EA received some holiday coal in its stocking Thursday when a California Superior Court judge rejected its argument that it should be excused from a $400 million contract-interference suit.

Activision alleges EA illegally attempted to lure away Call of Duty creators and Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella. Activision is also suing the two developers.

EA was added to the suit roughly a year ago, but had recently argued that it did nothing illegal in talking with the pair. The judge disagreed, though, saying there was sufficient evidence to move forward with the case against EA.

West and Zampella, after being dismissed by Activision, formed their own studio and have since struck a publishing deal with EA.

Microsoft is breaking up with the Consumer Electronics Show.

The tech giant has announced via a company blog that this year's keynote and exhibit booth will be its last at the show – a notable departure, since the company's keynote has long been the unofficial kickoff to CES.

"We have decided that this coming January will be our last keynote presentation and booth at CES," said Frank Shaw, Microsoft's vice president of corporate communications. "We’ll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but we won’t have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing."

It's hardly a devastating blow to the show, which still has the support of television manufacturers and more, but combined with Apple's boycotting of CES, Microsoft's decision to bow out will create a notable hole in the computer/tablet space.

When the clocks strike midnight, the rush will be on into EA's newest massively multiplayer online game – and the only title around that has any chance of giving "World of Warcraft" any sort of competition.

"Star Wars: The Old Republic," made by the company's Bioware Studios in conjunction with LucasArts lets players explore the rich universe 3,500 years before the Star Wars films occur in the timeline.

That gives lots of flexibility as far as story, but robs players of the chance to interact with favorite characters like Darth Vader and Han Solo. (Then again, seeing as a Sony-run MMO Star Wars game set in that universe just shut down for good, that's not necessarily a bad thing.)

The game's rumored to have cost over $135 million and it shows, with fully voiced characters and epic land and space combat. It will have a long climb to reach World of Warcraft's subscriber base of more than 10 million players, but pre-orders for the game have set an all-time EA record for a PC title – and if any franchise can pose a threat, it's Star Wars.

Social game maker Zynga's much anticipated debut on Wall St. didn't go quite as well as planned Friday.

The company finished the trading day at 9.50, 5 percent below its offering price – as investors, fearful of a new tech bubble, steered clear and analysts ripped the company on growth concerns.

Before shares even began trading, one of the gaming industry's more notable analysts – Sterne Agee's Arvind Bhatia – initiated coverage with an "sell" rating, citing the notable slowdown in the company's growth in recent months. And Cowen and Company's Doug Creutz gave the company a "neutral" rating in coverage today.

It's an ugly debut for the company, but not one that will negatively impact it. Founder Mark Pincus holds 70 times more voting power than all of the common stock that went up for sale today, so the performance of the stock has no impact on him (or the rest of Zynga, really). If the company tanks and investors call for his head, he can ignore them. If it soars to Google or Apple territory, he profits.

It's a true win-win – unless you're an investor.

As expected, social game maker Zynga will begin trading shares on Wall Street Friday, marking one of the video game industry's biggest public offerings in years.

The company has priced shares at $10 each, the high end of its expected range and will offer 100 million shares to investors. That puts the company valuation at about $7 billion.

That's a lot, but it's just half of where outside consultants estimated the company's worth to stand. Zynga chose to go low because of market turbulence. A recent slate of high profile tech IPOs haven't held up well since their splash debuts. Groupon is already below its IPO price – and Pandora, Zillow and LinkedIn are all well off their highs.

The company will raise about $1 billion through the stock offering, but CEO Mark Pincus will still be firmly in control of the company, thanks to the creation of a third class of stock.

Pincus would hold all of those shares, with each having 70 votes at shareholder meetings. (VC investors would get seven votes per share in their stock class, while folks who buy stock as part of the IPO will get just one vote per share.)

Add Web television to awards season.

The International Academy of Web Television has announced nominees for the inaugural IAWTV awards, with Felicia Day's "The Guild" and drama series "RCVR" topping the list.

"RCVR" racked up a dozen nominations. The show focuses on covert government agents that try to suppress the truth about extraterrestrial encounters and hunt humans selected by an alien species to act as channels for advanced technologies. "The Guild," a long-running Web series that is arguably the field's most popular, picked up nine nominations.

The awards will be presented in Las Vegas on Jan. 12, alongside the Consumer Electronics Show.

A full list of the nominees can be found after the break.

Microsoft continues to roll out new entertainment offerings for the Xbox 360.

The second wave of content providers for the recent user interface revamp of Xbox Live has hit the console, bringing some familiar names. Starting today, U.S. users will be able to access content from ClearChannel's streaming radio service iHeartRadio and Verizon FiOS customers will be able to access a limited selection of live channels.

Also joining the fun is YouTube, TMZ and MSNBC.com.

Verizon's FiOS customers will be able to watch up 26 live TV channels, including MTV, Spike, Food Network, Comedy Central, HBO, CNN and Nickelodeon. In order to use the services, Xbox Live users must prove they are subscribers to the cablers or satcasters, or in Bravo or Syfy's case, confirm that they are paying cable or satellite customers.

Other countries are getting different channels. Here's the complete list.

* blinkbox. United Kingdom

* iHeartRadio. United States

* MSN Video. Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Mexico, United Kingdom

* MSNBC.com. United States

* MUZU.TV. Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom

* Rogers On Demand (Rogers Media). Canada

* SBS ON DEMAND. Australia

* TMZ (Warner Bros.). Canada, United States

* RTVE (RTVE.es). Spain

* Verizon FiOS TV. United States

* YouTube. Available in 24 countries globally

Spike TV's annual Video Game Awards program always tends to divide the gamer audience, which grumbles about the flashy nature of the programming, but the event is still very much a can't miss event among those players.

With several announcements of new game franchises, including Epic Games' "Fortnight" and Sony/Naughty Dog's "The Last of Us" making bows this year, it's a second E3 of sorts. But the real focus is on the awards.

This year's crop were a fairly worthy bunch. While there's always room for disagreement (many fans thought Mark Hamill's Joker in "Batman: Arkham City" was robbed), there's really not a clunker in the bunch – a far cry from the early incarnations of the VGAs, which were often seen as out of touch and an attempt to solely capitalize on the money surrounding the industry.

This year, game makers mixed with the celebrities, with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong, among others) making a surprise appearance to accept the first Video Game Hall of Fame award.

Among the current crop of titles, Bethesda's "Skyrim" took home the Game of the Year trophy, while Valve's "Portal 2" swept five categories and "Batman: Arkham City" dominated four.

A complete list of the winners is after the break.

Led by "Modern Warfare 3" and a surprisingly strong "The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim," video game software sales soared past analyst expectations in November.

Retail sales of console and portable software were up 15 percent to $1.67 billion. Analysts had expected a climb of just 3 percent.

While the success of "Modern Warfare 3" was telegraphed (the game is currently tracking about 7 percent ahead of last year's "Call of Duty: Black Ops"), it's Skyrim's success that has turned heads. The game beat out EA's much-hyped "Battlefield 3" for the #2 sales spot and is on track to being one of Bethesda's best selling titles.

“In one month, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is just about half a million units shy of matching Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in lifetime sales," said NPD analyst Anita Frasier. "Its first month performance was a five-fold increase over Oblivion’s first month sales. The game garnered outstanding review scores.”

As a whole, the industry fared a bit worse, reporting numbers that matched November 2011. That's due to the fact that Kinect for Xbox 360 launched a year ago, which skewed the comparions. Console hardware sales were down 9 percent as well – but Microsoft continued to dominate the field.

“This is the fourth consecutive month in which the Xbox 360 has been the top selling hardware system," said Frasier. "The gap between 360 sales and sales of the next best selling platform was the largest we’ve seen since December 2008 when the Nintendo DS was the top selling system.”

The full list of the month's top selling games can be found after the break.

The video game industry's top developer seems ready to step back from game making.

Shiergu Miyamoto, creator of Donkey Kong, Mario and The Legend of Zelda, has told Wired.com that he plans to step away from major game development and focus instead on smaller projects and training younger developers. He does not, however, plan to leave the company.

"Inside our office, I’ve been recently declaring, 'I’m going to retire, I’m going to retire,'" Miyamoto said. "I’m not saying that I’m going to retire from game development altogether. What I mean by retiring is, retiring from my current position. … What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself. Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small."

The news came as a shock to gamers (who expected Miyamoto to be with the company forever) and apparently for Nintendo as well. The company's shares fell 2 percent Thursday and it quickly went into damage control mode as reports that Miyamoto was retiring fully made the rounds.

"This is absolutely not true," a Nintendo spokesperson told Reuters. "There seems to have been a misunderstanding. He has said all along that he wants to train the younger generation. He has no intention of stepping down. Please do not be concerned."

Miyamoto has been critical to Nintendo's success over the past 30 years, having a hand in virtually every major hit game the company has put out, from the arcade standard Donkey Kong to Super Mario 3 (which sold more than 18 million copies) to this year's critical hit The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.