Nintendo of America announced that its hand-held systems including the 3DS, 2DS, and 3DS XL have sold more than 11.5 million units in the United States since launch. That figure is way up from the 10.5 million units the company said it has sold to-date less than a month ago. Nintendo also said that over the last 12 months over 16 million 3DS games had been sold through a combination of retail sales and digital sales through the eShop. That's a 45 percent increase in software sales year-over-year.

PlayStation marketing VP John Koller says that the PlayStation 4's early lead over the Xbox One is not a big deal. Koller tells CVG that his company is not focused on any advantage it has at this early stage of the new console cycle.

In a self-congratulatory post on Xbox Wire, Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President of Marketing, Strategy and Business, Xbox announced that the next-generation console system has sold three million units to-date since its launch on November 22.

Virtual currency Bitcoin jumped to over $1,000 once again after social games maker Zynga said that it would use the currency as a payment option for its various games.

The virtual currency's value has been highly volatile in recent weeks; in November it peaked at $1,250, but fell sharply to $421 in December after China restricted trade. As of this morning a single Bitcoin was trading at $1,030 on MTGox, one of the virtual currency's major exchanges.

Dave Roberts, chief executive of Electronic Arts’ PopCap Games division, will retire next week, according to a GamesBeat report. Roberts, who joined the company almost nine years ago will officially exit the company on January 8, with PopCap co-founder John Vechey taking over the job of CEO at the Seattle-based studio responsible for the Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled franchises.

Developer Bohemia Interactive recently revealed that more than 400,000 people have put down their hard-earned money to buy DayZ during its first week on Steam Early Access. The game, which began its life as a mod for Arma 2, was released on December 16.

While some people who might not otherwise be interested in a game like DayZ are taking note because of its popularity, Bohemia Interactive is warning potential customers that the game they are thinking about buying early is not finished and still contains a lot of bugs.

Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V has sold more than 3.6 million copies in the UK, according to CVG, and is poised to take the crown for the best-selling game of all time.

China's video game industry brought in an estimated $13 billion in revenue in 2013, a 34 percent increase over revenue of $9.7 billion generated in 2011. That figure comes from the China Games Party, a committee that oversees the games industry in the region. The figures were unveiled at the recent China Game Industry Annual Conference. According to the data, client-based PC games represented more than 64.5 percent of revenue totaling approximately $8.7 billion, while browser-based games brought in $2 billion, and social games raked in less than $1 billion.

According to IBM's newly released "Digital Analytics Benchmark Report," purchases made from iOS devices accounted for about 23 percent of the online shopping done on Christmas Day in the U.S. The report tracked millions of transactions from approximately 800 U.S. retail websites. Around 4.6 percent of purchases were made on Android devices.

New research from financial analytics firm EEDAR concludes that software reviews matter more in the early part of a console's life cycle. The new research from EEDAR provided to GamesIndustry International this morning shows a stronger correlation between review scores and sales early in a platform's lifespan.

David DeMartini, a former senior vice president at EA has joined Oculus VR as its new head of worldwide publishing. DeMartini is the first executive to join this brand new division. He says that this new position is not unlike what he did for Electronic Arts.

This week Japanese publisher Cyber Front announced its dissolution in a simple statement (PDF, Japanese) published on its website (according to a translation by Gamasutra).

Even though Activision warned (earlier in the year) that it expected this year's iteration of the Call of Duty series to be down compared to last year's Black Ops II because of the transition to new console systems, Cowen analyst Doug Creutz is sounding alarm bells with investors today. The analyst noted that sales of the franchise year-over-year are down 19 percent and could ultimately be down a lot lower than that for the life of the title.

Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga are the top iPhone and iPad apps of 2013, according to Apple's annual year-end report on its free and paid apps for its iOS devices.

On both the free iPhone and iPad charts, Candy Crush Saga was the king of the hill, while paid apps on both platforms were ruled by Mojang's pocket edition of Minecraft.

Both games beat out some pretty powerful competition including YouTube, Google Maps, Skype, and even Instagram.

The full list can be found below:

Top 10 Free iPhone Apps

Oculus VR has raised $75 million to help complete the consumer version of the Rift virtual reality gaming headset. Venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz helped find most of the Series B funding money, which comes from Spark Capital, Matrix Partners and Formation|8. This injection of cash follows $16 million in Series A funding the company received in June of this year, $2.4 million in crowdfunding generated from its highly successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012, and direct sales of more than 30,000 development kits.

As the supposed console war kicks off, it looks like Sony has a slight edge over Microsoft. According to data released by retail research firm NPD Group, the PS4 edged out the Xbox One in sales, but Microsoft says it won a battle on a different front during the launch window for the next-gen consoles. More PS4 software was sold as well during the period, but more sales of PS4 consoles and software makes sense given that the system went on sale a week before the Xbox One did in North America.

According to a brief report in Tax News the French government is pushing to reform the country's video games tax credit (known as the CIJV). French Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti, Budget Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, and Innovation Minister Fleur Pellerin, have all embraced the French National Assembly's adoption of plans to reform the country's video games tax credit (CIJV).

A new report from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) claims that video games, video game systems, and accessories are the most wanted items for the 2013 holiday season. according to the report, approximately 79 million Americans intend to purchase video games during the holiday season, according to new market research and analysis.

Microsoft said today that it has sold more than two million Xbox One consoles worldwide in a little over two weeks since the system launched on Nov. 22.

Sony said earlier in the month that it had managed to move 2.1 million hardware units in roughly the same timeframe after it launched a week before the Xbox One. The Xbox One launched in 13 regions, while the PS4 only launched in the U.S. and Canada to begin with, and was subsequently released in multiple other regions two weeks later.

According to a Wall Street Journal report (membership required), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) spent a considerable amount of money and effort in fighting anti-videogame laws in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Jersey - and in Oklahoma last year. Many of the bills have either died or are locked in legislative committees waiting for approval.

The ESA is also taking aim at a federal bill, according to records and a co-sponsor of the bill.

PS4 sales are outpacing Xbox One sales in Spain, according to PlayStation Spain and Portugal CEO James Armstrong. Armstrong claims that the PS4 is outselling Xbox One by more than three units to one. The console has sold about 80,000 units in Spain since the European PS4 release date of November 29, he also claims. Armstrong said that the company is working hard to fulfill another 12,000 - 15,000 pre-orders that have yet to be met due to supply constraints.

Rakuten, owner of the UK-based games retailer Play.com, claims that Nintendo’s Wii U has seen a 75 percent sales spike in October. The company predicts that Wii U and iPad will be more popular than Xbox One and PS4 amongst children during the holiday season. The company also cites a Twitter analysis that comes to the conclusion that its Wii U and iPad range are "the most talked about presents for children this Christmas."

Gamasutra has the exclusive scoop on the Stardock Staffing Company, a new unit put together by Galactic Civilizations developer Stardock. Thaw company announced earlier this year that it had put together a multi-million dollar fund called the Stardock Investment Fund, with the goal of using it to invest in "promising, small companies."

Capcom announced that the latest title in its Monster Hunter series has helped push the franchise to 28 million units sold to date. In October, Capcom said that the franchise had sold 26 million units total. It also revealed that the latest game in the series - Monster Hunter 4 - had sold four million copies since its release in September. The 3DS game has only been released in Japan. That four million figure included sales of the downloadable version and is up from the three million figure announced in October.

DFC Intelligence predicts that the global market for video game software on console systems will grow by right around 30 percent to somewhere in the neighborhood of $22 to $23 billion a year from 2016 to 2018. This figure includes revenue from game software from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, but excludes additional revenue these platforms will receive from non-gaming sources such as streaming video.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates that Sony, who has promised "substantial resupplies" of the PlayStation 4 consoles in North America before the end of 2013, is making one million units per month. Pachter says that Sony is shipping about one million units to North America per month, with about half of those units going to retailer GameStop.

Sony says that it has sold 2.1 million PlayStation 4 consoles worldwide since its launch in North America on November 15. The company claims that it sold one million PS4s in its first 24 hours of availability in the United States and 250,000 units in its first 24 hours in the United Kingdom. The PS4 is currently available in 32 territories.

Microsoft fared considerably better than Sony on Black Friday, according to data analysts InfoScout. The firm claims that Xbox One was the highest selling console during the period, comprising 31 percent of total hardware sales. The Xbox 360 also fared pretty well, grabbing a 30 percent share resulting in a joint Microsoft lead of 60 percent. Joint sales of the PS3 and PS4 amounted to 30 percent share in sales total, while sales of the Wii U and Wii combined was 7 percent.

EA Studios executive vice president Patrick Soderlund predicts that the life cycle of the newest consoles from Sony and Microsoft will not be as long as the last console cycle (which has not ended yet) Soderlund says that he expects the PS4 and Xbox One console cycle to last for five to six years. Soderlund, who is in charge of EA's console and PC games development, also said that the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation "may have gone on a little bit longer than I would have wanted."

Research firm NPD Group has released a new report called Q3 2013 Games Market Dynamics: U.S., which details the spending habits of video game consumers in the United States during the third quarter of this year. The report notes that $3.45 billion was spent on games in Q3 2013. Around $1.30 billion of that total was spent on physical game software, while $1.75 billion was spent on digital content (digital purchases, DLC, subscriptions, social, and mobile games), $436 million went towards used games and game rentals.