- Codemasters Chief Operating Officer Tony Williams leaves unexpectedly after four years. There is no smoke without fire so it will be interesting when I find out what happened here.
- There are now 30 million iPhones and iPod Touches out there in the world. An incredible achievement and one that is very relevant to the whole gaming industry. This has inspired me to write a full article on the whole smartphone thing for next Monday.
- European Parliament supports PEGI and ELSPA support the European Parliament. And the Byron review favoured BBFC instead. Yet the F in BBFC stands for Film, just as the F in BAFTA stands for Film. And games are nothing like film. Film is an old medium in decline. We are the best medium with the technical advantages of interactivity, connectivity and non linearity. We are the future and they are the past. We really don’t need their institutions on our back and we have the power to create and use our own.
- US Government anti drugs website says that taking recreational drugs makes you useless at playing video games. The main problem with this preaching is that the people this is aimed at are far more expert on the subject than the US Government is. So the website becomes more notable as a source of humour than as a source of information.
- Top Rockstar personnel receive $18 million in Take Two stock. For a three year deal. Well they certainly earn it if you look historically but you have to wonder how much the GTA franchise has left in it going forward. And you have to wonder how much Take Two stock is going to be worth in the future. AAA boxed console games are a dwindling proportion of all gaming, let’s see how the franchise and Take Two adapt.
- Electronics Boutique in America leak details of Playstation PS3 price drop. Too little too late or a masterstroke to dominate at the peak of the cycle? Only time will tell. One thing is for sure and that is the fact that Microsoft will win any price war hands down. The Xbox 360 is far more elegant and cheap to make and Microsoft still have enough cash in the bank to buy a medium sized country.
- iGoogle to get gaming themes, in upcoming GDC announcement. To me this looks like the tip of an upcoming Google gaming iceberg. But what they actually do will be very unpredictable because those big brains at Google work in often obtuse ways. And they have a significant fail behind them with Lively. Google now own so many key bits of the interweb firmament that there are a myriad of gaming possibilities open to them. And with gaming exploding like it is you would expect them to explore quite a few of these possibilities. But to really succeed Google need to put their marketing on a serious footing.
- Chinese government to clamp down on foreign online games. They are giving two reasons, firstly they want to protect their own games industry secondly they want to protect their culture. Guess which reason is the truth.