breakouts like Farmville are far and few between. Most damningly, players seem to have moved on to other diversions.
Chris Morris: Journalist 