Via Slashdot:

Parents who dismiss video games as mindless entertainment with no intrinsic value for their children may not have a leg to stand on anymore thanks to science. Cognitive scientists from the University of Rochester have proven action based video games train people to make quick, accurate decisions...

I've experience this myself. A while back, I noticed that I read faster after playing Pokemon Puzzle League (one of the few video games I've ever spent much time playing...and that hasn't happened for a while).

But I have two questions:

1) How long does the effect last? My reading speedup wore off pretty quickly after my brain got out of gaming mode.

2) Does the benefit even come close to compensating for the time spent playing?

If it takes half an hour to get in Pokemon Fast Reading Mode, I'd have to follow it up with a lot of reading to get my half an hour back.