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According to sales data collected by NPD Group, sales of new videogame products fell 25 percent in May, with game sales of console hitting their lowest levels in more than a decade. While NPD and other analysts are chalking this decline up to anticipation for new consoles like the Xbox One and PS4, they fail to mention the dramatic shift to digital sales not covered by the NPD.

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Games for Change has announced that the game concept Safe Sex with Friends is the winner of the 2013 SEXECT.ORG Game Design Competition. The three finalists were Safe Sex with Friends, SexEd Super Task Force, and Check/Mate. After hearing presentations from all three finalists (during the 10th Annual Games for Change Festival) and thoughtful deliberation by jurors (Matt Parker, Lana Dakan, Lucinda Holt, and Naomi Clark,) Safe Sex with Friends was selected as the winning game.

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Respawn co-founder says shooters aren't direct competition, explains absence of single-player campaign

If you are a PC owner that enjoys playing EA Sports titles like FIFA, then I have some sad news for you: you won't be playing the latest editions of these games. You'll be weeping alongside Wii U owners who also have been told that EA Sports titles are not available to you. The reasoning behind this, according to EA? Most of your PC rigs are just not powerful enough to handle EA's new Ignite Engine - the technology that was touted during EA's E3 press event being used to develop PS4 and Xbox One sports titles.

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Humble Bundle for Android 6 is alive and kicking, offering five games for Android-based hand-helds. Most of the games are also available for Windows, Mac and Linux too - and all of them are DRM-Free. The games include Aquaria, Fractal, Organ Trail: Director’s Cut, Stealth Bastard Deluxe, and Pulse (Android only). If you pay more than the average price you can also get Frozen Synapse and Broken Sword: Director’s Cut. You'll also get digital soundtracks from all the games.

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adeelarshad82 writes "For the fourth year running, PCMag sent drivers out on U.S. roads to test the nation's Fastest Mobile Networks. Using eight identical Samsung phones, the drivers tested out eight separate networks for four major carriers across 30 cities evenly spread across six regions. Using Sensorly's 2013 software, a broad suite of tests were conducted every three minutes: a 'ping' to test network latency, multi-threaded HTTP upload and download tests including separate 'time to first byte' measures, a 4MB single-threaded file download, a 2MB single-threaded file upload, the download of a 1MB Web page with 70 elements, and 100kbps and 500kbps UDP streams designed to simulate streaming media. Nearly 90,000 data cycles later, the data not only revealed the fastest networks (AT&T) and the most consistent (Verizon), but also other interesting points. The tests recorded the fastest download speed (66.11 Mbits/sec) in New Orleans and the best average in Austin (27.25 Mbits/sec), both for AT&T's LTE network. The tests also found T-Mobile's HSPA network to have the worst Average-Time-To-First-Byte, even when compared with AT&T HSPA network. Also according to the tests, Sprint's LTE network didn't even come close to competing with other LTE networks, to the point that in some cities its LTE network speed averaged less than T-Mobile's HSPA network speed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday it was revealed that Microsoft planned to hold the line on pricing for retail game discs for Xbox One to current levels at right around $60. Today we learn that Sony will use the same price point for PlayStation 4 retail game discs.

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We talked with Peter Wayner about autonomous cars on June 5. He had a lot to say on this topic, to the point where we seem to be doing a whole series of interviews with him because autonomous cars might have a lot of unanticipated effects on our lives and our economy. Heck, Peter has enough to say about driverless cars to fill a book, Future Ride, which we hope he finishes editing soon because we (Tim and Robin) want to read it. While that book is brewing, watch for some thoughts on how autonomous cars (and delivery vans) might affect us in the near future.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Play, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are blocked in China -- so how can Western mobile games succeed? Yodo1's Henry Fong suggests a complete re-write for marketing. ...

ananyo writes "Physicists have resurrected a particle that may have existed in the first hot moments after the Big Bang. Arcanely called Zc(3900), it is the first confirmed particle made of four quarks, the building blocks of much of the Universe's matter (abstract one, abstract two). Until now, observed particles made of quarks have contained only three quarks (such as protons and neutrons) or two quarks (such as the pions and kaons found in cosmic rays)."

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Droqen (IGF nominee Starseed Pilgrim) writes about what really breaks immersion -- bad creative decisions on the part of a game's creator -- and how to use the game's world to "whyproof" it. ...

"Reporting to the VP of Technology, this role's primary objective is to direct the development of significant tools technology across multiple Activision studios and titles." ...

Google and Russia's biggest search engine Yandex are voicing their opposition to a new bill that would block sites accused of hosting (in some way) copyrighted material. The new bill, which has already passed Russia's State Duma, is being called Russia's version of the Stop Online Piracy Act. The bill gives intellectual property holders the ability to sue a web site that they claim is hosting copyrighted materials. The accused site then has 72 hours to remove the offending material (without the option of reviewing the claim).

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Qedward writes with an excerpt at TechWorld about a new project from Jon "Maddog" Hall, which is about to launch in Brazil: "The vision of Project Cauã is to promote more efficient computing following the thin client/server model, while creating up to two million privately-funded high-tech jobs in Brazil, and another three to four million in the rest of Latin America. Hall explained that Sao Paolo in Brazil is the second largest city in the Western Hemisphere and has about twelve times the population density of New York City. As a result, there are a lot of people living and working in very tall buildings. Project Cauã will aim to put a server system in the basement of all of these tall buildings and thin clients throughout the building, so that residents and businesses can run all of their data and applications remotely."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While everyone else was focused on the Microsoft-Sony horse race, editor Patrick Miller was paying attention to the Oculus Rift, eSports, and a collection of creator-driven games as the real next gen. ...

Sunstorm Games, a highly successful mobile games developer with a reputation for having a fun, collaborative work environment, is seeking multiple developers for our Las Vegas studio. As we continue to grow, we are seeking several mobile developers to assist us in our ongoing expansion of our highly successful product offerings of over 80 titles on iOS, Android, and all other casual gaming platforms. We need creative, smart, eager, and team oriented individuals to join our successful group.

All the latest on newscientist.com: living without oxygen, writing the body, how the Med is killing the Atlantic, Lego Curiosity, slimy computers, and more    

After suffering the worst smog on record earlier this year, China has decided to cut the emission of air pollutants by 30 per cent in 5 years    

If you are someone that will buy CD Projekt RED's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and are concerned about all the nonsense associated with DRM and used game sales blocking found on the Xbox One, and you want free DLC (that you likely won't get for free on the PS4), then your best bet seems to be found on the PC.

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While the rest of the country worries about what the NSA is doing with our data on the Internet, the state of Texas is securing the privacy of its citizens' emails. On Friday Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) signed into law a privacy bill that will guard Texans from warrantless searches by state law enforcement officials. House Bill 2268 in effect requires that state investigators obtain a warrant to access emails no matter how old the communication might be.

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