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UK Nintendo magazine NRevolution has called it a day. The final issue'll be released December 11. Besides suffering from "an identity crisis" and competition, the increasing difficulties of game print contributed to its demise.
The consultation period for the UK's Byron Review into age ratings and the effects of videogames on children has now concluded and the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) have presented their report to the UK Government.
Eidos UK's PR firm has confirmed that British sites planning on posting Tomb Raider: Underworld reviews with less than an 8.0 score are being asked to hold off posting them until Monday. The news originally game from a twitter post from Gamespot UK journalist Guy Cocker, relaying a call he received voicing that very request. A representative from the PR firm Barrington Harvey spoke to Videogaming247 this morning.
"That's right. We're trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos."When asked why, the spokesperson said: "Just that we're trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that's handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don't put people off buying the game, basically."
I'm an archive junkie — I consider it a side-effect of my profession, since we spend half our lives in temperature-controlled buildings with lots of old stuff. So I watch the growth of the video game archives across the globe with no small measure of excitement — not only does my little historian heart go pitter-patter at the fact that people are being so proactive in figuring out how to preserve our beloved medium for future generations, but it means a couple more places to poke my head in when I have a good excuse. The recent announcement of the UK National Video Game Archive has led to some fruitful discussion on how to preserve games — not just in terms of the hardware, but also as a culture. Which, of course, is a hell of a lot harder than making sure books don't rot:
Not all World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King launches are ugly! Besides the San Francisco signing event, there are only three other midnight Blizzard-sponsored launches in the US: Austin, New York and Anaheim. According to game site Multiplayer, there were 20 people lined up in 45 degrees Fahrenheit cold by 5:00pm with the first lining up at midnight the night before yesterday. Across the pound, things reached fever pitch at London's Oxford Street HMV. An estimated 2,000 or 2,500 people lined up for the WoW expansion pack, breaking the store record set previously by World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Anyone else experience lines?
Well, militaries across the world may soon have a new war game to their arsenal, and it could have a trickle down effect to retail games — British researchers have come up with a game system that incorporates a 'smell box,' in an attempt to see if they can make training stick better. In what sounds like an unpleasant experience, various smells are triggered as users 'take an authentic walk' around hostile areas. If it's determined this is making training more useful, it could be rolled out next year and be used in training actual soldiers:
The BBC is reporting that video games, just the games not hardware, will start outselling videos by the end of the year.
Right, that's decided, then - Microsoft has fixed the price you will be paying for the Xbox 360 in the UK until the end of the economic downturn or until Microsoft need to start really shifting units again - whichever comes first.
For those who felt let down, disappointed and even spurned by Nintendo's E3 2008 press conference, Nintendo UK exec David Yarnton wants you to know: Nintendo has never neglected core gamers. Sure, there might have been a brief lapse in memory, but neglect? Nope! Here's Yarnton in his own words:
Responding to Dr. Tanya Byron's findings that parents in the United Kingdom don't seem to be familiar with the PEGI rating symbols, the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) are introducing a traffic light system, reasoning that parents know that green means go, yellow means caution, and red means stop. Obviously they've never driven in my Atlanta suburb before, where yellow means "Go faster" and red means "Oh screw it, I'm late for pilates!"
"The world of gaming is fast moving and it is vital that we have a clear ratings system that is up to date with consumers' needs. It has already been proven that everyone understands traffic light labelling, making it the perfect scheme for the industry to adopt."
I suppose if the bright colours fail they can always force publishers to shape the game boxes based on the ratings, forcing parents to push them through the correct hole in order to buy them. Hit the jump for a larger version of this new, possibly but not actually parent-proof system.
