Port Washington, N.Y. - U.S. video game sales were up 53% in June from a year ago, to $1.69 billion, and although Sony got a major bump in sales via the top-selling, PlayStation 3-exclusive "Metal Gear Solid 4," Nintendo once again led with sales of 666,000 Wii consoles during the month, according to sales data compiled by market research firm NPD Group. [more..]

Mountain View, Calif. - Shares of Google fell more than 9% -- roughly $50 -- by late Friday after the Internet giant posted second quarter earnings that fell well short of Wall Street expectations. [more..]

Baltimore - In a major blow to dissent shareholder Carl Icahn, Legg Mason -- the asset management firm that owns 4.4% of Yahoo's shares -- announced on Friday that it will be supporting the existing Yahoo board, and not the dissident slate nominated by Icahn. [more..]

Mountain View, Calif. - Google announced on Friday that it will acquired Russian contextual advertising service ZAO Begun from Rambler Media for $140 million. [more..]

Los Angeles - PodTech, a publisher of video podcasts about new technology that raised over $7.5 million in venture capital, has been sold for less than half a million dollars to ViewPartner, a holding company of multimedia technologies, VentureBeat reported. [more..]

Cambridge, Mass. - GenArts, a provider of visual effects software for the film, broadcast and video industries, has announced that Insight Venture Partners made a venture capital investment in the company earlier this year. [more..]

YouTube remains impervious to monetization models. CEO Eric Schmidt said Google was trying multiple ad strategies, including pre-roll, post-roll and "in-view" ads but had yet to hit on the formula for turning YouTube's huge traffic into meaningful revenue, blogs Paul Sweeting. [more..]

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New York - NBC Universal this week granted both Verizon and AT&T rights to air its Olympics coverage on the broadband, IPTV and mobile platforms. [more..]

Los Angeles - Activision will include the music and likeness of rock legend Jimi Hendrix in the next iteration of its "Guitar Hero" franchise, via a deal with Experience Hendrix, the Associated Press reported. [more..]

Los Angeles - Indie911 has announced plans to offer its first full-length feature, B-Side Entertainment's music industry documentary "Before the Music Dies," on its Hoooka online distribution service, Variety reports. [more..]

Maastricht, The Netherlands - GravityZoo on Friday announced the beta launch of MediaZoo, its "cloud-based" music library and player that allows users -- and up to five friends -- to store and access their music libraries online. [more..]

Dallas - AT&T said this week that it has signed a deal with Electronic Arts to offer exclusive content from the publisher's forthcoming "Spore" game to its wireless and broadband subscribers. [more..]

McLean, Va. - Mobile Posse, a mobile technology company, announced that it has partnered with STATS, the world's leading sports information provider, for availability of sports content on Mobile Posse's mobile advertising delivery platform. [more..]