Technology giant Sony on Saturday held the world launch of its next-generation PlayStation Vita handheld console in Japan, as the company aims to take a bite out of the growing smartphone games market.

Gaming fans in Japan, Sony's home country, flocked to the shops to get their hands on the device, which costs between 25,000 yen and 30,000 yen ($320 to $380).

Sales of epic medieval videogame "Skyrim" have soared to about $650 million, with rave reviews pegging the title as game of the year.

Bethesda Softworks, which is owned by US-based Zenimax Media Inc., said on Friday that it has shipped 10 million copies of "Skyrim" since its launch on November 11.

Facebook game maker Zynga jumped into the stock market with a billion-dollar listing on Friday, seeing its stock price leap out of the gate and then drop below the opening price.

Offering 100 million shares -- one-seventh of the company's total -- at $10 a pop, the maker of Facebook games FarmVille, Mafia Wars and Words with Friends was valued at a whopping $7 billion.

Sony on Saturday launches its next-generation PlayStation Vita handheld console in Japan, its gamble to take a bite out of the burgeoning smartphone market for games.

The new device features a five-inch (12 centimeter) organic LED touch screen and comes in WiFi and 3G models, according to the Japanese electronics giant.

The first Vietnamese-made war video game was released on Friday, giving players a chance to relive a historic victory over the French army while riding a wave of nationalism in the communist nation.

Hanoi-based developer Emobi Games chose to recreate virtually the French debacle in the northern valley of Dien Bien Phu, the scene of the greatest Vietnamese military victory in modern times.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. said Thursday that new phones deemed critical to the company's future will be delayed until late 2012.

Mike Lazaridis, one of the company's co-CEOs, said the BlackBerry 10 phones will need a highly integrated chipset that will not be available until mid-2012, so the company can now expect them to ship late in the year. He disclosed the delay on a conference call with analysts.

Amazon said Thursday that it is selling more than one million Kindles a week and the new Kindle Fire tablet computer is its top-selling item.

"Kindle Fire is the most successful product we've ever launched -- it's the best-selling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks," Amazon Kindle vice president Dave Limp said in a statement.

Facebook on Thursday began transforming profile pages into interactive digital scrapbooks that let members of the world's leading online social network tell the stories of their lives.

The "Timeline" feature being rolled out by Facebook was unveiled at a developers’ conference in September and comes with new ways for people to discover and share music, movies, books and news.

The Louvre said Thursday it has teamed up with Nintendo to hand out 3D game consoles to guide visitors through its vast art collections, as part of a stepped up digital drive at the Paris museum.

Starting in March, the world's most visited museum will gradually replace its traditional audio-guides -- used by just four percent of its 8.5 million annual visitors -- with 3DS pocket consoles.

Japanese electronics giant Sony on Thursday revealed technology that generates electricity from shredded paper.

As an environmental product fair opened in Tokyo, Sony invited children to put paper into a mixture of water and enzymes, shake it up and wait for a few minutes to see the liquid become a source of electricity, powering a small fan.