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Lego friends (Credit: Lego)COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Lego's sales soared 25 percent last year thanks in part to its new series of building blocks designed for girls.

The privately owned company said Thursday that on revenue of 23.4 billion kroner ($4.2 billion) its net profits grew 38 percent, to 5.6 billion kroner ($1 billion).

The company, based in western Denmark, said the Lego Star Wars and Lego Ninjago series remained among the more popular, but it was a novel rollout for girls, Lego Friends, that sold better than expected — to the extent that production units were unable to keep pace with demand.

Rebekah Araujo hopes to get girls in EA's FIFA gamesBy Mike Krumboltz

Rebekah Araujo loves soccer. When she was just two-years old, her father Roberto put a soccer ball at her feet. Now, the 13-year-old Maryland girl loves playing it, talking about it, and playing video games based on it. But there is one thing she doesn't love -- the fact that EA Sports' FIFA soccer video game series doesn't include female players.

Photo: PR NewswireWhile Sony formally unveiled the PlayStation 4 at its media event Wednesday night, it left plenty of questions unanswered.

Much of that was deliberate. After all, the system won't hit store shelves until the holidays -- a good 9 months off -- and the company's marketing machine needs to keep some of its powder dry. But Sony ignored several concerns during its two-hour press conference, many of which remain top of mind for those interested in the next-generation console.

Luckily, Sony addressed a few of these following the reveal. Here's the lowdown on a handful of big issues.

Sony's Andrew House introduces PlayStation 4 (Credit: PRNewsFoto/Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.)After almost a year of rumors and whispers, Sony has finally revealed the worst kept secret in gaming: The PlayStation 4 is on the way.

At a lavish press event in New York, the company showed off its next-generation console, a system it hopes will lure people away not only from competing machines from Microsoft and Nintendo, but from smart phones, tablets and other new gaming platforms. It will be released this holiday season, though the company didn’t announce a price.

It’s a big, big day for Sony, as the company is expected to finally pull the wraps off the follow-up to the PS3 at a gala event in New York. Will the PS4 boast impressive new power? Crazy new controllers? Social networking integration? Cloud-based gameplay? And most importantly, can it cut this tin can? We’ll all find what the future holds at 6:00 pm (EST) when the press conference begins.

And you can watch the whole thing as it goes down right here. The livestream will technically go live 5 minutes before the event starts.

Q*bert is having something of a renaissance these days. After playing a pivotal role in last year's game-friendly film Wreck-It Ralph, the big nosed video game icon is at the center of a pair of new video game records.

George Leutz has broken the reigning Q*bert high score, a record that stood for 30 years, by playing the classic coin-op for nearly 85 consecutive hours. He pressed play right before noon on February 14 and didn't finish playing until 12:38am on February 18^th.

Destiny (Credit: Bungie/Activision)Is there life after Halo?

The ace game developers at Bungie Studios, best known as the folks who turned Master Chief into a household name, believe there is, and they’ve poignantly named it Destiny.

At a recent event at their sprawling headquarters in Bellevue, WA., Bungie and publisher Activision finally pulled the curtains back (a bit) on their first non-Halo project in a dozen years. And while Destiny shares some general sci-fi themes with Master Chief’s expansive mythos, the creators believes their new shooter is significantly more ambitious.

Nintendo has a problem on its hands.

The Wii U, in its second full month of availability, sold a paltry 57,000 units in the U.S. according to data from The NPD Group. That's substantially fewer than its predecessor and well under half the number analysts were expecting for the month. And it props opens the door -- and perhaps issues a warning -- for Sony and Microsoft, which are both expected to roll out new consoles this year.