Ok it's true, most business news these days is pretty dire, to say the least, sweeping corporate layoffs, increased inflation, a nationwide housing collapse, airlines consolidating and motor-city still suffering from a 1970's hangover with a lesson not learned: poor and inefficient SUV and car design is coming home to roost. In case you hadn't noticed, a visit to the pumps today is costing nearly two arms and two legs.

Still, fear not, my non-feathered bipedal friends, there is some good news on the horizon in the escapist entertainment field of video-game software and hardware. Despite the deluge of bad economic news, new sales records are being set virtually on a daily basis. Video game sales are positively booming, up 37 percent while video-game hardware is up 34 percent from last year. According to NDP, a pay-for-survey group, the total video game sales thus far has reached $6.6 billion and NDP are predicting a total of $23 billion in sales for 2008.

The two big winners have been Take-Two Interactive's Grand Theft Auto 4 and Nintendo's Wii console and Wii-fit interactive workout game. GTA4 sold about 871,000 units for both Sony Playstation3 and Microsoft's XBox 360 combined. Nintendo sold about 675,000 Wii game consoles in May alone totaling about 10.2 million to date.

So kick back and plug in the console America, the house maybe 'underwater' or worse in foreclosure and the SUV may now be worth less than a full tank of gas, but at least the Google internet economy, along with a plethora of cool video games will save the day.