gaming

If you thought Vegas was where the big gamblers went to play, you're behind the times. Sin City has been blown past by another exotic destination once infamous for corruption and mob activity. But you probably won't be heading there to play baccarat any time soon.

Even as investors reel from the stock-market roller coaster this week, Wall Street is moving on, with plenty of news on the way. Next week will bring headlines about retail and gaming earnings, as well as quarterly reports from News Corp., SodaStream and some newly public Chinese firms.

Las Vegas Sands benefits from being more geographically diversified than its major competitors. With a casino resort presence that spans the U.S., Macau and Singapore, LVS is a strong player that can ride out local downturns, and one stock analysis firm thinks its stock is undervalued by 10% to 15%.

Microsoft soundly beat its 2010 sales forecast for the Kinect, a motion-sensor device that enables players to use body movements -- instead of controllers -- to play games on the Xbox console.

Given recent valuations for the likes of Zynga, you'd think investors would be frothing at the mouth for any IPOs in this sector. But only a few players look serious about going public soon, and investors aren't putting as much pressure on them to jump as you'd expect.

In Las Vegas you can bet on cards, dice, slots, horses, football, baseball, hockey ... but you can't bet on the Oscars. You can't bet on who will be the last survivor on Survivor. You can't bet which pooch will take first place at the Westminster Dog Show. Thanks to a change in the local...

Activision Blizzard's shares fell after the video-game maker forecast that 2011 sales would fall short of analysts' estimates and announced that it would cease creating Guitar Hero games because of lackluster sales.

Electronic Arts says its fiscal third-quarter net loss widened as revenue fell, but adjusted results surpassed Wall Street's expectations -- and an optimistic outlook and stock buyback plan helped push its shares higher.

Sony (SNE) unveiled its new PlayStation Portable device, the Next Generation Portable Entertainment System, or NGP. The hand-held device has greater motion sensitivity and allows gamers to connect with other users online, Sony said in a statement. The company plans to release the device at the...

U.S. gamers spent about the same amount of money on video games last year as they did in 2009, even as sales of consoles and other hardware took a plunge. Purchases of physical game discs slid 5%, in spite of the record-breaking success of "Call of Duty: Black Ops," but downloadable and social-network games made up the difference.