To help kick-off this summer’s LAN events, Evo 2009 will be going live this July bringing some of the best combat action for consoles with new release titles and some old school ones. The event starts on July 17th and will continue till July 19th and will feature the following titles:

Street Fighter IV
Street Fighter III: Third Strike
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Soulcalibur IV
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core

Evo 2009 will be in the heart of Las Vegas — the Rio Hotel and Casino. Not only are the games listed above having tournaments, but there is also a 64-man invitational taking place for Tatsunoko vs. Capcom as well.

Keep it locked to this event, because you may even see some CompLexity action take place!

The german organization known as wooSai has announced its Counter-Strike team for 2009. If you don’t remember who wooSai is, its more than likely due to the long absence the organization has taken. However, with all of the excitment that 1.6 has had in the previous weeks, wooSai thought it only fit to get in on the action!

The former Vulkanclan of Finn “karrigan” Andersen, Nicolaj “Nuggi” Larsen, Bardi “bardi” Haraldsson, Marc “nexiz” Woolrych, and Shervin “zhrv1N” Rafiie will now fly under the wooSai banner. Also, former player Magnus “pzyclone” Hansen will be moving to a managerial role on the team.

Upcoming events for the team will consist of SEAS(Scandinavian Electronic Amateur Series) and HK-LAN and KWAZQ, which will have some of the best teams in the nation of Denmark.

The following is the current roster for wooSai:

Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen
Nicolaj ‘Nuggi’ Larsen
Bardi ‘bardi’ Haraldsson
Marc ‘nexiz’ Woolrych
Shervin ‘zhrv1N’ Rafiier

Source: GotFrag

After comScore released its report on Friday, it showed that iPhone is currently the leading device for all mobile games in the downloading category. At a stellar 14 percent against all mobile game products and over 32 percent of all iPhone users saying they download atleast 1 game a month, the reports are definitly showing the iPhone leading the wave for Mobile Gaming competition.

The current market average is 3.8 percent for all users downloading games and the iPhone is doing 10 times that. If you’re into mobile gaming and you’re still carrying around that clunky blackberry or smartphone, maybe its time you switched to what works?

Source: Kotaku.com

An interesting article was recently published on the MeetYourMakers official website. The article touches base on what is apparently.. a fear for eSports and its survival. As we head into 2009, with the economy looking the way it does and everyone holding onto their last ounces of cash — is there room for growth for our beloved eSports? The articles covers several important topics such as: ESWC and the popular G7 Teams.

Here is a snippet of the article below:

“One cannot help but think that something is wrong when elite Counter-Strike and Warcraft III players are without a home. And 2009 will most likely bring many changes to several organizations, with some folding and others unable to put together the financial package required to retain the services of their players. This means that those with hard cash ready to be spent will find themselves kings in a kingdom built on shaky ground.”

God bless those that strive for perfection in their games and organizations and to those that put their all into this crazy world of dreams known as eSports.

Get the full version of the article HERE
Source: MyMYM.com

The Entertainment Software Associating has just opened registration for E3 2009. This year will definitly be a “do not miss” experience with the list very impressive list of companies that will be making an appearance. CEO Michael D. Gallagher had this to say on E3 for 2009:

“With robust exhibitor sales, high attendee interest, and strong commitments from multiple industry sectors, we are going to ensure the full excitement and energy of this industry is on display.”

2007 brought the first year where the event was noticably decreased with a lower participation and that followed onto 2008 with the maximum attendance only at 5000. However, this year at the Los Angeles Convention Center the tremendous in size crowd is expected to make its return with the likes of: MTV, Disney, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard and much more already on the docket.

E3 2009 will start on June 2nd and carry on till June 4th, and as previously stated at the Los Angeles Convvention Center.

Source: SK-Gaming

SK’s young Warcraft player Dong Hwan “ViOlet” Kim had to visit the hospital after a fire broke out in his family’s home.

Despite the circumstances, ViOlet and his family were very lucky however, ViOlet will spend some time in the hospital for severe smoke inhalation.  According to SK-Gaming, the families home burnt down and the organization wishes both their player and his family good luck as they hope for a quick recovery.

How this affects SK’s already thin Warcraft-division is yet unknown. The lineup only consisted of ViOlet, Lyn and Miou.

Source: SK-Gaming

Gaming statistician’s get ready! According to comScore (a Market researcher) the United States audience for gaming website visitors has grown an impressive 86 million people, with 67 million people just a year ago. The time spent playing games has increased 42% with the amount of time internet users spend playing video games jumped from 3.7% to 4.9% from December 2007 to December 2008.

Below are the Top 8 Gaming websites with their visitors count:

1) Yahoo – 19.5 million
2) EA Online – 15.4 million
3) Disney Games – 13.4 million
4) Wild Tangent – 13.3 million
5) Addictinggames.com – 11.3 million
6) AOL Games – 10.7 million
7) MSN Games – 103. million
8) Miniclip – 7 million

The director of comScore – Edward Hunter, said that the ad-supported games is one of the few things people have really been doing more of since the decline of our economy. It has even effected gaming sells, where casual gamers are now playing the free-to-play games rather than purchasing them. It was such a noticable change that the NPD Group stated that it was a clear explanation why the sales dropped nearly 14% for retail sales for video games. However, that hasn’t stopped the video game industry from growing as it grew 19% from its previous year to $22 billion in 2008.