There are plenty of bad stories about video games. Those stories fill news sites daily. However, here’s an actually positive and warm-feeling inducing story about video games. A couple met through Xbox Live and has now had their first baby.

The couple met while playing Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Lockdown. According to the woman, they actually hated each other at first, but soon grew to love one another. They finally decided to meet and it was an instant love connection. Then, on September 24 of last year, the couple had their first child. (more…)

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In The Great Games column we look back at titles that have defined video games over the years and earned a special place in the history of the medium.

Sixteen years passed between the original Ninja Gaiden’s release on the NES in 1988 and the franchise relaunch on the Xbox in 2004. In those 16 years a lot of things changed in gaming, including the passage of three console generations and the arrival of 3D graphics as the norm. The one thing that did not change is Ninja Gaiden’s name standing for hardcore action.

Younger gamers may not be able to fully appreciate the way the gaming market used to work. Games arrived with little or no fanfare and were seemingly dumped onto the market. Yes, there were advertisements in magazines, but hardly the full media blitzes gamers are so used to today for even the most modest of releases. Amidst all this, a little game called Ninja Gaiden found a market. It probably didn’t hurt that it was very loosely based off a semi-popular arcade game (best remembered today for its Jason Voorhees look-a-like villains). (more…)

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For up and coming developers, Xbox Live Arcade has become one of the best places to get recognition for their games. However, man cannot survive by internet hype alone. Surely the indie developers are getting some kick back from Microsoft for all those game downloads.

Indie developers in the past have typically received 70 percent of the royalty share and it was rumored recently that Microsoft has cut that in half to 35 percent. The reason for the decrease is believed to be Microsoft’s future reliance on the recently announced XNA initiative. XNA is Microsoft’s new software package designed to make it easier for game developers to design games by freeing them from writing repetitive code. (more…)

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A man convicted of beating his 17-month-old daughter to death has been sentenced to 23 ½ to 47 years in prison. Why would drive a man to beat his own daughter to death? Apparently the girl knocked over his Xbox damaging it.

Obviously this is not a “video game violence” story in the traditional sense. No one seems to be claiming he killed her because he played a game where you could kill children. In truth, someone like this would be just as likely to kill over a knocked over HDTV, set of dishes, etc. Still, one has to wonder how anyone could be so upset over anything damaged as to kill a young child. (more…)

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