Finally, a game industry analysis has been published that includes digital sales and transactions. The industry has endured countless misrepresentative reports that only accounted for physical product sales (which are, quite obviously, down considerably with the evolution of that new-fangled "Internet" thing—we really need to get one of those "websites").

From our previous article, "The $60 Game is Just the Start," sources include the ESA, Reuters, and VG Sales.

The NPD Group has released its latest Games Market Dynamics (US edition) report, emphasizing a total of $2.87 billion in spending from US gamers in Q3 2012; of the $2.87B reported, a total of $1.4B was diverted toward digital purchases and game subscriptions or DLC transactions. Physical products are still clinging for life, though, and brought in $1.07B in spending; used games and rentals made up the remaining $399 million. At the time of writing, we are unsure if this data includes Steam's sales metrics, though we have reached out to the NPD Group for comment. (Update: NPD notes that Steam does not release official sales details, so they have estimated for digital consumption through Steam).

The South Eastern parts of the US don't have much in the ways of technology conventions (unless you count guns and technological advancements in the 'grits' department), but between ECGC, X-CON, CGS, and the incumbent DragonCon, we've seen evidence that there's room for growth.

Our friend and developer of Digitanks is offering his game up for free as a protest of SOPA and PROTECT-IP, the two internet censorship bills that are being combated today.

"I encourage everybody to pirate Digitanks for free. If this legislation passes then I won’t be able to make a living on the internet, so you may as well pirate my games," Jorge Rodriguez, developer of Digitanks, posted on his blog.

How many times have you been playing one of Spacetime Studios' grounding-breaking Mobile MMOs, either Pocket Legends or Star Legends, and thought about just how much bigger the world would be, how much more populated and how much more involving it would be, if it were populated by people who were playing the desktop counterparts too? That dream is now a reality as Spacetime Studios has announced the first ever PC/Mobile cross-platform MMO.

The desktop clients for Pocket Legends and Star Legends are now available for download off of the Chrome Store and the iOS/Android versions have been available for a while.

In a recent gaming hours report put out by the gaming log website Raptr, we found that Skyrim beats out Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3, Gears 3, and Bulletstorm in terms of the longest average gaming session (continuous sittings) and nearly dethrones MW3 for total hours played. The stats below show the most played video games of 2011, broken down into a few key categories and by hours. Here are the stats (more after th jump):