The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has been running quite a few stories on the release of Halo 3, all of which seem to be extremely positive with titles like “Microsoft’s ‘Halo 3’ Game Meets Approval of Critics” and “Casual Gamer Takes a Turn At Halo 3 to Judge the Hype.” One of the articles cites Halo 3’s high score on Metacritic (an aggregator of reviews) and then speculates that the critics’ acclaim caused the boost to Microsoft’s shares yesterday (which rose 43 cents or 1.5%) and explained the nearly doubled volume of stock trading.
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The big computer companies seem to have one thing in common right now: bring computer gaming to the masses. Last week 
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A DJ in the Netherlands uses his Wii-mote (what fans call the Nintendo Wii’s remote control) to mix techno music at dance parties while a medical student in Italy has reconfigured his to analyze results from CT scans. More uses? You bet. A software engineer in Los Angeles controls a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner with his, and a formally trained conductor in Connecticut is showing classical musicians how to conduct a Beethoven symphony. The musicians use Wii-motes to control a digital section of an orchestra.
The research company NPD Group