Electronic Arts’ is betting big on Star 
Wars – to the tune of nearly $100 million.
“Star Wars: The Old Republic” is one of the video game publisher’s biggest titles of the year – arguably of the last 5 years. While the game’s not scheduled to come out until this holiday season (and could potentially slip to 2012), this seems like a good time to run down the latest on one of the few titles that could give “World of Warcraft” a run for its money.
Sony is stopping short of making direct 
accusations, but pointed an accusatory finger at the collective group of hackers who go by ‘Anonymous’.
The company, in a letter written to the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, said it does not yet know who was behind the attack, but it had found a file planted on the server of Sony Online Entertainment named “Anonymous”. (SOE just yesterday announced it had discovered hackers had accessed and stolen information from 25 million accounts.)
For all the talk of film and video game synergy, you 
don’t see a lot of real world applications. Now, Sony’s putting its money where its mouth is.
The company will include a demo for the upcoming “Resistance 3” in the Blu-ray release of “Battle: Los Angeles”. The game is expected to hit store shelves in September.
Google TV hasn’t exactly taken the 
world by storm, but the search giant isn’t giving up on it.
Google is expected to showcase a second generation of the device next month at its I/O developer conference. Whether the company has mended any fences with the networks, however, is less clear.
Film rental giant Redbox wants to 
add another jewel to its crown.
The company, best known for its rental kiosks in areas like pharmacies, grocery stores, fast food restaurants and convenience stores, is adding videogames to the mix, with new, legacy and children’s titles coming to 21,000 locations starting June 17.
With the shock wearing off after yesterday’s announcement 
about the scope and magnitude of the hacker attack on the PlayStation Network, Sony is now having to deal with the ugly public relations fallout.
Gardner analyst Avivah Litan says the incident is the largest theft of personal information to ever occur. That has spurred politicians in two countries to demand answers. And, as expected, the first of what will likely be several lawsuits has already been filed.
After six days of silence, Sony has revealed 
more about the security breach of its PlayStation Network – and it’s much worse than expected.
The company says hackers obtained personal information for all of the service’s 70 million subscribers. Still unclear is whether the credit card information on file with the service was compromised.
Video game industry veteran John Schappert, 
who has served as chief operating officer at Electronic Arts for the past two years, has quietly left the company.
Schappert’s last day was yesterday – and media reports indicate he plans to join social gamers maker (and EA rival) Zynga in an undisclosed role.
Most companies ignore the rumor mill – 
sometimes to the point of it being embarrassing. Nintendo, however, is willing to admit when its secrets are spilled.
The company has confirmed the rumors that it plans to unveil a successor to the Wii at this year’s E3 (the annual trade show of the video game industry). The new system will be out in 2012.
Players hoping to play a multiplayer game on their PlayStation 3 haven’t been able to do so reliably for several days – and for the past three days, they haven’t been able to do so at all.
The PlayStation Network – the console’s online service – has gone down and at present, no one seems to know when it’s coming back. Sony, in a blog update about the outage yesterday, said it was investigating the cause, but “it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running.” Since then, the company has remained silent.
Chris Morris: Journalist 