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Harris Poll finds majority of US parents believe games contribute to teen violence, 38% entirely unaware of ESRB
Most American parents believe the violence in games is tied to violence in the real world. As reported byVentureBeat, a Harris Poll survey set for release later this week found that 58 percent of 2,278 US adults surveyed think that video games contribute to violent behavior in teenagers.
The poll also found that 38 percent of parents were completely unaware of the Entertainment Software Rating Board system. That contradicts the ESRB's own surveys, which have found only 15 percent of parents are unaware of the industry's rating system. Speaking with GamesIndustry International earlier this month, ESRB president Patricia Vance said awareness of the system may have peaked, although she added educational efforts would continue.
Violence in games became a point of cultural debate once again last year after the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting. The National Rifle Association responded to calls for stricter gun control by casting the blame on violent media, with executive vice president Wayne LaPierre calling gaming "a callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against own people." Last month, President Barack Obama called for research into possible ties between gaming and real-world violence in a package of proposals to address the problem of mass shootings. Stricter gun control measures were also part of his plan.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...games-violence

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Hi all, the last few days i have unmerged all the news forums so that news forums now only support one console or maybe a few for the likes of the Open Source Handhelds. I had to go through thousands of threads trying to sort them out into the right forum.

That was a massive task but due to googles rules about duplication its unavoidable, to understand better the PSP/PSvita news forum was supplying both the PSP and PSvita site so duplication all over. So by spliting the news forums back to supporting one site only i hope that google will eventually move us back up the rankings, but if not at least news on a certain console is a lot easier to find.

From now on ill work on site by site adding links of interest to each site that corresponds to that console etc.


Thanks for your time ...

Games jumped from $49.99 to $59.99 in the last generation - analysts discuss whether $70 will become the next standard for AAA titles
With the PlayStation 4 unveiled and rumors swirling that Microsoft is preparing to announce a new Xbox in April, next-gen is all the buzz right now. These are massive investments from the respective platform holders, and under the old "razor and blades" model the hope is to make back much of the money on software. And since some of that software is going to cost a good deal more to develop (although not as much as some think, says Hermen Hulst) should consumers be worried that $69.99 will become the new standard AAA game price?
GamesIndustry International posed that question to a few analysts. The consensus seems to be that $59.99 should be able to hold, but some big budget titles like Call of Duty and others could get away with higher.
"I think that games should be priced based on the value proposition, so some games should be priced higher, but I don't think the publishers have the collective will to charge more. My guess is that $59.99 will be the price point. I would applaud the publishers if they tried to charge $69.99, although gamers would probably get upset," said Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter.
"I would applaud the publishers if they tried to charge $69.99, although gamers would probably get upset"
Michael Pachter

Sony Computer Entertainment America boss Jack Tretton told AllThingsD that PS4 will support a variety of prices from $0.99 to the $60 range (of course, "range" could imply $69.99). But the bottom line is that in this digital era, a variety of content will lead to all kinds of pricing. And as EEDAR's Jesse Divnich pointed out to us, publishers can maintain the $59.99 price but bring in much more revenue with additional DLC.
"The $59.99 price point in the United States for next-generation games are unlikely to change. As we've seen through the years, however, revenue per game has increased gradually as publishers have been able to capitalize on additional in-game and digital content," he said. "With publishers focusing on fewer, yet bigger and longer lasting titles, I'd expect publishers to keep the $59.99 price point intact, but expand on their digital offerings with more in-game content and expansion packs."
He added, "And I don't think this is a scenario where publishers ship a 'base' product and gauge on digital offerings. We believe these digital offerings, like they are today, will expand upon the player experience and offer even more value than they do today."
David Cole of DFC Intelligence agrees. While he thinks the "super AAA" games may test out the $70 price, most content will come in much lower than that. "I think we will see an incredibly wide range of prices. Premium games command premium prices. Think Skylanders, Collector's editions, Guitar Hero and Wii Fit in their day. What gets squeezed is the stuff in the middle that must compete with high-end development on one hand and low cost/low price games on the other," he pointed out. "So you have fewer big budget titles but those will have even bigger budgets and that will be cost passed on to the consumer. Of course, very few games will be able to do this."
Even if there is a slight bump on AAA game pricing, the average selling price (ASP) will beging coming down as the cycle advances, according to IDC Research manager Lewis Ward.
"While there will always be collector's and limited edition console game discs that cost $80 or more, I'm not projecting that the PS4 or next-gen Xbox will raise the typical 'AAA' game disc to $70. 7th gen disc ASPs have trended down a couple dollars per year since 2006-2007. 8th generation discs will come in closer to $60 - which we're already seeing with Wii U - and then start trending down a few dollars per year. So there will probably be a ~$10 gap in pricing between 7th and 8th gen discs, but due to ASP slippage over time, the overall console discs ASP through 2016 should remain in the low to mid-$40s range," Ward explained.
An ASP in the mid-$40s is palatable for many hardcore gamers, but the console business is still going to have to face the fact that mobile, tablets, and free-to-play are changing the gaming landscape and the business of games. With PS4 supposedly being more open than any console before it, hopefully developers will being able to offer more free-to-play games and titles at more attractive prices.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...l-pricing-hold


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It's a second week at the top of the Japanese software chart for Dragon Quest VII: Warriors of Eden, and while the sales might not be high as last week's 872,922, it's still over 10,500 ahead of its nearest rival, Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

1. [3DS] Dragon Quest VII: Warriors of Eden - 184,993 (Total sales - 1,012,916)
2. [3DS] Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 78,178 (2,591,602)
3. [3DS] New Super Mario Bros. 2 - 11,784 (1,922,492)
4. [Wii] Taiko Drum Master Wii Super Wonderful Edition - 10,076 (396,225)
5. [3DS] Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (Best Price!) - 9,138 (227,235)

On the hardware chart all the consoles kept their places, with the Nintendo 3DS still reigning supreme, despite a slight drop in units sold. It'll be interesting to see if next week's chart shows any significant change in sales of the PS3, now that its successor has been announced.

1. 3DS XL - 66,139 (Last week - 89,050)
2. 3DS - 31,832 (38,645)
3. PlayStation 3 - 16,934 (17,004)
4. Wii U - 10,744 (12,185)
5. PSP - 10,501 (11,056)
6. PlayStation Vita - 8,044 (8,762)
7. Wii - 1,655 (1,945)
8. Xbox 360 - 506 (593)

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...apanese-charts ...

Hi all, heres just a small bit of news concerning the network as a whole.

Recently we have condensed a lot of the smaller sites down to single sections over at www.dcemu.com, the Joypad news, DCEmu Interviews, DCEmu Console History, DCEmu Gadgets and Import Gaming, DCEmu Tutorials, Amazon releases and Ebay Releases and Daily Deals have all moved to single pages over at DCEmu.com.

I did move DCEmu reviews but its now been reinstated as 2 full sites again and we hope to see many new reviews.

The forums have been reduced massively and as you can see the news forums are now seperate from the discussion forums, this will hopefully please all those who hate news items on discussion forums and hopefully one day get the site buzzing again (it will). Theres still some work to do with descriptions but the basics are there.

My next project is the hardest and it involves a mountain of work, i was going to redirect and kill off all the subdomains but that would make it too hard to find news on the subject you want, So the plan is to make each forum go back to supporting one site, so the Wii/Wiiu News forum would be split into Wii News and WiiU News and so on, this way its easier to find news for the console you want to read about and for later years for homebrew etc etc.

Ive Split the Android news from the Apple forum today and theres lots more to do, over the next week or two all news forums will be split and sorted better. Thanks for your patience and time. ...

Sometimes Amazon is left home alone with too much J-U-I-C-E, gets a bit tooexcited, and chucks around a whole bunch of quick-fire gaming deals throughout the day. Today is just such a day, and if you head over to the Gold Box page you can see all those deals just waiting to be hurled into your discount-loving arms.

One deal is ongoing through the day: Dead Space 3 for $39.99, a touch cheaper than other recent offers. As for the Lightning deals, discount sleuthGamerDeals reckons they'll see StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty swoop to $17.99,Battlefield 3 Premium bomb to $39.99 (confirmed), and the Professional Edition of Hitman: Absolution takendown to $35.99.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox/ref=cs_top_nav_gb27 ...

William Volk may not be the world's oldest game designer, but he's up there. He started out as a play tester for Avalon Hill in 1979, and since then has worked for Activision and other major players in the game space. His current job is with PlayScreen, where he's working on their Word Carnivale iOS game, which is not violent at all. But over the years Volk has worked on slightly violent video games and has watched public outcries over video game violence since 1976. He's also tracked how much less violence we've seensince lead was removed from gasoline. (Editorial interjection: Aren't most remaining pockets of massive gun violence in cities where many poor kids grow up in apartments that have lead paint?) Due to technical problems during the interview, some of the conversation is missing, primarily about the recent spate of multiple murders. It seems, for instance, that Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was heavily into violent video games, which is sure to spark plenty of new discussion about how they affect players. But then again, as Volk reminded me in an email, "If people were influenced by video games, a majority of Facebook users would be farmers by now," a meme that has been floating around Facebook since last year, if not earlier.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/0...and-lead-video ...