With his cute round features and high-pitched voice, Disney's iconic character Mickey couldn't possibly be evil... or could he? For the past year, Disney and Nintendo have worked on redesigning the 81-year-old character for an upcoming Nintendo Wii video game.

The new Mickey is now leaner and meaner. While it is a departure from the Mickey we've come to know and love, it's actually a closer depiction to the original incarnation in 1928's "Steamboat Willie", in which he got into fistfights, played tricks on his friends, and amorously pursued Minnie.

The new Mickey still sports his trademark red shorts, yellow shoes, and white gloves. But he now has longer limbers and a bit edgier facial expressions that some have even called "demonic". Demonic might be going a little too far, but it is definitely a look that conveys that this Mickey isn't all sweetness and nice.

With the makeover, company execs are hoping that it will keep Mickey relevant in a generation growing up with Nickelodeon and Pixar. And what better a way to do that than to put him in a video game.

The Beatles couldn't get even get by with a little help from their friends. Sales figures for Beatles Rock Band, which was released to much hype, showed the game shifted 595,000 copies. While that figure may look good, experts were expecting the game to sell at least one million copies.

Analysts are writing of John, Paul, George, and Ringo just yet though. They say that they foresee the game selling well during the holidays.

Responding to cuts in price by rivals Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp., Nintendo Co. Ltd. will be slashing the price of its popular Wii video game console by 20 percent. The move is designed to bump up sales of the console, and the new pricing will go into effect on Sunday.

Nintendo will reduce the price of the Wii by $50, putting at the enviable price point of $199 in the US. The price will also be cut in Japan, where it will fall from 20,000 yet to 5,000 yen on October 1.

In dropping the price, Nintendo is the last of the popular video game consoles to cut prices. Microsoft took $100 off the price of its high-end Xbox 360 console, and Sony dropped the price of its Playstation 3 console by $100. With these price cuts, both the Xbox 260 and PS3 start around $300. Microsoft does sell a low-end version - called the Xbox Arcade - for around $200.

In the latest incarnation of the video game console wars, Nintendo has far outsold its rivals. Part of their winning strategy has been focusing on expanding the gaming population via intuitive and easy-to-play games. Their rivals, however, have choosen to focus their attentions on life-like graphics.

The Beatles are undoubtedly the most popular band of all-time, so it is no surprise that their first venture into the world of video games - The Beatles: Rock Band - would be a resounding success. Nevertheless, sales of the video game have far exceeded expectations, so much so that Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman is warning that it might not be available for Christmas shoppers.

Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Dauman said that the "Limited Edition Premium Bundle," which sells for about $250 and comes with a Ringo Starr/Ludwig-branded "Rock Band" drum kit, could sell out by November. Speaking with Wall Street analysts on Wednesday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XVIII Conference in New York, he added:

"If any of you out here want to buy some, you better hurry up."

As a lifelong 33-year-old Beatles fan, some things about the band have irked me in the last decade or so. The Beatles Anthology of the mid-1990's felt like the final chapter in the band's illustrious history, but then came the deluge of shaky releases that rehashed the Fab Four time and time again. Just relying on memory as a guide, there was The Beatles collection of Number 1's which wasn't much of a replacement for decades old collections found on the Red and Blue albums, then the reissue of the American album releases (which wasn't that bad of an idea but why they weren't remastered like the most recent collection is puzzling and really feels like a money grab with the worthy release of the mastered versions currently available), and a remix cd (yes a remix cd entitled Love) thrown in for bad measure which is probably buried under all the older Beatles releases in your car if you were a fool like me and purchased them. The irony of it all was that die hard Beatles fans have been waiting on the painful yet important movie release of Let it Be on DVD for well over a decade when the surviving members of the Fab Four and their spouses were serving up releases that seemed more like a money a grab. While I may have been disappointed with the lack of Fab offerings from Liverpool's finest recently, I never would have anything bad to say about their music. My love affair with the pop sounds of the band probably started even before I can vividly remember popping in an warped 8 Track Cassette of Meet The Beatles as part of my daily ritual coming home from school after the first grade. Maybe it was the serendipity of the famous number 9 in Beatles lore that had to pull the band out of their little funk. If John Lennon had been around for 9-09-09 he would undoubtedly have been happy to celebrate the occasion, and was probably smiling in the heavens yesterday when Yoko and Macca finally got something right for a change.

Video games are often an activity associated with the young, but a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention paint quite a different picture. Researchers found that the average gamer is age 35, often overweight, introverted, and may be depressed.

The CDC looked at the behavior of 552 adults aged 19 to 90 from the Seattle-Tacoma area. Of these, 249 (45 percent) were video game players. Men accounted for 56 percent of the video game players.

Men who played video games weighed more and used the internet more than other men. Women who played video games reported greater levels of depression and poorer overall heath than non-gamers. Adult video gamers were also found to be less outgoing, and less social and assertive than non-gamers.

Researcher James Weaver and his colleagues suggested that for adults, video gaming may be a form of "digital self-medication". They said women in particulary may immerse themselves in brain-engaging digital environments as a means of self-distraction.

Adult gamers of both sexes relied more on the internet for social support than non-gamers. This also supports prior research that suggests that adult gamers may "sacrifice real-world social activities to play video games."

If you are a fab-four fanatic/gamer you are looking forward to September 9th when the Beatles make their first splash into video games. The band today released their second trailer of the awaited game. Here is what it look it looks like:

On Wednesday, Blockbuster Inc. announced that in keeping with previously disclosed plans to launch an online video game rental service by summer, that they would launch a pilot program in the Cleveland area beginning June 30. Blockbuster is planning to expand the program nationwide by the end of the year, which would make it the only by-mail service to offer both movie and video game rentals.

We have to give credit to the advertising agency that came up with this clever advertising campaign. Warner Bros. launched an ad campaign to advertise its new shooter game, F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin, which saw quite a few black cats wandering around the city of London on this past Friday the 13th.

Branded a "cat-vertising campaign", specially trained black cats were seen around London sporting F.E.A.R. 2 clothing. According to Warner Bros., the idea is that the cats would "capture the attention of superstitious passers-by" on the notoriously unlucky Friday the 13th.

Explaining the campaign, a Warner Bros. spokesperson said that "everyday people are bombarded with so many advertising messages that it can be easy to miss them. With our research telling us that Brits are actively looking out for signs of bad luck this Friday, it makes perfect sense to try and capture their attention that way."

Another interesting twist to the ad campaign was that cat owners could join in the fun and order some F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin cat shirts of their own. They have since run out of the cat shirts.

Now the question is, will "catvertising" start popping up in the U.S., perhaps in a big city like NYC?

Here are some more photos of the cute and creepy felines:

How do you reach the target demographic of teenage boys? Get a girl to dress up in a revealing outfit. That is exactly what EA Sports and Sony Ericsson’s did today promoting new gaming handsets today which a bunch of pre-loaded EA Games including Lara Croft Tomb Raider. The promotion was done in England on the famed Oxford Street. The the W910 Exclusive Gaming Edition and motion-sensitive F305 handset are currently only available in England where the launch took place.

If you are wondering who Lara Croft is nowadays, the face of the popular franchise is Alison Carroll. The 23 year old is a English gymnast and model who will be making her film debut in the film "Doghouse " which is set for release later this year.