Look back for a sec and try to remember which brand has been the most talked about, most advertised, and most hyped last year. Well, social media services provider Vitrue did more than just that, measuring the amount of mentions of around 2000 brands, naming the 100 most social brands of 2008. The top, the runners-up, and the gaming brands are all in the full article.

Monday morning in Virgina, a 6-year-old kid misses his bus to school. What's a kid to do? He's about to be late! Well, obviously, take your family's car and get your tardy butt to the campus, of course! And that's just what the kid (name undisclosed, so we'll just call him "Lil Nicky" - you'll know why in a bit) did. Aren't kids just amazing these days? If they're not fighting battles in court to legalize hedgehogs, they're driving themselves to school.

*Update* CNN video included!

How far would you go for your favorite video game character? This kid went all the way to court. 11-year-old Judson King was such a Sonic the Hedgehog fan that he decided he wanted the real thing - only to find out that hedgehogs were illegal in his city. What's a boy to do but take the case to court?

Good news, Rock Band fans! We've got some juicy new details related to the upcoming Rock Band 2. Find out the platforms the game will be headed on, the number of tracks, and the general release date of the game after the jump!

CNN recently released an analysis piece discussing the Wii's place in the stock market, and the judgment? There's a possibility that the Wii may get too big for its britches by being valued too high in the market but for now it's still strong and it's not showing signs of reaching its peak yet.

Nintendo stocks remain high in Japan: it's still a buy and it's still going up and up. Read more in the full article.

With his Nintendo Wii and DS consoles conquering millions of homes like welcome alien invaders, Shigeru Miyamoto certainly is making enough monetary impact for him to land in CNN Money's shortlist of 50 People Who Matter Now.

Miyamoto managed to grab the 20th spot (possibly even higher, if us gamers were to be asked). Who hasn't heard of Donkey Kong? Zelda? Surely even your grandmother could recognize the trademark red cap and moustache that Mario sports in each and every game that he stars in. Nintendo is now beyond being a household name; it has evolved into a culture in its own right.

And the reasons that Miyamoto matters right now are his cleverly-marketed new consoles: the DS and the Wii. While the Nintendo DS innovated gaming with its use of stylus controls and dual screens, the Nintendo Wii has given new meaning to console gaming by injecting more physical involvement into Wii games, with its Wiimote controls. Marketing the Wii to an until-recently untapped older demographic, the Nintendo is still going strong in its quest to dominate the US$ 30 billion dollar industry, despite of naysayers.

It's probably a gamer's ultimate dream to be working in a game company and get a high salary for it. If you're gonna dream, dream high and aim to work for a company like Electronic Arts which got to CNN Money's Top 20 Great Employers.

Coming at second, EA currently has a US$ 3 billion revenue and 7, 200 full-time employees. Aside from the starting US$ 60,000 salary, new average-entry workers also get five to ten free games yearly, an option to purchase heavily discounted copies from a company store, and US$ 100 coupons for any game consoles. There are also restricted stock grants, an on-site gym, free DVD library and a plan that allows employees to buy company stock at a 15% discount.

To be fair, it's quite difficult to get a position in this gaming giant's company. Out of 5,000 graduate applicants last year, only 200 passed. A gamer getting paid for working in the video game industry is still a luxury, so good luck to anyone who attempts getting into EA.

First and foremost, we would like to give our sincerest condolences to the family and friends of those 32 people (33 including the gunman) involved in today's shootout at the Virginia Tech campus. While everyone is still reeling in shock from the events at Norris Hall this morning, we share everyone's sentiment that it is indeed a horrible tragedy. Already, CNN is even calling it the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.

But why post something that's not gaming related? Well, we would have wanted to avoid this whole issue altogether, however, someone had apparently brought videogames (something oh so close to all of our hearts) into the picture. Hence, the relevancy to these blogs.

As Kotaku reports, Jack Thompson spoke on FOXNews about the Virgina Tech shooting, saying that the massacre is linked to videogames. Now, we do not know to what extent Jack Thompson said this and we do not know the exact context in which the attorney said this. While it's pretty hard to form any substantial and unbiased judgment from such a lack of details, CobaltBlue, as a comment to Kotaku's post, sheds some light on what happened in FOXNews for us:

@possiblymalignant: Fox News Live was calling him a "School Shooting Specialist", or that's what he's calling himself now. All he talked about though was linking video games and "murder simulators" to school shootings. I guess we can look forward to a new Jack Thompson crusade now.

Maybe there is more to Thompson's statement than just "the Virgina Tech shooting was due to videogames" after all? And we have yet to find an actual video, transcript, or news clipping from FOXNews or any other news source. For now, this is what we have.

Pic courtesy of FOXNews.

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Update: We've managed to grab the Fox News interview with Jack Thompson over at YouTube which was uploaded by rgbyhkr. Here's the clip.

Contrary to rumors, Microsoft's Shane Kim is saying that the company is not interested in buying Take-Two Interactive, and for good reason.

CNN's Chris Morris talks about the potentially powerful acquisition, citing Shane Kim and some pretty good reasons why Microsoft wouldn't want to take over Take-Two:

One company that says it's not in the running is Microsoft. Because today's independent publishers are platform agnostic - that is to say, they build games for all major systems - taking over one would result in a massive revenue loss for Microsoft, as all development would be redirected toward the Xbox 360.

"We could never launch an acquisition bid at a third party publisher," said Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft (Charts) Game Studios.

Of course, where there's a will (for rumormongering), there's a way. "Potential buyers" now include Ubisoft, Activision, Bono (care of Elevation Partners), and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Sorry folks, Cthulthu won't be making any bids this time, so consider that rumor smashed.

Just recently, Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik (a.k.a., Gabe) has written a scathing commentary in response to a story that was published by CNN. In his commentary, he expresses his dissatisfaction at the fact that, once again, a murder happens and it all gets blamed on the under-aged suspect's gaming habits, and not on other factors which may have shaped the individual into a killer.

For those who don't frequent CNN's site too often, the article in question discusses the recent rise of the number of incidents which involves homeless individuals being murdered by teenagers "for sport."

As a primary example of such an incident, CNN uses the story of the 49-year-old homeless man, Rex Baum, who was killed in 2004 after he was beaten to death by Nathan Moore, Luis Oyola, and Andrew Ihrcke. At the time of the incident, the killers were 15, 16, and 17 years old respectively. After Baum's body was discovered two days after he was killed, the police were able to track down the teens and question them about what they've done. According to police reports, the eldest answered that Baum apparently "reminded him of playing a violent video game."

That statement from Ihrcke may actually be enough to raise more than a few eyebrows within both the gaming and the legislative community. However, what caught Krahulik's attention was the fact that even though the original article continued to present more facts and examples, and also mentions several other theories on what may have been prompting minors to go on killing sprees, it is inevitable that many would stop reading at the point where video games are mentioned. As Krahulik laments:

These kids have given the media their angle and just like all the other cases where games are mentioned no one will ever look any further. No one will ask what their family life was like, what their parents were like, what the kid was like before all this happened. Games did it and that’s the end of the story ... I'm perfectly aware that the reality of the situation was somewhere between the two extremes. I know full well that violent games did not create this killer and I also know that his parents did not make him a murderer ... The sad truth is that the reality we're talking about here would probably never actually see the light of day. The media will tell the story they want to tell regardless and that story will be about violent games. The parents of these kids will be lucky to get two lines in an article about the crime. If they tell a reporter that their son hardly played games or that he was f***ed up long before they bought a Playstation do you really think that will make it into the final article? You'd never see that side of the story, not in a million years. [Bold format not in original text. - QJ]

However, all that has now changed, as the stepmother of one of the suspects (they did not mention which one) has bravely come out in the open to let everyone know the truth about these teens. Who would have known that the parent of a so-called "video game killer" can actually be a gamer herself? Who would have thought that she was a regular Penny Arcade reader? Who would have expected that she would choose to trust the folks of Penny Arcade with the truth instead of handing it over to the mainstream media?

We'll never be as eloquent as Tycho or Gabe, so click on the "Read" link below, read on, and brace yourselves for what a lot of people in politics would probably hate to hear.