Blog Posts by Chris Morris

Madden NFL 11 - EA If you've bought a copy of Madden or NCAA Football in the
past six years, you might have found an interesting email in your in-box over
the last few days.

A pair of disgruntled gamers have filed a class action suit
against Electronic Arts over the games, accusing the publisher of overcharging
customers and stifling competition, via its exclusivity agreement with the NFL,
NFL Players Association and other leagues. .

While class action suits are filed all the time - and often
disappear in a poof of dust - a federal judge recently certified this case,
allowing it to keep its class action status. That means pretty much anyone who
bought either of the games from 2005 through today (or the Arena

The Great Sell Back - Getty Images As winter begrudgingly surrenders to spring and you begin that annual task of
cleaning out all the detritus that has accumulated in your closets over the
past year, you might want to start with your game collection.

Everyone has a few favorites they'll hang on to forever, whether for sentimental value or because they enjoy replaying them from time to time. But most video games simply gather dust -- and while some of those games on your shelf might have limited value, others are in high demand.

As you might expect, no one's interested in that 2001 copy of Madden you've been
holding onto. Newer games, quite simply, sell better.

"The newest games have the highest values," says David Abrams,

Could Battlefield 3 be the new boss? - EA There's no love lost between leading game publishers Activision and Electronic Arts, but this November the studios are planning their biggest battle yet.

EA CEO John Riccitiello, speaking
at the Ad Age Digital Conference this week, confirmed that upcoming shooter
Battlefield 3 will be released in November, putting it in a head-to-head battle
with the latest Call of Duty game -- widely expected to be Modern Warfare 3.

"This November, we're launching Battlefield 3," he said. "It's going up against the next Call of Duty, which is presently the number one game in the game industry -- a game that last year did $400 million dollars in revenue on day one. [Battlefield 3] is designed to take that

Delayed? Sony's efforts to stay competitive in the handheld gaming space have hit a snag following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Sony officials say the disasters may delay the release of their NGP handheld, with the system releasing in just one region of the world this
year instead of all three. That could give Nintendo and Apple a chance to cement a solid lead in an increasingly competitive space.

Jack Tretton, president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, told Bloomberg that production problems related to the March 11 quake could force the company to scale back its launch plans. Tretton, it's worth noting, did not indicate that any final decisions have been made about the

EA on the bench In 2010, Electronic Arts waited until the last second to cancel its flagship NBA game. This year, it's bowing out long before the season
begins.

The leader in video game sports has quietly announced plans to bypass this season and release its next installment of NBA Elite (formerly called NBA Live) in the fall of 2012. That will create a three-year gap between
releases, a significant fall for what used to be the leading basketball sports simulation.

Following last year's debacle, EA Sports is returning development duties of the series to its Orlando-based Tiburon studio (which also works on the Madden franchise). The 2010 installment was delayed, then cancelled after internal play-testing

A fight's brewing. Activision and EA aren't going away anytime soon, but the never ending clash of the video game publishing titans has opened the door for
a newer, more nimble type of competitor.

Their names -- Zeptolab, Mojang, LimaSky -- certainly don't demand attention like the major console publishers. But their products are as
familiar to the gaming world as many titles from the big guns. And, in some
circles, they're perhaps even better known.

The three companies are respectively responsible for Cut the
Rope, Minecraft and DoodleJump, huge titles made by small companies that are
stealing playtime away from traditional games. In today's video game market,
where companies fight as much for people's time

It's been a while since we've heard from Max Payne - that godawful
2008 Mark Wahlberg movie notwithstanding.

There hasn't been a new game in the series for eight years.
And while Rockstar Games announced two years ago that a third installment was
on the way (and initially planned for a holiday 2009 release), the only time it
has mentioned the game since is to announce delays. Over the course of the past
week, though, the hype machine started to churn once again.

"He's coming," read the Tweet from the company, which attached two new screenshots with no warning. Then Max surprised us all by appearing on the cover
of the May issue of Edge Magazine.

Here's what we know about the game so far:

Games are creeping into TV habits. The Nielsen Company, that arbiter of television ratings, has released a study breaking down American gaming habits. The study, part of its
March 2011 State of the Media report, finds that Americans spend an average of 13 minutes
playing video games on a television each day.

That might not sound like a lot, but keep in mind that the data was taken from Nielsen homes, which are made up of a wide swath of people, many of whom are not core gamers - and many of whom don't even own a gaming
console.

Nielsen further breaks it down by ethnicity. According to the study, African Americans are the biggest gamers today, playing, on average, 16 minutes per day. Caucasians were second, spending 13