When news spread about GameStop breaking the street date on Modern Warfare 2, Chris Oliviera, the retailer's vp for corporate communications in Texas, contacted Kotaku to explain the situation. The exec confirms that GameStop indeed made the decision to break the street date, saying that it was "an effort to protect our customer base."

Finally, a game that everyone is definitely waiting for: Madden NFL 10. We' have some lackluster stand alone games the few weeks past, but not anymore. Starting this week, you're finally gonna get all the field action you've been longing for. Not only that, this whole week of August 9th to 15th seems to well-represented, with various games sprinkled all throughout the different days. Check out the list after the jump.

There's a new bill being hatched in Texas that may require convicted sex offenders to register their gamertags and other account names for online game networks like the PlayStation Network and Second Life with the fuzz. The new bill is called HB 22 and is headed to the Texas House of Representatives. If it passes there, it's next stop will be the Senate.

Leipzig's over and the Tokyo Game Show won't be till October. But that doesn't mean there won't be any other conferences around to satisfy ever-curious gamers' appetites. And this time, we won't even have to fly overseas. The Austin Game Developers Conferences is coming up next, and they've added in a nice touch to this year's event.

This month saw the exodus of three companies from the ranks of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). Following the trend started by Activision, Vivendi, and LucasArts, id Software of Doom and Quake fame recently confirmed that it will also be taking its leave from the video gaming group. More details on this on our full article after the jump.

When you've got a business going, it's a wise idea to keep track of your cashflow. THQ has been doing precisely that. In fact, the company has recently reported the fourth quarter results of the fiscal year, which ended last March 31, 2008. More financial statistics in the full article after the jump.

With all the flak that video games have gotten from politicians, we're tempted to think that two will probably never mix.

The latest one involves U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama and his comment about video games. You can read an excerpt of his statement n the full article after the jump.

Independent works will always have a hard time finding its niche in an already established market, and video games are no exception. Usually the bottomline in creating a game is creativity versus profitability.

Steve Escalante, Business Development VP of the Gamecock Media Group, talked about this subject during the Texas' Independent Game Conference. Read more in the full article.

It's official: Blacksite: Area 51 (Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, PC) creative director Harvey Smith, one of the developers behind Deus Ex, and parent company Midway Austin have parted ways after Smith's "public resignation". This ends the partnership that the two began in 2004 after Smith bolted his old team by dishing out strong words in a recent interview.

These days, GameStop has a lot of reasons to celebrate. It's working on an industry that's growing every day, it's posting some serious numbers financially, and has recently opened its 1,000th store outside of the US.

The Texas-based game and console retailer has opened new stores recently in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Norway to hit the thousand-store milestone. Prior to that, the company has already branched out to Ireland, Switzerland, Australia, Guam, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

GameStop points to the booming hardware sales led by Kyoto-based Nintendo with its DS handheld and Wii console. Microsoft and Sony are also pitching in with the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, respectively.

Total sales posted by the retailer last year amounted to US$ 5.32 billion and is expected to grow even more this year as hot demand continues for pole platforms. The first quarter of fiscal 2007 saw GameStop with its best quarterly performance ever with US$ 24.7 million in profits while gross sales were at an all-time high of US$ 1.279 billion.