NEW YORK CITY – With the London 2012 Olympic Games just around the corner, Michael Phelps has been working hard in the pool in preparation for adding more Olympic medals to his collection. He spends a lot of his off time playing video games. In fact, Phelps helped designed the first Kinect for Xbox 360 game, Michael Phelps: Push the Limit. The Olympian talks about his gaming habits in this exclusive video interview below.

According to the Q2 2011 Games Industry: Total Consumer Spend report from leading market research company, The NPD Group, in addition to the $1.44 billion spent in the U.S. by consumers on new physical video and PC game software in the second quarter of 2011, 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 games, is estimated at $1.74 billion. The total amount spent by consumers on hardware, content and accessories is estimated at $4.5 billion, an increase of 1 percent versus Q2 2010.

LOS ANGELES -- The second annual 3D Gaming Summit: Gaming and Beyond expanded its scope to include fast-growing segments of the games industry like cloud gaming, mobile gaming social gaming, and the impact augmented reality will have on games moving forward. Highlights of the jam-packed one day conference included an Opening Keynote Interview by David Maisel, Senior Advisor to Rovio creator Angry Birds, conducted by John Gaudiosi, Gaming Summit Senior Content Advisor & Co-Founder of Gamerlive.tv; and a Featured Interview with Vince Zampella, (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare) General Manger of Respawn Entertainment, conducted by USA Today's Video Game Editor Mike Snider.

Sega continues its year-long celebration of Sonic the Hedgehog’s 20th Anniversary. The game publisher had a full lineup of titles at PAX Prime 2011 in Seattle. Located at Booth 3625 on the show floor, the company had a pair of new Sonic games playable -- Sonic Generations, which is the first 3D Sonic game, and Sonic CD.

Are you ready for some football? Updating today and in time for the start of college football season, the new ESPN on Xbox Live delivers the ultimate sports viewing experience for fans.  A newly redesigned user interface coupled with brand new personalization features, tools and more gives fans access to thousands of live events and highlights, including more than 400 college football games, 31 bowl games and more than 75 exclusive games – close to 50 in the first five weeks of the season alone – from ESPN3.com, including some of the biggest out-of-market showdowns. Now gamers can play EA Sports NCAA Football 12 and take in real games all on the same console.

Microsoft has messed around with its Xbox Live dashboard setting more than once, introducing "blades" for people to navigate through, adding new channels and, as of late, Kinect support.  But this holiday season, it'll introduce its most significant update to date, not only adding many of the services that were talked about during its E3 presentation, but also a new way to navigate, via a feature called "Twist Control".

THQ has shuttered multiple studios and canceled key game franchises as part of a “strategic realignment” of its internal studio development teams.THQ is in the process of transitioning its portfolio away from licensed kids titles and movie-based entertainment properties for consoles. The company has also killed its MX vs. ATV, deBlob and Juiced franchises. Homefront 2 remains in development, but it's been moved to Montreal.