The research hopes to analyse avid gamers to see if they develop learning skills which could be transferred to the classroom.

However, the games used could not neccesarily be purely edutainment ones, with the Associated Press story giving Gears of War a mention, and how games like it require decision making as well as analytical skills that researchers wish to understand more.

"We want to figure out what's compelling about the games," said John Nordlinger, head of gaming research for Microsoft. "If we can find out how to make the games fun and not make them so violent, that would be ideal."

The location of the institute was not revealed but Microsoft has already partnered up with New York University as well as a few other colleges. Although, Microsoft will not be the first to explore if video games could enhance education with the University of Wisconsin researchers already having found that playing World of Warcraft can encourage scientific thinking.

Kotaku / MSNBC.com [photo from MSNBC.com]