Video game hardware and software sales were down by 25 percent during the month of April (April 4 - May 7, 2013) in North America, according to data released by the NPD Group. Excluding PC game sales numbers, the video game sector raked in $495.2 million.

At about this time last year adult video streaming and rental outfit SugarDVD announced that it would bring its services to the PlayStation 3. Since that time the service has been added to every imaginable device on the planet either through a custom app or simply via a device's version of a web browser. SugarDVD is available (or at least accessible) on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, Ouya, iPad, Android, ROKU, BOXEE, and Google TV.

On Thursday June 13th (as part of this year’s E3 expo) video gaming site Venus Patrol will team up with MOCAtv (the video channel of Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art) to present an alternative press conference called HORIZON. Organizers say that this press event will show off a "lineup of beautiful games as an alternative to what we’ve come to expect from standard E3 fare."

As detailed in this May 7 story, indie studio Notion Games indicated that Ubisoft had asked it to change the name of its game Super Ubi Land to something else to avoid the implication that the game was somehow associated with the French publisher. At the time Notion Games said that it would do just that and that it understood where Ubisoft was coming from.

In April the House of Representatives managed to push the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) through the chamber, but shortly thereafter it stalled in the Senate. Leaders there said they weren't planning on taking the issue up, instead planning to focus on a number of separate bills to address issues related to cybersecurity concerns by the government and corporations.

Electronic Arts has decided to do away with its controversial online pass system for used games, the company confirmed with GamesBeat last night.

"Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass," EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed to GamesBeat in an e-mail. "None of our new EA titles will include that feature."

A group of developers have released a video showing the results of reverse engineering the Nintendo Wii U GamePad. The little experiment shows how the GamePad communicates with the main console system and notes that it isn't a very secure device. Speaking at length with Eurogamer's Digital Foundry one of the developers involved in the project - Pierre Bourdon - says that "The GamePad is actually not a very secure device... Read more