(Credit: Getty Images)The next-gen console war gets official on May 21.

That’s the date Microsoft will finally unveil its long-awaited follow-up to the Xbox 360. The event, sent out to members of the press Wednesday, will take place at the company’s HQ in Redmond, Washington at 10:00 am PST, though it will also be streamed live on Xbox Live, xbox.com and Spike TV.

“We are thrilled to pull back the curtain and reveal what we’ve been working on,” said Microsoft spokesperson Major Nelson in an otherwise uninformative blog post.

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(Credit: Nintendo)If there was any remaining doubt that the Wii U has been struggling, Nintendo erased that in its latest earnings report.

The company reported that in the past three months, it has sold just 390,000 units of its next generation console. Life to date sales for the Wii U are under 3.5 million. That's more than 500,000 less than the company had predicted in January, a figure that had been revised downward from initial forecasts of 5.5 million.

Read More »from Nintendo has sold fewer than 400,000 Wii Us so far this year

(Credit: Sony/Insomniac Games)Some of Sony’s most charismatic mascots are ready for their close-up.

Ratchet & Clank, the long-running PlayStation action-adventure series, is headed to the big screen, reports Variety. Rainmaker Entertainment (“Escape from Planet Earth”) and Blockade Entertainment are partnering on the 3D animated film, which is due out in 2015.

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(Credit: Getty Images)Contrary to popular opinion, video games can be good for your eyes.

Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have found that puzzle games, especially the classic block-dropper Tetris, are effective in helping treat patients with amblyopia, better known as lazy eye.

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With the successor to the Xbox 360 likely to hit stores before the end of the year, you'd think people might hold off on things like an Xbox Live subscription at this point in the console cycle. But apparently the online service is more popular than ever.

Microsoft reports Xbox Live subscriptions hit 46 million worldwide in the most recent fiscal quarter. That's up 18 percent from a year ago.

Put another way: Of the 77 million Xbox 360s the company has sold so far, nearly 60 percent have Live subscriptions tied to them. Perhaps even more impressive, however, is how many of those Microsoft has monetized.

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One of the biggest video games ever is now one of the biggest video games ever.

On April 19, Philadelphians with a clear view of the 29-story Cira Centre were treated to a fully-functional game of Pong on the side of the building.

Read More »from Massive Pong game takes place on Philadelphia skyscraper

What would you do with 10,000 iPhones? How about lining them up and knocking them down for the sheer amusement of watching that much technology be reduced to extremely fancy dominoes?

Read More »from 10,000 iPhones topple like dominoes

Tomb Raider's Lara Croft and BioShock Infinite's Elizabeth (Credit: Square-Enix/2K Games)Female characters have had a rather dubious run in the video game world. When they aren't damsels in distress, they're oversexualized stereotypes meant to titillate rather than foster a sense of empowerment in players.

There have been exceptions, of course -- Half-Life 2's Alyx or Samus from Metroid -- but progress has been slow. In the past year, though, the exceptions are starting to become … well, if not the rule, less of the exception.

Whether it's the rebirth of iconic female protagonist Lara Croft or the depth of a non-playable companion like BioShock Infinite's Elizabeth, more and more female characters are showing a strength that writers and developers have denied them previously.

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