So this interesting tidbit quotes Activision CEO Bobby Kotick on the crazy mad success of World of Warcraft.

Seems the juggernaut really can’t be stopped…or the business model to defeat it hasn’t yet been formulated.

I’m going to get geeky now.

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The Escapist has an interview with Bioshock creator Ken Levine.

Very interesting! I wish there were more interviews like this on the web, like just chatting with game makers without all the bells and whistles of a new release. Like Inside the Actor’s Studio but wiith game makers…Hmm…

Also, in a silly misake while typing I ended up not at The Escapist, but The Escapist, a page dedicated to rpgs and larping. Once there I found The Square One Podcast which is a wee talk show for would-be gamers to learn the tricks of the trade as well as the traditions. I just thought the idea was darling. Teaching people to play role playing games via podcast, like isn’t that the sweetest thing? Trying to encourage others to use their imaginations. I’m not sure of the execution of the idea, but the heartfelt effort is pleasing to my inner eye.

Also check out this interview all about Lego and gaming! Two of my favourite things!

Speaking of consolidation. Wonder-Con – which runs this weekend in San Francisco – will be featuring not just comics, film and tv, but also video games, like its sister convention Comic-Con. EA, Ubisoft, LucasArts and Capcom will all be there ready to wet the whistles of gamers with tidbits about upcoming releases. Yeehaw.

Can I tell you all that I’m worried?

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Yeah, I bet they do:

They see the videogame business as an opportunity for significant growth, especially compared to their more mature, traditional businesses such as television and movies. Box office revenue inched 4.0% higher last year, in large part because of ticket price increases, while home-video sales declined 3.2%, according to Adams Media Research. In contrast, videogames are the fastest growing sector of entertainment, with sales in the U.S. rising 34% last year to $8.64 billion, according to NPD Group Inc.

Prepare for Scary Movie 6: The Game.

To double-dip in the ‘NPD group sales reports’ dip bowl: January sales reports are in, and the PS3 has outsold the 360, PSP and the DS for the month. And with 269,000 units to the Wii’s 274,000, damned near beat out the Wii, too, which would have taken a dump in everyone’s “casual games are the future” theories.

OK let me never again mention dump-taking and dip bowls in the same paragraph.

Why did this happen? Well, there’s that thing called Blu-Ray. Also, supplies of both other consoles may have been constrained. And I do think the 360’s hardware problems are catching up with it – more than once, people asking me for console-buying advice have voiced concern that the 360 would fall apart on them.

Game Software (in units sold)
1) Halo 3 (360, Microsoft) – 4.82 million
2) Wii Play with Wii Remote (Wii, Nintendo) – 4.12 million
3) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (360, Activision) – 3.04 million
4) Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS2, Activision) – 2.72 million
5) Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, Nintendo) – 2.52 million
6) Pokémon Diamond (DS, Nintendo) – 2.48 million
7) Madden NFL 08 (PS2, Electronic Arts) – 1.9 million
8) Guitar Hero II (PS2, Activision) – 1.89 million
9) Assassin’s Creed (360, Ubisoft) – 1.87 million
10) Mario Party 8 (Wii, Nintendo) – 1.82 million
(via)

The New York Times analyzes the numbers and concludes that it’s evidence of a sea change from hardcore to casual, given the success of the Wii and Guitar Hero, the lack of PS3 titles and top-reviewed games Bioshock and The Orange Box. What do you think?

Rogers Communications Inc. has rolled out “blue” t-shirts, but critics are saying the company’s shirts are anything but.

Rogers spokeswoman Elizabeth Hamilton said the shirts reflect the changing state of the t-shirt marketplace.

“We’re in the business of offering high-value services to customers.”

Critics say the shirts are, in fact, red.

“What appears to be a good shirt on the surface comes with some serious caveats,” wrote Marc Lostracco, assistant editor of the Torontoist website. “Customers need to remember that a company calling something ‘blue’ doesn’t actually make it so.”

Hamilton disputed the criticism and said the shirts fit the uses that customers were asking for.

“It’s actually quite good value,” she said.

So yeah, that’s pretty much the gist of it, wouldn’t you say? I thought it was pretty clear what unlimited meant in the context of cellphone data plans, but Rogers sure doesn’t think so. Shit like this keeps us Canucks in the technological ghetto, as Steve notes.

Here’s a good, measured piece from Ars’ Nate Anderson: Is the music industry dying? The answer is: no. CD sales are tanking hard, but digital sales are skyrocketing – not just at iTunes but also eMusic and presumably others.

Convenience isn’t the only thing at work here; price is also a major factor. [eMusic CEO David] Pakman believes that the CD is priced “completely wrong,” and points out that hundreds of major DVDs can be had for $4 or $5. Despite the pressure that music labels have been under the last few years, CD prices have never approached this level (not counting those Beatles Greatest Hits! (as played by the Western Ljubljana State Radio Orchestra) discs you find in value bins).

Goddamned right. If CDs were $3 I’d be buying the hell outta them. But it’s clear that the major labels have had a big hand in their own downfall, and not just the suing-own-customers thing. They could have lowered prices on CDs to $3 and still made money, and they could have realized that albums full of junk filler tracks won’t sell like hotcakes in the era of single track downloads. And they could have ditched the DRM a lot quicker.

So given that, and thinking of the recently-announced iTunes movie rentals full of DRM and time limitations, what’s Hollywood thinking? Isn’t it clear that the DRM has got to go eventually? They should get out in front of that shit right now, and not cock it up like the labels did.

I was thinking about which games I have played the most of this year, and number one has to be a tie between Oblivion and my hockey pool.

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At ars, Jacqui Cheng debunks the Microsoft HD/DVD conspiracy theories. Or does she? She notes that there’s no proof that Microsoft wants to keep the format wars going in order to champion (Microsoft-supplied) downloads. But where’s the proof that they want to win?

If Microsoft wanted the format wars over and a clear winner decided, they would either a) not be in bed with Toshiba behind the HD DVD format, ceding the fight to Sony’s Blu-Ray or b) put everything at their disposal into HD DVD. Have they really done the latter? Microsoft still doesn’t include an HD DVD drive with the Xbox 360 – they sell an add-on drive. While the drive is cheap (now $129 in the US, $200 in Canada), it’s still $579 for the console + drive, while the entry-level PS3, with its built-in Blu-Ray drive, is $400. So if they were really trying to battle Blu-Ray, they’d be competing on price at the very least.

Microsoft makes no money from Blu-Ray, whereas they earn licensing fees from HD DVDs, and they must take a substantial cut from their own digital downloads. They clearly don’t want Blu-Ray to win, but the question of how badly they want HD DVD to win could be answered if you knew how much money they made from downloads vs. HD DVD. Since we don’t know that, we can only speculate… and from their actions, they’re not backing HD DVD that hard.

We talked about the Jeff Gerstmann saga a little bit on the podcast we recorded last night (which I hope to have up by tonight BTW). Nadine considers it business as usual, Toku and I were perhaps less jaded and still somewhat disturbed by it.

(One-line summary: Gerstmann was fired from gamespot after giving Kane & Lynch, a massive advertiser on the site, a negative review.)

But since then I’ve been thinking a bit more about the positive aspects of the whole mess.

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Why do all the games come out right now? Kyle Orland’s got an article in the Escapist exploring that question. Short answer: it’s the time of year where non-gamers by games (for gamers), and publishers consider a small piece of a big pie better than a big piece of a much smaller, springtime pie.

While I’m at it, there’s also an interview with a Sony guy in MTV Multiplayer about the new, relatively unknown PSP download store.

OK, here’s a problem: the PSP download store doesn’t support Macs.

The Entertainment Software Association of Canada has released a very interesting report on the state of the videogame industry in Canada. The number that screams out is the average age of gamers: 39. Seems crazy high, until you realize this takes into account anyone who has played a computer or console game in the past year, so it includes someone who logged onto yahoo games once for a game of scrabble. Which is still a game, though – I’m not saying that the numbers are suspect. Rather, it’s good to get a reminder that our medium reaches a much more diverse group than you would often think.

Other facts of interest:

• 58% male, 42% female
• 40% of Canadian households own a console
• 46% of Canadian adults have played a game in the past month
• only 25% of those on a console
• role playing games are more popular than shooters
• ‘action’ is the most popular genre. What exactly is an action game?
• 20% of the top-selling North American games are developed in Canadian studios. Considering that Canada’s population is one tenth that of the US, that’s not bad.
• yearly growth in spending is expected to be 21% in Canada this year, higher than the US 16%. Could just be the dollar though.