Blog Posts by Associated Press

Oculous Rift (Credit: Oculous)
By Derrick J. Lang, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — It's back.

The virtual reality headset, the gizmo that was supposed to seamlessly transport wearers to three-dimensional virtual worlds, has made a remarkable return at this year's Game Developers Conference, an annual gathering of video game makers in San Francisco.

After drumming up hype over the past year and banking $2.4 million from crowdfunding, the Irvine, Calif.-based company Oculus VR captured the conference's attention this week with the Oculus Rift, its VR headset that's more like a pair of ski goggles than those bulky gaming helmets of the 1990s that usually left users with headaches.

By Derrick J. Lang, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It's a time of transition for the video game industry.

Journey (Credit: thatgamecompany)With last year's launch of the Wii U, the impending arrival of the PlayStation 4 and the likelihood of a new Xbox on the horizon, the next generation of video game consoles is nearly here.

However, more than half of the attendees at this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco identify themselves as indie developers and their next creations will be for smartphones and tablets. So when it comes to the next generation of consoles, the question on their minds doesn't seem to be "What's next?" but rather "Who cares?"

Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite (Credit: 2K Games/Irrational Games)By Derrick J. Lang, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Locked in a tower lingering above a fantastical floating city, past electrical barricades and steel doors, is a curious young brunette woman in a long blue dress that's just a few shades darker than her big, expressive eyes. Her name is Elizabeth, and with an enterprising blend of art and technology, the creators of "BioShock Infinite" have aspirations that she'll be the most human-like character to ever appear in a video game.

In the eagerly anticipated follow-up to 2007's "BioShock" - a hugely popular undersea first-person shoot-'em-up - players are cast as Booker DeWitt, a gruff ex-Pinkerton agent who rockets to the cloud city in 1912 to track down this mysterious woman. Within the first hour of the game, he frees her - but that's just the beginning of their journey together in the airy yet foreboding kingdom of Columbia.

By Jason Keyser, Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — As a kid rooting around in the attic of his boyhood home, Allan Calhamer stumbled across an old book of maps and became entranced by faraway places that no longer existed, such as the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires.

Allan CalhamerThat discovery and a brewing fascination with world politics and international affairs were the genesis of "Diplomacy," the board game he would create years later as a history student at Harvard University in the 1950s. After its commercial release in 1959, the game earned a loyal legion of fans in the U.S. and elsewhere that reportedly included President John F. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger and Walter Cronkite, among others.

Calhamer died Monday at a hospital in the western Chicago suburbs where he grew up, his daughter Selenne Calhamer-Boling said. He was 81.

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.

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus (Credit: Associated Press/Paul Sakuma)By Barbara Ortutay, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Online game maker Zynga is reporting a smaller net loss and nearly unchanged revenue for the fourth quarter of 2012, a year in which its stock price shrank 75 percent.

The results flew past Wall Street's muted expectations. Zynga's battered shares added nearly 6 percent in after-hours trading as a result.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata (Credit: Koji Sasahara/Associated Press)By Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) — Nintendo's president Thursday ruled out price cuts for its new Wii U home console as a way to boost sales, vowing to become profitable again in its core businesses as smartphones and tablets increasingly threaten specialized game machines.

Satoru Iwata, speaking at a Tokyo hotel to investors and reporters a day after earnings were released, acknowledged the sales momentum for the Wii U, as well as the 3DS hand-held game machine, had run out of steam during the key year-end shopping season, especially in the U.S.

By Erika Niedowski, Associated Press

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling - whose video game company underwent a spectacular collapse into bankruptcy last year - is selling the blood-stained sock he wore during the 2004 World Series.

Curt Schilling (Credit: Getty Images)Chris Ivy, director of sports for Texas-based Heritage Auctions, says online bidding begins around Feb. 4. Live bidding will take place Feb. 23.

The sock previously had been on loan to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It has been at Heritage's Dallas headquarters for several weeks and will be displayed at the auction house's Manhattan office before it is sold, according to Ivy.