Sometimes the simplest plans are the most effective. One gamer managed to steal 60 PlayStation Portable games from a Myrtle Beach Blockbuster yesterday, not by digging a tunnel or using some secret spy equipment--he simply stuck them in his pants, reports Myrtlebeachonline.com. According to a police report, his "pants were bulging out because he had so many games [in them]." An employee, who had observed the thief shoving PSP games in his pants, asked him to stop as he was leaving the store, but the perpetrator fled in a rental car. The value of the games is estimated at $1,800.

Im lost for words, i bet those games stunk afterwards :P
via Gamespot ...

If you were looking for the movers and shakers in the world of adult-oriented video games Thursday, most of them could be found here. That's because about 150 of them--publishers, developers, programmers, writers, and marketers--had gathered for the first-ever Sex in Video Games conference. The two-day affair kicked off Thursday with a series of panels, but the real work going on was networking and cementing the notion that the nascent industry can support its own conference.

To be sure, there's been sex in video games almost as long as there have been video games. That was one of the major points made during Thursday's morning keynote address by Brenda Brathwaite, chair of the International Game Developers Association's sex special-interest group and a conference organizer.

Throughout Brathwaite's talk, in which she briefly discussed the history of sex in video games and then gave a comprehensive review of the previous year, the longtime game designer talked about the benefits of gathering a group of sex-positive people who agree that video games are a natural medium for sex-oriented material, and one that should be treated no differently from movies, books, comic books, or any other medium in which adults choose to examine sex.

But because the conference is an opportunity for many in the industry to learn how to market their games in the post-"Hot Coffee" era--meaning after the 2005 scandal in which the popular game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was discovered to contain hidden sexual content, despite its being rated for ages 17 and up rather than for adults only--many on hand were interested in talking about what it will take to get the growing number of adult-oriented games off the ground.

The US Federal Trade Commission announced Thursday it had reached a settlement with Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two after a months-long investigation into the Hot Coffee scandal. Under the terms of the settlement, Take-Two agreed to properly label its games in the future and not to hide age-inappropriate content.

"Our purpose (in being at the conference) is we think there needs to be a concerted effort by a lot of people in this industry to be a success," said Brad Abram, president of XStream3D, publisher of Virtually Jenna, the game based on the life of porn star Jenna Jameson. The conference is "more about the networking (than about the content) and putting faces to names. There are still old-school ways of doing business that are appropriate for any industry."

Anthony Valterra, director of business development for Lamplighter Studios, which creates 3D assets for video games, agreed. He was at the conference to try to nail down deals with publishers and on Thursday seemed to be succeeding.

"Even though right now a lot of the companies here are underfunded and underexperienced," Valterra said, "some of them have funding, and we'd love to work for them."

He explained that he'd gotten at least two publishers on hand interested in his company's offerings.

Meanwhile, to Brathwaite, putting on the conference after nearly a year as head of the IGDA's sex special-interest group was an exercise both in bringing the people together who are crucial to getting more mainstream acceptance for the industry and in indulging her own curiosity.

"Every single panel is there because I wanted an answer" to a question, Brathwaite said in her morning talk.

Later, she told CNET News.com that she had worked hard to ensure that the mix of conference attendees would stimulate progress for the industry.

"Everybody that I invited are here, all the representative groups," Brathwaite said. "Developers, publishers, players, First Amendment lawyers, designers, programmers, and artists. I deliberately did not invite a panel of politicians."

And that was probably smart, given that many politicians have attacked the video games industry for making it too easy for children to encounter sexual material in spite of the industry's rating system, which decrees what age groups video games are appropriate for.

All the games talked about at the conference Thursday were for adults only.

Some attendees felt that the adult-video games industry is on the verge of significant growth, as long as its major players pay attention to what its potential customers want.

"I believe that for the multiplayer [adult-oriented] games to develop to their full potential, the publishers should be aware of [the experiences of the mainstream] of Internet users who have had cybersex or who are interested in sexual interaction," said Regina Lynn, an author and columnist who writes about sex, and in particular, online sex. "So you'll have to reach out to that audience and know what their [desires are], because they might be resistant at first, and you want their minds and their bodies to open up."

But Lynn, who is not a gamer by trade, nonetheless was encouraged by what she saw at the conference Thursday, especially when it came to serious discussion of how to make adult-oriented ...

Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi continued to discuss SCEI's plans for the PlayStation 3 in the third part of an interview with Japanese site PC Impress Watch.

At the 1999 Microprocessor Forum, Kutaragi set out a vision of e-Distribution using broadband networks. At that time, most consumers still connected to the Internet with dialup, so that vision was largely ignored. But now Kutaragi stated that Sony will emphasize network features with the Playstation 3. "We really wanted to do this with the PS2," he lamented. "But now, Apple has realized a successful e-Distribution program. It's about time we made our move, too." He continued, "We'll be conducting network services from launch day." He explained why he has steered clear of the e-Distribution topic at conferences. "Talking about our distributors and network services isn't very engaging," he said, "so I didn't mention it at E3."

Regarding the business aspect of the PS3's online components, Sony seems to be taking its cues from the PC. "You can't charge money for network matching and other basic services. These things are just taken for granted on the PC...On the PS3, basic services will be taken for granted while content will be the bread and butter of our business."

Kutaragi does not think it will take long for digitally delivered PS3 content to catch on and gave a time frame of one to two years. With the availability of networked entertainment, it would seem that having optical drives would cease to be important, but Kutaragi goes one step further. "I expect even the hard disk to disappear eventually. If you have all the data on servers, you probably no longer need disk drives...But to do this, the server is crucial. It's a difficult problem."

Kutaragi also predicted the PS3 would be welcomed warmly by an industry trying to cope with falling DVD sales and looking for a successor. He made the further claim that the "PS3 will be the trigger that ignites flat-panel TV sales."

He also discussed the potential of using multiple Cell processors in concert. "Users will be able to connect to Polyphony Digital's server. So I want it to be a Cell server, with the number of Cells at a thousand to several thousand. This would allow us to maintain an entire cyberworld, as long as our power supply holds up." ...

After the Nintendo Wii's impressive showing at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, more companies are looking at the machine as a viable platform for their products. The latest to jump on the bandwiigon is Take-Two Interactive, publisher of games such as the Grand Theft Auto and Civilization series.

In a postearnings conference call with investors and analysts, Take-Two CFO Karl Winters fielded a question with regards to the company's plans for the Wii.

"The reception this platform received at the E3 show, you know, is one that makes us take a real strong look at it," he said. "And as we grow our sports business, there are opportunities with our sports games to extend them to the Wii system, particularly if you look at baseball where we have exclusive arrangement, as well as, you know, some of the other sports games, which would play extremely well on the Wii product, the nonlicensed league ones."

He went on to say that the appearance of 2K Sports games on the Wii would likely happen in late 2007 or 2008. The company's MLB 2K franchise is, as Winters mentioned, a likely candidate to appear on the Wii. Take-Two currently owns the third-party rights to make MLB-licensed games.

Aside from the baseball portion of Wii Sports, Nintendo has not yet announced a first-party baseball game for the Wii. The company did have a baseball game in the works for the GameCube, titled Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball, but eventually canceled it. Some presumed it was canceled to develop that series on Nintendo's next-gen console. ...

While the Game Developers Conference has proven a popular venue to examine various aspects of the gaming industry for years, there are emerging trends and topics that could support more robust discussion than is afforded by the one or two GDC sessions they are able to carve out. To give those topics their due, GDC organizers The CMP Game Group established the Focus On series--specialized summits designed to bring the key players in a number of emerging trends together to provide a deeper look at issues that will affect the industry in years to come.

The Focus On series begins today with the Game Advertising Summit. And to deliver the keynote address, the GDC turned to Kevin Brown, Microsoft's general manager of Xbox new media and franchise development. Brown is working to facilitate the flow of advertising to the Xbox platforms, but he also heads the effort to get Microsoft properties such as Halo and Viva Pinata licensed out to become movies, TV shows, and the like.

Brown opened his GDC Focus On keynote presentation with a disclaimer for the audience, journalists in particular: "I will make a bunch of statements that are rhetorical questions that I hope we can deal with seriously as an industry," Brown cautioned. "Please don't write that Kevin Brown said to drop your prices so we can get a bigger audience, because I'm not saying that. I'm asking a question--a valid question--about whether we can attract 10s of millions of gamers to an advertising business when we charge $60."

For most of the next 50 minutes, Brown talked about what "needs" to happen and what is "essential" for in-game advertising to reach its potential. But when Brown hit the part of his presentation he feared would be misreported, he was quick to note he didn't have all the answers to his questions. To start, he laid out some perspective, pointing out that the worldwide gaming industry right now is roughly $25 billion a year, while advertising, as an industry, spends some $378 billion a year to convey branding and marketing messages to consumers--with media-buying expenditures expected to grow six to eight percent every year, near-term.

"When you think about it, a fairly small shift in advertiser behavior could replace all the revenue that we generate today," Brown said. "We could be a totally ad-funded business if we could figure out how to do that. We could double the size of our industry by 2010 by finding the right mix."

Brown also saw some other possibilities for taking advantage of the advertising industry, in ways that could potentially revolutionize the game biz. He wondered if publishers should look at advertising as the extra $1-per-unit that could help a borderline title reach profitability, or something more.

"Could you as a publisher think about your business and say 'I'm going to price so that I can attract 10 times the customers I have today and be able to make it up on ads,'" Brown asked.

He also wondered if advertising could help create more flexible and fluid release windows for games. Right now, movies get a theatrical run, pay-cable TV, DVD release, and home broadcasting. Increased revenue from in-game advertising might be able keep publishers from feeling like they have to get all their revenues in the first six weeks of sale and make staggered releases in different windows more feasible for publishers.

That's what Brown thinks might happen. But he also discussed plenty of things he said needed to happen. To describe those, he broke the interested parties into three groups: gamers, advertisers/ad agencies, and developers/publishers.

"For us to make any progress at all, the things that you do have to provide benefits for all three," Brown said.

For gamers, the first rule is to "do no harm," Brown said. He emphasized that relevant advertising and providing bonuses like sponsored tournaments and original content were helpful in winning them over, and said that consumers these days are actually quite receptive to advertising; they just want to dictate how they get it and in what form.

"Think about this consumer as somebody not to vomit all over with messages," Brown said, "but rather to engage in a discussion."

Appealing to advertisers and ad agencies requires a different tack. Brown stressed the need for accountability and devising methodologies for tracking not just whether ads are being seen, but who they're being seen by. Advertisers need assurances that they are hitting their target market.

For the developers and publishers, Brown said they want advertising relevant to the game just like their consumers. Ads have to provide them with revenue to offset their development costs, but Brown brought up ease of implementation as a key issue facing the in-game ad sector.

In the rhetorical part of his presentation, Brown proposed a scenario where car manufacturer Volvo was debuting a new vehicle and wanted to run an ad campaign in all the big new games over a six-month period surrounding the car's release.

"If you were Volvo ...

News has broken that THQ has acquired the rights to publish a version of Tetris for Xbox 360 outside Japan following the settling of differences between the publisher and The Tetris Company.

THQ had previously entered into a legal dispute with The Tetris Company, claiming that it had breached a contract with the publisher which resulted in the axe falling on THQ's planned release of a Tetris game for Nintendo DS. THQ's scoring of rights to deliver an Xbox 360 Tetris title comes as part of the settlement between the two companies. ...

Hi All,

Here is a new version of PSPInt the Intellivision Emulator for PSP.

What's new in version 1.0.4 :

- Second joystick support
- Add keys to the virtual keyboard
- Option to toggle between players

Auto racing works now on this emulator !

Save state feature is still missing, i've spent hours on it, but without any success
(very unstable, it freeze your PSP one time over two ...).

How to use it ? Everything is in the README.txt file.

Sources are included, and this package is under the GNU public license,
read COPYING.txt file for more information about it.

Enjoy,

Zx.

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Hi All,

Here is a new version of PSPMSX the MSX series Emulator for PSP (and i hope the last).

What's new in version 1.0.4 :

- Disk images are now supported !
- Joystick support
- Code cleaning

How to use it ? Everything is in the README.txt file.

Sources are included, and this package is under the GNU public license,
read COPYING.txt file for more information about it.

Enjoy it as much as i took pleasure to port it on the PSP,

Zx.

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Cools has released a new game written in Lua for the PSP, heres the details:


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