League of Gaming Continues in Video Game Industry

If you've followed competitive gaming at all, then you've heard of MLG. Major League Gaming has been around since 2002 fighting tooth and nail for the legitimacy of competitive gaming. The uphill battle of bringing competitive gaming to the mainstream has since been won. While MLG doesn't necessarily bring in the ridiculous large market shares like the NFL, MLG has come a long way.

It was announced a few weeks back that MLG has raised over $50 million dollars in funding. For a company that's been around for only 8 years, that's quite an achievement. According to MLG's own research they reach over 4.5 million users a month with over 600,000 unique

Gears of War Game Bundle

2011 might be Gears of War's best year. A few months back Microsoft and Epic mentioned publicly that Gears of War 3 had been delayed, not out of necessity, but for marketing reasons. Microsoft wanted to give Gears of War 3 the Fall season of 2011 to push the franchise forward as well as to give the game additional time in the oven. Frustrating as it was for fans of Gears of War, it was also kind of nice to know that Microsoft was behind Epic's flagship series in a way that should ensure an incredibly polished title. A win win for everyone.

Well the marketing blitz for Gears of War has begun. Early adopters of Bulletstorm have already been promised

Girl Gaming - Black Ops

When Call of Duty: Black Ops was getting ready to hit the market Activision and Treyarch put together a Prestige Edition and a Hardened Edition package of extras for their dedicated players. The Prestige Edition came with a copy of Black Ops, a Black Ops RC-XD Car, a premium steelbook casing, custom Black Ops emblem medal, a woods Avatar outfit, and four exclusive co-op maps. The Hardened Edition came with a custom Black Ops emblem medal, a woods avatar outfit, and four co-op maps. Awesome deal right? – For guys; yes, but for girls; well lets just say we received the short end of the stick on this one.

Unfortunately for those who have created a girl avatar on their Xbox Live accounts they

Finding love with XBOX LIVE

Many parents dread the life of video games for their children, mostly because they fear it will lead to an anti-social life style. Fortunately there are companies like Gaming Passions, and Game Crush and there is even a facebook group, Xbox Live Dating , that are here to help take the burden off of meeting new people through video game social networking.

The

When Gears of War 3 got pushed back, most of the office was pretty bummed out about it, but we're excited to hear that the game Bulletstorm will include early access to the Gears of War 3 Beta. EA and Epic Games have announced that the Epic Edition, of Bulletstorm will include the beta access as well as a 25,000 EXP bonus and some multiplayer visual upgrades.

Aesthetically, Bulletstorm looks awesome. The color palette shown throughout the trailers doesn't show a gritty looking shooter with dull browns and grays nor cartoon like greens and purples, but has it's own unique look that confidently displays a sci-fi looking world with fluorescent blues and orange. Bulletstorm's unique and untested look could be why the Gears of War 3 beta is being included.

Cheap as in Free!Free Games!

There's a nice gaming surprise for those of you that haven't checked the gaming marketplace in a while. Doritos recently released two completely free downloadable arcade games. Harm's Way and Doritos Crash Course. While you shouldn't expect full fledged arcade titles packed with a ton of extras, you can expect two pretty decent games (for being free). If you remember Dash of Destruction, just know that these two games pack a lot more content and will require more then a single sitting to unlock all the achievements.

Harm's Way is an unusual racing game with two modes of play. In the first mode you race around the track and

Canada using video games to boost morale

A while back, the Canadian military had a garrison outside of Montreal opened a requisition for $25,000 (Canadian, that would be nearly $24,800US) worth of video games. People in the military scratched their heads in confusion wondering why they would ask for such an unusual proposal, but the info has now been made public. They're gifts for soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.

Canada's Ministry of Defence (that's how it's spelled) followed up with the Canadian Press, who reported the story about the earlier experience, to inform the public that they wanted to buy 500 video games

Rewards for being on XBOX Live!

Microsoft has now introduced its free Xbox Live Rewards program for their loyal customers. Members who participate in the program will earn Microsoft Points (the same currency used by Xbox Live) when they use the service to renew memberships, activate Netflix, purchase certain merchandise and more.

According to Major Nelson of Microsoft ( real name Larry Hryb), allparticipantswill be able to earn points while just playing games online. While its available to everyone, Gold Members get the more opportunities in comparison. This is great, in this blogger's opinion, as sometimes I feel like there should be a way to earn those points at times, because I really

Kratos to be performing Mortal Kombat Fatalities!

Could the God of War be the newest fatality performing combatant? Kratos has slain, decapitated, and mauled enough of his enemies that he would certain feel right at home in the Mortal Kombat universe, but is this just a Sony fanboy's dream or a reality?

As it turns out, this rumor could actually end up being true. David Jaffe, the creator of God of War has since posted the following message through his twitter @Twitter.com/davidscottjaffe:

"LOVE that Kratos is in the new MK. So bummed he's not in

Industry News - Console's memberships are 50% Paid

Most people that have a Xbox 360 are likely to be connected to the internet. What you probably don't know is that most of them aren't on the Gold subscription list for Xbox Live.

Yep, half of them are Silver according to a quote from Microsoft's Dennis Durkin at the Credit Suisse Annual Technology Conference here in Arizona.

"Of our 25 million members, about half of them are subscribers to the business and pay us about $60 dollars a year for that. It's a very large business for us and our partners."

While he is emphasizing the GOLD membership's revenue being great, people are wondering exactly what is the internet-based breadwinner in this part of Microsoft.