Eideard

A public relations company and its owner have been cited for having staff post glowing reviews of game applications for companies it represents at the online iTunes store.

According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Reverb Communications and its owner Tracie Snitker engaged in deceptive advertising by having its employees pose as ordinary consumers when posting the reviews.

“Companies, including public relations firms involved in online marketing need to abide by long-held principles of truth in advertising,” said Mary Engle, director of the FTC’s advertising practices division.

The California-based Reverb Communications represents dozens of major video game companies and developers.

The FTC, however, claims Reverb did not disclose the reviews were written by its staff, nor that they were hired to promote the games and that they often received a percentage of the sales.

That information is relevant to consumers who were using the endorsements as a guide to whether or not to buy the games…

Under a proposed settlement order, Reverb will have to remove any previously posted endorsements that misrepresent the authors as ordinary consumers.

Sleaze ain’t any less relevant when it’s geeks and gamers indulging in the practice.

The South Korean government is introducing policies aimed at curbing the amount of time children spend playing online games.

The first involves barring online gaming access to young people of school age between 12am (midnight) and 8am.

The other policy suggests slowing down people’s internet connections after they have been logged on to certain games for a long period of time.

The Culture Ministry is…asking the companies to monitor the national identity numbers of their players, which includes the age of the individual.

Parents can also choose to be notified if their identity number is used online.

“The policy provides a way for parents to supervise their children’s game playing,” Lee Young-ah from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism told Reuters.

OK. This starts off as a voluntary program – which means nothing.

My initial response is that it works as a regulation for the companies and voluntary participation by parents. How well that works is anyone’s guess.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

Somewhere in Japan, Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata are clinking together crystal glasses of premium liquor, adjusting their monocles and belly-laughing until their top hats fall off.

They have reason to be merry in this economically depressed holiday season: NPD reported last week that Nintendo made off like bandits in November, selling 3.61 million pieces of hardware in North America. The impossibly popular Wii sold 2.04 million units alone, twice the amount it did last November, when the economy was robust.

Meanwhile, that other Japanese gaming giant, Sony, suffered through a miserably disappointing month: Its flagship console, the Playstation 3, sold only 378,000 units, fewer than half the number of the second place console, the Xbox 360. This was supposed to be the flagging console’s breakout year; instead, after last month’s debacle, Sony executives have to be wondering how things turned so bad.

Sony’s poor performance is certainly not due its game library…The PS3 has boasted unmatched technical sophistication since its release, but it was only recently that those claims bore fruit attractive enough to demand the attention of hardcore gamers.

Instead, much of Sony’s poor performance has been to attributed to price. Former Sony Executive Ken Kutaragi infamously urged people to “work more hours” to afford the PS3’s bloated price tag; instead, consumers have decided to ignore the console altogether.

While Sony never really had a chance to grab the insanely lucrative casual market away from Nintendo, the company bungled away its chance to win the hearts and minds of the American hardcore by refusing to lower the console’s price beyond $399. That’s far above the price threshold of the two groups crucial to a console’s success: cash-strapped college students and Christmas shopping parents.

I’m not a gamer; but, I would have to be more thick than a Bush Republican to ignore the reality of what gaming hardware [and sometimes software] contributes to the health and development of computing. I hope Sony hasn’t shot themselves anywhere higher up than the foot – and wait and watch for marketing sense to return to the venerable giant.

Like a biblical litany, Sony has repeatedly recited a list of games that it believes will make 2008 the year of the PlayStation 3. However, the company will need more than a good year to climb out of the hole it’s in with the console.

The PS3 has cost the Japanese electronics giant $3.3 billion since its launch in late 2006 because of “strategic pricing” under which it sells the console at a loss, according to the annual report filed by Sony with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “Even if the platform is ultimately successful, it may take longer than expected to recoup the investment, resulting in a negative impact on Sony’s profitability,” the report said…

The year may not even be at the halfway mark, but Sony’s luck will have to change if 2008 will end up the year of the PS3. It will now have to rely on its cast of anticipated holiday hits, such as Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet, and the launch of Home, its oft-delayed virtual online community, to drive sales.

There’s always 2009. So they say.

These Japanese geeks say they put this version of iPhone Pong together in about an hour. Apparently, just so they could drive each other nuts.