The growth of 
the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad as gaming devices has done plenty to worry executives at Nintendo and Sony for a while now, but new numbers from Flurry Research may cause even more agita.
The mobile analytics firm says revenues from the iOS and Android gaming markets are now higher than that generated from traditional portable systems from the two gaming giants. And in a $3.3 billion market, that’s noteworthy.
The biggest complaint 
from iPhone owners to date has been the inability to access sites that use Adobe’s Flash player. Adobe spent years appealing Apple’s decision without success. Now the company is throwing in the towel.
Adobe has announced plans to cease developing its Flash Player plug-in for mobile browsers – a move that may well signal the end of Flash. The company instead plans to focus on HTML5.
There’s little doubt 
that today’s launch of “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” will set new entertainment industry records for first week revenues. But to put things in perspective, here are a few numbers – some hard, some estimated by analysts –showing how big of a monster this franchise has turned into.
Activision turned 
heads last year with its eye-popping “There’s a Soldier in All of Us” campaign for “Call of Duty: Black Ops”. Now it’s upping the ante.
Jonah Hill (“Superbad”) and Sam Worthington (“Avatar”) headline the campaign’s new installment – with a quick cameo from Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard. And it’s just as heart pounding as the original.
There aren’t a 
lot of surprises in the entertainment world these days — particularly when it comes to tentpole events.
Whether it’s a quick-cut trailer, the interview circuit or an online spoiler site, audiences generally have a pretty solid idea of what they’re going to experience — with movies, TV shows and videogames.
But that’s rarely, if ever, the case with new releases from Rockstar Games. The vidgame developer tightly controls the flow of information before a title’s ship date and seldom emerges from the studio to talk about its products. The reason, says Dan Houser, the veep and co-founder of creative at Rockstar, is pretty simple: Letting people peek behind the curtain spoils the fun.
With Steve Jobs
first dropping hints about Apple’s plans for a branded TV set in his conversations with biographer Walter Isaacson, others are a bit more comfortable discussing it now.
The latest to reveal details was CBS CEO Les Moonves in an earnings conference call this week.
Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog
Today’s revelation 
that Spike TV has tapped Survivor creator Mark Burnett to exec produce this year’s Video Game Awards was just the tip of the iceberg.
The show, which is the highest profile celebration of the industry each year, has also teased a few of the world premieres it plans to unveil and announced its contenders for Game of the Year.
Eight days after 
letting the world know “Grand Theft Auto V” was on the way, Rockstar Games has given us our first look at the title – and it looks like fans of the series will be pretty happy with what the studio has been working on.
The game, set in a Los Angeles clone (Santa Monica is dubbed Pleasure Pier and Hollywood becomes Vinewood), seems set in a modern era, with homelessness and foreclosures highlighted.
One of the reasons 
video games and Hollywood have stayed so far apart in the public eye is the gaming world’s casual regard for plot. Games, traditionally, are a series of event moments strung together by a rather threadbare plot (though you could say the same thing about some tentpole summer theatrical releases).
The “Uncharted” series is different – and the release of the game’s third installment today is a good example to non-gamers of what that part of the entertainment industry is capable of when it brings together multiple elements.
Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog
Electronic Arts has 
snatched away bragging rights for the year’s biggest video game launch as the company’s much anticipated ”Battlefield 3” has sold more than 5 million units in its first week, making it the fastest-selling game in the company’s history.
The big bow unseats Microsoft’s ”Gears of War 3,” which boasted first week sales of 3 million copies in September — but it’s likely to be a short-lived victory. The launch of ”Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” is expected to set entertainment industry launch records, as the series has done for the past two years.
Chris Morris: Journalist 