America's ESRB organisation has apologised for classifying Dead or Alive: Paradise as a PSP game filled with "creepy voyeurism" and "bizarre, misguided notions of what women really want"; "Paradise cannot mean straddling felled tree trunks in dental-floss thongs," the Mature rating summary read.

The post has now been neutered. It was posted "in error" and the ESRB has said that the listing "improperly" contained "subjective language".

"Our intention with rating summaries is to provide useful, detailed descriptions of game content that are as objective and informative as possible. However they are ultimately written by people and, in this case, we mistakenly posted a rating summary that included what some could rightfully take to be subjective statements," ESRB spokesperson Eliot Mizrachi said in a statement.

"We sincerely regret the error and will work to prevent this from happening again in the future."

The ESRB, unlike the BBFC, provides voluntary ratings for games - no one need take any notice of them.

Dead or Alive: Paradise follows female characters from the fighting series on holiday on a hot, tropical island. They play various mini-games and wear tiny bikinis. Boobs bounce and camera angles are risque. The official marketing slogan is, "Paradise in the palm of your hand."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/es...adise-outburst ...

THQ boss Brian Farrell has promised to show the new Red Faction: Guerrilla game at E3 2010 this summer.

The as yet unnamed follow-up will be released in the publisher's next financial year (April 2010 - March 2011). Farrell said all this in a recent investor call, his favourite place for new announcements, the rogue.

There's no official word what to expect, although a more fully-rounded experience built on the same technology RF Guerrilla technology seems like a good guess. Strong sequels appear to be a feature of this generation, what with Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed II and Mass Effect 2 doing so well.

Read our Red Faction: Guerrilla review for the full story.

Farrell also said Homefront will be released on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 before April 2011.

That's the shooter set 20 years in the future when North Korea has invaded and occupied the US. Kaos, developer of Frontlines: Fuel of War, is at the helm, and there's even talk of sequel already. Must be confident.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/re...ore-april-2011 ...

THQ boss Brian Farrell has promised to show the new Red Faction: Guerrilla game at E3 2010 this summer.

The as yet unnamed follow-up will be released in the publisher's next financial year (April 2010 - March 2011). Farrell said all this in a recent investor call, his favourite place for new announcements, the rogue.

There's no official word what to expect, although a more fully-rounded experience built on the same technology RF Guerrilla technology seems like a good guess. Strong sequels appear to be a feature of this generation, what with Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed II and Mass Effect 2 doing so well.

Read our Red Faction: Guerrilla review for the full story.

Farrell also said Homefront will be released on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 before April 2011.

That's the shooter set 20 years in the future when North Korea has invaded and occupied the US. Kaos, developer of Frontlines: Fuel of War, is at the helm, and there's even talk of sequel already. Must be confident.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/re...ore-april-2011 ...

Sony's financial results this morning have yielded some good news for the consumer electronics giant: it shifted 6.5 million PlayStation 3s between October and December 2009, says VG247.

That's a rise of 2 million consoles and over 44 per cent from the 4.5 million Sony sold in the same period in 2008. A price cut amd the new PS3 Slim model did their bit, and the launch of Modern Warfare 2 probably helped, too.

Things weren't so rosy for PS3's stable-mates, though. The ageing PS2, which celebrates its tenth birthday this year, slowed from 2.5m to 2.1m sales.

Of more concern to Sony will be the fate of the PSP handheld, which despite the launch of the PSPgo dropped almost 18 per cent of its fourth-quarter sales, falling from 5.1 million units in 2008 to 4.2 million in 2009.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/so...3s-last-autumn ...

Sony's financial results this morning have yielded some good news for the consumer electronics giant: it shifted 6.5 million PlayStation 3s between October and December 2009, says VG247.

That's a rise of 2 million consoles and over 44 per cent from the 4.5 million Sony sold in the same period in 2008. A price cut amd the new PS3 Slim model did their bit, and the launch of Modern Warfare 2 probably helped, too.

Things weren't so rosy for PS3's stable-mates, though. The ageing PS2, which celebrates its tenth birthday this year, slowed from 2.5m to 2.1m sales.

Of more concern to Sony will be the fate of the PSP handheld, which despite the launch of the PSPgo dropped almost 18 per cent of its fourth-quarter sales, falling from 5.1 million units in 2008 to 4.2 million in 2009.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/so...3s-last-autumn ...

An anonymous reader links to Greg Kroah-Hartman's explanation of a rift (hopefully mendable) in the development culture of Google's Linux-based Android OS and the Linux kernel itself.
"As the Android kernel code is now gone from the Linux kernel, as of the 2.6.33 kernel release, I'm starting to get a lot of questions about what happened, and what to do next with regards to Android. So here's my opinion on the whole matter ..."

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/0...rnel-Community ...

Developer Fabien Sanglard has written a code review for id Software's iPhone port of Doom. It's an interesting look into how the original 1993 game (which he also reviewed to understand its rendering process) was adapted to a modern platform.
"Just like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom was rendering a screenframe pixel per pixel. The only way to do this on iPhone with an acceptable framerate would be to use CoreSurface/CoreSurface.h framework. But it is unfortunately restricted and using it would prevent distribution on the AppStore. The only solution is to use OpenGL, but this comes with a few challenges: Doom was faking 3D with a 2D map. OpenGL needs real 3D vertices. More than 3D vertices, OpenGL needs data to be sent as triangles (among other things because they are easy to rasterize). But Doom sectors were made of arbitrary forms. Doom 1993's perspective was also faked, it was actually closer to an orthogonal projection than a perspective projection. Doom was using VGA palette indexing to perform special effect (red for damage, silver for invulnerable...).

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/0...For-the-iPhone ...

The Wii and various mobile gaming platforms have done wonders for the trend toward casual or "easy" games. But the success of a few recent titles, despite their difficulty, has caused some to wonder whether the pendulum has swung too far; whether a little frustration can be seen as a good thing. Quoting:
"The evidence is subtle but compelling. For one example, look to major consumer website GameSpot's Game of the Year for 2009: Atlus' PS3 RPG Demon's Souls, which received widespread critical acclaim – none of which failed to include a mention of the game's steep challenge. GameSpot called it 'ruthlessly, unforgivingly difficult.' Demon's Souls was a sleeper hit, an anomaly in the era of accessibility. One would think the deck was stacked against a game that demanded such vicious persistence, such precise attention – and yet a surge of praise from critics and developers alike praised the game for reintroducing the experience of meaningful challenge, of a game that demanded something from its players rather than looked for ways to hand them things. It wasn't just Demon's Souls that recently flipped the proverbial bird to the 'gaming for everyone' trend. In many ways, the independent development scene can be viewed on the macro level as a harbinger of trends to come, and over the past year and into 2010, many indies have decided to be brutal to their players."

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/0...ty-As-a-Virtue ...

Gameloft CFO Alexandre de Rochefort has said that he expects mobile game sales to quadruple over the next 3-4 years – even if actual mobile phone penetration remains the same as it is today.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz following Gameloft's release of its 2009 year-end financials, de Rochefort said that as Java handsets are replaced by the new generation of smartphones, game sales will increase exponentially simply because the games that can be made for those handsets are of such higher quality.

"If I look at the long term growth for Gameloft and for mobile gaming in general, what I see is that the attach rate on Java phones is around 3 per cent, whereas on the next generation of smartphones, beginning with the iPhone, the attach rate is above 10 per cent. On the iPhone several studies have shown it's even as high as 15 per cent," he said.

"My point is that, basically, there is absolutely no doubt that in the next 3-4 years all Java phones will have been replaced by the next generation of smart phones. And this means that even if we have a similar install base – I'm not even betting on the increased penetration of mobile phones in the world, I'm just saying at equal install base - we are capable of growing this market 3-4 times just due to the fact that because the games are so much better on the next generation smartphones than they are on Java phones, because of that the consumer experience is much better and therefore – and we are living and experiencing this as we speak – the tie ratio is much higher on these phones.

"Just keep in mind that a Gameloft Java game is a 1MB game whereas a Gameloft smartphone game like on the iPhone is 100 – 400MB. So there's no question that the consumer experience is much better."

Mobile game revenue accounted for 94 per cent of the company's total in 2009, while iPhone sales grew a staggering 231 per cent on the previous year. In total the company has sold over 10 million games through the App Store since 2008 – an achievement that de Rochefort puts down to Gameloft's focus on creating quality, 3D games for mobile phones early on, and also to its fearless approach to new platforms.

"When we started to work on the Nokia N-Gage, I remember a lot of analysts were quite dubious about our reasons for going there. The thing is, we've been preparing Gameloft to be able to develop 3D games since 2004. And the reason why Gameloft has such high market share on the App Store, along with EA, when Glu and the other companies are nowhere to be seen, is really because we've been preparing for this shift for years now," he said.

He adds that the company "isn't shy" about investing in new devices – even when it doesn't know how those devices are going to perform in the long term.

"Gameloft was, as far as I know, the only European company invited by Apple to present on stage for the launch of the iPad and, to a certain extend, I believe this was because we've shown to Apple that we were ready to invest on new devices really as ahead of the new device as possible," he said.

"We're not shy, we are not fearful of investing – even if we don't know what the output will be. We've been investing on Google phones, on the Palm, on the iPhone and we're going to continue doing this and clearly it is our will to be present on the iPad when it is launched. I don't know with how many games but we'll be there."

On the subject of the iPad, de Rochefort is reluctant to offer an opinion - "I personally have not seen the device myself," he says. But he offers some insight as to its potential in the gaming market.

"The processor seems to be more powerful than that of the iPhone, the definition of the screen seems to be even better than on the iPhone, and the size of the screen is obviously much bigger. So, all things considered, my guess is that it's going to be a good device to play games on."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...next-few-years ...