With a good chunk of gaming taking place online, a decent headset with a microphone is a necessary tool for any gamer.

Able Planet's PS500MM headphones are aimed squarely at anyone with a need for a decent and affordable headset, though some gamers may find better options elsewhere.

The headphones themselves are rather comfortable, and the microphone works well. The audio quality is great, with Able Planet's LINX AUDIO technology delivering crisp sound.

There are some smaller gripes, though. The microphone has to be twisted up if you want it out of the way, which feels a bit odd, especially when other headsets offer a turning mic for easy adjustments.

And, while the wire isn't short, it could certainly be a bit longer. If anyone is using this headset for general multimedia purposes, it poses no problem, but anything involving the TV may result in sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room. Suitable for PC gaming, but when it comes to consoles, not so much.

However, the relatively cheap price tag makes it a good starter buy for anyone needing a headset.

Dragon Quest IX is already a hit in Japan – and it's not even out yet.

Square Enix's highly anticipated DS role-playing game will release in Japan on July 11, and pre-orders have already passed the 2 million mark. The previous installment, released on the PlayStation 2, sold 3 million in Japan within the first week.

Famitsu, a popular video game magazine in Japan, estimates that 95.5 percent of all Japanese people between ages 16 and 49 are aware of the Dragon Quest brand. Dragon Quest IX has also been in the top four of the magazine's reader-polled “Most Wanted” list for the past two and a half years.

The Dragon Quest games have proven to be so popular in Japan that Enix (before its merger with Square) had to change release dates for Dragon Quest from weekdays to weekends after receiving complaints of mass absenteeism from schools and workplaces.

However, unlike the Final Fantasy series, Dragon Quest saw relatively little success outside of Japan until Dragon Quest XIII on PlayStation 2.

The newest title will feature four-player cooperative play, which may entice non-Japanese gamers to give the game a shot. Also helping the title is the fact that it's releasing on the DS, which is currently the most popular system.

The release dates for Europe and North America have yet to be announced.

Last month, Nintendo announced Demo Play, which would help gamers who were stuck by either displaying a video walkthrough or taking over control of the game.

The first game announced that will use this feature was New Super Mario Bros Wii, the four-player co-op Mario game. No other Demo Play-compatible titles have been announced, though the company has stated its intent to support other titles.

Now, Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun has revealed that Nintendo is looking beyond the Wii and at the DS as well. Although no details on titles or implementation has been revealed, the company does plan on mostly utilizing the feature on high speed action games.

New Super Mario Bros Wii will release in the holiday season.

Wii Sports Resort, the follow-up to the immensely popular Wii Sports, is off to a great start.

The title, which released in Japan on June 25, has already sold over 350,000  copies, according to publisher and media tracker Enterbrain. This makes Wii Sports Resort the third-fastest selling Wii title; Mario Kart sold over 600,000  copies and Super Smash Bros. Brawl sold over 800,000 copies in a similar time frame.

The game will utilize the newly released Wii Motion Plus attachment, which  promises more accurate motion detection. EA’s Grand Slam Tennis was the  first game compatible with the device.

Wii Sports Resort will be released in the U.S. on July 26.

Troubled video game developer and publisher Midway has stopped taking bids for its assets – which it had recently put up for sale amid bankruptcy and legal issues – and has found just one offer.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment emerged as the only bidder with a $33 million offer to buy most of Midway’s franchises, including Mortal Kombat, Spy Hunter, Joust, and Wheelman, as well as Midway’s Chicago and Seattle studios.

Midway’s other two studios, in Newcastle, UK, and San Diego, are not part of the sale.

Warner announced its offer in May, but Midway held out, accepting bids through June 24 in hopes that a bidding war would occur, culminating in an auction to determine who would receive the assets.

However, because Warner was the only bidder, there will be no auction. Warner will likely buy up the assets, but not before Midway resolves several complaints from creditors.

Warner has been looking to strengthen its foothold in the video game industry lately by acquiring Snowblind Studios in February and acting as publisher for anticipated games such as Scribblenauts and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

id is known for the wildly popular Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake games. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“This puts id Software in a wonderful position going forward,” said id founder and lead designer John Carmack in a statement. “We will now be able to grow and extend all of our franchises under one roof, leveraging our capabilities across multiple teams while enabling forward-looking research to be done in the service of all of them.”

Bethesda’s critically acclaimed Fallout and Oblivion games are role-playing games – out of the way of id’s first-person shooters. The two different genres mean that the two companies will not conflict with one another, but rather operate under a unified banner.  

ZeniMax has announced that no changes will be made to development at id, and all the principals have signed long-term employment contracts.

Bethesda is currently working on Fallout: New Vegas, another role-playing game in the series, while id is currently working on Doom 4 and Rage, a new first-person shooter/racer.

The formerly DS-exclusive title Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will now be heading to the PSP and PSP Go as well, Take-Two Games announced on Monday.

Take-Two subsidiaries Rockstar Leeds and Rockstar North developed Chinatown Wars.

“Rockstar's work with the GTA series has been an enormous part of the success of PlayStation platforms," said Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO and President Jack Tretton in a statement. "We're excited to welcome the critically acclaimed Chinatown Wars to the outstanding line-up of great games headed to the PSP platform this fall.”

The game sports a top-down view, similar to the first two games in the series. The title was originally built specifically for the DS, but sluggish sales may be why Take-Two will be porting it to the PSP, where it will feature scaled-up graphics and new story missions.

Chinatown Wars missed internal sales expectations, selling only 89,000 copies in its first month. This led to Best Buy drastically cutting the price for a while in a bid to boost sales.

The title will release on UMD for the PSP and as a digital download for the PSP Go in the fall.

Carbon modeling startup Planet Metrics on Tuesday announced the beta release of its Rapid Carbon Modeling software.

The software-as-a-service product will allow companies to track and model their carbon and energy throughout their entire supply chain, which will in turn help them lower their carbon footprint and save money, according to Planet Metrics.

“A lot of people focus on buildings and transportation when it comes to carbon, but that’s a low-hanging fruit,” said Planet Metrics CEO and founder Andy Leventhal. “If you step back and look at the real carbon contributions, 90 percent of it comes from the supply chain.”

With the software, a company could look at various scenarios, such as changing the size of the bottle or changing the manufacturer from Mexico to Poland, and Planet Metrics’ software will show the effect of the change on carbon footprint. The program makes no judgments, either. There is no “too much” or “just right” – Planet Metrics' software merely interprets the data. It is up to each company to decide what they plan to do with the information.

The detailed breakdown applies from the very first step in making a product to when it’s sold. So Planet Metrics focuses on aspects such as ingredients, manufacturers, suppliers, packages, and shipment. Once it’s in the consumer’s hands, though, it’s not Planet Metrics’ concern.

In that sense, the company software is primarily geared toward businesses and  results. Mr. Leventhal cites an unnamed vendor that had 400 suppliers, but identified with the software that a third of its carbon came from only 10 of those 400. The vendor could then focus more on those 10 suppliers and decide whether to discuss ways to innovate or to simply find someone else.

This one example is just one of many; companies generally have a lot of suppliers providing materials.

“There’s very little visibility,” added Mr. Leventhal. “If you don’t understand where your carbon is in that supply chain, there is an enormous amount of risk.”

Although Planet Metrics is unable to disclose most of its customers, it has announced that Method Products, the maker of environmentally friendly cleaning products such as soap, has been using its software for the past couple months.

Not a bad start considering that the company just launched in November. Its software is currently offered at an annual rate depending on the complexity of the model and the size of the company. Everything is calculated on Planet Metrics’ side, and the client itself is easy to use, making it hard for companies to justify not taking a hard look at their carbon footprint.

The company launched with $2.3 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and angel investors.

It looks like grandma can keep up with even the most traditional gamers, now.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii will feature “demo play” – a setting that will allow the game to take over during tough spots, with players regaining control whenever they feel they can handle it again.  

Although the feature was revealed in a patent earlier this year, developer Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that it will be used in the upcoming new Super Mario Bros. Wii, with other games potentially using it as well.  

The actual patent that was filed offered three modes to demo play (then referred to as the “kind code”): a video of gameplay that does not interrupt the action on screen; a full automatically controlled walkthrough that players could jump into at any time; and a DVD-esque scene selection mode that would allow players to choose where to start.

The patent also notes that if  players jumps ahead with the full video walkthrough, they will not be able to save their progress. 

However, Mr. Miyamoto only confirmed the existence of the future in an upcoming game – he did not go into any further details regarding how it will be implemented.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is set to release sometime this holiday season.

The video game industry took a nasty dip in the month of May.

According to industry tracker NPD Group, the video game industry fell 23 percent to $863.3 million, compared with $1.12 billion last May.

Portable hardware was the only category that did not decline from the previous May, due in large part to the DS Lite and DSi systems, which sold 633,500 units in May – more than the PSP, Xbox 360, PS3, and PS2 combined.  

“This is the first month that industry sales have dipped below $1 billion since August 2007,”  NPD analyst Anita Frazier said in an email.

However, it’s somewhat expected.

“May is typically one of the lowest revenue-generating months in any given year for the industry in general,” she added.  

Nevertheless, the impending release of Wii MotionPlus, along with strong software lineups including The Sims 3 (already a big seller), Ghostbusters, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, and Virtua Tennis 2009 will likely help the industry.

Having already secured exclusive rights to the Beatles, Rock Band developer Harmonix is taking yet another step to music game domination by signing on punk rock band Green Day.

“[Green Day’s] message and their music have been the voice and sound of this generation,”  MTV Networks President Van Toffler said in a statement. “The addition of Green Day…marks another landmark in our efforts to bring the best artists to Rock Band.”

The first of the music will be a three-pack of songs – 21 Guns, Know Your Enemy, and East Jesus Nowhere – which will be available for download July 7.

It is unclear if the exclusive deal with Green Day will yield standalone games like AC/DC or the Beatles; Harmonix and MTV Games have simply stated that additional songs and projects will be revealed later.

Gamers eager to try the PlayStation 3 version of action game Prototype may find their excitement tarnished by an installation issue.

The Activision-published title was only released yesterday, but apparently a small number of PS3 Prototype games will alert the player that there is insufficient hard drive space to install the game, even if that is not the case.

As an immediate workaround for those who can’t wait to play, the Prototype team has offered the solution of changing the hard drive space by 700 MB. Players can either install or uninstall games, download or remove games or demos, or add or remove music and videos.

After changing the available hard drive space, players should be able to install the game.

The team is currently working on a patch to release on the PlayStation Network.

EA’s next-up in the immensely popular Sims franchise is, understandably, quite popular.

The Sims 3 has only been out for a week, but it has already sold 1.4 million copies for the PC and Mac in what EA describes as the “best-selling PC launch in EA’s history.”

The game is, as the name suggests, a simulation game. Players control Sims in their lives as they learn, work, do chores, and form relationships. One major change from the previous games lies in the evolving neighborhood, so that the neighbors will age and act as if the player were still controlling them, even if the player is only controlling one family.

A leaked, albeit incomplete, version of The Sims 3 surfaced a couple weeks before the game launched. Although there were initially concerns that piracy would hurt sales – the download rate was outpacing that of Spore, another EA game – it seems the popularity of the Sims name is enough to open up many wallets.

The Sims 2, which released in 2004, has sold more than 13 million copies worldwide. Its popularity spawned many expansion packs, such as The Sims 2: University, The Sims 2: Pets, and The Sims 2: Apartment Life.

With more than 7 million downloads of user-created content already, the newest iteration looks like it will follow the same trajectory of multiple expansion and item packs.

Sega’s beautiful, and grossly underappreciated, PS3 game Valkyria Chronicles has received a second wind in the sales charts.

The action role-playing game, which sports a unique “pencil sketch” look, sold poorly upon launch in North America, due in large part to the overcrowded holiday release schedule.

Although the game looked to be condemned to a similar fate as Okami – another critics' darling that bombed at retail – word-of-mouth, impressive downloadable content, and a price cut gave Valkyria Chronicles a big boost.

According to Sega’s blog, the game sold 400 percent more in April than in March. Considering that game sales generally go downhill after the first month or two, it’s a rare feat to see such a huge jump in sales seven months after launch, especially for a title that was all but ignored. 

With the Wheel, the Zapper, the Balance Board, and soon-to-be-released MotionPlus on the Wii (not to mention innumerable third-party peripherals), the thought of another add-on makes me balk.

But another device is exactly what Nintendo plans to release.

Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata announced the Wii Vitality Sensor at the company’s E3 press conference, a device that measures a person’s pulse and will somehow help in relieving stress.

Not much else information was shared, but I think the general consensus was the same: not interested. Who needs to dedicate more space, and more money, to another piece of plastic?

And it’s not only Nintendo who’s guilty of this. DDR plants a dance mat in the room. Rock Band and Guitar Hero take up space with plastic instruments. DJ Hero will add a plastic turntable. Tony Hawk: Ride brings with it a skateboard peripheral. Sony already has the Eye Toy, but plans to release a motion-sensing wand to go along with it as well. Microsoft’s Project Natal is a while away, but will still vie for that precious TV-top space that the Wii Sensor Bar currently occupies in many households.

It doesn’t stop there, either. The list goes on in a tangled mess of plastic, wires, and dongles that makes my head spin.

Developers understandably want to immerse the player in their games, but it’s starting to get ridiculous.

I think I share the sentiment of many gamers when I cry: Enough with the peripherals!