Insurance Industry Lobbying Group Offering Facebook Gamers Imaginary “Currency” To Oppose Health Care Reform

Virtual bribery is now a reality.  Business Insider is reporting that insurance industry lobbying groups are offering Facebook gamers in-game currency to oppose Obama's health care reforms. The practice is already fairly common - companies like Netflix have long offered in-game currency for trying their products. The anti-health care reform program, called "Get Health Reform Right" asks gamers to take a survey, which then automatically generates an email to the user's Congressional Rep...

Last.fm Available On Xbox Live Starting Today

Last week's Xbox related news focused mostly on the new Twitter and Facebook applications coming to Xbox Live - because... people like talking about Twitter and Facebook.  But let's face it.  The Xbox is not exactly an ideal platform for message writing.  There's the lack of a keyboard, for example. Last.fm support, however, is pretty cool.  Integrating Internet radio into your living room setup will be pretty awesome for people who don't have an HTPC setup already. So, in case you dis...

Modern Warfare 2 On Track To Be Biggest Game Launch In History

We tried our hardest to ignore it, but with reviewers tossing around words like 'epic, show-stopping, stunning, best ever, etc.' it's getting pretty difficult... Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which just went on sale yesterday is already on track to be the biggest game launch of the year and may even be the biggest game launch in history. Analysts are estimating potentially $700 million in sales by the end of the year - between 11 million and 13 million units, which would blow away th...

Unreal Engine Developer Kit Now Available For Download… By Anybody

Epic Games and Nvidia have announced that the previously very difficult (and very expensive) to get your hands on Unreal Development Kit for it's newest Unreal Engine 3 is now freely downloadable. Even better, The UDK is free for noncommercial and educational use.  For for-profit projects, licensing terms are 25% of all revenue over $5,000. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNQLL92bOJQ] Start your engines, kids.  Go forth and create cool stuff.   The future is bright. UDK inclu...

Game Console Price War Heating Up

The Nintendo Wii is still dominating in total number of consoles sold worldwide, having sold almost twice as many as the competition - but it looks like the Xbox 360 and PS3 are in a fierce fight for second place. It's a case of tit-for-tat price reductions, with PS3 first dropping their price to $299 three months ago.  This was quickly followed by an announcement from Microsoft that they would be dropping the price of their top-level console, the Xbox 360 elite, to the same price. Finally, ...