Late Night Consoling

...but it's no longer in Australia. The country's Office of Film and Literature Classification has retroactively given GTA:SA "unclassified" status (PDF link), meaning that the game "cannot be legally sold, hired, advertised or exhibited in Australia". The press release indicates that the game originally had a rating of only MA15+, meaning the game requires parental consent for those under 15. The game was rated for "medium level animated violence" and "medium level course language". Had the Hot Coffee-related segments been disclosed initially, the game probably would have received an R18+ rating, but due to the bylaws of the organization any game determined to have undisclosed mature content must have its classification revoked.

Some photographs of slides from Spanish LAN event Campus Party has surfaced, showing among other things an Xbox 360 controller containing a full QWERTY thumb keyboard. The Spanish text on the slide seems to indicate that one connects the keyboard to the controller. Also present on another slide entitled "XNA Technology Map" are the words "Valve: Half-Life 3" under the heading "Game Engines". Compelling!

For the fourteenth week in a row, the Nintendo DS held the top spot in Japan in terms of hardware sales, selling 41,982 units for 41% market share last week (up 5% from the prior week), followed by the PS2 with 25,980 and 26%. PSP took 19%, GBA 11%, GameCube 3%, and Xbox .16%. Those sales edged the DS above the PS2 in terms of most total units sold this year. The top selling game was Capcom's Dynasty Warriors-esque Sengoku Basara (Devil Kings when it makes it to North America) for PS2; numbers two and three were both baseball games of all things: Konami's Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 12 for PS2, and Nintendo's Super Mario Stadium Miracle Baseball for Cube. Why they're changing the latter's name to Mario Superstar Baseball over here is beyond me.

Speaking of the Nintendo's handheld, the company is commencing their advertising campaign for the upcoming Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection online service for DS (and, later, Revolution). A trailer-like spot by legendary advertising studio Leo Burnett, which will air only in movie theatres before films such as Stealth, The Island, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, will run from today until August 25th. The wordless advertisement is similar in atmosphere to the television ads that ran for the DS last year. Entitled "The Sad, Agonizing Tale of Bhuvan Ganguly", the film is available from IGN.

Activision announced today that they have entered agreements with comics publisher Marvel Enterprises to develop an RPG based on Marvel charaters. This is a distinct agreement from the one pertaining to Activision's X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, set to ship September 20. The announcement specifically denoted that the RPG is to be of the "non-persistent" variety. It sort of says something about the current deluge of MMOs that the term had to be specifically noted.

Zodiac, the Palm-based gaming-cum-multimedia handheld device, is no longer being supported by manufacturer Tapwave. A succinct statement on Tapwave's website reads "We are sorry to inform you that the Zodiac business was discontinued and service and support are no longer available as of July 25th 2005." Bad omens for the Gizmondo?

GameSpy has a chat with Burnout Revenge executive producer Matt Webster. GameSpy also has a feature about being nice on Xbox Live. Seriously, DON'T BE A JERK ON LIVE. Holy crap.

N-Sider takes an in-depth look at the Nintendo's first-party development structure.

GameSpot posts a Q&A with designer American McGee, who is currently working on Bad Day LA. They also have a story about porn on cell phones. Enjoy.