Kazunori Yamauchi took a break from working on Gran Turismo 6 to check out the latest vehicles at the SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The head of Polyphony Digital was also in Sin City to choose the next car that will be playable in GT5 as a downloadable vehicle. At the 9th Annual GT Awards,Yamauchi awarded “Best Hot Rod" winner Mary Pozzi’s 1973 custom red Chevrolet Camaro “Best in Show”. Next year, gamers will be able to get behind the wheel of this extremely fast vehicle and take it on any course.

Epic Games went to the UK to connect with gamers at the public gaming and technology show, Gadget Show Live. During the six-day show, Epic assembled a team of game developers to discuss the future of videogames. Click on the videos below to see the panels discuss what’s on the horizon of game development.

Samsung Electronics in the fourth quarter of 2011 solidified its leadership of the U.S. liquid-crystal display (LCD) market, as its share of unit shipments reached a record high, according to the IHS iSuppli Television Systems Service at information and analytics provider IHS. During the final three months of 2011, Samsung accounted for nearly one-quarter of U.S. LCD TV shipments, at 23.6 percent. This represented the largest share of the market ever posted by Samsung on a quarterly basis, and allowed the South Korean electronics giant to pad its lead over No.2 brand VIZIO Inc. of Irvine, Calif.

National health care company Humana has extended its partnership with video game leader Ubisoft by offering rewards for healthy gaming. Through its wellness and loyalty solution, HumanaVitality, members are now able to seamlessly earn Vitality Points™ for exercising using Ubisoft’s fitness games, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved” and “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012,” available exclusively on Kinect™ for Xbox 360. This partnership marks the first time a fitness video game has been integrated with a health care solution in this way.

SAN FRANCISCO – The Game Developers Conference (GDC 2012) is officially in the record books. The world’s largest and longest-running event serving professionals dedicated to the art and science of making games held to its title of “largest” with a record-breaking 22,500 game industry professionals making the trek to the Moscone Center in San Francisco. That’s a 17% increase in attendance over the previous year’s event.  Following the success of the show, organizers have announced that GDC 2013 will return to the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco from Monday, March 25 to Friday, March 29, 2013, – with a call for lecture submissions to open this summer. 

SAN FRANCISCO -- According to Canadian hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, “a good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” And that’s exactly how the game is being played in the thriving Ontario Technology Corridor, as evidenced by “hockey stick” expansions by companies including Google Inc., Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), Gameloft and Arkadium.

German online game publisher Bigpoint has surpassed 250 million registered players for its free-to-play (F2P), browser-based online games. Bigpoint, which has established a global publishing network of over 1,000 game portals, social networks, and media sites, attracts over 250,000 new players to its key titles every day. The company has targeted U.S. gamers with titles like Battlestar Galactica Online, Drakensang Online, Dark Orbit, and Farmerama. The game makers were in Los Angeles for E3 last year, where they held a party at the Playboy Mansion.

The PC gaming community was pretty much abuzz all this weekend, when a Minnesota-based Best Buy reportedly put up a stand in its store, indicating that Diablo III, Activision Blizzard's monstrous new sequel, was coming sooner than expected.  The standee indicated that the game was releasing on February 1st, a date that sent a lot of folks into a frenzy to pre-order it and attend their midnight party.  Well, it's going to be a sad, lonely outing, because Blizzard responded in regards the release date.

Even the most powerful man in the world has to find some time for Christmas shopping. President Barack Obama checked out the videogame section of Best Buy in Virginia to pick up Ubisoft’s Just Dance 3 for the Wii. This is the latest game to be added to the Presidential Wii Collection at the White House. Obama’s daughters Malia and Sasha play Wii, making the White House a First Gaming Family.

Chinese online game company ZQGame has partnered with Los Angeles-based SEE Games to create, co-invest in, and publish an original MMO (massively multiplayer online) game based on Sony Pictures Entertainment’s 2012 summer event film, Total Recall (2012), starring Colin Farrell. The deal represents the first time a Hollywood entity has partnered with a game company from China to develop an online game in-full.

The virtual goods business is booming, and not just in the PC gaming space. A new report from MocoSpace found that Caucasians and African Americans over-index on virtual goods spending. Caucasians, which made up 18 percent of surveyed users, made 26 percent of virtual goods purchases. African Americans, which comprised 36 percent of surveyed respondents, made up 38 percent of purchases, a slight over-index. 

Seattle – Valve Software, which is based in Seattle, used the local video game convention, PAX Prime 2011, to debut its latest game. Counter Strike: Global Offensive was on display at Valve’s booth for gamers to get a first look at. Counter Strike has been a staple of the pro gaming circuit and remains one of the most beloved shooters of all time by gamers. A first look at the sequel can be seen in the trailer below.