On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

GAME manages to find a buyer-- Baker Acquisitions Ltd., an entity advised by investment company OpCapita, is taking over all remaining GAME UK assets including all 333 UK GAME and Gamestation stores.

The parties are not disclosing financial details of the sale and no statement is available on the future of GAME operations outside the UK.

Baker Acquisitions will be bringing the GAME business out of administration, saving nearly 3200 jobs. It will also re-employ a "small-number" of ex-GAME head office staff made redundant last week. It also has "no plans" for further store closures.

The retailer already closed down 43 UK retail outlets (12 GAME stores, 6 Gamestation stores and 25 Debenhams concessions) last March.

GAME reportedly owes creditors, suppliers and banks something around £180M, as major games publishers (including EA, Nintendo, Microsoft, Tecmo Koei, Capcom and Activision) started refusing to supply the retailer with new titles due to concerns of creditworthiness.

Go Announcement of the Sale of GAME UK

The Xbox 360 is just a games console... or is it? According to Microsoft marketing staff speaking with the LA Times, more American customers are using the machine to consume media than play video games online.

The report says American Xbox-owning households spend around 84 hours monthly on Xbox Live, compared to 150 on regular TV-- a 30% Y-o-Y increase. More importantly, "just over half that time is spent on videos and music."

If this is the case, then Microsoft's "Trojan horse" strategy to take over living rooms appears to be working. Globally Microsoft currently has around 20M Xbox Live Gold customers (out of a total of 66M Xbox 360s) paying monthly subscriptions to access a variety of non-gaming entertainment services.

Of course, American customers have a greater variety of entertainment options than Europeans-- the US Xbox 360 connects to 36 different services, including Netflix, ESPN, Hulu, Vudu, Youtube and HBO go. European users can access content from the BBC (UK), Telefonica (Spain), ZDF (Germany) and MediaSet (Italy).

Go Xbox Now Used More for Online Entertainment Than Online Gaming (LA Times)

Garmin has an announcement for next week's New York Auto Show-- following a partnership with Suzuki Garmin is producing a factory-installed in-dash infotainment system, a first for the company.

The Garmin system consists of a 6.1" "high-resolution" touchscreen, CD player, AM/FM radio, internal flash memory, SD card slot USB port, AUX jack, Bluetooth connectivity and backup camera support. The UI includes voice control for all functions, while connecting a smartphone provides Pandora integration and Smartphone Link functionality.

Of course the system also includes what Garmin is best known for-- a GPS navigator. Being integrated into the vehicle the GPS has access to car sensors, providing location information when a GPS signal is not available (such as in tunnels).

Select 2013 model year Suzuki vehicles carrying the Garmin system should be hitting the European market sometime in 2013.

Go Garmin Enters In-Car Infotainment Market

If The Wall Street Journal's sources are right, Google is going to rival Apple and Amazon even further-- with plans to directly sell Google-branded tablets via online store.

According to "people familiar with the matter," Google will be selling Asus and Samsung Android tablets later this year, with Motorola-built Google-branded devices to follow.

“Google believes the current model for selling tablets is broken,” the WSJ says. Will direct sales (and putting retailers aside) fix it? The company already tried selling the HTC-built Nexus One exclusively online back in 2010... managing to sell only around 100000 phones, according to Android team lead Andy Rubin.

Meanwhile both Apple and Amazon have no troubles with online hardware sales (especially Amazon, whose successful Kindle Fire is only available online).

Rumours have also been going on for a while on Google entering the hardware arena-- with Motorola-made Google-branded tablets and a wireless music streaming system.

Go Google Heightens Rivalry with iPad (WSJ.com, subscription required)

Go Google to Launch Own-Brand Tablet?