Microsoft and various divisions of News Corp made another major move this week to dominate gaming, with the announcement of a professional gaming league that will make cultural icons, rather like today's skateboarding, wrestling or basketball players from video game players.

Sponsor, Mountain Dew, and retailer Best Buy will add their weight to launch the Championship Gaming Series during 2007. The tournaments – three a year - will be broadcast in a kind of reality TV show, something that Fox is brilliant at, over the DirecTV satellite TV service, giving it yet more exclusive "sports" content.

Microsoft is almost certain to use both its recent Massive acquisition and its Xbox Live network as a basis for advertising both in and around games. This married up with the News Corp owned IGN Entertainment, which reaches 35m gamers per month, will mean the show becomes a "de facto" leader overnight.

Prizes will be donated by fizzy drink brand Mountain Dew, in the form of the "Dew Cup" and huge amounts of prize money.

The three tournaments this year will be a warm-up for the start of CGS league play in 2007, and the first of these will take place on July 21, 2006.

This week at US gaming show E3 Microsoft, chairman Bill Gates announced Live Anywhere, which allows video gamers to play games with each other whether they're on Windows Vista computers, Xbox 360, game machines, or even mobile phones.