But a growing number were individuals, often eager for features such as cameras, games and Internet browsing.
For instance, VinaGame says it became cash-flow-positive by early 2006 largely by relying on a prepaid card for playing games at Internet cafes.
To help cushion the slowdown, and have customers come back for upgrades, many device makers are diversifying into content and services, such as offering music, games, Internet access, and applications.
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Researchers are discovering that daily exposure to computers, smart phones, video games, Internet search engines, etc. stimulates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways while weakening old ones.
Though its games may be less flashy than many of the Internet games and consoles on the market, GameCam provides real physical activity -- a plus for inactive game addicts or busy executives needing stress relief.
Cryptic thereby defies a troubling trend: Internet games, first ballyhooed as the next big thing, have struggled.
Just as backgrounds, my first two books in 1995-1996 were on playing multiplayer games on the Internet.
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That shortcoming matters, because playing games over the internet is becoming more popular as broadband access spreads.
Activision Blizzard thinks that will change as faster broadband makes it easier to broadcast games over the internet.
The solution, however, is not to tether your games to an internet connection.
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Eventually, those two worlds will merge, and music, movies, games and the Internet will all be funneled through one box.
The most notorious case of overdoing it: a 24-year-old man who dropped dead after playing Internet games for 86 hours nonstop.
Separately, Sony Computer Entertainment America, maker of the PlayStation, has been urging game developers to translate PlayStation 2 games to the Internet.
Several users have already had their Xbox Live accounts "permanently suspended", preventing them from being used to access multiplayer games via the internet.
Technologies such as television, video games and the internet are omnipresent in the world of communication and making it more sensational and less participatory.
Playing fast moving games over an internet connection poses a number of technical challenges, including latency - the time the remote system takes to execute a command.
But the fact is that there are easily available versions of their games on the Internet that have been hacked to get around this DRM management issue.
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App-solute Entertainment - Sound Platform 2 enhances any entertainment experience delivering rich, detailed audio with any app to enjoy movies, TV shows, videos, games, and Internet radio, including Pandora, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, TiVo, Spotify and HBO GO.
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Sport and stars notwithstanding, ratings are likely to go on falling, not just because of new television services, but also because television viewing is falling as children and teenagers increasingly spend time on computer games and the Internet.
They will showcase WiFi internet tomorrow on the show floor, including Mario Kart DS. Around the world 25 developers are working on games for WiFi Internet play, including: Activision, Bandai, Capcom, EA, Konami, Activision, Ubisoft, Square Enix, THQ.
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Their adoption of Network Magic is a big plus for privately held Pure Networks, which has already authored Port Magic, a product that enables gamers to play multi-player games over the Internet by automatically opening and closing ports on their Internet gateways.
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"Expanding our partnership with YouTube provides another platform for extending the reach of the thousands of hours of archived baseball content in our library and for delivering live baseball games via the Internet to fans in new markets around the world, " said Kenny Gersh, Senior Vice President, Business Development, MLBAM.
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Mochi Media, which serves in-game ads to 60 million people, is granting Google access to its inventory across 5, 000 games as part of the Internet giant's European launch of AdSense for Games.
Many children prefer to spend their spare time watching television, playing computer games or using the internet.
Games, graphics, Internet plug-ins, and speech recognition applications can take particularly good advantage of the new instructions.
Are you worried about personal computers, which can be used to play video games and access games websites on the Internet?
Last October, Aurora Feint raised its initial round of funding of several million dollars from Japanese mobile internet and games company DeNa.
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Similar to Apple TV, it offers games, videos and other Internet-streamed entertainment in China.
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They bet that Internet video, games and yet-unseen Web uses will create demand.
To play games at one of the Internet cafes, a customer gets a prepaid card and then goes to a computer.
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