Blog Posts by Ben Silverman

Free Realms Free-to-play online games are a sensation on the PC, but they're pretty much absent on the home consoles.

Thanks to Sony Online, that's about to change.

The company has announced plans to release the hugely popular, kid-friendly Free Realms on the PS3 on March 29th, making it the first free-to-play virtual world game to arrive on a console.

It might not enjoy the instant name recognition of World of Warcraft, but Free Realms actually boasts more registered players, with nearly 17 million to Wacraft's 12 million. While users aren't required to pay a monthly fee, they can access more quests and higher level caps by becoming paid members, and can purchase loads of items and weapons via

Call of Duty: Black Ops Well, that didn't take long.

According to new figures released Thursday by sales tracking firm the NPD Group, Activision's first-person blockbuster Call of Duty: Black Ops is now the best-selling video game ever released in the U.S.

"Call of Duty: Black Ops was the best-selling game in February, retaining the top selling spot since launch in November. It has now become the best-selling game in history, topping Wii Play," said the NPD's Anita Frazier.

Activision has yet to formally release their own Black Ops tally, but NPD puts it at 13.7 million copies sold in the U.S. (although since NPD doesn't count Wal-Mart sales, that's likely a bit low). That indeed surpasses Nintendo's Wii Play,

Kinect makes a move Microsoft's Kinect camera system is all about movement, but no one could have imagined it would move this quickly.

The company today revealed some startling sales info for the motion-control device. According to Microsoft, since launching in November of 2010 they've sold over 10 million
Kinect sensors worldwide. Even more impressive is the rate at which those units
were sold: in its first 60 days (between November 4, 2010 and January 3, 2011),
eight million Kinects were sold, an average of 133,333 Kinects per day.

Big numbers? To Guinness World Records, they're pretty much
the biggest ever. The record-tracking authority has officially stated that
Kinect is now the fastest-selling consumer

Nintendo president Iwata at GDC - Nintendo Ask any video game insider about the future of gaming and they'll quickly point to Facebook blockbusters like Farmville and mobile hits
like Angry Birds.

Ask Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata, however, and you're in for a rough ride.

During his keynote speech at this week's Game Developers Conference, Iwata shrugged off the success of social and mobile gaming by issuing a clear warning to game makers: such titles are bad for business as they promote quantity over quality, and the increased interest in these platforms will threaten their very livelihoods.

"The majority of people here are creating games for social and mobile," Iwata said to a packed crowd on Wednesday. "I fear our business is

Craziest video game crossovers

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Why settle for one game franchise when you can have two in the same game? Such is the thinking behind video game crossovers, titles that somehow find a way to bring together seemingly unrelated franchises under one harmonious video game roof.

Back in the Day: Oldest Video Games

Think Mario is old-school? In the grand scheme of things,
he's a regular newbie. With roots reaching back to the middle of the 20th
century, the earliest video games were crafted by risk-taking inventors who
toiled away in anonymity for the sheer sake of technological progress. Take a
trip through time and check out gaming's true classics.

Whose turn is it again? It's designed to be unwinnable, has the strategic depth of Jersey Shore, and stops being entertaining right around when you stop
believing in Santa Claus. As a kid's diversion, it's genius, but as a grown-up game, it's the pits.

It's tic-tac-toe, the definitive zero-sum game.

But it's more interesting than you think.

It ruffled PETA's feathers.

Appearing in numerous casinos over the years, the "Tic-Tac-Toe
Chicken Challenge" pits a live chicken against hopeful gamblers in a good,
old-fashioned game of tic-tac-toe. Confined in a glass cube, the chicken goes
first, pecking away at an X or an O while the human taps out a retort on a
video screen. Several moves later, and we have a winner

Duke Nukem Forever - 2K Games Warm up your trigger finger and load up on bubble gum -- Duke Nukem Forever, the definitive vaporware video game, is headed back to your living room in a few short months.

Really.

2K Games and developer Gearbox announced Friday that the legendary first-person shooter will be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 in North America on May 3rd and internationally on May 6th -- a mere 14 years and one month after being announced.

"The moment fans all over the world have been waiting for is almost here," 2K prez Christoph Hartmann proudly proclaimed in a statement. "May 3, 2011 marks Duke's return as he unleashes his brash and brutally honest wit on the world. His return is going to be epic and