MySpace is turning to video games to help the former social-networking king recoup its share of Internet relevancy that it lost to Facebook.

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, MySpace Inc. co-President Mike Jones launched a new “MySpace Games” strategy designed to showcase online games on the site and to draw more developers.

Social games are becoming a big component of the company’s overall strategy to refocus itself on being a social entertainment destination for its core 34 and younger audience.

“Just as MySpace made a real commitment to music, to have the best musicians and have the best content, we’re now making the same type of commitment with games,” Jones said.

MySpace, a unit of media conglomerate News Corp., saw its lead in the social media world obliterated in the past year by Palo Alto’s Facebook Inc., which now has more than 400 million active members worldwide.

And some MySpace observers began writing off the Beverly Hills firm as a social network has-been last month following the surprise ouster of chief executive Owen Van Natta after just 10 months, with Jones and Jason Hirschorn assuming an unusual dual-leadership role as co-presidents.

“I haven’t seen very many companies that go from being the talk of the Internet to the dog of the Internet and back again,” said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst for Internet research firm eMarketer. “That’s not to say they can’t, but there’s a lot of work to be done.”

But in an interview, Jones countered that while MySpace had lost its way, the company still has more than 100 million users, about 80 percent of whom are in the United States.

“If people want to write it off, that’s fine, but the reality is we have a massive amount of audience in the U.S. and globally,” Jones said. “We generate crazy amounts of page usage, we have huge brand advertising relationships and people use MySpace for a lot of different purposes. It’s hard, in my mind, to write it off.”

Music – specifically singers and bands – originally helped build MySpace’s popularity and is a reason members still log on, so the company is now refocusing on entertainment.

And social gaming has become one of the hottest uses of social networks. For example, the Facebook-exclusive game FarmVille, from San Francisco’s Zynga Inc., spread virally and in less than a year has about 83 million players.

About one-third of MySpace members play games each day and play about 1 billion minutes per month. Jones said he believes MySpace can boost those numbers by year’s end to 50 percent of the audience and at least 2 billion minutes per month.

The company is also working on a site redesign, although that isn’t expected to roll out until later this year.

Analyst Augie Ray noted that MySpace wasn’t the only social network to announce a new game strategy Wednesday. San Francisco-based Hi5, which has more than 60 million members, also announced a game developer platform.

Yet Ray said it’s unclear whether either company can line up the type of exclusive games that will become big enough hits to attract members. Even one game that MySpace highlighted, Paradise Paintball, already has 50,000 players on Facebook.

But Ray said MySpace can still remain relevant even if it never catches Facebook as long as it can carve out a solid niche like entertainment.

“The truth is MySpace doesn’t want to get back into the game,” Ray said. “What they want to do is be a specialty social experience.”

MySpace has been talking about a social game focus for several months, but part of the turmoil that forced Van Natta out was because “they couldn’t seem to get things out the door,” Williamson said. “To see them getting something out the door is refreshing, but it still feels like they’re playing catch-up.”

“Are they going to be as big and as powerful as Facebook? No one really knows now, but maybe they don’t have to be anymore,” she said.

A new twist to the popular music game genre will bring players one step closer to the rock icons they seek to emulate — Power Gig: Rise of the Sixstring features a guitar controller with real strings (instead of buttons).

The game, developed by Seven45 Studios, was announced on Tuesday at the beginning of the Game Developers Conference. Power Gig is similar to other music games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and features “beat-match” style play in which players must match the onscreen beats with their instruments.

There will also be a new mode of play that requires players to depress certain strings in order to play actual chords — the same chords that players will then be able to play outside of the game.

Power Gig: Rise of the Sixstring will be a great option for people who enjoy Guitar Hero-type games, but who don’t want to spend a lot of extra money on an otherwise useless game controller. The guitars in Power Gig will come in a variety of sizes and will feature standard quarter-inch instrument jacks — which means you’ll be able to plug these babies into a regular amp and play real music. The guitars have a dampener near the pickup that will raise up during video game play (so the strings don’t make sounds) and lower for actual guitar playing.

If learning to play guitar isn’t your thing — and playing Rock Band is — the game will also be playable with Rock Band and Guitar Hero guitar-controllers. Likewise, Rock Band and Guitar Hero will also be compatible with the Power Gig controller.

Power Gig: Rise of the Sixstring is scheduled to be released this fall for PS3 and Xbox 360, and will also come as a “band bundle” with a set of drums and a microphone (still in production). Pricing hasn’t been announced yet, but it will be priced similar to other games of its type — which is anywhere from $70 to $200. There’s no word on what the official licensed tunes will be like, either.

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ne of the holiday season games we’re most bullish on is Dragon Age: Origins. While this nerd-tastic tale of dragons and elves and guys wearing chainmail armor isn’t for everyone (or even usually our cup of tea), the large chunks of the game we’ve played have had a mainstream Lord of the Rings epic action movie vibe, rather than rolling a 20-sided die in your parents’ basement. Plus, it’s one of the only big budget games in recent years developed first for PC gaming, and then ported to living room consoles, rather than the other way around.

We saw two early tastes of the game this morning (one very literally). The first is a browser-based flash game spinoff, called Dragon Age Journeys. Billed as an “EA 2D Production” it’s a surprisingly faithful recreation of the full game, from the menus and interfaces to the dialog system — just recast as cartoonish 2D animation. Combat has a similar feel, with plenty of special attacks and powers to use, but it’s more strictly turn-based in the browser version.

Unfortunately, it’s not embeddable, but the dragonagejourneys.com Web site does allow you to save your game and even create multiple characters.

Coincidentally, moments after we logged into Dragon Age Journeys, a promotional package for the game hit our desk. The box contained a pile of hay-like material and a small wooden box. Inside the box was a vial of red liquid and a wax-sealed note written in the game’s arch-geek style, warning us that “Some master the blood of the darkspawn, some perish.”

Our promotional vial of demon blood actually had a handy (and probably legally required) list ingredients attached, which included taurine, caffeine, ginseng, elderberry juice, and, of course, sodium benzoate and FD&C Red #40. We haven’t dared touch it…yet.

One Industry which was going head steady at times of recession was the gaming industry and now, recession took its toll on it too.

Videogames sales took a surprising dip during the month of March, as the slowing economy combined with fewer blockbuster releases.

Sources reveal, sales of game software in the U.S. fell 17% during the month, compared to the same period the previous year. Wall Street analysts had largely been expecting sales to remain flat for the period.

Game hardware shared a similar fate, with sales falling 18% for the month. Accessories fell 15% during the period.

Very few titles on all the consoles moved well in the market.

But we all know GAMERS NEVER DIE, so the scenario will change soon enough, and I hope the gaming field raises its front again.