Chinese telecomm ZTE Corp. is apparently in a joint venture with Chinese game developer The9 Ltd. to build a new console for the Chinese market, according to a Bloomberg report. When grilled by Bloomberg about the new console, a representative from ZTE Corp. confirmed that its Fun Box game console will be released this month, will be powered by an Nvidia Tegra 4 chip, feature 2GB of RAM, and feature Bluetooth-enabled game controllers.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) today presented Texas Gov. Rick Perry (and former Republican presidential candidate) an award for his efforts to create jobs, provide tax incentives and generally foster the growth of the computer and video game industry in the state. ESA president and CEO Michael D. Gallagher presented the award to the Governor and praised him for his "longstanding support for the industry" during an award ceremony at the historic Governor’s Mansion.

According to one Electronic Arts executive, consumers should not expect to see a price cut on last generation systems like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 any time soon. Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, & Technology conference in San Francisco this week, EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen said not to expect any movement on that front until the end of this year - possibly during or after the 2014 holiday shopping season.

PS4 digital and retail software sales approach 14 million units, according to Sony. The company claims that global sales of games are well over 13.7 million units as of March 2.

Danish developer Interceptor has bought 3D Realms, according to this Eurogamer report. Initially there was some confusion because the company said it bought Apogee Software LTD. The new Apogee - a separate company doing business under the name Apogee Software LLC - denied the report. This caused Interceptor CEO Frederik Schreiber to later clarify on Twitter.

Starbreeze CEO Bo Andersson Klint says that the success of its action game Payday 2 has driven a turnaround for the Swedish development studio. In the six month period that ended on December 31, 2013, pre-tax profit amounted to SEK 103.7 million and net sales during the same period rose from SEK 25.8 million a year earlier to SEK 130.4 million.

"To put the past six months in perspective," said CEO Bo Andersson Klint, "I would like to highlight that Starbreeze historically, from 1998 to June 2013, accumulated a total loss of SEK 94 million (£8,650,000).

The House Ways and Means Committee released details on in its long-awaited tax reform bill, which offers a variety of tax benefits to businesses... while excluding video game makers from R&D tax credits, according to a Washington Examiner report.

The PlayStation 4 went on sale in Japan on February 24, and according to Japanese publication Famitsu, the system sold a repeatable 320,000 hardware units. Believe it or not, the two day sales figures are a lot better than they were for Sony's last console launch in the region; the PlayStation 3 sold 88,443 units in its first two days of release in Japan. The PlayStation 2 remains Sony's fastest selling console in Japan to date, hitting 630,552 units in its first two days on sale.

Sony Pictures has purchased the film rights to "Console Wars," a book chronicling the war between Nintendo and Sega in the 1990's. Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Pineapple Express) has apparently signed on to write and direct a film based on the book. He will be joined by his long-time writing partner Evan Goldberg as well, according to Book Trade.

According to a new report from NPD Group called "Exploring Digital Gaming," around 16 percent of Americans use digital distribution exclusively, ignoring traditional disc-based games altogether.

Electronic Arts COO Peter Moore says that his company's digital revenue will overtake its physical disc sales in two years. Moore made the comments during a conversation with Entertainment Software Association president Mike Gallagher at the Digital Entertainment World conference in Los Angeles, as reported on by Games Industry International.

Organizers of the Game Developers Conference today released the second annual "State of the Industry" report, which offers trend data based on game developers polled during last year's event. The data is based on the responses of 2,600 North American game industry professionals.

Candy Crush Saga maker King has filed the paperwork to become a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The company has filed an application to register with the Stock Exchange under the name King Digital Entertainment, in an IPO that some believe is worth upwards of $500 million.

According to new data from AppData, Supercell's free-to-play action strategy game Clash of Clans generates $654,000 per day in micro-transactions. Yes we have a hard time believing that figure too, but that is the figure put out by AppData, and their data is always spot on.

That $654,000 in daily revenue comes from the purchase of add-on content, booster packs, and other forms of downloadable content. The game launched for iOS devices in 2012 and made its way to the Android last year.

Around 40 percent of consumers will watch video on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones by 2018, according to a new report from research firm ABI Research. This the firm says, is in spite of strong efforts to bring online video to new devices such as Google’s Chromecast and new video game consoles from Microsoft and Sony.

Entertainment Software Association president Michael Gallagher issued a statement today condemning a speech from venture capitalist Gilman Louie about the state of the game industry during his DICE 2014 talk "Disrupting Gaming."

Michael Gallagher, president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, publicly admonished venture capitalist Gilman Louie for remarks Louie made about the state of the game industry during his DICE 2014 talk "Disrupting Gaming."

According to a research note from Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter to investors, game sales dipped 20 percent on the weakness of current generation sales in the month of January. Pachter is making his predictions ahead of the NPD Groups' retail report for the month of January. When those numbers are released on Thursday, Pachter says that they will show that retail software sales fell 20 percent in January to around $300 million - down 20 percent from the $373 million generated in the same period a year ago.

Sales of Blizzard's popular online-only action-RPG Diablo 3 have reached 15 million to date worldwide, according to Activision Blizzard. The new milestone was revealed as part of the company's latest financial report. Those 15 million in sales include versions of the game across all platforms. Activision Blizzard chief Bobby Kotick said that these numbers also bode well for the upcoming launch of the expansion pack Reaper of Souls in March.

Game-focused video streaming service Twitch is now one of the five most popular destinations for U.S. internet users, according to an infographic published by Wall Street Journal and highlighted by Twitch marketing VP Matt DiPietro.

Sony's games division (which covers PS Vita, PS3, PS4, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Online Entertainment, and PlayStation Network) recorded sales and operating revenue of 441.8 billion yen (or $4.35 billion USD) for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2013. That's a 64.6 percent year-on-year increase thanks to the launch of the PlayStation 4 in major markets around the world last November.

Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian sent out a report this morning to investors detailing predictions of the interactive entertainment sector in 2014 and offered a preview of several high profile companies' Q4 results. Sebastian said that the next phase of growth for the industry after a successful next-generation rollout during the holiday season is to survive the traditional Q1 lull the sector experiences every year.

While there's been a lot of talk about the questionable relationships between publishers like EA and Microsoft with YouTube content creators, one very familiar YouTube personality claims that it's a pretty common practice.

YouTube personality Boogie2988, who has more than 1.6 million subscribers and produces the popular Francis rage series of videos, claims that the endorsement policies being talked about by the games media are part of daily business within YouTube networks.

Chris Roberts and his studio Cloud Imperium Games continue to generate ridiculous sums of money from ongoing crowd-funding efforts for his latest space simulation game Star Citizen. As of this writing, the game has managed to raise an impressive $37 million dollars through a combination of the original Kickstarter campaign for the game and subsequent efforts through the game's official web site.

On Friday Nintendo projected that it would take a $240 million net loss for the fiscal year ending in March on weak holiday sales of its Wii U console and related software, and scaled back its sales projections for its home console and its 3DS hand-held. This morning the company is seeing the effects of that news in its stock price, according to this BBC report.

Richard Garriott and his development studio Portalarium have managed to raise another $1 million for his new online role-playing game Shroud of the Avatar. The original Kickstarter campaign for the game in 2013 managed to rake in around $1.9 million by its close - but like Chris Roberts' Kickstarter for Star Citizen, Garriott and company have continued to collect funding via the game's website. Combing the original $1.9 million with donations through the web site, Shroud of the Avatar has managed to raise a respectable $3,038,484.

According to NPD Group's retail sales numbers for the month of December, Xbox One was the top-selling console in the U.S., moving right around 908,000 units. The Xbox 360 came in third with roughly 643,000 units sold.

"We're grateful for the excitement and support of our fans - many purchasing their next Xbox console and many joining the Xbox family for the first time," commented corporate vice president of marketing, strategy and business for Xbox Yusuf Mehdi.

Nintendo has revised its forecasts for the fiscal year to a net loss of $240 million (25 billion yen) due to weak sales of the Wii U during the holiday shopping season, according to a syndicated Bloomberg report. The company described its year-end sales of Wii U consoles and software as "far below expectations."

Retail sales of video games slipped overall in 2013 as gamers and game makers prepared for a transition to next-generation systems, according to data released by retail research firm NPD Group on Thursday. Overall sales dropped two percent for the year despite the launch of the Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One in late November. But don’t feel sorry for game companies, as the overall business saw growth when you count digital sales such as mobile and online games.

Video game industry trade group UKIE is strongly disputing the Government's claim that the games industry in the United Kingdom is shrinking. The UK games industry shrank by nearly half in 2012 compared to 2011, according to figures released by the department for Culture, Media and Sport. UKIE disputes the findings of the report and warns that many UK games companies are not being counted as part of official industrial and economic figures.

GameStop said today that it generated $3.15 billion in total worldwide sales over the nine-week holiday shopping season of 2013. The numbers represent a 9.3 increase over the same period a year ago, which can be directly attributed to new consoles and new console software sales. In fact, GameStop said that hardware sales were up 99.8 percent over the same period a year ago. Go figure.