Hi folks, Cooper Hawkes here with your news roundup for Wednesday, December 7, 2005:

Item One: 1up.com: ESRB Flunks National Institute for Media and Family.

Last week the National Institute for Media and the Family issued a "report card" to the videogames industry, assigning it a grade of D+ and calling the industry rating board, the ESRB, "broken beyond repair." The Interactive Entertainment Merchants' Association issued a statement questioning the methodology behind the report, and today the ESRB issued its own report card on the NIMF, giving the group an unequivocal F, saying that it has misled parents and gamers and is guided by political motives.

Well, duh.

You have to love 1Up and their subtle snarky comments. Well some people love it. Ok truthfully it smacks of trying to sound young and hip when they are actually a soulless corporation who cares probably only half as much about gaming as they do making money.

Wow did I ever digress. AHEM, where was I?

I've always gotten a kick out of these supposedly higher moral ground groups deciding grades on various forms of media and industry, I'm pretty sure this is the first time a group has hit back. Personally its nice to see the ESRB grow a pair, let's hope they keep up with it.

The grades were allocated thus:

Full Disclosure of Pertinent Facts F
Research and Analysis F
Documentation and Presentation of Evidence F
Working Well with Others F
Overall Grade: F

Plus Demerit for Neglecting Parents' and Childrens' Best Interests

Gee I wonder if this will get the same amount of attention from the mainstream media that NIMF's report received.

Item Two: EuroGamer: DOA4 Slips in Japan again.

According to a report from Game Watch, Tecmo's now planning to release the Xbox 360 beat-'em-up on December 29th in Japan. The developer said it regretted the need for the delay, but due to a stability problem with online head-to-head fighting it was unavoidable.

Honestly color me surprised that it's only a three week delay. If I remember correctly Ninja Gaiden got pushed back like ten times before we finally got our hands on that gaming goodness. Nevertheless, things are not looking so hot for the house of green (or is it white now?) in Japan. No DOA4, No Ninety Nine Knights, that leaves maybe Winning Eleven and Ridge Racer 6 to try and coax the Japanese game consumer.

Probably not gonna work.

And finally:

Item Three: EuroGamer: Sony spray-ads draw anger.

Sony is copping some flack, as they presumably say in whatever corner of the world it was that gave us that hideous expression, for spray-painting walls with cutesy images of big-headed children playing with PSPs as part of a guerrilla marketing effort.

Ok so if these are the best tricks Sony can come up with, I'm not all that impressed. I guess the part that annoys me is that if you ask Sony's PR people about it, they deny having anything to do with it and that it must be someone who's very happy with his PSP.

Nice and transparent guys and gals.

On a positive note: At least its not like they are just "taggin'" while everyone is asleep. It appears (so far) that the sites hit are being paid for allowing the advertising to stay up. But of course Sony denies that it is advertising so I wonder how they paid them without leaving a trail?

Maybe I ask too many questions, could be why Sony never wants to return my calls. Then again Nintendo and Micrsoft aren't exactly knocking down my door. But I bet Nokia gets in touch with me soon! Oh except, N-gage, dead.. yeah.

And that's today's news.

Questions? Comments? STFU? Send them to Hawkes

Semper Fi!