Hurry! We're running out of time to make some quick dough off of the black market for mature-rated games in Australia. Who's with me?!
News Blips:
Retailers sign on to support a new restricted video-game rating in Australia. Currently, the highest rating in Australia is Mature 15+, and games with content that earn Mature ratings in other markets receive censorship to bring them down to M15+ or get banned. This new rating would allow these games to escape censorship in Australia. EB Games in Australia was the first retailers to support a new rating, and now GAME and Gametraders are also in favor of it. The companies offer a compromise, in attempt to appeal to lawmakers, that involves keeping blank-labeled R18+ games in a secluded area of video-game stores. Hey, it's a start. [Gamespot]
Viacom wants to recoup some of the money they've invested in the Rock Band franchise. Back in December 2008, Viacom paid a $150 million performance-based bonus to Harmonix, the developer of the Rock Band series, based on how well the games sold in 2007. Then in December 2009, Viacom filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to ask for a "substantial portion" of that money back. This is no housing or dot-com bubble, but it seems like the peripheral-based music-game bubble is about to burst. [Gamasutra]
Layoffs at Activision hit various studios. The publisher cut staff at Neversoft (developer of Tony Hawk series) and disbanded the Luxoflux (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) studio. Activision is still holding on to the employees who worked on the guitar-peripheral hardware for Red Octane (Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2) despite cutting a significant portion of its staff. Our best wishes go out to all of those affected by these cuts. [GamePro]
Exciting news for Mac gamers: Telltale Games is bringing the Tales of Monkey Island series to Apple's brand of computers, and they want fans to vote on which of their titles they'll port next. In less exciting news, the StarCraft 2 beta is PC only. You win some, and you lose some. [Kotaku]
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