Video Game News:
Civilization Music Composer awarded
Music's Highest Honor.

It's a first in video game history, never in its history has any part of video game's music industry won a Grammy. Christopher Tin who done recent work for Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect, the Civilization series and various other video games, has beaten out other Grammy Nominees in the Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists category. Christopher won the award for his piece "Baba Yetu" which he wrote for Civilization IV back in 2005. Sure it was composed six years ago and is now later nominated and won for the 2011 Grammy's but hey, the video game

Game News - Guitar Hero is Cancelled by Activision

Seen here, it seems that from the reports from Activision is that the company has stopped all work on the Guitar Heroes series. According to the company is that due to continued declined interest in the music genre, Activision will dissolve any business relating to Guitar Hero and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game

A recent study at Brigham Young University has established that video games can make girls happier and healthier as long as parents are willing to play along. The study by Sarah M. Coyne, Ph.D.,distributed questionnaires to 287 children between the ages of 11 and 16 and their parents, asking them a series of questions about video games, behaviorial, and family-related issues. The focus is to see if there is a connection between behavior of children andparental participation in gaming. And any other additionalbehavioraleffects.

When it came to measuring their outcomes against factors like positive behavior, aggression, family connection, and mental health, the results were surprising. Girls had more positive results then boys.

Research from the study discovered that girls that gamed with their parents (mainly their fathers, mothers admitted they don't game much) were better behaved, more connected

It seems as though it's one thing after another. Life influence games and games influence life. YouTube user MichaelCiuffo has created a real life FPS styled ammo counter.

The ammo counter keeps track of the shots you fire pretty accurately. Now whether or not that provides a distinct advantage in a real life battle situation probably hasn't been confirmed quite yet, but after being featured on Kotaku, user Michael Ciuffo has announced that he will definitely begin going into production. It might seriously become a cool add-on for those of us that like to go paint balling. Let's cross our fingers that we won't need real guns to appreciate this

Looks like gamers have been awfully trigger-happy when it comes to Black Ops. Activision recently released statistics on Black Ops players and their ways of life, which basically sum up the fact that they like to shoot and they like to shoot a lot.

Lets remember Black Ops only came out in November. Since then, according to Activision, all players combined have killed 9 times the worlds population and have shot over 1 trillion shots.

Furthermore, over 147 billion COD points have been earned, approximately 2 billion planes and cars combined have been exploded, and, most interestingly, vindictive players have returned fire with over 10 billion paybacks.

Also, the top 3 guns used are the Famas, AK74u, and Galil, with the top ten perks being Marathon, Sleight of Hand, and Lightweight.

10,000,000,000 App Downloaded!

As of now, ten billion apps have now been downloaded from Apples App store. After an ongoing countdown approaching the momentous number, Gail Davis of Oprington, Kent, UK, acquired the ten billionth download on Saturday morning (January 22). As a reward for her purchase of Paper Glider that day, Gail was awarded $10,000 in iTunes credit. (Makes me wish Id gotten that billionth download!!)

During the countdown, Apple released posts of its top paid and free apps. The top games sold were, unsurprisingly, Angry Birds and Flight Control. Also unsurprisingly, Facebook dominated as top unpaid application.

The top free apps

Industry/Political News - Politician to Make Games to have Cigarette Box-like warnings

Congressman Joe Baca (D-Califorinia) tried to introduced legislature in 2009 on display a label warning of links between violent video games and aggressive behavior. The proposal was denied. Read more about the 2009 legislature here.

Cut to 2011, where he has now proposed the exact same legislature with the exact same information, only the difference now is he's backed by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia). The Virginian Congressman adds that like smokers being warned about cigarettes via labels, we should warn parents and children about the growing scientific backed

Industry's biggest to make bigger changes

What is going on in the lead industry workplaces? Is it just me, or have some major companies been making some major changes? Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google will be stepping down from his role on April 4^th. But, he is not leaving the company. Schmidt tweeted,Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed! Meanwhile down at the HP headquarters 4 directors, Joel Hyatt, John Joyce, Robert Ryan and Lucille Salhany will all be stepping down. According to CNN it is due to wake of intense criticism and several shareholder lawsuits over how HP dismissed former CEO Mark Hurd. And to top off the major changes in companies, the CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave. Jobs sent out a letter

Apple CEO Sick

Heres an interest piece of gossip for those of you who frequent both our blog and potentially Perez Hiltons as well. Apparently, Steve Jobs, Apples mastermind and infamous CEO, is taking his third leave of absence since 2004 for health related issues. The length of the absence has yet to be determined.

Apple has no word on why he is taking the current leave, but in the past, Jobs has dealt with pancreatic cancer. Hopefully it has nothing to do with that!

As a result, Apple stock has already dropped by 8 percent overseas, in tandem with the announcement, although U.S. stock prices did not change.

Apple COO Tim Cook will be taking over day-to-day responsibilities until Jobs return.

Industry / Gamer News -
Obesity isn't linked to Gaming!

It's no question that United States and other countries like the U.K. and Canada have been growing in its numbers of obesity lately, and a lot of blame is put on video games. But made recently, some researchers say that it isn't really true. Now in the past, video games are the blame for obesity. First Lady Michelle Obama "Let's Move" campaign cited that the released of the Playstation was a a major event in the cause of childhood obesity's growing numbers. Then, internationally, the World Health Organization pointed out that video games had