Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

Video Game Biz Goes Big Time; Pfizer Pulls Ads But Not Drug

Aired December 20, 2004 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Checking stories "Now in the News," gearing up for a rematch. Viktor Yanukovich and opposition leader Viktor Yuschenko faced off in a heated television debate today. Voters go to the polls on Sunday in a replay of Ukraine's disputed elections, which were annulled over charges of fraud. Today, Yuschenko accused Yanukovich of trying to steal that November runoff.
Three men accused in those arson fires at an upscale subdivision in Maryland are scheduled to be in court this hour. Now, according to court papers released today, the men have admitted they were involved and implicated others, as well. A fourth suspect was arrested last week. The fires caused an estimated $10 million in damages.

Defending his defense secretary. At a news conference today, President Bush said Donald Rumsfeld cares deeply about the troops and is doing fine work. Critics, including several prominent Republican lawmakers, have said they have no confidence in the defense secretary. We will have more on this at the top of the hour.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, it was stiff competition for President Bush. His political adviser Karl Rove and political attacker Michael Moore were in the running, but it was President Bush who became TIME magazine's "Person of the Year." TIME's editors talk to us about their presidential pick.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM KELLY, MANAGING EDITOR, TIME: For waging a war that is more controversial today than when it first started, for sticking to his guns and for redefining what leadership means in America today, TIME has selected President George W. Bush as its person of the year for 2004.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.

MATT COOPER, TIME WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: George W. Bush not only won re-election in a year when a lot of people thought he'd have a very tough fight, he won pretty handily.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you all.

NANCY GIBBS, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TIME: He won the election at a time when the country was in the middle of an increasingly controversial war and the economy was kind of standing on tiptoes and the country was divided over many things, not least of all him.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Bush and Cheney's gotta go!

KAREN TUMULTY, TIME NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: He framed the electorate in a new way. The decision was made very early that there weren't a lot of voters out there that could be swung from one side to another. President Bush and his campaign team, led by Karl Rove, decided that they were going to dig deeply into the Republican base and were going to come up with new ways of energizing Republican voters. It had never been seen before in quite the way the Republicans pulled it off this time.

JOHN DICKERSON, TIME WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: There was a riskiness to his campaign. He ignored what most wanted him to do, if you judge by the polls. He was told a number of times he had to do certain things, he had to get ready of his secretary of defense during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. You've got to change your position on stem cells. You've got to send more troops to Iraq, you've got to withdraw troops from Iraq. In each of those instances, he did just the opposite. He did what we normally expect from politicians. He didn't give people what they wanted, what he was being told in the polls, he went the other direction.

GIBBS: One of the main things that Bush was being told to do, not just by columnists and editorial pages, but by fellow Republicans, was he had to admit mistakes, he had to show a either a little humility or that there was a learning curve.

DICKERSON: He also knew that publicly, the minute presidents admit a mistake, they pull on a sweater thread and that the sweater unravels because once you admit one thing, you have to keep admitting.

GIBBS: So he drew the line and just did not go there.

BUSH: Thanks for taking time out of your Sunday to say hello.

GIBBS: When the president stood up in front of a crowd, he was not delivering one message, he was delivering two. He would talk about the issues and his positions on the issues.

BUSH: That's why I went to Washington, D.C., to strengthen Medicare.

GIBBS: But he would also say, three or four times in his stump speech...

BUSH: Even when you might not agree with me, you know what I believe and where I stand and where I intend to lead our country.

DICKERSON: His gamble was this. He said, people won't agree with me, but they'll like the fact that I believe in what I believe in and that's what they'll ultimately vote for.

TUMULTY: It certainly is -- has set a model, I think, that we are going to see in a lot of elections to come.

GIBBS: The fact that he won and the way that he won is likely to change the political rules for at least the next generation. JOE KLEIN, COLUMNIST/SENIOR WRITER, TIME: Arguably, given the screw-ups in Iraq, given the torture at Abu Ghraib, you could have easily made the argument and I frequently did in my column, that this was a chief executive who needed to be replaced.

COOPER: Even though many of the arguments he put forward for having a war in Iraq were proven to be untrue, he nevertheless was able to rally the country and a fair number of allies to keep prosecuting this war.

KLEIN: In the end, the strength and clarity of his stand against the Islamist radicals was far more important to the public, or at least marginally more important to the public, than the errors that he made in going to war in Iraq and the post-Saddam period.

DICKERSON: In fact, you could almost ignore the record. If you could appeal to people with this notion that when the tough decision comes, here's a person who is used to making those kinds of decisions who can handle being in the chair.

COOPER: He put the United States troops into a land war in the Middle East, and that alone will be the decisive aspect of his presidency, the thing that people will talk about in a hundred years. The Bushes have quietly emerged as America's pre-eminent political dynasty, not just now but for all time, I think. I think you can make a case that they've arguably been more influential than the Kennedys. They've certainly elected more presidents than the Kennedys.

GEORGE H. BUSH, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I just called Governor Clinton over in Little Rock.

DICKERSON: The president has done something his father couldn't, which is win the election. And so, in terms of the Bush family dynasty, the Bush family now has this new chapter.

COOPER: They are like a Darwinian creature that's able to adapt to changing environments and just survive and multiply. President Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush, was a classic old-lawn Republican. He was a New England WASP who reflected the time and place where he was as a senator from Connecticut.

The president's father was very much a transitional figure and the president is very much today not only in tune with the conservatives in the Republican party, he is their champion and his brother Jeb, the governor in Florida, is their champion.

KLEIN: And so in that way, they're a classically American family. They've moved with the country from the aristocratic East to the entrepreneurial South and West.

COOPER: This has got all the makings of a dynasty that's not only made it from the 20th century into the 21st, but has the capacity to keep going.

TUMULTY: Under George Bush, we have seen America take an entirely different approach to its standing in the world. But we've also seen and electoral sea change that could, in fact, live well beyond George Bush.

COOPER: There's the great man theory of history, not great in the sense of necessarily good, but great in the sense of commanding and powerful.

KLEIN: George W. Bush gives that theory some credence because he has really put his own imprint on world events.

KELLY: President Bush famously says he doesn't care about what historians will say, but clearly this is a man who very much is conscious of history and when you think about the war in Iraq and its lasting implications for not just the Middle East, but for America's role in the world, I can't imagine that people thought 10, 15, 20 years from now won't still be talking about the transformative presidency of George W. Bush.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Now we went through the TIME magazine archive and we found some notable covers of the past few decades. You may remember last year's pick, the American soldier. The cover featured three Americans of America's fighting men and women.

And this one stood out because it was not a person at all. In 1982 TIME's choice for "Machine of the Year," the personal computer. The cover story included a poll in which 80 percent of Americans at the time said personal computers would someday be as common as television sets and dishwashers. They were prescient.

In 1979, TIME picked Ayatollah Khomeini as the man who made the biggest news. The 79-year-old Muslim cleric toppled the shah, orchestrated the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and that ensuing hostage ordeal.

And one of my personal favorites, some have called it the most audacious, most dangerous manned spaceflight ever. In 1968 Apollo 8 astronauts, Frank Borman, James Lovell, William Anders were chosen as "Men of the Year," they flew to the moon 36 years ago this month -- Betty.

NGUYEN: I'm not surprised that was your favorite, Miles.

Well, first Vioxx, now Celebrex, the latest wonder drug crisis and the alternatives you should consider. Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: I'm technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg. Gamers are growing up fast and they're spending more than just quarters. Find out how video games have become a dominant player in the entertainment market.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: It's all in the game this holiday season. Video games are some of the hottest gifts for kids and kids at heart. But gaming has far surpassed the simplicity of Pac-Man. It is now a multibillion dollar industry.

CNN technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg has more on this. Boy, I remember when Pac-Man was all the rage.

SIEBERG: It really was. And Pong, as we were talking about earlier, and Pong a big part of it. But games have grown up and gamers have grown up as well. You know, gaming may be just sort of fun and games for a lot players out there, but it's also a multibillion dollar industry.

So many of you may be wondering, how did the video game industry get so big so fast.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG (voice-over): Video games may have started out as a distraction for kids, costing just a quarter at the neighborhood arcade. But electronic entertainment has now become the $8 billion gorilla in America's living room.

DOUG LOWENSTEIN, ELECTRONIC SOFTWARE ASSOCIATION: Video games have emerged as an equal partner in shaping the culture and the entertainment that people around the world consume.

SIEBERG: No fewer than 145 million Americans say they play video games. That's just more than 50 percent of the total population.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It has grown to be something phenomenal.

SIEBERG: Including both hardware and software sales, the industry made about $11 billion in 2003. Compare that to only $9 billion in box office receipts for that year. The November release of Halo 2 saw sales of $125 million in its first day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We sell tens of thousands of games a week here.

SIEBERG: Part of the reason? Those kids who started out playing Atari 20 years ago, well, they're still playing, and so are their kids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Usually a lot of sports games. Sometimes we'll play a couple of adventure games, but...

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Halo.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, and Halo 2. As many hours as we put behind a game console, yes, it's a great way to spend some father-son time.

SIEBERG: While demand has grown, so has the competition. The amount of money invested in a top name video game is on the level with a blockbuster movie.

DAN "SHOE" HSU, "ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY": You're talking about $10 million, $20 million to make some of these games. You know, you're asking consumers to pay $50, $40 or $50 to buy one of these games.

GREG ZESCHUK, BIOWARE: Yes, there's a lot at stake, and that's why you really have to do things very carefully, really plan out what you're going to do and execute well.

SIEBERG: Hundreds of titles this year didn't even break even. And at these budgets, it only takes one bomb to break a company. But for the top titles, Americans don't hesitate to shell out.

But could the popularity of these games just be a passing fad?

HSU: If you asked me this maybe 10 years ago, maybe. But now, you know, mom and dads are playing video games. Adults, business owners. You know, the average age of a gamer in the United States is 29 years old. So I think it's definitely here to stay.

SIEBERG: And with the backing of Santa Claus, at least for now, analysts predict the holiday season of 2004 will set a new record when the numbers come in.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, tomorrow we're going to continue this series on video games. We're going to profile a 23-year-old who is known as Fatality. He's very well known for being a professional gamer and he makes six figures. Wednesday, the virtual violence of many video games has critics turning up the heat. We'll look closer at that. Thursday, we'll go to the olympics of competitive video games. And Friday, a video game where you might not win or lose, but perhaps you'd be the person you've always -- or creature you've always wanted to be. That's our video game series that's going to be all this week on LIVE FROM.

NGUYEN: Not just a person but a creature as well.

SIEBERG: That's right. You can be anything you want in a game. And that's part of the appeal.

NGUYEN: It's all possible. All right, Daniel Sieberg, thank you -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Daniel, I just have one question for you. How do I get the 12-year-old off the Gamecube? What do I do?

SIEBERG: It's called the power button. That's about all you can do, off.

O'BRIEN: Kill the power button. Send him to his room. I'm going to have you come and do it, thanks.

SIEBERG: All right.

O'BRIEN: Appreciate it, Daniel Sieberg.

Coming up next on LIVE FROM, what's keeping you awake at night? Maybe you're stressing about your health. As Celebrex pulls an advertising Houdini, what's the message if it's already in your medicine chest?

Or maybe it's credit card debt laying the groundwork for your insomnia. If so, you are not alone. We've got more on who is afraid of the credit wolf banging at the door. More news that you can take to the bank coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Celebrex is pulling a vanishing act from the advertising world but not from the market. CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now on why Pfizer made one move but not the other meaning pull the ads but not the drug from the market.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: The basic reason is the FDA said to them, we want you to take these ads off the market. So the ad that we're going to show you in a minute, well, you won't be seeing those anymore. Chances you saw them in the past because this was one of the most heavily marketed drugs ever. In fact in the first nine months of this year Pfizer spent $71 million selling Celebrex.

And now again the FDA says they have to take these off the air and the FDA is saying, look, you have to change what you tell doctors. When you market to doctors you need to talk about this most recent study that shows people who take Celebrex are at a 2 1/2 times greater risk of having a heart or stroke and they're telling Pfizer you also need to tell doctors to tell people, to tell their patients about alternatives to Celebrex.

So that's sort of an interesting position. They're telling a drug company that they need to tell doctors to tell their patients about other drugs so that the message is clear, but the FDA is not taking it off the market. What they're saying is we're looking at the data. We haven't -- we'll still looking at the data. We still feel like we don't have all of the data. We need to put it all together.

NGUYEN: Since it's still on the market and if folks really like Celebrex and don't have heart problems, can they still use it?

COHEN: Sure, anybody who can use it. When a drug is on the market anybody who wants to can use it but the Food and Drug Administration has been very clear that even if you don't have heart problems, go to your doctor, talk about Celebrex and your doctor may say to you, look there may be other things on the market. There may be other drugs that will help you just as much and that won't pose this heart risk even though you don't have heart problems, who wants to have a heart risk posed to them even if you don't have the problem to begin with.

Here are some things that doctors might think about. Other over- the-counter pain relievers such as Ibuprofen, Aspirin, exercise can help people with arthritis or other pain issues, weight loss, dietary supplements, all things doctors might want to talk to their patients about.

So again, even if you don't have the heart risk your doctor might do that. There might be some patients who say, everything else hurts my stomach. I don't want to take anything but Celebrex and if the doctor agrees with that the doctor's going to tell the patient take it at the lowest possible dose. What the study found is the higher the dose, the more heart and stroke problems.

NGUYEN: Elizabeth, thanks.

O'BRIEN: According to a new poll, more than half of us are worried about our credit card debt so what are shoppers doing? They're saying, charge it! David Haffenreffer in New York. How worried are we really?

DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: That's human nature, isn't it?

O'BRIEN: It is, isn't it?

HAFFENREFFER: You know, Miles, most shoppers are going to the stores this holiday season with their credit cards in hand. But they're probably worried about how they're going to pay for all the gifts they charge up. According to a new survey by the Associated Press half of all shoppers polled say that they do worry about the money they owe and the debt anxiety doesn't stop there. About 16 percent of credit card holders say they have doubts about managing their credit card debt. No surprise that among those experiencing the highest levels of debt stress were people at their credit card spending limit. Those who were unmarried and have children and those without jobs -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Covers a pretty big group there, doesn't it? You know what gets me, is even as interest rates plummeted to all-time lows, those credit card rates are well into the 20 percent range. It's crazy.

HAFFENREFFER: Have you noticed the trend that when they're going up they're really quick to ratchet them up. But when going down they sort of hold the line for a while.

O'BRIEN: There's inertia in one direction on that deal. There's some good economic news to report today. Tell us about it.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

NGUYEN: All right, thank you, David.

Well, the average commute time for most Americans, 25 minutes, the time for this woman, 2 1/2 hours. One way. We go along for the ride with an extreme commuter in just a few minutes to find out why she's part of a growing group of Americans willing to sacrifice time on the road.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired December 20, 2004 - 14:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Checking stories "Now in the News," gearing up for a rematch. Viktor Yanukovich and opposition leader Viktor Yuschenko faced off in a heated television debate today. Voters go to the polls on Sunday in a replay of Ukraine's disputed elections, which were annulled over charges of fraud. Today, Yuschenko accused Yanukovich of trying to steal that November runoff.
Three men accused in those arson fires at an upscale subdivision in Maryland are scheduled to be in court this hour. Now, according to court papers released today, the men have admitted they were involved and implicated others, as well. A fourth suspect was arrested last week. The fires caused an estimated $10 million in damages.

Defending his defense secretary. At a news conference today, President Bush said Donald Rumsfeld cares deeply about the troops and is doing fine work. Critics, including several prominent Republican lawmakers, have said they have no confidence in the defense secretary. We will have more on this at the top of the hour.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, it was stiff competition for President Bush. His political adviser Karl Rove and political attacker Michael Moore were in the running, but it was President Bush who became TIME magazine's "Person of the Year." TIME's editors talk to us about their presidential pick.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM KELLY, MANAGING EDITOR, TIME: For waging a war that is more controversial today than when it first started, for sticking to his guns and for redefining what leadership means in America today, TIME has selected President George W. Bush as its person of the year for 2004.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.

MATT COOPER, TIME WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: George W. Bush not only won re-election in a year when a lot of people thought he'd have a very tough fight, he won pretty handily.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you all.

NANCY GIBBS, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TIME: He won the election at a time when the country was in the middle of an increasingly controversial war and the economy was kind of standing on tiptoes and the country was divided over many things, not least of all him.

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Bush and Cheney's gotta go!

KAREN TUMULTY, TIME NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: He framed the electorate in a new way. The decision was made very early that there weren't a lot of voters out there that could be swung from one side to another. President Bush and his campaign team, led by Karl Rove, decided that they were going to dig deeply into the Republican base and were going to come up with new ways of energizing Republican voters. It had never been seen before in quite the way the Republicans pulled it off this time.

JOHN DICKERSON, TIME WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: There was a riskiness to his campaign. He ignored what most wanted him to do, if you judge by the polls. He was told a number of times he had to do certain things, he had to get ready of his secretary of defense during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. You've got to change your position on stem cells. You've got to send more troops to Iraq, you've got to withdraw troops from Iraq. In each of those instances, he did just the opposite. He did what we normally expect from politicians. He didn't give people what they wanted, what he was being told in the polls, he went the other direction.

GIBBS: One of the main things that Bush was being told to do, not just by columnists and editorial pages, but by fellow Republicans, was he had to admit mistakes, he had to show a either a little humility or that there was a learning curve.

DICKERSON: He also knew that publicly, the minute presidents admit a mistake, they pull on a sweater thread and that the sweater unravels because once you admit one thing, you have to keep admitting.

GIBBS: So he drew the line and just did not go there.

BUSH: Thanks for taking time out of your Sunday to say hello.

GIBBS: When the president stood up in front of a crowd, he was not delivering one message, he was delivering two. He would talk about the issues and his positions on the issues.

BUSH: That's why I went to Washington, D.C., to strengthen Medicare.

GIBBS: But he would also say, three or four times in his stump speech...

BUSH: Even when you might not agree with me, you know what I believe and where I stand and where I intend to lead our country.

DICKERSON: His gamble was this. He said, people won't agree with me, but they'll like the fact that I believe in what I believe in and that's what they'll ultimately vote for.

TUMULTY: It certainly is -- has set a model, I think, that we are going to see in a lot of elections to come.

GIBBS: The fact that he won and the way that he won is likely to change the political rules for at least the next generation. JOE KLEIN, COLUMNIST/SENIOR WRITER, TIME: Arguably, given the screw-ups in Iraq, given the torture at Abu Ghraib, you could have easily made the argument and I frequently did in my column, that this was a chief executive who needed to be replaced.

COOPER: Even though many of the arguments he put forward for having a war in Iraq were proven to be untrue, he nevertheless was able to rally the country and a fair number of allies to keep prosecuting this war.

KLEIN: In the end, the strength and clarity of his stand against the Islamist radicals was far more important to the public, or at least marginally more important to the public, than the errors that he made in going to war in Iraq and the post-Saddam period.

DICKERSON: In fact, you could almost ignore the record. If you could appeal to people with this notion that when the tough decision comes, here's a person who is used to making those kinds of decisions who can handle being in the chair.

COOPER: He put the United States troops into a land war in the Middle East, and that alone will be the decisive aspect of his presidency, the thing that people will talk about in a hundred years. The Bushes have quietly emerged as America's pre-eminent political dynasty, not just now but for all time, I think. I think you can make a case that they've arguably been more influential than the Kennedys. They've certainly elected more presidents than the Kennedys.

GEORGE H. BUSH, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I just called Governor Clinton over in Little Rock.

DICKERSON: The president has done something his father couldn't, which is win the election. And so, in terms of the Bush family dynasty, the Bush family now has this new chapter.

COOPER: They are like a Darwinian creature that's able to adapt to changing environments and just survive and multiply. President Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush, was a classic old-lawn Republican. He was a New England WASP who reflected the time and place where he was as a senator from Connecticut.

The president's father was very much a transitional figure and the president is very much today not only in tune with the conservatives in the Republican party, he is their champion and his brother Jeb, the governor in Florida, is their champion.

KLEIN: And so in that way, they're a classically American family. They've moved with the country from the aristocratic East to the entrepreneurial South and West.

COOPER: This has got all the makings of a dynasty that's not only made it from the 20th century into the 21st, but has the capacity to keep going.

TUMULTY: Under George Bush, we have seen America take an entirely different approach to its standing in the world. But we've also seen and electoral sea change that could, in fact, live well beyond George Bush.

COOPER: There's the great man theory of history, not great in the sense of necessarily good, but great in the sense of commanding and powerful.

KLEIN: George W. Bush gives that theory some credence because he has really put his own imprint on world events.

KELLY: President Bush famously says he doesn't care about what historians will say, but clearly this is a man who very much is conscious of history and when you think about the war in Iraq and its lasting implications for not just the Middle East, but for America's role in the world, I can't imagine that people thought 10, 15, 20 years from now won't still be talking about the transformative presidency of George W. Bush.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Now we went through the TIME magazine archive and we found some notable covers of the past few decades. You may remember last year's pick, the American soldier. The cover featured three Americans of America's fighting men and women.

And this one stood out because it was not a person at all. In 1982 TIME's choice for "Machine of the Year," the personal computer. The cover story included a poll in which 80 percent of Americans at the time said personal computers would someday be as common as television sets and dishwashers. They were prescient.

In 1979, TIME picked Ayatollah Khomeini as the man who made the biggest news. The 79-year-old Muslim cleric toppled the shah, orchestrated the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and that ensuing hostage ordeal.

And one of my personal favorites, some have called it the most audacious, most dangerous manned spaceflight ever. In 1968 Apollo 8 astronauts, Frank Borman, James Lovell, William Anders were chosen as "Men of the Year," they flew to the moon 36 years ago this month -- Betty.

NGUYEN: I'm not surprised that was your favorite, Miles.

Well, first Vioxx, now Celebrex, the latest wonder drug crisis and the alternatives you should consider. Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: I'm technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg. Gamers are growing up fast and they're spending more than just quarters. Find out how video games have become a dominant player in the entertainment market.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: It's all in the game this holiday season. Video games are some of the hottest gifts for kids and kids at heart. But gaming has far surpassed the simplicity of Pac-Man. It is now a multibillion dollar industry.

CNN technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg has more on this. Boy, I remember when Pac-Man was all the rage.

SIEBERG: It really was. And Pong, as we were talking about earlier, and Pong a big part of it. But games have grown up and gamers have grown up as well. You know, gaming may be just sort of fun and games for a lot players out there, but it's also a multibillion dollar industry.

So many of you may be wondering, how did the video game industry get so big so fast.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG (voice-over): Video games may have started out as a distraction for kids, costing just a quarter at the neighborhood arcade. But electronic entertainment has now become the $8 billion gorilla in America's living room.

DOUG LOWENSTEIN, ELECTRONIC SOFTWARE ASSOCIATION: Video games have emerged as an equal partner in shaping the culture and the entertainment that people around the world consume.

SIEBERG: No fewer than 145 million Americans say they play video games. That's just more than 50 percent of the total population.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It has grown to be something phenomenal.

SIEBERG: Including both hardware and software sales, the industry made about $11 billion in 2003. Compare that to only $9 billion in box office receipts for that year. The November release of Halo 2 saw sales of $125 million in its first day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We sell tens of thousands of games a week here.

SIEBERG: Part of the reason? Those kids who started out playing Atari 20 years ago, well, they're still playing, and so are their kids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Usually a lot of sports games. Sometimes we'll play a couple of adventure games, but...

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Halo.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, and Halo 2. As many hours as we put behind a game console, yes, it's a great way to spend some father-son time.

SIEBERG: While demand has grown, so has the competition. The amount of money invested in a top name video game is on the level with a blockbuster movie.

DAN "SHOE" HSU, "ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY": You're talking about $10 million, $20 million to make some of these games. You know, you're asking consumers to pay $50, $40 or $50 to buy one of these games.

GREG ZESCHUK, BIOWARE: Yes, there's a lot at stake, and that's why you really have to do things very carefully, really plan out what you're going to do and execute well.

SIEBERG: Hundreds of titles this year didn't even break even. And at these budgets, it only takes one bomb to break a company. But for the top titles, Americans don't hesitate to shell out.

But could the popularity of these games just be a passing fad?

HSU: If you asked me this maybe 10 years ago, maybe. But now, you know, mom and dads are playing video games. Adults, business owners. You know, the average age of a gamer in the United States is 29 years old. So I think it's definitely here to stay.

SIEBERG: And with the backing of Santa Claus, at least for now, analysts predict the holiday season of 2004 will set a new record when the numbers come in.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, tomorrow we're going to continue this series on video games. We're going to profile a 23-year-old who is known as Fatality. He's very well known for being a professional gamer and he makes six figures. Wednesday, the virtual violence of many video games has critics turning up the heat. We'll look closer at that. Thursday, we'll go to the olympics of competitive video games. And Friday, a video game where you might not win or lose, but perhaps you'd be the person you've always -- or creature you've always wanted to be. That's our video game series that's going to be all this week on LIVE FROM.

NGUYEN: Not just a person but a creature as well.

SIEBERG: That's right. You can be anything you want in a game. And that's part of the appeal.

NGUYEN: It's all possible. All right, Daniel Sieberg, thank you -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Daniel, I just have one question for you. How do I get the 12-year-old off the Gamecube? What do I do?

SIEBERG: It's called the power button. That's about all you can do, off.

O'BRIEN: Kill the power button. Send him to his room. I'm going to have you come and do it, thanks.

SIEBERG: All right.

O'BRIEN: Appreciate it, Daniel Sieberg.

Coming up next on LIVE FROM, what's keeping you awake at night? Maybe you're stressing about your health. As Celebrex pulls an advertising Houdini, what's the message if it's already in your medicine chest?

Or maybe it's credit card debt laying the groundwork for your insomnia. If so, you are not alone. We've got more on who is afraid of the credit wolf banging at the door. More news that you can take to the bank coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Celebrex is pulling a vanishing act from the advertising world but not from the market. CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now on why Pfizer made one move but not the other meaning pull the ads but not the drug from the market.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: The basic reason is the FDA said to them, we want you to take these ads off the market. So the ad that we're going to show you in a minute, well, you won't be seeing those anymore. Chances you saw them in the past because this was one of the most heavily marketed drugs ever. In fact in the first nine months of this year Pfizer spent $71 million selling Celebrex.

And now again the FDA says they have to take these off the air and the FDA is saying, look, you have to change what you tell doctors. When you market to doctors you need to talk about this most recent study that shows people who take Celebrex are at a 2 1/2 times greater risk of having a heart or stroke and they're telling Pfizer you also need to tell doctors to tell people, to tell their patients about alternatives to Celebrex.

So that's sort of an interesting position. They're telling a drug company that they need to tell doctors to tell their patients about other drugs so that the message is clear, but the FDA is not taking it off the market. What they're saying is we're looking at the data. We haven't -- we'll still looking at the data. We still feel like we don't have all of the data. We need to put it all together.

NGUYEN: Since it's still on the market and if folks really like Celebrex and don't have heart problems, can they still use it?

COHEN: Sure, anybody who can use it. When a drug is on the market anybody who wants to can use it but the Food and Drug Administration has been very clear that even if you don't have heart problems, go to your doctor, talk about Celebrex and your doctor may say to you, look there may be other things on the market. There may be other drugs that will help you just as much and that won't pose this heart risk even though you don't have heart problems, who wants to have a heart risk posed to them even if you don't have the problem to begin with.

Here are some things that doctors might think about. Other over- the-counter pain relievers such as Ibuprofen, Aspirin, exercise can help people with arthritis or other pain issues, weight loss, dietary supplements, all things doctors might want to talk to their patients about.

So again, even if you don't have the heart risk your doctor might do that. There might be some patients who say, everything else hurts my stomach. I don't want to take anything but Celebrex and if the doctor agrees with that the doctor's going to tell the patient take it at the lowest possible dose. What the study found is the higher the dose, the more heart and stroke problems.

NGUYEN: Elizabeth, thanks.

O'BRIEN: According to a new poll, more than half of us are worried about our credit card debt so what are shoppers doing? They're saying, charge it! David Haffenreffer in New York. How worried are we really?

DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: That's human nature, isn't it?

O'BRIEN: It is, isn't it?

HAFFENREFFER: You know, Miles, most shoppers are going to the stores this holiday season with their credit cards in hand. But they're probably worried about how they're going to pay for all the gifts they charge up. According to a new survey by the Associated Press half of all shoppers polled say that they do worry about the money they owe and the debt anxiety doesn't stop there. About 16 percent of credit card holders say they have doubts about managing their credit card debt. No surprise that among those experiencing the highest levels of debt stress were people at their credit card spending limit. Those who were unmarried and have children and those without jobs -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Covers a pretty big group there, doesn't it? You know what gets me, is even as interest rates plummeted to all-time lows, those credit card rates are well into the 20 percent range. It's crazy.

HAFFENREFFER: Have you noticed the trend that when they're going up they're really quick to ratchet them up. But when going down they sort of hold the line for a while.

O'BRIEN: There's inertia in one direction on that deal. There's some good economic news to report today. Tell us about it.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

NGUYEN: All right, thank you, David.

Well, the average commute time for most Americans, 25 minutes, the time for this woman, 2 1/2 hours. One way. We go along for the ride with an extreme commuter in just a few minutes to find out why she's part of a growing group of Americans willing to sacrifice time on the road.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com