It sounds pretty definitive the Wii will retail $250, will be released November 19 and will come package with Wii Sports.

I am totally sold.

1UP.com has a an intresting article detailing the emerging videogame market in the Muslim World. In addition to being an intresting peak into world of Middle-eastern entertainment it raises an intresting issue.

Why are videogames so one-sided? In the seemly infinite number of games set durring World War II why is the player always sided with the Allies? Is is possible for videogames to explore other elements of the human conditon beyond these are the good guys and they fight the bad guys?

Why is their no videogame eqivualent of Das Boot or Downfall?

Lego Star Wars 2 for the XBOX 360 will allow users to download characters from the previous game for a fee.

Like or not pay for play is here and its just going to keep on coming.

"This is why gamers have such heated debates about save mechanisms: They're metaphoric stand-ins for the way life works. Playing a game with frequent save points is kind of like being the child of a billionaire: You can soar through life without worrying about financial problems because if you fail, there's a "restore" point waiting for you. Games with few save points force you to live like a scrappy, coming-from-nothing immigrant: You embrace scary amounts of risk to get ahead because you've got no safety net."

The above post is from Wired News on the debate over save mechanisms in videogames.

I think I will just let it stand on its own without comment.

Sony has just announced that they will not be shipping the PS3 to Europe until March 2007. Also their current estimate is that by Christmas their will only be about 2 million units availible in North America.

What's that I hear? Is it Leonardo Di Capio's tedious monolouge before his disapears beneath the frozen waves? Just maybe.

Gamasutra has a story about a group of nine (nine!) universities working together to create a game to help children deal with bullying.

From the research team:

"If you’re a young person facing some sort of bullying on a regular basis the problem can seem too big, too overwhelming, to tackle. What we will be developing is a virtual world where the user can interface directly with a synthetic character who is also a bullying victim. That bullying scenario is played out on the screen then the user can interface with the synthetic character, discuss what has happened and make choices about how the character might like to react in future."

What exactly do they think a computer game is going to solve that most human history has failed to?

What searing advice will they offer that everyone from your dad to the Beaver's dad has completely failed to help with?

"Fight Dirty? He Has to sleep somewhere and sometime? Grinding glass into his food is a nearly undetectable method of assasination?"

Seriously.

Former Virginia Governor and potential 2008 presidential candidate Mark Warner gave a speech recently in the online social game Second Life recently.

This has pretty intresting untapped potential. Using online games as a mass communcaitons tool has many applications, from advertising to education.

Codemasters has announced that they will publish Fall of Liberty, a first-person-shooter that dares the revolutionize the genre by setting the game in a world where the Nazi's won WII.

On one there could be some fairly intresting gameplay in this. On the other hand at point will the videogame industry try a diffrent historical era?

There has never been a decent western game. The United States and the Soviets fought in dozens of diffrent theaters durring the Cold War. If you upon the genre to allow sword-fighting someone could build a brillant pirate game.

History is full of cool stuff? See isn't learning neat?

This just in: the official PS3 slogan for Europe is "this is living." Maybe Sony is trying some kind of anti-marketing campaign where they try so hard to make people not intrested in buying a PS3 that it becomes cool to do so.

Fans of anything worthwhile should check out Greg Costikyan'sManifesto Games