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arcticstoat writes to tell us that Square Enix has been revealed as the potential buyer to Eidos, developer of the Tomb Raider franchise. Eidos had been shedding workers and studios in an attempt for financial stability. This comes alongside news that Midway Games is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to stave off creditors while they sort out what's left of their resources. World of Goo publisher Brighter Minds Media also filed for bankruptcy last month. Free Radical, a UK studio recently put in a similar position was snapped up by Crytek, and we discussed news of Sega's financial turmoil as well. It seems that claims from late last year suggesting the games industry may be "recession proof" are quickly being proven wrong, though Kotaku suggests that most of the blame falls on the developers.

arcticstoat writes to tell us that Square Enix has been revealed as the potential buyer to Eidos, developer of the Tomb Raider franchise. Eidos had been shedding workers and studios in an attempt for financial stability. This comes alongside news that Midway Games is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to stave off creditors while they sort out what's left of their resources. World of Goo publisher Brighter Minds Media also filed for bankruptcy last month. Free Radical, a UK studio recently put in a similar position was snapped up by Crytek, and we discussed news of Sega's financial turmoil as well. It seems that claims from late last year suggesting the games industry may be "recession proof" are quickly being proven wrong, though Kotaku suggests that most of the blame falls on the developers.

Joystiq got the opportunity to spend some time playing an early version of Sony's DC Universe Online . Though the MMO won't be released for perhaps a year, the developers seem to have created a solid foundation for an entertaining and innovative game. GameDaily is running an interview with Marv Wolfman, a comic veteran who recently joined the DCUO team. From Joystiq: "DCUO is very much an action MMO, with few game mechanics decided by the roll of the algorithmic dice. The game controls much like most third-person action titles, with standard light and heavy (charge-sensitive) attacks, a jump action and an interact button (notably, used to pick up cars). Super moves are mapped to the same four face buttons (when using the PS3 gamepad; a keyboard and mouse will be compatible with the console version, too) and are activated using L2 and R2 toggles. In total, up to eight super moves are easily accessible at any given time. Our character could fire ice balls and freezing rays at opponents, melee them with blocks of ice, or conveniently freeze them inside larger blocks, for example. A simple targeting mode (accessed by holding R1) locks the game camera onto an opponent for focused attacks. ... DC Universe Online isn't trying to strictly clone today's success models. SOE is making genuine efforts to build what could be the best superhero game ever conceived, and we're excited to watch it grow."

GameDaily recently spoke with Jason Holtman, director of business development and legal affairs for Valve, about online sales and piracy. Holtman took a surprising stance on the latter, effectively taking responsibility for at least a portion of pirated games. Quoting: "'There's a big business feeling that there's piracy,' he says. But the truth is: 'Pirates are underserved customers. When you think about it that way, you think, "Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it." We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia,' Holtman says of Valve. 'The reason people pirated things in Russia,' he explains, 'is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television — they say "Man, I want to play that game so bad," but the publishers respond "you can play that game in six months...maybe." We found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly,' Holtman says." Attitudes like this seem to be prevalent at Valve; last month we talked about founder Gabe Newell's comments that "most DRM strategies are just dumb."

Every year, the National Institute on Media and the Family releases a report card which grades various aspects of the video game industry on how well they keep "inappropriate" games out of the hands of children. This year's report was largely positive, which is surprising given the history of strong criticism by the Institute. They acknowledged that gaming is becoming a much bigger part of family life than it was in the past, and they're making an effort to shift the focus onto the parents to keep their kids' gaming habits under control. The full report is available here (PDF), and Game Daily has an interview with Entertainment Software Alliance CEO Michael Gallagher which touches on some of the same issues.

The demo version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was released a few weeks ago for download through Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. Now, LucasArts has announced that the game shattered records for the number of downloads on Xbox Live, taking only eight days to reach 1 million. The full version is due out next Tuesday, and LucasArts will be holding a launch party in San Fransisco on Monday night to celebrate. The game is part of a multimedia project which includes a best-selling book, a comic, action figures, and other tie-ins. According to Eurogamer's interview with producer Cameron Suey, previous Star Wars games suffered from a "lack of ambition." Suey also shows off some of the gameplay in a video. A video walkthrough of the PS2 and PSP versions is available at Kotaku. The game will not be available for PC. Early reviews for the game are good, but not great, and developers recently mentioned that George Lucas himself provided input on the project.

azuredrake writes "According to GameDaily, EA today released a free download of a Spore prototype known as 'BIOME.' The download site describes BIOME as a program that 'uses a language based on chemical stoichiometry.' It goes on to note that 'cells in a BIOME simulation change state the same way that chemicals change when exposed to other chemicals. Systems such as this can be used to simulate phenomena such as forest fires, disease epidemics, animal migration patterns and crystallization.' Note that the link provided in the article is, in fact, incorrect. Here is the correct link. Apparently, many more prototypes giving insight into the dev process of one of the PC world's most-hyped games will be posted in the future, so keep an eye on it."

GameTap has announced that it will be giving their editorial section the axe and concentrating solely on the distribution business. "We have had a lot of successes over the last year and the move to the web has been a good one for us. While we have been very happy with the work done by our editorial and video teams, we've made a decision to focus the business on our biggest strength, which is our game catalog. As a result, we will be restructuring the site to focus exclusively on gameplay."

Veteran actor John Rhys-Davies sat down with GameDaily Biz to talk about his role in Uwe Boll's latest failure of a movie, 'Dungeon Siege: In the Name of the King'. Davies is surprisingly candid about his interest in the role, and pretty much nails the numerous problems of making film adaptations of games. "One or two may succeed, and I hope this is one of them, but the structure of a game is completely unlike the structure of a film. And it shows the despair of the studios and producers that these movies even get a look at. If we had good writing, it would not happen. I think that right at the moment, the film industry in Hollywood is in a crisis because we have successfully excluded young and able talent for so long that now there is nothing left."

00_NOP writes "Dreamcast lovers' hopes were raised earlier this month when it came to light that Sega had extended trade mark protection on the console's name. But hopes have now been dashed that we'll ever see another Dreamcast console, as even GameDaily's optimistic take on Sega's motivation makes clear. 'SEGA has no plans to get back into the hardware business, but we also want to protect our past and current brands. The trademark application was filed to protect our current and potential future use of the word DREAMCAST and to prevent other parties from using it in a way that could be confused or linked with SEGA.'"

Sales news is starting to trickle out for some of the big Fall games, with the Xbox 360 so far looking very strong. BioWare's Mass Effect has sold a million copies, while Bungie's blockbuster Halo 3 has already sold over five million copies since its September 25th release date. That last figure comes from a GameDaily interview with Xbox Marketing VP Jeff Bell. Aside from noting this week's release of Halo 3's first downloadable map pack, Bell also connected these sales back to the console itself: "The reaction has been very positive. In fact, we saw incredible sales of Xbox 360 for the week of November 18, including Black Friday of more than 310,000 Xbox 360 in the U.S. alone. This is really strong momentum for us given that we're already in our third year on the market."

Sales news is starting to trickle out for some of the big Fall games, with the Xbox 360 so far looking very strong. BioWare's Mass Effect has sold a million copies, while Bungie's blockbuster Halo 3 has already sold over five million copies since its September 25th release date. That last figure comes from a GameDaily interview with Xbox Marketing VP Jeff Bell. Aside from noting this week's release of Halo 3's first downloadable map pack, Bell also connected these sales back to the console itself: "The reaction has been very positive. In fact, we saw incredible sales of Xbox 360 for the week of November 18, including Black Friday of more than 310,000 Xbox 360 in the U.S. alone. This is really strong momentum for us given that we're already in our third year on the market."

GameDaily reports that Sony has had a lot of success with the PSP Slim in Japan, with sales of over a million units since its launch in September of this year. That's more units sold than the original PSP did in its several-year-long lifespan. "Titles such as Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and Monster Hunter in particular have helped boost Sony's portable in Japan. Sony is maintaining a sales forecast of 10 million units worldwide by the end of its fiscal year next March. The portable sector is still dominated by the Nintendo DS, however. Nintendo is aiming to sell 28 million units of its handheld by the end of its fiscal year."

The October NPD numbers are out, and (now that we know we'll keep getting the information) it's time once again for analysis and reaction from media and businesses alike. GameDaily has a one year later look at the fight that began last holiday season. As for the numbers themselves, with Halo 3 now a known quantity in the market the 360 is down to 366,000 from 527,800 in September. Microsoft is still quite happy with software sales, though. The PS3 only saw 121,000 units sold last month, but early news from November has Sony very excited. And all the while, somehow, the Wii manages to sell even more units. The system is up to 519,000 from 501,000 in September, with the DS slight down to 458,000 from 495,800. As the GameDaily analysis article concludes: "the race for console dominance is still anyone's to win. The 2007 holiday buying season will be crucial to setting all three players' market positions going into next year. Which is all nice to know, of course, but not that important to actually enjoying your system of choice well into the future."

In an interview with GameDaily earlier this week, IGDA's Jason Della Rocca expressed his extreme frustration over Rockstar's handling of the credits on Manhunt 2. You may recall that the core group that initially made the game at Rockstar Vienna were completely left off of the final credits . One of the producers has taken the step of speaking out about the poor treatment he received from the company. Producer Jurie Horneman initially expressed his displeasure on his blog, but followed that up with comments made to the site Next Generation. "I get the impression that Rockstar New York tried to close the Vienna branch as quickly and quietly as possible. The offices were closed down during E3 2006, making it likely that the news would be buried ... As I recall there was never an official press release stating we were closed - it even took some time before it was officially acknowledged we'd been closed down."

The ongoing saga of the suit/counter-suit battle between Epic Systems and Silicon Knights continues, with Epic's motion to dismiss dismissed. GameDaily reports: "GameDaily BIZ briefly spoke with SK's attorney on the case, Christopher T. Holland, an Equity Partner at Krieg, Keller, Sloan, Reilley & Roman, LLP. Holland confirmed to us that all of SK's initial claims will not be thrown out and 'remain in play for the trial.' An exact date for the trial has yet to be set. 'We're a long way from a verdict in this case, but certainly as a plaintiff we're pleased that the court has recognized the merit in our claims and we're happy that we can now proceed as planned with all the claims we brought for discovery and trial,' Holland said."

GameDailyBiz is reporting that Microsoft has posted a rare profit for their games business. As you might imagine, the good news is courtesy of high game and console sales thanks to Halo 3. "[Entertainment Division] revenue increased primarily due to increased Xbox 360 console and game sales. Xbox and PC game revenue increased $895 million or 148% as a result of increased Xbox 360 console sales, video game sales led by Halo 3, and Xbox 360 accessory sales. We shipped 1.8 million Xbox 360 consoles in the current quarter as compared to 0.9 million consoles in the first quarter of fiscal year 2007. Halo 3 was launched in September 2007 and generated approximately $330 million of revenue during the quarter."

The MTV Multiplayer blog is playing host to a two-part interview with outgoing Nintendo president of marketing Perrin Kaplan. A well-respected figure in the games business, Kaplan's 'exit interview' with Stephen Totilo touches on everything from the missing September surprise to why the US doesn't have a fan club. "You know we've taken a really close look at what they're doing in Europe and what they're doing in Japan. You have to remember that, geographically, we're much bigger here and cost-wise, it is much more expensive to run a program like that. We try to do pre-sale with our retailers as often as possible. You're talking about a scale that is much larger. But we do look at the differences in markets and what consumers are liking. It's just a difference in scale." Good luck to Ms. Kaplan in her future endeavors.

Despite the upbeat tone of IDG's official release about the first 'E for All', commentators are noting that the reported figure of 18,000 attendees is lower than expected. Wired is blunt about it: E For All has nothing on PAX. "Penny Arcade Expo was everything E For All dreams of being: a well-attended show packed wall-to-wall with crazy game fans. But it's also inexpensive: three days and two nights of musical performances for way, way less money than an E For All ticket, let alone the additional cost of Video Games Live. And it's got a whole mess of community events, like panels, gaming rooms, and other opportunities that make E For All's extracurriculars look slim. The show floor is just one part of PAX, but it's practically all of E For All."

GameDaily has the NPD numbers for September, and they're impressive if only because for the first time in months Nintendo isn't dominating the top of every list. Total sales across the industry hit $1.36 billion (a 74% bump over last year), mostly fueled by Halo 3 sales. The game (across all skus) sold some 3.3 million units, while Xbox 360 platforms hit about 528,000 units sold last month. Ironically, the Wii had its second best month ever and the DS sold big numbers thanks to Phantom Hourglass. "Nintendo's Wii, despite not really having any significant new software releases, was close behind with 501K units sold. The DS handheld also did quite well, selling another 495.8K. Looking at Sony's platforms, the PS3 sold just 119.4K units, while the surging PSP sold 284.5K and the PS2 maintained healthy sales at 215K." The piece also offers up analysis from an NPD researcher, who feels Microsoft is likely to maintain some good momentum through the holidays.

jasoncart writes "Microsoft today confirmed the news that has been speculated for some days, that Halo developer Bungie is 'on the path' to becoming an independent company. Microsoft describes this as an 'evolution' of their relationship, but no concrete reason is given for this move. 'Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, said the company was "supporting Bungie's desire to return to its independent roots". However, he added, Microsoft "will continue to invest in our Halo entertainment property with Bungie and other partners, such as Peter Jackson, on a new interactive series set in the Halo universe". "We look forward to great success with Bungie as our long-term relationship continues to evolve through Halo-related titles and new IP created by Bungie," he added.'" MTV wonders out loud ... if Bungie doesn't make Halo 4 who will? The official press release from Bungie gives you the same information from the other side, as does an interview with Frankie at GameDailyBiz. Update: 10/05 21:25 GMT by Z : In the wake of the announcement Kotaku has a quickie email interview discussing the future of the company.

Dr. Eggman writes "GameDaily.com announces that at long last, Half-Life: The Orange Box has gone gold. The release date has been set for October 10th. Although Valve recently announced that the company shall reevaluate episodic content, Newell has spoken to CVG, reassuringly stating that there is lots of Half-Life left at Valve. Expect more interesting stories like Portal to come out of Valve as they trickle out what they refer internally to as 'The [Half-Life] Bible.'"

njkid1 writes "Nintendo's legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, id Software's Todd Hollenshead and BioWare's Ray Muzyka offer up their expert advice on how to rise to the top of the industry at GameDaily. Miyamoto says his secret to success is that he makes sure sequels are entirely new games rather than just minor updates to the same engine. From Muzkya's comments in the article: 'BioWare's success is based entirely on the fact that we have a lot of very humble, hard-working and smart people at our company who are allowed to take creative risks. We put quality as our number one studio priority, because we believe it leads to long-term success, and as a result we don't release a game until we've achieved and exceeded our high quality targets.'"

A recent Gamers with Jobs podcast (well worth listening to) features co-hosting duties performed by Ken Levine of Irrational/2K Boston, makers of the title BioShock. During the podcast, Levine comes to the defense of Factor 5's Lair , saying that the folks over there may not have had much choice in how to proceed with their game. "Let me speak in these guys' defense for a minute as a game developer. I'm sure somebody came to them at some point and said, 'We have this motion control controller, and we have to make a go of it. And we really think you should try to make your game exclusively on that.' I think you're seeing a lot of this lately. Aren't there a lot of games where you're just like, 'Dude, can I just use the d-pad or the analog stick?' Ever since the DS came out I feel that there have been a lot of games like that. They've been so impressed by their control mechanic that they just really, really want you to play with that." It's still really, really bad.

The poorly-written game law passed in Oklahoma - and subsequently found unconstitutional by the courts - has now been permanently enjoined from existing. This has been a pet project of Governor Brad Henry, and this enjoinment will stop the law from rearing its head again. "The law sought to ban the dissemination to minors of any computer or video game that contains any depiction of "inappropriate violence," which was defined by depictions that fall into any one of nine broad categories. Violators would also have been subject to fines of up to $1,000 ...It also seems in some way that the law singled out the game industry, since according to the court decision, the law was found to be underinclusive - meaning that a minor might be prevented from buying a video game with 'inappropriate violence' but may still legally buy or rent the book or movie on which the game was based." GamePolitics has reaction to this decision.

Alien54 writes "Comcast has finally clarified what 'excessive use' is when it comes to their cable internet service. A customer is exceeding their use limit if they: download the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month. '[A Comcast spokesperson] said that Comcast's actions to cut ties with excessive users is a "great benefit to games and helps protect gamers and their game experience" due to their overuse of the network and thus "degrading the experience."'" Maybe they could put that limit in terms other than 'email' or 'songs'?

GameDaily had a chance to talk with Matt Ringel, the president of Games Media Properties, the company formerly sponsoring the World Series of Video Games. Matt and the site work through why the cancellation was so sudden, and what lead to the event's nixing. "It was a combination of factors. There are indeed a number of organizers competing at a high level, and advertising in the whole space has been a bit slow -- in part because advertisers are trying to decipher the relative merits and differences among the various organizations. Meanwhile, Games Media Properties, parent company of the WSVG, has an online business that is doing well. As appealing as competitive gaming will become in the future, the company wanted to put all [its] focus on the business that is able to perform today."

GameDaily reports on analyst research indicating that online games will be a huge part of the games market in a few years. The online portion of games sales hit roughly $3.8 billion in 2006, and is expected to grow at a rapid rate in the next few years, with Massively Multiplayer Online Games leading the way. By 2011 analysts expect that number to hit $11.8 billion, which would be about a third of all game sales. "'The main driver for sustained growth in the online games market will be the continued uptake of broadband services around the world,' said David Mercer, Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics. 'Additionally, the very lucrative revenue opportunity in both the massively multiplayer segment and the electronic sell through market will continue to attract new entrants into the online games market.' While digital distribution is making more and more full games available for download for PC gamers (through services such as Steam, Direct2Drive, etc.), console makers have been much slower to offer entire games for download - although Sony is starting to do this on its PlayStation Network, with Warhawk being a primary example since it's available for download or on Blu-ray disc."

A report released by casual gaming mecca PopCap Games indicates that white collar workers play games constantly throughout the day. The study indicates that as salaries and titles improve on the organizational chart, the amount of gameplaying in a given day increases substantially. "Considering that the casual games market is around 200 million people, PopCap estimates that the executive crowd is very much into casual gaming, with about 80 million 'white collar' workers playing. 24 percent of the 'white collar' employees said they do play at work, and that number jumps up to 35 percent for CEOs, CFOs and other senior executives. 98 percent said that they play casual games at home too." What's your favorite on-the-job casual title?

After much hemming and hawing, Take-Two appears to have secured an 'M' rating for Manhunt 2 from the ESRB. The title is now due in stores around Halloween. The reversal of fortunes for the much-maligned title has prompted a number of conspiracy theories and outright outrage from groups 'fighting' videogame violence. Well-known commentator on the subject and California State Senator Leland Yee is demanding more transparency from the ESRB as a result of this decision. From GamePolitics' coverage: "Parents can't trust a rating system that doesn't even disclose how they come to a particular rating. The ESRB and Rockstar should end this game of secrecy by immediately unveiling what content has been changed to grant the new rating and what correspondence occurred between the ESRB and Rockstar to come to this conclusion. Unfortunately, history shows that we must be quite skeptical of these two entities."

A study done by the market research firm Parks Associates shows that online games are the biggest draw for internet-based entertainment. Online games, including MMOGs, casual games, and free-to-play virtual worlds, had a bigger draw even that social networking sites or YouTube. Some 34% of US internet consumers played online games at least once a week in the second quarter of 2007. "Furthermore, the number of people playing games online seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. Parks' research found that the year-over-year growth rate for frequent online gamers was 79 percent, which easily trumps the growth rate for users of social networking (46 percent). That said, the growth rate for frequent users of video streaming sites was a whopping 123 percent, and that 'could pose a significant challenge to the gaming industry in capturing the online leisure time of Internet users,' Parks cautioned."

GameDaily reports that the PlayStation Portable has an interesting restriction: its full processor power cannot be utilized at the same time as its WiFi functionality. Therefore, games that are played online cannot make use of the chip's 333mhz processor speed. The original finding from Beyond 3D was confirmed to GameDaily by Sony. Dave Karraker, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications: "The recent firmware upgrade (3.50) that removed the restriction on the PSP's CPU speed enables developers to utilize speeds either lower or higher than the default 222MHz, up to the full 333MHz clock speed. The article is correct that increased CPU speed cannot be used with the PSP's wireless feature." Though speculation is that this is a power-saving decision, there has been no official announcement as to the root cause.

GameDaily is reporting that the $50 price drop on the Xbox 360 is now official. That's for the premium SKU, different boxes have different drops: "The Elite SKU (120GB) has been slashed by $30, bringing it down to $449.99, and the Core SKU now has an MSRP that is $20 lower at $279.99. All prices are effective August 8th. In addition, the special Halo 3 themed Xbox 360 that was casually mentioned by Peter Moore at this year's E3 Microsoft press conference has been assigned an estimated retail price of $399.99. The Xbox 360 Halo 3 Special Edition Console will arrive in stores this September and will feature "an authentic Spartan green-and-gold finish," a matching Xbox 360 Wireless Controller, Xbox 360 20GB hard drive, Xbox 360 Headset, an Xbox 360 Play and Charge Kit, and more."

njkid1 writes with an article at GameDaily that once again tackles the thorny subject of taxing virtual goods. This month Congress is going to issue its report on the subject. What's in the report isn't certain as of yet, but their decision could have an enormous impact on the future of massively multiplayer games in the United States. From the article: "Economists estimate the sale of virtual goods grosses somewhere around $30 million in the United States alone, and up to $880 million worldwide, but no one knows for sure. With this economy's growth factor averaging about 10 to 15 percent every month, it's no wonder the government wants a piece of the action. Here's the bottom line: Any service or commodity bought or sold using real-world money is taxable. Therefore, transactions where players pay real money for in-game currency or virtual items are taxable events. It doesn't matter that the items don't exist in reality, since it doesn't take much creativity to argue that the sale is attached to a service, such as the act of acquiring the currency or item. This being the case, it was never a question of WOULD the U.S. government step in with taxes, but a question of WHEN and HOW."

njkid1 writes "David Jaffe is now the former Creative Director for SCEA Santa Monica Studios. He's confirmed rumours that he was revving up his own studio, and has partnered with Incognito's Scott Campbell to form a group called 'Eat, Sleep, Play'. The company has partnered exclusively with SCEA on a multi-year, multi-title deal 'to create titles for the PlayStation family of products, with the first slated for release in 2008.' It will be based out of Utah (cheap rent), and Jaffe notes that they did ask around with other companies before partnering with Sony. Their first title will be Twisted Metal: Head On for the PS2. The title will use some unreleased material from the last Twisted Metal title, and combine that with a documentary on the series."

GameDaily reports that yesterday saw the debut of a trailer for the official Lost videogame. The game is slated for early next year, to coincide with the beginning of the fourth (and newly abbreviated) season of the show. Ubisoft Montreal is developing the game, and has apparently been working closely with the show's production staff. "Players will assume the role of a passenger on the ill-fated Oceanic flight 815 who survives the crash and is stranded on the uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean. As the player begins to unravel mysteries of the island, new secrets about your character are revealed. Players will have to understand their character's past mistakes in order to survive and find their way home. The game will incorporate familiar locations and will feature main characters from the show. Gameplay will involve solving puzzles, outsmarting enemies, battling the smoke monster, and overcoming many other challenges to survive the island and ultimately come out alive." Game|Life has some fleeting impressions of the trailer. There are also some scant details of a videogame version of the show Heroes , currently in pre-production by Ubisoft as well.

June was the first month that Nielsen's new approach to tracking game play was fully implemented, and the statistics from last month are now out. Some sample numbers: "The company determined that 68.1 million individuals used a videogame console in June, playing an average of 7.5 days during the month. The PlayStation 2 was the most-played console, accounting for 42 per cent of the total console usage ... The Xbox 360 accounted for eight per cent of console playing time. Its users logged in an average of 2.2 sessions per day, with an average session length of 61 minutes. The PS3 accounted for 1.5 per cent of console usage. Its users logged in an average of 1.9 sessions per day with an average session length of 83 minutes-the longest playing session of all consoles studied. The Wii, by comparison, accounted for four per cent of overall console playing time. Its users logged in an average of 1.78 sessions per day with an average session length of 57 minutes." GameDaily has further demographics from the results.

njkid1 writes "GameDaily has up their full E3 interview with Nintendo of America's George Harrison, SVP of Marketing and Corporate Communications. Harrison talks about the move of the company's sales and marketing force, acknowledges that Nintendo may 'lose some purists' while attempting to broaden the audience, and he doesn't rule out a Wii revision: 'It's interesting, console hardware has always historically been on a sort of fixed, sequential pattern almost every five to six years and it takes you about five years to develop a new piece of console hardware. The handhelds and portables, like Game Boy and now DS, we've always been continuously innovating, and whenever we feel like it's time or have an upgrade, we'll do it, whether it's an improved screen for the handheld or slimmed down like the DS Lite - those types of things. So it's not out of the question on Wii, but we're not even to our second holiday yet, so it's kind of premature to talk about any revisions to the hardware itself.'"

GameDaily points out something I didn't even notice: Too Human wasn't at E3 this year. Denis Dyack's histrionics in the year since the game's terrible E3 2006 showing may have had something to do with that. According to the site, Dyack said: "We made the decision not to show Too Human at the press conference some time ago. The reason for this decision was that we have another event planned in the future for Too Human that we thought would be more appropriate ... Not attending the show and setting appointments with the press was due to Silicon Knights being extremely busy finalizing the game and we simply could not spare the time." Of course, today's announcement of a pending lawsuit between Silicon Knights and Epic may have something to do with it as well. Too Human is using Epic's Unreal engine to get the job done ... perhaps they've run into a snag?

GameDaily reports on a couple of new ways that Neilsen is trying to stay with the times. Game usage and tracking have always been hard for them, and they're rolling out two new strategies to consumers. The first requires participation on the part of developers: a 'tag' that can be built into software to register usage with the Neilsen folks. An initial attempt at this was tried in 2005, and never got off the ground. They're now trying again. The other is a bit more clever, and is usable on multiple forms of entertainment. The blog 'We Can Fix That with Data' did some research into the organization's 'Portable People Meters': "The Portable People Meter, developed by Arbitron Inc., is a pager-sized device that is carried by a representative panel of television viewers. It automatically detects inaudible codes that broadcasters embed in the audio portion of their programming using encoders provided by BBM and Arbitron. At the end of each day, the survey participants place the meters into base stations that recharge the devices and send the collected codes to BBM for tabulation. The Portable People Meter can measure exposure to any electronic media, which has audio that can be encoded - television, cable, and radio, even cinema advertising and in-store media."

GameDaily is reporting on commentary from Nintendo of America's George Harrison, who essentially says the company will no longer be using the Game Boy brand. While at one point the DS was the 'third pillar' along with the Game Boy and the GameCube/Wii, the handheld has in recent years more than proven its worth. "This year in our marketing you really won't see much push against Game Boy itself, so it will kind of seek its own level. It's hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark. It was a big risk for us to actually pass on it and call the new product the Nintendo DS, but it was part of Mr. Iwata's philosophy that if we're going to make a radical difference and try to reach a new audience, then we have to change the name ... We had to make a break even though we had one of the greatest trademarks in the history of the industry."

So here's the deal: Kotaku has a flier for an upcoming Circuit City deal on the PlayStation 3, putting the price at $499. There's some confusion about whether this is just a sale from Circuit City, or an actual price drop from Sony. Next Generation has Sony saying 'no', indicating that this isn't a sign of an across-the-board price cut. Meanwhile, GameDaily says 'yes', with sources in the retail industry indicating this is the price adjustment we've heard coming for a while now. "As it turns out, a merchandising manager (who wished to remain anonymous) at one of the world's biggest retailers has confirmed to GameDaily BIZ that the price drop is indeed retail-wide and it's scheduled to take place on July 12, although the first wave of ads to promote the PS3's new price won't kick in until Sunday, July 15. Many analysts have speculated that Sony would drop the price on the expensive console this year, and some even predicted that it could happen this summer. It's starting to look like they were right. We're sure to find out much more next week when Sony holds its press conference at E3." Luckily we won't have to wait long to see what's the real story here.

GameDaily reports that Sony Computer Entertainment of America is partnering with the Nielsen group to assign metrics to in-game advertising. This will allow advertisers to more accurately assess in-game ad campaigns, while Nielsen will be able to gauge consumer interests. "SCEA will provide Nielsen with access to its game network traffic and other data from the PS3 and PlayStation Network, including the upcoming PlayStation Home. Using this information, Nielsen will analyze and benchmark the data to create new measurements for calculating the reach, frequency and effectiveness of game network advertising 'for the benefit of the entire industry.' Nielsen will then combine the SCEA data with its own game usage data, which the company currently collects from more than 12,000 U.S. television households in its National People Meter panel. This is expected to provide a more complete picture of game usage and advertising performance. The SCEA partnership should also help advertisers and agencies to calculate CPMs across PS3s and the PlayStation Network with more detail and accuracy."

GameDaily is reporting that Take-Two will be publishing a new Civilization title in Spring of 2008, with a twist. Instead of the traditional strategy gameplay Civilizations Revolution will be an 'action-packed' console game, streamlining the experience for different generation of gamers. They also mention they'll be aiming this game at handheld gamers. "The title will include 16 civilizations, numerous historical leaders to play as or compete against, online play with integrated video and voice chat, more accessible maps, a streamlined time scale for quicker games, and more ... 'Civilization is one of the world's top selling PC game series with more than 8 million units sold, and continues to be recognized as one of the greatest franchises ever created,' added Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. 'We are excited to have Sid Meier getting back to his roots as the game's Lead Designer to carry on its legacy with Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution.'" This seems somewhat similar to EA's decision to offer up a streamlined version of SimCity in their next iteration of the series.

GameDaily reports on news from Reuters; today for the first time Nintendo outpaced Sony's market value. Note that this isn't Sony's games wing, but the entirety of the Sony corporation. Investor confidence spurred by brisk sales of the DS and Wii pushed Nintendo (briefly) into the top ten earners in the nation of Japan, with such rarefied organizations as Honda, Toyota, and Canon. "Nintendo's shares rose to a record high 46,350 yen in the morning, increasing its overall market value to 6.57 trillion yen ($53 billion), which allowed it to surpass Sony's market capitalization for a time. The company's shares, however, finished the day a bit lower putting Nintendo back in 11th place behind Sony, but still ahead of Panasonic maker Matsushita, whose sales are over eight times larger than Nintendo's. Nintendo's market value closed at 6.39 trillion yen on Monday, just below Sony's 6.48 trillion yen."

If you've been following this story so far, it shouldn't come as a shock that Take-Two has shelved Manhunt 2 for the moment, while they decide what to do next. The company is considering its options, and still fully supports the game as a 'work of art'. "Take-Two Interactive Software has temporarily suspended plans to distribute Manhunt 2 for the Wii or PlayStation platforms while it reviews its options with regard to the recent decisions made by the British Board of Film Classification and Entertainment Software Rating Board ... We continue to stand behind this extraordinary game. We believe in freedom of creative expression, as well as responsible marketing, both of which are essential to our business of making great entertainment." Analysts have already started weighing in, with some seeing this as unfairly targeting the GTA-maker for previous 'sins'.

Via GameDaily a Financial Times interview with with Sir Howard Stringer, Sony's CEO, gives fans the first hope that price cuts may be coming soon. Lauding the Wii's performance in last month's NPD numbers, Stringer says that Sony is looking to 'refine' the PS3's pricepoint. "'Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper,' Mr Stringer said in a video interview. 'That [price cuts] is what we are studying at the moment. That's what we are trying to refine.' Sir Howard said he expected 'energy [in PS3 sales] by Christmas, and then you will begin to see break-out games'. Sony is launching a virtual-world game called Home this year, and up to 30 other games."

Capcom titles will be appearing on Valve's Steam service, reports GameDaily. "The first game to come to Steam under this agreement will be Devil May Cry 3, scheduled for later this week. Following that in the next few weeks will be Onimusha 3 and then Lost Planet: Extreme Condition on June 26 (which is day-and-date with the retail PC version). And later this year Steam will get Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix."

Bloomberg is reporting on Microsoft's efforts to be more inclusive to 'family' game players. Essentially, Micrsoft admits they're looking to Nintendo as the generation leader this time around, with low cost and family appeal driving their sales numbers ever higher. To that end, Microsoft is looking at a possible price cut and shift in strategies to appeal to a broader audience. This dovetails with comments made by Bill Gates at the AllThingsDigital event regarding motion controls in the future of the console. "Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer wants to avoid the fate of the first Xbox. The console appealed mainly to hard-core gamers, generally males between 15 and 29 years old, and trailed Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 in sales by a 5-to-1 margin ... Microsoft's initial attempts to target children didn't live up to the company's expectations. A November game called Viva Piñata, in which kids build a garden and raise animals that look like piñatas brought to life, didn't make it into the top 20, even with a Saturday morning cartoon created to promote the game." It might not have sold, but VP was an awesome game.

GameDaily reports on new numbers from Nintendo, discussing their ongoing success with the Wii's Virtual Console offering. According to the piece, there are now over 100 games available on the service, and some 4.7 Million downloads have been transacted since the system's launch late last year. "Nintendo has been updating the Wii Shop with new Virtual Console games every Monday. The top five downloads worldwide to date have been Super Mario Bros. (NES), Super Mario 64 (N64), Mario Kart 64 (N64), Super Mario World (SNES), and The Legend of Zelda (NES). 'With an Internet connection rate reaching 40 percent, Wii owners have more options than ever to find the kinds of games they love to play,' says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. 'Beyond the Wii Shop Channel, all types of people are getting connected and checking out the information and entertainment options available on the Wii Menu. Whether voting, creating a Mii or just checking the weather, everyone has a favorite channel.'"