Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of sports games on the PC or consoles. I have always leaned more towards games that had stuff that you can do in real life — like shooting zombies or racing cars at 250 miles an hour downtown with cops chasing you. Despite my gaming preferences EA’s Madden NFL is one of the biggest franchises of any type ever hit a game console.

Today marks the launch of EA’s Madden NFL 09, and this year’s version marks the 20-year anniversary of the Madden NFL franchise. EA says that the Madden NFL 09 assesses your skills and adjusts the gameplay to keep the experience fun and challenging as you get better. The constantly adjusting difficulty also means that the veteran players can play with the inexperienced without new players getting spanked too badly.

I am a big time PC gamer and have been for many years. If you ask me to pick my very favorite video game, it would be Mass Effect. The game is fantastic and as long as the game is, I wish it were longer. EA announced a long time ago that it would offer PC gamers the download content “Bring Down the Sky” for free.

The catch at the time of the initial announcement was that we didn’t know when exactly the download would be ready. EA has announced that the download pack is now available for PC gamers to get free of charge. “Bring Down the Sky” adds 90 minutes of new play to Mass Effect and adds a new uncharted world.

Today the amount of money generated by a top flight video game can easily outclass the money made by a theatrical movie release. The video game industry is also set to keep booming and in an “if you can’t beat them, joint them” move many video games are becoming movies. The sad fact is that many movies based on video games just plain suck. I’m talking to you Doom.

According to CrunchGear a movie based on the hit video game Gears of War has received the financing it needs to move ahead. Legendary Pictures and New Line are said to be co-financing the film. Legendary Pictures was one of the financial backers for the “Dark Knight” in theaters right now.

I have spent every day since the iTunes App Store launched fighting with iTunes tech support to get them to believe the fact that I couldn’t download anything from anywhere in the store wasn’t related to the amount of traffic the store was getting with the new iPhone. It seems that wait until later and try again was the best answer they could give me for 3 days until someone finally bothered to actually check my account and fixed it within 5 minutes.

With my account fixed I downloaded all sorts of cool apps today including the free game called Tap Tap Revenge. The game is sort of along the lines of Guitar Hero, but with tracks nowhere near as good. The game has a red, blue and green beams that have orbs of light and the occasional arrow that slide down them. The object of the game is to tap the orbs as the hit the bottom like you would do in guitar Hero.

I always sort of thought Guitar Hero was a stupid concept until I was bored one day in Best Buy and picked it up and realized how fun the game was. When Rock Band came out the drums had me running to buy the game the day it came out. It didn’t take long for me to realize the weakest link in the PS3 Rock Band bundle was the guitar, which broke about 3 days into playing. Now it only strums one way and you can’t activate Star Power/Overdrive to save my sucky friends when they punk out.

Peak Products has announced the Starpex guitar controller for the PS2 and PS3, and it is way sweet. Peak says that the controller is actually built by a leading guitar maker and the thing is made form real wood. Features of the Starpex include full Guitar Hero and Rock Band functionality with a Star Power/Overdrive button and a tilt sensor for the traditionalists.

Earlier this week there were lots of rumors going around about who would be the publisher for the Xbox 360 racing sim from them. Serious racing simulation enthusiast will know the name SimBin as the maker of the most realistic racing games around like the GTR series. SimBin and Atari have announced a new game called RACE Pro that will be coming to the Xbox 360 this fall.

RACE Pro will give Xbox 360 owners a precise and realistic racing experience with physics and deep realism and immersion. The game promises drivers of all levels the ability to pick up and race. A number of cars will be offered with 200 to more than 1000 horse power and different race series will be available. The game will also feature online play.

When you think of football games for the PS3 or Xbox 360 the first game that comes to mind is probably EA’s Madden franchise. While EA has the NFL locked up, Midway still has a popular football game for those looking for a Madden alternative.

Midway has announced development is underway on the next installment of its million copy selling Blitz: The League franchise. The new game called Blitz: The League II will ship this fall for the PS3 and Xbox 360 game consoles.

Many PC gamers don’t realize that EA’s Sims series of video games is one of the most popular video game franchises around. The Sims series of games sell more copies than most MMORPGs or shooters could ever dream of.

The first of the EA Sims games to hit the Nintendo Wii console was called MySims. EA has announced that MySims is being ported from the Wii to the PC and will get new and exclusive content for the PC version.

Midway and Epic announced today that Unreal Tournament III for the Xbox 360 game console is now available for purchase. The game is rated “M” for mature and retails for $59.99. The game has been available for the PC and for PS3 for a while now and has sold 1 million copies so far on those platforms.

Xbox owners will get an exclusive first look at the Gears of War 2 trailer, which is included on the game disc. The video content has never before seen footage of the multiplayer Gears of War 2 maps. The Xbox 360 version of the game includes new features that weren’t on the PC or PS3 version.

I am a big fan of the Star Wars movies going back to my childhood when I saw Return of the Jedi six times in one week. I haven’t traditionally been a big fan of video games based on the Star Wars films myself, but there are lots of hard core Star Wars Galaxies fans out there.

LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment announced today that in celebration of the 5th anniversary of Star Wars Galaxies a new trading card game is being introduced. The Star Wars Trading Card Game Champions of the Force is the first ever Star Wars trading card game offered exclusively online. That appears to mean the cards are all digital.