And here we are, standing like donuts and waiting to be swallowed by angry policemen, wondering all day long why the fuck more and more publishers and developers are running away from hardcore gaming. And when I say running, I have in mind a level 10 Loladin being chased by a bunch of bloodthirsty level 70 Tauren Warriors.

Technically speaking, why the hell would YOU, as a developer, produce a super-duper Panzer General for the brutal wargaming communities, when you know your income will be close to zero? Sure, that game will be purchased by a couple of thousands old dudes who still haven’t forgotten what a real game looks and feel like, but today, when gaming means business, that is not enough.

So why wouldn’t you just make a Panzer General Solitaire, replacing the long hours of tactical thinking with some good ol’ card game with tanks and guns (all of them American, of course), that must win against another bunch of tanks and guns (all of them Arabian, Russian, Vietnamese, or any other nation that the US would like to… disappear)? A card game that even my all-knowledgeable grandma could play, while taking a break from her usual moaning that her leg hurts? There sure are more grannies out there than casual gamers, that’s for sure.

A recent report from the research firm Interpret has revealed that, in the US, two out of three people aged between 12 and 65 have played casual games in 2007, with an average of 5.1 hours per week played. According to the study, that’s like… 740 million hours spent on gaming, which surpasses other almost-as-cultural activities, like, let’s say, reading. Revenue-wise, Interpret estimates that games like EA’s Pogo, and other accessible stuff like that, will add an income of about 700 million dollars till 2010. Not as much as 40 billion dollars, like the whole gaming industry, but still, it’s about casual, low budget games, not some big-ass title which sucked an investment of 10 million dollars faster than any Taiwanese prostitute would suck you dry.

The Stick of Joy scoop.

Price cut rumors are always welcome, particularly when they come true. And for this one, we'll only have to wait a few more days to find out if it's bogus or not. According to this fresh TechRadar story which already spread all over the webs, the price of the Xbox 360 will be cut by €50 on 14 March in Europe. They say the reduction will apply to all Xbox 360 SKUs, and that they confirmed the story with "numerous UK retailers" - none of which agreed to go on record, though.

"This effectively means that the cost of the Xbox 360 Elite system on Amazon will be in the region of £240 (ed. - €313) and the basic Arcade system (without a hard drive) will cost in the region of £150 (ed. - €195)", TechRadar predicts.

Indeed, that would put the price of the lower-spec Xbox 360 Arcade bundle below that of a Wii console. But the numbers are still wildly fluctuating - from £150 on TechRadar, to £170 on MCV, and down to £140 for the Arcade bundle (from what MCV seems to have seen back on TechRadar... weird). Only time - and Microsoft - will tell what's the right price.

I said it before, and I will say it again: Uwe Boll is a pure genius when it comes to “promote” his… creations. Negative publicity stunts are made of pure win, and his are even better than that. You probably do remember his previous accomplishments, like the boxing challenges made towards various dudes around the world who were methodically trashing his work… Sure you do, it was priceless.

Now, Uwe is trying to verbally own Spielberg, because his much anticipated (by me) Postal movie is supposed to hit the theatres in the same day that the latest Indiana Jones will, more precisely on May, 23th. Uwe gets on a ranting rampage, predicting his movie will outperform Sbielberg’s. Oh, and that Harrison Ford sucks ass.

“On the Indiana Jones weekend - May 23 - we will go out and destroy Indiana Jones in the Box Office! We all know that Harrison Ford is older as my grandpa and his time is up - would Michael Moore say!”

While I personally await Postal with tons of more anticipation than yet another dungeon crawling, temple plundering Indiana Jones for personal reasons, I am still puzzled at the guts that Boll has. He is a funny dude, I’ll give him that, but as a director… Oh boy.

Via Kotaku.

I'm pissing in the wind, just pissing in the wind, what a wonderful feeling, my e-peen is happy again... Just when we thought we had finally gotten away from all those silly "make / don't make that [X game sequel]", "close / don't close that [Y studio]" petitions... something new comes along. A boycott, no less! A boycott against the holy mother of monopolistic corporations - Microsoft - and all the developers and publishers jumping the Games for Windows Live bandwagon. Sort of a PC Gaming Axis, to combat the evil (?!) PC Gaming Alliance, and gas all the new-age untermenschen who don't agree that online PC gaming should be free. Sieg Heil!

As much as we cherish our fragging memories from the good old LAN parties with Doom 2 and Quake, we no longer live in the '90s, nor does the rest of the gaming world. Well, except for a select few, like the ones mentioned above - with their inspiring futile Boycott Games for Windows - Live initiative. Do they have a point? Sure. Should the Windows Live [gold] service be free? Sure. Should Halo 2 be natively playable on Windows XP? Sure. Should lolis be legal? Sure. But hey - there's not much we can do about any of these, no matter how many clicks we give. And God knows we keep clicking for lolis like madmen!

Heh, what do you know, so the stupefying rumour was true, after all. Phil Harrison, the former president of Sony's Worldwide Studios, has exchanged one presidency for another, like a dirty pair of corporate socks. Very, very expensive socks... As announced last night by Atari's parent company from France, Phil has become the new President and Directeur Général Délégué of Infogrames Entertainment (thank God for copy-pasting, those accents are killers), while also joining the company's Board of Directors.

The genuinely surprising move follows shortly after the appointment of David Gardner (ex-EA executive) as CEO of Infogrames, and now the two white-collared buddies are promising to "form the basis of a transformational leadership team at Infogrames that will grow the Atari brand into a leading online game company". Phil's daily duties will range from "reinforcing [Infogrames'] franchise portfolio of products, developing its new packaged and online games, and strengthening its internal and external studio capability through attracting world-class design and development talent to the organisation". Sounds like... umm... fun. So how does Phil feel about all this? (...)

 Continue reading 'Phil Harrison, From Sony To... Infogrames'...

Which would explain why the vast majority of MMOs in recent years were relative failures, and why the situation won't change much for those upcoming hot-shots, either (I'm not giving names... *cough*). After all, who on Earth is so filthy rich to afford spending up to $1 billion, just to make a WoW-killer MMO, instead of buying a couple of African countries and playing a real-life war-game.

The billion-dolar figure was estimated by Activision's CEO, Bobby Kotick speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium 2008 Conference this Tuesday, as reported by GI.biz.

"We don't think that even if we made the USD 500 million or billion-dollar investment to get a product out [to compete with WOW] that we would even be successful doing it. (...) When you... Look at all the money that's already gone to these businesses that have failed (ed. - EA, Microsoft, Sony & co.), there didn't seem a likelihood that even a well-managed company like Activision would have the prospect for profit any time soon in this category."

When you look at it that way, Activision were really the smartest guys around. Honestly, why spend a crapload of money and waste people's time trying to develop a WoW-killer, when you can just merge with Vivendi-aka-Blizzard-aka-WoW itself. Kind of makes you wonder how much Funcom is investing in Age of Onan...

Every damned piece of industry, be it gaming, be it construction, being any kind of entertainment you could possibly desire, has its Doom heralds. And, thank God, we here in the gaming one, have plenty.

We have Jack Thompson, all-around would-be gaming Terminator, who likes to talk a lot about things like murder, GTA San Andreas, and the new Viagra bottle which he purchased recently. We have Mark Rein, who likes to think that CliffyB is “an idiot”. And last, but certainly not least, we have Gas Powered Games’ Chris Taylor, an interesting, to say the least, fellow who recently shared with us his (unnecessary) thoughts regarding the current state of our beloved industry.

It all happened at At Dave Perry's "Lunch With the Luminaries", a party also attended by folks like Peter Molyneux, Phil Harrison, Raph Koster or Neil Young, and it was awesome. For a good laugh. Mr. Taylor somehow thinks that PC gaming is completely dead, while our bright future will be carried forward by the Internet. And by... Flash! Which, according to him, is „the next console”, and that "the web is kicking the console industry's ass.". Riiiight.... Check the scoop on Gamasutra for more details.

We already know that EA was desperately trying to get its sticky hands on Take-Two, in this endless attempt to take over the world and infest it with American bunnies. As a result, other big publishers like Ubisoft are practically forced to react, one way or the other – after all, lately, the whole fucking gaming world has been narrowed down to just a bunch of big companies, acquiring anything they possibly can.

Ubisoft was, as we recall, targeted by EA’s conquering grasp not long ago, in an attempt for a “hostile” takeover, but somehow managed to survive. Now, as a response to EA’s not-so-generous offer towards Take-Two, Yves Guillemont stated that his company is aiming to purchase as many game licenses as their budget allows.

"The desire of EA to buy Take Two pushes us to go faster, to accelerate internal growth but also to look at acquisition opportunities."

Ah, well, good luck to them. Forbes scoop.

I have stopped thinking weird things about Japan and its inhabitants since I, myself, became obsessed with anything related to that place. Well, almost anything, their little 2D girls especially. We all know that place as a paradise for gamers, with people of all ages, be it youngsters, be it 80 years old dudes that run around in wheelchairs, playing like madmen every game they can possibly get their hands on.

A quick visit to the Kotaku website reveals some nice and interesting statistics regarding the Japanese grannies (you know, those nice old ladies which are supposed to cook a lot, and which provide their grandsons and granddaughters with endless advices regarding the meaning of life), and their time spent in front of a gaming console. From a “pool” of over a thousand obaa-sans, aged between 50 and 69, no less than 41.3 percent own a gaming console.

Not bad. Almost 13 percent are playing games frequently, be it puzzle games, study games or simulators, with a bit of love for action titles, also. So remember kids, next time you have to visit granny on weekends, think twice before rejecting such a kind offer. She might have just bought that awesomely fantastic God of War that you have been drooling on since September. For those who love numbers, here is a short list with the most common consoles that can be spotted in grandma’s living room:

Nintendo DS 65.5 percent
PlayStation (any model) 61.5 percent
Super Famicom (SNES) 36.5 percent
Famicom (NES) 28.2 percent
GameBoy (including Micro) 25.5 percent
GameBoy Advance 17.8 percent
Wii 17.6 percent
PSP 14.2 percent
Nintendo 64 12.8 percent
Sega Saturn 5.0 percent
Xbox (doesn't specify) 4.5 percent
Dreamcast 4.5 percent
Other 2.9 percent

Two fucking billion dollars. That’s like… holy shit, so many manga volumes that even I cannot handle them. Just think about all the booze you can buy with it. All the whores you can LEGALLY rape with it. Every spermatozoon I can possibly produce in a wanking session will have a bright future with this kind of money.

…And EA seems to have this kind of spendola, ready to roll. Target? None other than Take Two, the owners of the Grand Gay Theft Auto franchise. After all, why should only Activision be able to suck Vivendi’s extremely enlarged penis, getting a share of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft while they are at it? We know that EA means business. As in… the whole fucking gaming business. Good for them. If Take Two accepts the deal, Viacom (MTV owners who were actually trying to buy Take Two before EA started negotiations) will get owned. Big time.

Let the purchase begin!