Blog Posts by Chris Morris

Is this a Durango dev kit?Despite plenty of leaks, Microsoft has yet to officially confirm that it's working on the next Xbox. But the first one may already have been sold.

An eBay auction over the weekend found a buyer for a purported Xbox 'Durango' Development Kit — a system game developers use to create games for the upcoming console. The buyer, who remained anonymous, shelled out $20,100 for the kit, which apparently looks like a black computer tower.

The sale comes with a load of questions, the foremost being: Is this thing real?

Star Wars: The Old Republic (Credit: EA)Just a few short years ago, massively-multiplayer online games (MMOs) were considered the future of gaming.

Virtually every publisher was running one, building one, or contemplating one. A lot of those failed. A few struggled along with small but loyal audiences. And all of them acknowledged that they lived under the shadow of perennial champ World of Warcraft.

These days, though, massively-multiplayer online worlds are beset by bad news. World of Warcraft lost 1.1 million customers in the last three months. It's lost 2 million in the past year. Meanwhile, EA's highly anticipated entry in the field -- Star Wars: The Old Republic -- failed to take off, with subscriptions dropping to under 1 million last quarter. It was an incredibly rapid drop from the 2 million subscriber peak of earlier this year.

With these two behemoths having serious issues, is the entire genre on the outs? Not necessarily, but it's definitely changing -- and that could be great news for consumers who have grown sick and tired of forking over monthly fees for online games.

(Credit: Blizzard Entertainment)Add Blizzard Entertainment to the long list of video game companies that have been hacked in the past 18 months.

Mike Morhaime, president of the company behind titles such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Diablo III, announced the breach of the company's Battle.net servers in a note to users late Thursday afternoon, urging them to change their passwords.

NCAA Football 2012 (EA)Another month, another batch of bad news for the game industry.

July continued the industry's ugly retail decline, with sales of video game software falling 23 percent compared to last year, according to The NPD Group.

If there was any consolation, it's that for the first time in a while, the decline was in-line with analyst expectations rather than screaming past them.

The Political Machine 2012 (Stardock)As the race for the White House heats up, presidential hopefuls find themselves in situations that were unthinkably outlandish just a matter of months ago as they do whatever it takes to win.

While this metaphor could arguably extend to the real-world candidates, we're actually talking about the scenarios conjured up by the cottage video game industry that springs up during election years. The 2012 election has become fair game for developers to exploit -- and the advent of the social and mobile gaming world has opened the floodgates.

This year's crop of political games runs the gamut from semi-serious to absolutely ludicrous. If the stump speeches, endless bickering and countless photo ops are beginning to wear down your interest in who will become the next leader of the free world, maybe these can help bring you back to the party — whichever one you prefer.

Curt Schilling (Credit: Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)Curt Schilling's video game dreams are now the property of the state of Rhode Island.

A U.S. Bankruptcy judge has given The Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. and Bank of New York Mellon Trust Co. the go-ahead to take 38 Studios' assets -- specifically, the IP for its games.

As you might expect, the governor has no interest in making a video game of his own, meaning the state and bank plan to look for a buyer to the rights for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and the in-development online game Copernicus.

(Credit: Getty Images)A 15-year old from Columbus, Ohio was rushed to an area hospital Tuesday after collapsing during a marathon session of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 that lasted between four and five days.

Tyler Rigsby was admitted to the Ohio State University Medical Center, suffering from dehydration. Hospital officials say he was released later in the day.

Local news reports say Rigsby only paused the game to use the bathroom, grab an occasional snack and take a shower. He stopped playing Tuesday to visit his aunt with his mother.

Living Classics (Credit: Amazon)For years, Amazon has been a looming figure in the video game industry. On Monday, it finally pulled the trigger.

The retail giant has launched a new division, called Amazon Game Studios, which will focus (initially, at least) on social games, though expect it to branch into other areas in the months and years to come.

The game 'Living Classics' will be the first effort from the studio. Amazon describes the Facebook title as a "moving object game" where a family of foxes wanders into a series of classic books. Players reunite the family by exploring the scenes. Early reviews of the game have been complimentary.