(Reuters) RALEIGH, North Carolina – As the video game industry heads into 2011, this new decade has already seen a major shift in both who’s playing games and what they’re playing. The January Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas will usher in even more gaming opportunities aimed to further broaden the video game market.

Electronic Arts is backing the emerging Google Android gaming space, which has exploded over the course of this year to take a larger chunk of the global mobile smartphone market. With CES 2011, new tablet and smartphone devices are expected to debut offering even more gaming opportunities across the rich gaming platform. EA Mobile offers a full selection of games for select Android-based mobile phones, including The Sims 3, Need for Speed Shift, FIFA 10 by EA SPORTS, Tetris, MONOPOLY and THE GAME OF LIFE. Check out Need for Speed Shift on Verizon Wireless' DROID X in this exclusive video interview.

With yesterday's announcement by Verizon of its LTE (Long-Term Evolution) 4G network, the battle of the 4G mobile networks has officially started. It all started with Sprint and Clear, which Sprint owns 50% of, with their 4G WiMax network that was launched a couple of years ago and is now available in about 60 markets including Los Angeles and San Francisco officially yesterday. T-Mobile entered the game a few months ago with its enhanced 3G HSPA+ network with "4G speeds" and AT&T recently announced that their upgraded 3G HSPA 7.2 network with "4G speeds" will be available by the end of 2010. While technically, none of these networks are actually 4G as defined by the International Telecommunication Union's strict definition , they are all many times faster than 3G with download speeds from 3 to 21 megabits per second, depending on which network, compared to 0.6-2.1 megabits per second for 3G. The ITU defines 4G as network technology that must be IP-based and use orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), which none of the current networks are. The other main requirement is that the technology needs to support peak download speeds of 100Mbps. The current flavors of LTE and WiMax are not that fast and neither is the technology T-Mobile is using, which is called HSPA+. To make sense of all the new 4G choices, we wanted to compare the various offerings to make sense of it all.

According to Bruno Uzzan, co-founder and CEO of Total Immersion, augmented reality (AR) technology will help expand 3D entertainment beyond the movie theater and videogame console. AR – which blurs the line between the virtual world and the real world by integrating real-time interactive 3D graphics into a live video stream – is, for increasing numbers of consumers, the front line in the 3D revolution. It’s the way that millions are now getting up close and personal with 3D, via near-tactile experiences. For example, Sony has used this technology with its new PlayStation 3 game, EyePet, and PSP game Invizimals

According to the soon-to-be-released Games Industry: Total Consumer Spend report from leading market research company, The NPD Group, in addition to the $3.7 billion spent in the U.S. by consumers on new physical video and PC game software in the first half of 2010, the total consumer spend on content via other monetization methods, including used games, game rentals, subscriptions, digital full game downloads, social network games, downloadable content, and mobile game apps., is estimated in the range of $2.6 to $2.9 billion. 

President Obama has launched the National STEM Video Game Challenge at a White House event as part of the national “Educate to Innovate” campaign. The Challenge aims to motivate interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games. The first annual competition is being held by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media in partnership with sponsors AMD Foundation, Entertainment Software Association and Microsoft. Founding outreach partners include the American Library Association, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, The International Game Developers Association and BrainPOP.