“Industry” is a new blog feature and opinion piece across MyMedia that will focus primarily on the video-game industry from a financial and political viewpoint. The feature will appear on MyMedia blogs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Silent Hill: Homecoming refused classification in Australia

We’ve seen Fallout 3 get banned and then given an MA15+ rating, GTAIV be edited to fit into an MA15+ rating and now Silent Hill: Homecoming has become the 6th (yes, 6TH!) game this year to be banned by the Classification Board of Australia, otherwise known as the Ignorant and Party Pooper Association of the Entire Universe.

OK, it’s not fair to blame the classification board. After all, they classify content based on the laws in relation to classification set by our politicians.

Either way, it’s pointless to point the finger at anyone, as that hasn’t seemed to have helped the problem over the past 12 months, a time in which the problem has grown in magnitude.

There is a worthy argument against an adult rating for games. Unlike film which is watched, games are interactive and therefore a person can interact with a virtual character and create illegal acts in a virtual environment. The argument is that such an action may encourage people to perform those acts in real-life.

While it might sound like a ridiculous notion, it has happened in the past, and not just with minors. Adults have been known to mimic what they see and/or interact with on television/film and in games.

Still, there seems to be more such instances that refer to film rather than video-games. There’s the infamous Child’s Play murder in the UK in the early 90s and the execution-type killing in Japan in the late-90s that was eerily Pulp Fiction-esque.

It all comes down to the audience. Who are playing games? Adults. Are games that contain violence still available in Australia? Yes. Has this violence encouraged illegal behaviour? No.

Halo 3 Sales Hurt By Used Games, says Bungie

Bungie's audio director Marty O'Donnell believes that Halo 3s success could have been even greater if not for the pre-owned games business that retailers such as EB Games and GAME make most of their profit on.

Speaking to GameIndustry.biz, O’Donnell claimed that, even though Halo 3 was a multi-million seller, it’s unfair that the people who make the games don’t profit from a sale of the game.

It seems as though the pre-owned games business only benefits the companies that have such a system and almost never the consumer. Firstly, retail chains like EB Games sell the game you trade-in at between 200%-800% mark-up. Secondly, they offer you peanuts in the first place for games that have only been released for a few months. I know this for a fact, but EB Games make around 90% of their profit from selling pre-owned games. With such a mark-up on traded-in games, it’s no surprise. They only make a few dollars selling new games direct from the publisher, and make hardly anything selling consoles.

Can you really blame developers for throwing their arms up in disgust at the pre-owned game business? They’re entitled to every dollar earned from the selling of their product through retail, especially when the store is make such substantial profits.

XBOX 360 outsells PS3 in Japan…AGAIN!?

What the hell?

No, seriously. What the hell?

The XBOX 360, helped by a recent price-cut and some major JRPG’s hitting shelves, has outsold the Playstation 3 in Japan for the second week in a row.

Outstanding!

But, there’s something very funny in all of this. Firstly, the 360 only sold 13,777 units. That’s OK by XBOX standards in Japan, but not by actual industry standards. Secondly, Sony went even worse and sold only 8,156 Playstation 3’s.

I’m not even going to post numbers, but Nintendo owned everyone.

It seems as though console sales are the only thing the Japanese have in common with the rest of the world when it comes to gaming.

Great FPS’s and action titles fail to generate much attention there, while JRPG’s and “misc.” titles generate little attention here.