Industry sources reveal that IBM has decided to no longer involve in the development of future Cell processors.

Cell was developed by IBM along with Sony and Toshiba.

It currently powers the Sony Playstation 3 gaming console in addition to some other appliances like Television sets and supercomputers.

IBM was involved in the latest iteration of this processor named PoweXCell 8i. This processor is the power behind the Roadrunner supercomputer.

It remains to be seen what happens to the Cell processor platform now. What would Sony use in the next edition of Playstation!

Disney has announced yet another acquisition deal.

The company recently announced that they were acquiring Marvel.

Disney is now buying Wideload Games which is based in Chicago.

The two companies did not reveal the financial aspects of the deal.

Wideload CEO Alexander Seropian would now join Disney as Vice President of Creative (brand new position).

Wideload President Tom Kang would manage the company as a Disney subsidiary. Analysts believe that the acquisition deal was made primarily to get Seropian to join their operations. He is the man behind the Halo gaming title which literally made Xbox a formidable challenger to Playstation.

EA has announced the appointment of John Schappert as their new chief operating officer.

He is leaving Microsoft to join EA where he has worked before.

In fact he had started working at EA as a software engineer way back in the year 1991.

He had left EA for Microsoft in 2007. He looked after the company’s properties like Microsoft Game Studios and games including Halo and Gears of War.

He is also one of the individuals behind Microsoft’s New Xbox Live Experience.

EA further said that they current COO John Pleasants is leaving the company to become CEO at social gaming company Playdom.

Ngmoco has announced the appointment of Simon Jeffrey as the new Chief Publishing Officer of the company’s Plus+ Publishing group.

Jeffery was previously the president and COO of Sega of America. He has also worked at LucasArts as the company’s COO and President.

This is a great appointment from the popular mobile gaming company considering Jeffery is a veteran of the gaming industry with around 22 years of experience.

Ngmoco is well known for their iPhone games. They are the company behind titles like Rolando, Star Defense, Dropship, Topple, Word Fu and more.

It was established by a former EA executive Neil Young.

Nintendo has pioneered motion sensing gaming with their Nintendo Wii gaming console.

Now, both Microsoft and Sony are developing similar technology for their gaming consoles.

And both of these solutions are based on camera based motion sensing capabilities.

Nintendo has revealed that they have tried going through that route but it does not work.

That is why they decided to use accelerometer based technology in their Wii gaming console.

It remains to be seen if Microsoft and Sony are successful in their attempts. As they just displayed early prototypes.

April turned out to be a bad month for the videogame industry.

The overall video game retail sales in the US market declined by around 17%.

The market has seen a decline for two months consecutively now.

However, Grand Theft Auto IV was one of the major reasons for slowing down sales in April.

Grand Theft Auto IV was launched in April last year and it was one of the biggest successes of the year.

Market sources say that the total game sales in the US market last month slumped 17 percent to $1.03 billion.

US based software giant Microsoft has announced that they are now acquiring Canadian online game developer BigPark.

The two companies did not reveal the financial aspects of this acquisition deal.

BigPark was founded in 2007 and it consists of developers who had previously worked on popular gaming titles like Need for Speed and Fifa Soccer.

They have already been working with Microsoft to develop an exclusive gaming title for the Xbox 360 gaming console.

Microsoft said that BigPark would now become a part of the Microsoft Game Studios.

BigPark CEO and co-founder Hanno Lemke would now report directly to Phil Spencer.

Google has made available some new themes on their iGoogle personalized home page service.

These new themes are based on popular videogame franchises.

The themes are available for games like:

Animal Crossing
The Lord of the Rings: Conquest
Call of Duty: World at War
Donkey Kong
Dungeons & Dragons
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
Tomb Raider: Underworld
Galaga
World of Warcraft
Mega Man
Mario
The Sims 3
Guitar Hero
Magic: The Gathering
Street Fighter IV
Zelda
Spore
Burnout Paradise: Ultimate Box
Wii Sports
The Godfather II
Fifa 09
Mass Effect 2
Dragon Age Origins

Checkout: Introducing gaming themes for iGoogle

Videogame company Activision has announced the appointment of Dan Rosensweig as the new head of the unit which makes the popular Guitar Hero series of games.

Rosensweig is a former COO of Yahoo.

He has now been named the President and Chief Executive of RedOctane.

Activision added that the former CEO of the division Kai Huang would now report to Rosensweig while working in the company.

Incidentally, Kai Huang is the creator of the game along with his brother Charles Huang.

Checkout: Guitar Hero