Since we were previously talking about Japan, games, and various other things (actually, we always talk about Japan and various other things), let's take a look at some figures from the Tokyo Game Show, courtesy of Gameindustry.biz.

It seems that this here event is set to break tons of records, including the number of games exhibited – no less than 879 titles, for every platform available. To get into even more details, we have around 19 percent DS games (actually, 18.7, but who's counting), 18 percent mobile games, and around 17.5 PC games. The top of the bottom is gloriously held by the Playstation 3, with a mere 3.5 percent.



And while we're here, let's get into genres. Most of the titles (around 20 percent) will obviously be action-adventure oriented (no wonder, kids seem to like easy stuff these days), with the roleplaying awesomeness of true gaming reaching only 9 percent, followed by simulation and puzzle titles.

And they say cheap whores don't sell. Well, I beg to differ, in my country at least, cheap is the actual true meaning of a good marketing and sales department. Microsoft seems to be learning a bit from this, since they recently announced that their X360 sales have gone up faster than a horny teenager browsing his porn magazine, increasing with 62% in good ol' Europe.



While Microsoft's console is also becoming a good hit in Japan (the place you want to check out first when it comes to games and jail-free loli porn), it still hasn't managed to top down the Wii – no matter, though, the (high school) girls in charge of the company are estimating good sales for the Japanese 360 titles, up to 1 billion USD until the end of the fiscal year.

Ah well... They are doing good so far, even if the X360 is starting to become of age. But with the upcoming titles that will probably make many a gamer droll, things are looking shiny and pink fo Microsoft.

That's how David Perry puts it, anyway, bluntly reinforcing what other industry execs also bashed, in the wake of the freshly ended E3 expo. Like EA's CEO John Riccitiello and Ubi's Laurent Detoc, Perry had nothing good to say about this year's edition in his statement for GI.biz, using words like "broken", "expensive", "stupid", and "embarrassment". Oh, and a conditional "I'm never going again".

"The concept is broken, it's expensive, messages are diluted, consumers are ignored (remembering that the future of this industry is direct connections with consumers - not retailers), the ticket policies are stupid, and if the entire industry worldwide doesn't participate, it's not real anyway.

(...) I used to bring major investors to E3 to get them excited about our industry, which worked every time. Now it's just an embarrassment."

Perry, who most of us know as the the founder of Shiny Entertainment (MDK, Sacrifice... some Matrix crap, too), nowdays poses as the chief creative officer of Acclaim v2.0. Nice fella. Not in a gay way.

All play and no work makes... jack shit. Just look at our flawless inactivity as of late, if you have any doubts about it (as always, we blame it WoW). It's no wonder then that the worldwide economy is going to Hell, while PC hardware and video game sales are soaring high, even more so since summer began. In the month of June, game sales rose by 53% according to NPD Group's market research data, and just about the same can be said about hardware sales, as well - in the U.S., anyway.

Piecing together the blurry data we vaguely remember from previous months, we came up with this highly professional looking graphic, to better illustrate the situation at hand.

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 Continue reading 'Video Game Sales Level Up By 53% In June'...

We, real men, take great pride (and joy) in the majestic art of peeing. Especially after a long, well sustained drinking session, where beer flows just like the Spice should flow, where vodka glitters friendly from the nearby glass, and where every God damned woman looks like she is hot. I pee, therefor, I am. Seriously.

And since some of us do these things quite often (both peeing and drinking), two Belgian drunktards fellow citizens decided to make it even better – just think about it, what is better than drinking with friends? No, not weed. At least not in this certain context – it’s gaming, booze and friends! We all know Belgians like to drink. And that they have more than exquisite beer. Hell, even I, who enjoy strong drinks only, have a certain fetish for Belgian beer – especially Leffe. And we also know that (some) Belgians are smart. Take these two for example, a software developer, Werner Dupont, and an electrical engineer, Bart Geraets – they went out for a (couple of hundreds) drinks, and came up with an excellent idea.

A video game, folks, but not your ordinary, top notch, “I invested 100 milion dollars in this shit” kind of video game – just a fine urinal sport that allows you to ski or to shoot some evil aliens, using… The Unleashed Force of Your Pee! So, you go to the toilet, and you start doing your job. Inside the urinal, you will “spot” several sensors that, vigorously motivated by the power of your toxic waste, will move the characters on the screen. Even more, you can challenge the guy next to you for some multiplayer matches… As long as he can keep up.

Women are also part of the equation, since these guys designed a special paper cone that lets the ladies do what they usually cannot do – shoot straight. Heh, this little game made my day. So in the near future, watch out for a... strange toilet near your favorite pub. It might get interesting.

Arigatou, Reuters

As I have stated before, along side good ol’ Uwe Boll, Jack Thompson is one of my favorite characters related to the gaming industry. He is a fascinating man, with strong, yet terribly unnatural beliefs, who still thinks, after years of practice, that all the world spins around his misconceptions. Well, too bad for him, it seems.

Game Politics, a website that also loves Jack Thompson almost as much as we do, tells us the story of a Florida Judge who decided to… recommend Mr. Thompson as guilty for no less than 27 counts of misconduct. In other words, if the Florida Supreme Court is sane enough to say yes, Jack is screwed. Initially, there were 31 such counts, most of them (21, to be more precise) are related to his infamous epic-fail crusade against Rockstar and Grand Theft Auto, while others hint at his (again failed) attempt to “convict” Bully of being a major suck-ass game.

I guess it all started with that kid who went rampage and Starfire-critted two police officers and one dispacher, an indeed sad event followed by a lawsuit, in which Thompson represented the victims’ families. The kid was playing, amongst other games, GTA, and Jack quickly assumed that this here title, and only this, is the sole unquestionable reason for the murders.

We are passionately awaiting to see the results of such great events. Hell, we should probably start to write a script for a Jack Thompson-inspired soap opera - until then, we’ll leave him in his medicine’s care.

How many kids on your block own a game console? Less than 20% if you live in a third'ish-world country? Over 50% if you're among the more privileged Earthlings? Well then, imagine a whole country where over 95% of kids (fifth-year elementary school kids, to be more precise) have at least one game console of their own. Welcome... to the land of Japan!

This utopic figure came up from a survey released by the National Congress of Parents and Teachers Associations of Japan (PTA), according to Mainichi (here's a backup of the soon-to-disappear report). The survey, called "Attitude Survey on Children and the Media" revealed a 2% increase from last year (when "only" about 93% of kids had a console), and a similar trend was observed among high-schoolers, almost 91% of them enjoying the same playful status.

Genre wise, action games seem to be the most popular ones (30.9%), followed closely by RPGs (28.4%). And, not surprisingly, adult games with sexual content are also played by elementary school kids, even though only 2.5% of them would admit it. There are a few more mobile- and TV-related stats in the report, if you're curious.

If all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, you can imagine how we feel after our overly-extended leave of absence, most of which we so shamelessly spent by playing WoW day in, day out (well, that and doing various other highly-enjoyable and equally-unproductive activities). We're still not entirely prepared to get our asses back to this thing we call "work", but - as cruel as it may be - subscriptions don't pay themselves, neither does the booze, nor the cabs you have to take for drinking too much, nor the tons of milk you have to drink the next morning for similar reasons. Because it's no fun farmin' an' grindin' with a nasty headache. Heed my words!

So, time to start making some money again. I mean, time to follow our unending passion for writing about this rotting rotten industry that we vaguely recall having admired, once upon a time. But it still has its moments, every now and then, so we're not about to give it the finger just yet. Not when id announces Doom 4, giving us the perfect reason for getting back in the pseudo-journalistic game. Right then, let's make this quick: my SSC raid is starting in an hour!

Can you say… Cnet? Hell yea, I bet you can. This little company has been responsible lately for all sorts of scandalous decisions regarding (so far) the online gaming press. We all know they have acquired major known websites to do their dirty work, one of which is some’s favorite Gamespot.

Problems started appearing when the likes of Eidos (and other bullshit producers that cannot face the reality that their games SUCK MAJOR ASS) let Cnet know that… well, the site’s review for Kane and Lynch, one of the biggest failures in the gaming universe so far, was rated… too low. This, after Eidos spent tons of money painting the whole fucking Gamespot with Kane and Lynch commercials.

The quick follow-up was awesome – in a very bad way, at least for us gaming journalists – Mr. Gerstmann, the one responsible for the said review, was fired without notice. Because, you see, If Eidos tells you to rate its game high, YOU MUST RATE its games high. Otherwise, go work in the fucking construction department. It was a surprise for all, but not quite that big, considering we all know Cnet is a money-hungry bitch with absolutely no respect for gaming journalism.

After that, people came and went from Gamespot, with other sound and good names leaving the sinking boat because of the same reason – the absolute lack of freedom of speech. And now another Senior Editor, Brad Shoemaker will kiss the crew goodbye and will travel to, we hope, better places, where people can actually say what they think about a game. We wish you good luck, Brad, may your writing days be long and prosper, and Eidos bashing days even more prosper.

What a fucked up industry we have, for Christ’s sake. It is becoming like politics. You can listen to the related Hotspot here.

Just how do you call an official shit-mouth with the likes of Jack Thompson, that seems to constantly shoot idiocy from between his teeth, poking the gaming industry for “inciting to violence and weird sexual behavior”? I, for one, call them clowns or attention whores. Or trolls.

But when the said individual is also involved in a massive prostitution ring, is also a New York Gov., and is also licking Monica Lewinski’s ex-boyfriend’s wife, Hillary Clinton, under the tail for some good earned attention? I’d just say… a hypocrit.

Mr. Eliot Spitzer is mainly (not manly) known for his 2006 campaign, when he went on a rampage about video games, violent content, rating systems, and so on, and so forth. His video game bill was supposedly approved by the New York Assembly, and should have been re-discussed in 2008, but it seems now it is not the case…

…since this here dude was caught by federal assassins prosecutors on tape while he was fixing up for a hooker to travel from New York to Washington where he was, not surprisingly, paying a “business” visit at the same time. In short, he needed to get a piece of pussy before getting back to work. One little statement regarding the “issues” of gaming sounds like this:

Like all parents, I know it is increasingly difficult to protect our children from negative influences… we have learned that when self-regulation fails, government must step in… we must do more to protect our children from excessive sex and violence in the media…

How extremely satisfying. A Game Politics awesome scoop.