Video Games

A few days after South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford returned from Argentina and publicly revealed his adulterous affair with a Buenos Aires businesswoman, a group of five video game creators are gathered in a small conference room in San Francisco to discuss politicians with a wandering eye.

To predict what will happen in the video game business this holiday season, just look at last year. Activision Blizzard Inc. said Wednesday that it expected consumers to behave the same way they did a year ago -- by flocking to top titles and shunning marginal or lesser-known games.

Activision Blizzard Inc. has given up on its effort to block competitor Electronic Arts Inc. from releasing the heavy-metal music game Brutal Legend, which stars Jack Black. A person familiar with the settlement, who declined to be identified because the terms are confidential, confirmed to The Times that the game would be released in October, as EA, of Redwood City, Calif., had previously planned. Santa Monica-based Activision sued the game's developer, Double Fine Productions Inc.

The video game industry experienced a stomach-churning 29% drop in U.S. sales in July, its third-worst year-over-year slide since January 1995, when NPD Group Inc. first began tracking sales data. The monthly decline, the industry's fifth consecutive drop, means game console and software sales are now down 14% from January through July this year compared with the first seven months of 2008. To climb out of the red zone, sales from August through December would need to grow 11% from a year earlier, NPD analyst Anita Frazier said.

For most of his career in the NBA, there have been two Kobe Bryants, each evolving in mirror universes. One is a 6-foot-6 Los Angeles Lakers guard who grew up playing Double Dribble, a video game released in the 1980s, with his cousins during summer visits to his grandmother's house. The other is also a basketball player, albeit a digital one created 10 years ago by Visual Concepts, a video game developer in Novato, Calif. If the real Kobe built up his shoulders, so would the virtual Kobe.

The 2009 version of Beatlemania had no screams, no fainting and little hysteria. But there were plenty of smiles on the faces of fans indulging their fondness for the music of the Fab Four as the Beatles: Rock Band and a batch of new and improved CDs of their complete catalog went on sale Wednesday. "I always liked the Beatles," said Theresa Gordon, 48, who trekked from Lake Arrowhead to a Best Buy store in West Los Angeles with her four children, three of whom made a beeline for the Beatles: Rock Band setup and tackled "I Am the Walrus."

Boom! Not even John Madden and his trademark expressions could avert the crash in video game sales in August, which fell 16% from last year. The drop was the industry's sixth consecutive monthly decline, according to a report released Thursday by market research firm NPD Group Inc. That means sales of games and game consoles must grow 14% in the last four months of the year for 2009 sales to be flat with 2008, NPD analyst Anita Frazier said....

Let the price war on video game consoles begin. Weeks after Sony Corp. trimmed the price of its PlayStation 3 console and Microsoft Corp. issued a $50 rebate for its Xbox 360 Elite system, Nintendo Co. said Wednesday night that it would slash the price of its Wii console 20% to $200, starting Sunday. To fuel sales, Nintendo plans to reach out to millions of prospective Wii users by holding sampling events where shoppers can try out games on the console. The Japanese game company also said it would release the New Super Mario Bros.

In January, Stephanie Barish took her son to a birthday party and made the fortuitous choice to wear a T-shirt with the logo for Indiecade, a festival she runs that is dedicated to independently made, artistic video games. While there, she met a fellow parent, Scott Malsin, who was then the mayor of Culver City. He asked what the T-shirt meant and was immediately intrigued. "I wasn't aware of that world at all, but as we spoke it immediately appealed to me, and I asked her if she would think about holding it in Culver City," said Malsin, who's now on the City Council.

Japan's big-name electronics manufacturers are readying flat-screen TVs that can show high-definition movies and video games in 3-D for launch next year. At the country's biggest consumer electronics show, which opened Tuesday just outside Tokyo, all the major makers had large 3-D prototypes on display. Visitors to company booths at the show donned special electronic glasses and watched as soccer balls flew toward them in sports clips and virtual heroes moved deep into the background of video games.