Electronic Arts

A start-up company called Tapulous has turned a simple game for the iPhone into an Internet-age mobile stage for musicians.

"Tap Tap Revenge," a free game that challenges players to keep up with catchy tunes by tapping in the right spots on the phone's screen, was available in Apple's iPhone application store when it opened in July.

It quickly climbed the store's charts. More than three million downloads later, Apple declared it the most popular free iPhone game of the year.

After much delay, Sony Computer Entertainment is opening its Home on Thursday. The Home virtual community, originally scheduled for a 2007 launch but hit with several delays, will be available to PlayStation 3 owners worldwide free of charge.

PS3 users will be able to download and install the Home software, create three-dimensional avatars to represent themselves in the community, and communicate with others. The company said the main activity will be creating friends as avatars visit virtual bowling alleys, arcades, game- and movie-related spaces, and homes.

The Khronos Group on Monday announced that its OpenCL 1.0 specification has been ratified and publicly released. Apple proposed the spec six months ago.

OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is the first open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors found in personal computers, servers and handheld/embedded devices.

Electronic Arts wants to be part of the Wii magic for women interested in getting fit. The publisher of popular game series under its EA Sports label, including Madden, NASCAR and NBA Live, has developed EA Sports Active, a game exclusively for Nintendo's Wii game console. The game will be available in the spring.

During past downturns, layoffs were mostly a private affair. Big companies tended to issue vague news releases filled with jargon about "downsizing," and startups often gave people the pink slip without telling the world anything at all.

Not anymore. In the age of transparency, the layoff will be blogged.

Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla Motors in San Carlos, California, said he had no choice other than to blog about the Oct. 15 layoffs at the company, even though some employees had not yet been told they were losing their jobs.

I didn't expect much from games on the iPhone. I had visions of casual games, perhaps a fancy take on solitaire or a version of poker that takes advantage of the handset's touchscreen. Surely not a true mobile gaming experience.

Sick of the advertisements for the presidential election? Thought unplugging your phone, ignoring television programs, and avoiding the newspaper would protect you from advertisements featuring Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain? Think again.

Google is adding click-to-buy links to its YouTube video-sharing site. The new feature will let customers purchase songs and video games they like while watching videos on the site.

Google calls it instant gratification. Click-to-buy links, the company said, are non-obtrusive retail links positioned on the watch page beneath the video with other community features. That means users can buy products the same way they share, comment on, and respond to videos.

There is something for everyone, according to Microsoft officials who are touting the company's new prices for all three models of its video game console, the Xbox 360.

On Wednesday, U.S. consumers saw the Xbox 360 Arcade base model drop from $279 to $199 just a day after the software giant cut prices by 30 percent for the Xbox in Japan. And beginning on Friday, prices for additional Xbox models will drop. The 60GB Xbox Pro model will drop from $349 to $299, and the 120GB Xbox Elite will have a new $399 price tag compared to its old price of $449.

Will Spore be the biggest thing to hit the gaming world since Doom? Electronic Arts dearly hopes so. The long-awaited game by Sims creator Will Wright has so much hype surrounding it that anything less than a home run will be a disappointment, say game-industry watchers.

Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, told The Wall Street Journal that between the cost of developing the game and marketing it, EA needs to rake in $75 million with Spore. Pachter expects EA to sell two million copies by the end of the year.