Apple CEO Steve Jobs is taking a medical 
leave of absence from the company to focus on his health, the company announced Monday.
Jobs will continue as the company’s CEO and said he would continue to be involved in major strategic decisions for the company – but chief operating officer Tim Cook will be responsible for day-to-day operations at Apple.
2010 was another ugly year for video game 
retailers. Overall sales of video games were down 6 percent compared to the 2009 numbers – coming in at $18.58 billion. But there was some room for optimism.
Adding in other income streams, including digital downloads, used game sales, game rentals, subscriptions, social network games and mobile game apps, the NPD Group, which tallies the numbers, estimates preliminary software sales in 2010 were between $15.4 to $15.6 billion – which represented relatively flat growth compared to 2009 (though perhaps down by 1 percent).
Nintendo will break new ground with the 3DS 
portable gaming system later this year, offering the first consumer electronics device to let people enjoy stereoscopic 3D effects without wearing glasses. But it looks like the company might have much bigger ambitions for the gadget.
In the latest Iwata Asks Q&A with the company’s global CEO, Satoru Iwata reveals that he would like to include video recording capabilities into future updates of the 3DS, letting people shoot home movies in 3D and watch them back on their device or (presumably) on a 3D TV via SD card.
The entertainment industry’s war on piracy is 
well known, but exactly how big an army it has been battling has always been something of a mystery.
MarkMonitor, which protects online brands for its clients, has done some counting, though, and it estimates that Web piracy sites distributing software, films and other products attract roughly 53 billion visits per year.
After years of rumors, speculation
and pining, Verizon finally has the iPhone.
The company made the formal announcement Tuesday, confirming that the top smartphone on the market will be available to its customers in early March, ending AT&T’s long run of exclusivity with the device.
Blizzard’s MMO juggernaut “World of Warcraft”
is showing no signs of slowing down.
The company announced Monday that the game’s latest expansion – “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” – had sold 4.7 million copies worldwide in just one month. That makes it the fastest-selling PC game of all time, displacing “Wrath of the Lich King,” the previous “WoW” expansion.
Things are starting to slow down at CES – kind of. 
The crowds will be huge today and the show isn’t over until tomorrow, but rather than the flood of announcements, seminars and keynotes, Saturday and Sunday are basically days for attendees to seek out the items they’ve missed.
This is when quality tends to win out over hype at the show – as word of mouth spreads about smaller devices that don’t have the marketing budgets of Panasonic, Sharp or other multi-billion dollar companies.
As technology gets more complex, it’s fitting that an 
underlying theme of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show is making people’s lives easier.
Tech advances can be a dual-edged sword. Bleeding edge products might be phenomenal, but using them can often be frustrating (look no further than the bulky glasses required for 3D TV). There will be announcements galore at this year’s show – but more and more companies are realizing that the key to success is focusing on products that not only fill a need, but don’t require users to memorize a hefty manual before they turn it on.
Kinect, Microsoft’s recently launched motion 
capture device for the Xbox 360, has lived up to its reputation as one of the holiday’s must-have gifts.
The software giant says there were 8 million Kinects sold through the end of the year. That’s far beyond the company’s 5 million estimate (which was raised from an initial estimate of 3 million right before the system’s launch).
Panasonic is opening an app store – and launching a tablet.
The company announced plans Wednesday to transform its VieraCast service, which embedded a limited number of apps on select HDTVs, into Viera Connect – a market that will welcome apps from a larger pool of developers.
Chris Morris: Journalist 