YES! YES! YES!!! Thank you EA. They are a bit pissed about the total joke and travesty that was Fox’s report the other day on their newly acquired master piece that is Mass Effect. We already posted the video here, take a look if you wanna get mad about something.
Anyways EA sent a letter to the good folks at Fox asking them to correct some miss-statements that were in their report. Here’s some of the letter :
Your headline above the televised story read: “New videogame shows full digital nudity and sex.” Fact: Mass Effect does not include explicit or frontal nudity. Love scenes in non-interactive sequences include side and profile shots - a vantage frequently used in many prime-time television shows. It’s also worth noting that the game requires players to develop complex relationships before characters can become intimate and players can chose to avoid the love scenes altogether.FNC voice-over reporter says: “You’ll see full digital nudity and the ability for players to engage in graphic sex.”
Fact: Sex scenes in Mass Effect are not graphic. These scenes are very similar to sex sequences frequently seen on network television in prime time.FNC reporter says: “Critics say Mass Effect is being marketed to kids and teenagers.”
Fact: That is flat out false. Mass Effect and all related marketing has been reviewed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and rated Mature - appropriate for players 17-years and older. ESRB routinely counsels retailers on requesting proof of age in selling M-rated titles and the system has been lauded by members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. In practical terms, the ratings work as well or better than those used for warning viewers about television content.
Remember that little wrap up they had after cutting off Geoff Keighley with the ignorant people who have no business talking video games? They mention them to here “They have had zero experience with Mass Effect and are largely ignorant about videogames, the people who play them, and the ESRB system that governs their ratings and sales.”
Then they finish the whole thing with this :
“The resulting coverage was insulting to the men and women who spent years creating a game which is acclaimed by critics for its high creative standards. As video games continue to take audiences away from television, we expect to see more TV news stories warning parents about the corrupting influence of interactive entertainment. But this represents a new level of recklessness.Do you watch the Fox Network? Do you watch Family Guy? Have you ever seen The OC? Do you think the sexual situations in Mass Effect are any more graphic than scenes routinely aired on those shows? Do you honestly believe that young people have more exposure to Mass Effect than to those prime time shows?
This isn’t a legal threat; it’s an appeal to your sense of fairness. We’re asking FNC to correct the record on Mass Effect.”
Sincerely,
Jeff Brown
Vice President of Communications
Electronic Arts, Inc.
Thank you very much EA. You may be a huge video game company eater but you showed that you do care about the products your recently acquired developers produce. You chose not to let just the online gaming sites and gamers be the voice for this travesty and put some real weight behind this matter.
Thanks Kotaku
Ah, how many puns can you get out of one game title? Good stuff.I know it’s Fox News, but wow that’s ignorant. Just watch the video and you’ll see what I mean. Fox News decides to take on yet another subject they know nothing about. Funny thing is, they get one panelist that actually does know what’s happening. Enter Geoff Keighley, SpikeTV and GameTrailers.com video game journalist.
I have to say, watching this really just fills me with ragohol. To see a bunch of people with no knowledge of a subject whatsoever bash and tear it apart makes me a little sad. However, all is not lost. Game journalist, Geoff Keighley, took a stand for truth, justice, and Mass Effect. The “news” piece attempted to take on the growing controversy over the highly popular (and sweet) Xbox 360 game Mass Effect and it’s “sex scene”.
I could go into all the reasons why these people are wrong and stupid. I could go into why they all suck and don’t know what they’re talking about because they’re all to busy pimping their own book or promoting their own agenda, but I won’t. I’ll let you do that. As a gamer, having played Mass Effect or not, what do you think about this atrocity of news journalism? All I have to say is, Bravo for trying Mr. Keighley. Bravo.
Source: GamerNode
Boom!
M$ as they’re often lovingly referred to on “the internets”, or Microsoft had some problems over the past holiday season. Problems keeping Xbox Live, well, live. The resulting backlash had them release this letter. Basically telling everyone, sorry our service is so popular, blah, blah, blah, we’ll give you a free game to ease the pain. They gave us no real information on what that game was or when we would get it.
So, that day has come, they have announced that the game is… Undertow! Tada. Yay, now we can all be happy and go back to loving big papa Microsoft. Technically they don’t have to do anything, as per their terms of service state nothing about the level of actual uptime or quality of that service. But, being the generous monopoly, I mean company that they are they have decided to offer us Xbox Live Gold customers a free game. All of us, the same game. A game, if you don’t already own, you might play for all of five minutes before going back to Mass Effect or Call of Duty 4.
I’ve heard that if you already own the game, according to Xbox Live front man Major Nelson. He said, “If you have already purchased the game, you can contact support and they will take care of you.” That almost sounds like a threat. I’m sure it’ll be just as painless as it sounds though.
So, when do we get this game? And who gets it? I’m glad you asked. Microsoft has said, “all Xbox LIVE members (Gold and Silver) around the world would have access to a full Xbox LIVE Arcade game [Undertow] to download free of charge.”…”beginning next Wednesday, 2:00 a.m. PST through Sunday, 11:59 p.m. PST, Xbox LIVE members worldwide can download the full version of the recent award-winning Xbox LIVE Arcade game, Undertow.”
Wait, am I reading this right? All Xbox Live Member? Silver to? The people who were effectively unaffected by the Xbox Live outages? Really? Okay.
Why don’t they just give us 800-1200 Microsoft Points, that way, we’re all happy. The people who actually want to buy Undertow can, and everyone else can buy a good game. I’m sure I’m not the only one less than satisfied with this “solution”. What do you think Microsoft should do for Gold Live Members? Let us know. Comment below or post in the forums.
Boom!
Story via GamingNews
Join the forum discussion on this post 
A few chaps over at BusinessWeek discuss if video games are still for kids. In other word….are gamers losers still? Or is gaming a viable form of entertainment?
Humankind’s epic battle for survival against the Locust Horde, a nightmarish race of creatures that surface from the bowels of the planet.” However stellar the game play, that’s basically the 1990 movie Tremors minus Kevin Bacon.
-Derek Thompson on Gears Of War.
So wait….I’m slightly confused here….Is he saying it’s a bad thing to be similar to Tremors? That’s news to me! Does he realize that it had Reba in it? Probably not.
Take for instance, last year’s sleeper hit, BioShock from 2K Games, a first-person shooter. The game’s narrative and dystopian setting wove an argument about the relationship between power and freedom, ultimately building to a rejection of Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy. Not exactly Mario territory.
Gaming in general is becoming more and more sophisticated. So….how long before “Gamers” loose the stereotype of….well…lets have Derek describe it since he did so magnificently in the article.
Today, the average gamer is 33, part of a $7 billion national industry, and, well, possibly still living with his parents.
[slow clap] Yes……ooooh yes! How very comical indeed! You sir are marvelous! Now where was I? Ah yes! Reading my Shakespeare!
Source - BusinessWeek
So I loved the first Rainbow Six Vegas. It was a great all around game. Single player, co-op, and online play all were great. So will the second Vegas be good? Well it looks like it will be. Hey don’t take my word for it check out this video. It talks about the player development in the game. I’m starting to drool already!
Thanks Gaming Today
MacWorld kicked off and it looks like the biggest thing out of it so far is really the smallest. The MacBook Air is the newest MacBook and the thinnest. Its super sexy and sleek and oh yea as usual with Apple stuff, it’s real pricey.
It’s a pretty impressive machine check out the specs. The good news for anyone who plops down the $1799 for this baby is you can save some money on a case for it because it will fit in a padded manila envelope.
You can go ahead and pre-order this mother, the 2 options on Apples home page are $1799 or $3098, OUCH!!!!
All the Apple fan-boys are still drooling over this baby and will be for a while.
The good news for Sony just keeps on coming. First our story about MGS4 and now this. It looks like the price of the PS3 has been cut in half. While $400 seems somewhat high it is notably better then $800 that it did cost to make.
The seeming victory of Blu-Ray over HD/DVD is also good news for the PS3. The money guys are saying that it means Sony will start to see a profit in the near future.
Looks like this might be the year on the PS3.
Thanks Businessweek
This doesn’t seem to happen very often lately, but it looks as though the Playstation 3 may finally be getting some good news. The news comes in the form of the consoles flagship allstar title Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots getting an early release date. As early as the 2nd quarter of this year. They won’t pin down an exact day, or even a month, but the game is said to be in the final stages or “last push” as assistant producer Ryan Payton revealed on the weekly Kojima Productions Report podcast, of testing and “polishing” the game.
Shack News has Payton quoted as saying: “Mr. Kojima of all people is really committed to [the date] because he really hates to disappoint people, and I know he is embarrassed by what happened with the 2007 slip into 2008.” Some features may be added, but “for the majority of the team, this is the end.”
If the rumors are true, this is also good news for Xbox 360 gamers, as they’ll potentially get the game on their console of choice sooner as well.
Boom!
According to Eurogamer.net Little Big Planet will be hitting stores in September.
YEAAAA!!!!
Well YEAAAAA!!! kinda. September is a long time away. We’ve been waiting for this game for quite some time and it seems that it will be a bit more. Hopefully though this delay will just mean a better game when it does come out.
Here’s a video on the game that came out at CES. This is about the only cool video game news we got at CES this year.
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