Good Wii Hunting!

The titles you want stuffed in your stocking this year

(NEWSER) - Are you ready to wear out your thumbs this holiday season? Looking at games slated for holiday release, Forbes thinks gamers "crave a lot of morally questionable mayhem." Here are their top choices:

• Gears of War 2 (Microsoft): This game promises hordes of aliens to shoot up.
• Guitar Hero World Tour (Activision): Write your own songs, with drums and singing to add to your axe-grinding.
• Fall Out 3 (Bethesda): An adventure into post-apocalyptic Washington DC.

For recipients, it just doesn't matter, say researchers

(NEWSER) - Are you the kind of person who spends hours fretting over the perfect holiday gift? Or who tries to impress by spending big? Don't bother, because it's not helping your cause, writes John Tierney in the New York Times . In fact, price matters a lot more to the giver than to the recipient—and gift-getters would rather have money or something they put on a wish list than a surprise present, according to research by Stanford University psychologists. (Surprised? What do you think a married couple would rate more favorably: cash, the sheets they registered for, or those ridiculously expensive crystal candlesticks...) More»

If it's $500, analysts don't expect great sales

(AP) - The upcoming Wii U, part tablet computer, part game machine, could help Nintendo surpass its rivals once again. But not until we know how much it will set us back—investors so far are skeptical of that and other unknowns, and the company's stock has fallen 10% since the Wii U's unveiling this week. Expectations for the new machine have been high following the original Wii's roaring success. Wii U, which will go on sale next year, features a motion-sensing controller with a tablet-like touch screen and high-definition graphics. Only the tablet screen feature will be unique to the Wii U. More»

(NEWSER) - Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, on the original Nintendo Entertainment System, was a “perfect combination of addictive gameplay and technological impressiveness,” Chris Kohler writes in Wired. In a new version for Wii, happily, the company has figured out "what made the original so compelling” and recreated it “in spades.” Sometimes, Kohler writes, “they do make ’em like they used to.” More»

Outselling theater, music, and movies, but still not taken seriously

(NEWSER) - Video games are going gangbusters financially, but they're still generally relegated to "lowbrow" entertainment by the culturati. Some critics, however, are finally giving video games their due and deeming them art. "The best games are already beautiful, and I can see no reason why the look of video games won’t match or surpass that of cinema," notes John Lanchester in the London Review of Books. More»