Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Video games used in Physical Ed classes to keep kids in shape

Monroeton Elementary school in North Carolina is using Dance, Dance Revolution video game to keep their kids in shape during PE classes.

According to the news article the kids are much more enthusiastic about exercising using the video game than they would otherwise be. A lot of them are playing the game at home, too, so that they'd get better when competing against their classmates at school. The end result is more exercising.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Nintendo Wii keeping the elderly active

A retirement community in Lincolnshire, IL got a Nintendo Wii as a Christmas present and the residents haven't looked back since. The retirees living in the community have taken video gaming to heart and are having 20 person Wii Sports Bowling tournaments Sunday afternoons.

Looks like video game addiction is not just for the young.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Anshe Chung becomes the first virtual millionaire

A Second Life resident, Anshe Chung, is the first virtual millionaire, according to a press release she's put out.

Anshe is a virtual real estate tycoon in Second Life, a virtual world game, where she buys, develops and sells virtual real estate.

Second Life currency can be exchanged freely to real currency. According to the current exchange rates her in-game assets are now valued in more than $1M USD in real US currency.

Her press release states she's made her million entirely within the virtual world in two and a half years starting with a mere $9.95 investment in a paid Second Life account.

Burger King scores big with video game tie-in

Burger King Holdings reports its quarterly earnings ending at 12/31/2006 were better than expected. Net income increased from $27M to $38M over the same period last year. Quarterly revenues were up 9%.

Burger King is stating one of the reasons for the better than expected results is the cross marketing campaign with Microsoft. Burger King and Microsoft created Burger King branded video games for the XBox 360 video game platform and sold the games at Burger King locations for $3.99 each.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Michigan State University developing a MMO game to teach Chinese online

Michigan State University's Confucius Institute is developing a Massively Multiplayer Online game to teach Chinese to US high school students. The effort is sponsored by the Chinese Government.

The goal of the program is to make learning Chinese more interesting to US teenagers by taking advantage of the interactive elements of Massively Multiplayer Online games.