Blog Posts by Reuters

By Liana B. Baker

(Photo credit: Reuters/Gene Blevins)(Reuters) - The $64 billion global video games industry, shaken up by the likes of Zynga in recent years, may be on the verge of another identity crisis.

Hardware and software sales for consoles keep dropping, market-leading Activision Blizzard, which makes the "Call of Duty" and "World of Warcraft" mega franchises laid off 8 percent of its staff in February, and a proliferation of games on app stores is making it costlier to stand. So, an estimated 20,000 video game industry types, executives and game designers will descend on this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco looking for answers.

By Nita Bhalla, Reuters

Angry Brides (Shaadi)(Reuters) - Anger at the practice of demanding dowries, which can lead to violence against brides, has prompted a takeoff of "Angry Birds" called "Angry Brides" that aims to highlight the illegal practice still prevalent in many South Asian countries.

Dowries -- such as jewelry, clothes, cars and money -- are traditionally given by the bride's family to the groom and his parents to ensure she is taken care of in her new home.

The custom was outlawed more than five decades ago. But it is still widely practiced, with the groom's family demanding even more money after marriage, leading to mental and physical harassment that can drive the woman to suicide.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — A new video game has gotten its hooks into Brian Kealer, a 26-year-old San Francisco software engineer. He's not killing birds or using his vocabulary to impress his friends. No, Kealer is after real prizes, like the iPad2 he just scored. And he's playing with his bank account.

Getty ImagesAt least once every day, Kealer signs into SaveUp.com, a new financial website, and does some financial activity that wins him credits he can then use to play for big money prizes. To earn those credits, he can pay a credit card bill, deposit money into his savings account, or watch a sponsored video about personal finance.

To be clear, Kealer's not making any real dollar bets; he's just paying his bills. But by participating in SaveUp, he is playing into the financial services industry's latest attempts to attract and keep engaged consumers. Call it, inelegantly, "gamification." It involves the use of game-like attributes and mechanics -- contests, prizes, scorecards, badges, friendly competitions and the like -- to make the boring business of money more appealing to hard-to-snag consumers.

"It's a word that everybody hates, but it is descriptive of what's going on," says Jim Bruene of Netbanker, a banking technology consulting firm.

Each Friday, we'll be blasting out free game codes on the Yahoo! Games Facebook page. Don't want to miss out? Then make sure to "Like" us!

Old-school gamers, rejoice: this week, we're giving away 5 free Xbox Live download codes for Choplifter HD!

An HD remake of the venerable action game classic, Choplifter HD lets you fly a variety of helicopters as you try to save prisoners across over 30 different missions. Scoring an 8/10 on IGN, it's a great game for high-score hunters — and if you're lucky, perfectly free!

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) — Microsoft Corp said on Monday sales of its revolutionary Kinect sensing device for the Xbox game console have hit more than 18 million just over a year since launch.

Xbox 360 (Getty Images)Popularity of the device has helped Microsoft Xbox recently outsell Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation in the United States game console market.

One of Microsoft's undoubted successes in consumer electronics, the Kinect allows users to play games and manipulate their televisions solely through gestures and voice commands. It was launched in November 2010.

BY: Liana B. Baker, Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Electronic Arts Inc may never recover its Silicon Valley swagger. But maybe it doesn't have to, its top executive says.

The Sims Social (EA)Three years after EA went from being one of the hottest kids on the video games block to industry also-ran, the leaner, more focused company now hopes to take on Zynga and make $3 billion in revenue from digital game sales in the next few years.

Chief Executive John Riccitiello told Reuters in an interview his company survived a "near-death experience," three years ago when its profit shrank, game quality was poor and it lacked an Internet presence.