The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has to do more to police and ensure mobile and broadband competition across the country, said FCC chairman Julius Genachowski in a speech earlier this week.

He also said that the agency must resist calls for various corners of government and the private sector to eliminate or phase out regulation of broadband and mobile carriers.

"Competition is the lifeblood of our free-market economy, driving private investment, innovation and consumer value," he said. "The more competition, the less need for regulation."

We've all heard the story about how the PC is doomed and PC gaming will soon be a thing of the past, so it's not surprising that a company like GREE (whose bread and butter is mobile games) says that the future of the traditional PC is basically doomed.

GREE CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka highlighted some of the changes that will be important to the gaming industry in his keynote speech at the Tokyo Game Show. He may have some valid points.

"The line between PC and mobile has blurred, and that's a trend for this year," he said at the Tokyo Game Show.

The official Kickstarter campaign for iMpulse launched this morning, with the aim of raising some much needed capital for this pocket-sized Bluetooth controller designed specifically for iOS and Android-based gaming.

Engage Digital announced that three different divisions of The Walt Disney Company will take part in The App Conference by providing a "unique and powerful keynote" at the event. The App Conference takes place October 18-19, 2012 in Santa Clara, California.

In its second year, the App Conference focuses on application development, marketing and revenue generation on mobile and tablet devices. The conference program features two tracks covering the important elements of product and business strategies in the mobile space.

While AT&T might be willing to take a lot of public heat for its stance on Apple's FaceTime application, Verizon Wireless is taking an entirely different tact. The company says that it will enable Apple's popular video communication apple on all data plans.

"All Verizon Wireless customers will be permitted to use the data-intensive application with no additional charges, including those remaining on unlimited data plans," said a company spokesperson. Sprint has also said it won't place any limits on FaceTime use.

Having bested Samsung in a U.S. court over patent infringement, Apple is putting its focus on defending itself against phone maker HTC, but it may have an uphill battle on its hands. As SlashGear points out in this article, Apple is not starting out on the best footing.

The Federal Communications Commission announced today that it will start monitoring and reporting on mobile broadband speeds across the country. The FCC said that it will begin a review process of mobile networks in the U.S. with a meeting on Sept. 21. The end goal is to provide consumers with a report card for those networks. The new effort is part of the FCC’s overall National Broadband Plan, and has gained support from both major wireless carriers and the CTIA.

The Kindle Fire has literally sold out, according to Amazon, and the Android-based device won't see a new production run. The company said that those who want a Kindle Fire but can't find it at retail will have to wait until later this year when Amazon releases a new version of the device. The device was originally released in November of last year and did pretty well by Amazon's own accounting.

One developer who is angry over web sites charging for expedited reviews of mobile game apps has decided to publicly call the web sites out. Luckily most people who consider themselves even casual gamers have never heard of these web sites, but apparently they have been running a racket for quite some time.

Speaking to Bloomberg, President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau commented on the layoffs at Peggle and Plants v. Zombies developer PopCap Games. Gibeau said that the main reason for the cuts was to make the studio more efficient and part of a move away from social game development.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is considering getting rid of a ban on using electronic devices when an aircraft is below 10,000 feet. According to this PDF file from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the agency has announced a "request for comments" about the issue from the public and experts.

Two internet rights groups have cried foul on AT&T's plans for the video chat application FaceTime. The groups say that the iPhone app will violate net neutrality rules put in place by the Federal Communications Commission in late 2011. AT&T announced last week that it would only allow consumers to use the app on its 3G network if they subscribe to new shared data plans. Those subscribers who use the old individual data plans would only be allowed to use it via Wi-Fi networks.

Casual game maker Gree announced in April of this year that it would enforce a new policy that restricted how much 16 - 17-year-old consumers could spend on in-app purchases. The self-regulating policy came in response to government worries that Japan's youth in that age range were spending ridiculous amounts of money on in-game purchases. Gree put a spending cap on people ages 16 - 19 at around $125 per month on virtual items and a cap of around $60 on those younger than 16 years of age.

While other App stores such as Google Play and Apple App Store have eschewed the ESRB ratings system here in the United States in favor of their own internal systems, Verizon is taking a different tact. Verizon has been slowly adding the ESRB ratings system for all of the gaming apps in the Verizon App Store for its supported Android devices.

Google takes a break from suing other companies over phone designs using patents it acquired from Motorola to lay off 4,000 employees, or 20 percent of the company's work force. Google says that this reduction is part of a larger restructuring plan that will ultimately see the closure of one-third of Motorola’s 90 offices.

id Software co-founder and chief mad scientist John Carmack revealed during the keynote address at QuakeCon yesterday that his studio had to cease developing mobile games to focus on Quake 4. Carmack said that it had to close its mobile game operation and shelf whatever iOS projects it was working on to focus on other important priorities:

"It saddened me a lot to because I loved doing the mobile work," he said. "It was fun, it was fun for the company, it makes money but it's not a grand slam sort of thing."

Earlier this week the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined Verizon Wireless $1.25 million for limiting its customers’ use of applications on its 4G network. In 2011, Free Press filed a formal complaint with the FCC against Verizon after reports indicated that Verizon had allegedly urged Google to remove some apps from its Android Market. These apps allowed Verizon subscribers to use tethering. Before these apps were available customers spent as much as $30 extra a month to tether.

Mobile entertainment company Glu Mobile has purchased GameSpy from News Corp. for about $2.7 million in stock. The online multiplayer and matchmaking technology company was bought by IGN in 2004 for roughly $57 million. Later IGN and its properties were purchased by News Corp.

"Our acquisition of GameSpy brings Glu industry-recognized leadership in online, cross-platform technology infrastructure," said Niccolo de Masi, the CEO of Glu.

Here's a feel good story for the day - at least for developer Imangi Studios: it's ultra-popular iOS and Android game, Temple Run, is ... ultra-popular. According to a press release issued by the company today, Temple Run has been downloaded over 100 million times in the last year, with over 68 million downloads on iOS devices, and on 32 million Android devices.

Electronic Arts has merged two of its mobile game development studios into one mega-studio in Australia. Firemint and IronMonkeys will be merged into a single studio now known as Firemonkeys studio.

In a statement on Facebook, game developer Madfinger Games claims that the piracy rate for its Android zombie shooting game was "unbelievably high." The game had been priced at a mere 99 cents, but the developers say that the low price point didn’t stop pirates from stealing the game and using it for free.

As a result the company has announced that the Android version of the game is now completely free to play and enjoy. When we say free, we do not mean "free-to-play," for the record.

Over the weekend it was revealed that Minecraft maker Mojang is being sued by a Luxembourg, Germany-based company called Uniloc for patent infringement. The company claims that Mojang violated a patent it holds related to a "system and method for preventing unauthorized access to electronic data".

Ben Cousins, general manager of Ngmoco, recently gave a keynote at GDC Taipei where he offered his predictions on the five big trends in the game industry across the next 5-10 years. One of the big trends that will change the industry will be freemium and mobile, according to Cousins. In his keynote he claims that the combination of mobile and freemium games will ultimately kill off the home console.

Engage Digital has issued a call for speakers for the second annual App Conference on October 18-19, 2012 in Santa Clara, CA. Those interested in sharing their expertise with the app development and business community can submit their pitches here.

The deadline is June 11. The event caters to app developers on various platforms including game developers.

The BBC reports that a Latvian company has been fined £50,000 over smartphone apps it created that tricked people into receiving premium rate text messages. What's worse is that these apps pretended to be legitimate versions of hit apps such as Angry Birds and Cut The Rope. More than 1,000 people received bills after downloading the fake versions of games. Naturally they were upset about this and complained.

The government of Japan has decided that it needs to ban 'complete gacha' mechanics in video games, particularly those used by companies like Namco Bandai, Gree and DeNa. Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency will ban 'complete gacha' mechanics because they see it as encouraging the addictive nature of gambling.

While most of us couldn't imagine having billions of dollars in profits, that doesn't take away the sting of losing $700 million that Gree CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka feels. According to this Kotaku report, over the weekend the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the Japanese government could regulate online social games that have players paying extra money to try and win rare in-game items. The items in question are rare in-game idol cards. Players collect these cards in order to collect a whole deck. In Japan both Gree and DeNA use this reward system for their social games.

"Hate" is a pretty strong way of describing something that you might find slightly off-putting but that's the word that Edmund McMillen of Team Meat describes "freemium games." The maker of Super Meat Boy recently said on his team blog that free-to-play mobile games have a "lack of respect for players."

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) and George Mason University President Alan Merten announced the creation of a series of interactive and educational computer and mobile phone game applications that teach youngsters about the risks and consequences of joining gangs. The goal of these programs is easy enough: to slow down gang recruitment levels in the state.

During the spring semester, GMU students used their programming skills and tapped into the attorney general’s office information of gangs to create several games and apps.

Motorola Mobility has won an injunction against Microsoft in Germany prohibiting the sale of products in the country including Windows 7 and the Xbox 360. The injunction is the latest punch thrown in a bitter patent lawsuit between Motorola and Microsoft