Last week's news that Ken Kutaragi was stepping down from his post at Sony wasn't exactly a surprise, but it does raise a number of questions. Given reports that Kutaragi has visions for PlayStations 4, 5, and 6 and analyst speculation that he'll be involved with those products as well, why is he on the way out the door? 1up's Editor Sam Kennedy spends some time ruminating on the situation on his site blog, and comes to the conclusion that this may be what Kutaragi wanted all along. "No one doubted Kutaragi's vision or ability to create fantastic hardware, but his failure as an executive was holding the division back. This is why Kaz Hirai took his place. With the PS3 off and running at the start of a 10-year life cycle, Sony won't need a visionary for quite some time -- now, it needs someone to run the business. And Kaz is right for that. He's a team player and has great relationships with the publishers. He can take things from here. But in all of this hubbub surrounding his departure, what's perhaps been overlooked is that this may have been what Kutaragi had also wanted. It's unfortunate, as the expectation was always for Kutaragi to climb the corporate ladder, yet this wasn't necessarily his goal. As he once told Newsweek about his executive role, 'We have so many things to create, but unfortunately for me I have a lot of responsibility right now...This was not in my dream.'"

The book Halo Effect is an intriguing title that takes a look Bungie's best-selling Halo titles from a number of different angles. Each chapter includes coverage of specific elements; included are descriptions of pro events, a bit on the development process, and the making of the Red vs. Blue series. One of the most interesting chapters takes a look at the science behind the Halo world, talking about the physics and logic behind ringworlds and the hi-tech weaponry seen in the game. Thanks in part to a mini-review of the book on the GameSetWatch site, Gamasutra has been allowed to reprint the entire 'science of Halo' chapter on their website. "A 5,000 kilometer radius would yield a circumference of roughly 31,400 kilometers. If we assume a width-to-radius ratio similar to that of Niven's Ringworld, they would be approximately 5.37 kilometers wide. They are significantly wider, though, at 320 kilometers. The Halos, then, would have a surface area of 10 million square kilometers - slightly larger than the surface area of Canada, and approximately 2 percent of the surface area of Earth. Of course, since we know that there are lakes, seas, and rivers on the Halos, the livable surface area would be fractionally less." Update: 05/02 18:30 GMT by Z : The initial version of the article posted was from pre-production and contained some errors. They've been fixed in the article and now here in the post as well.

An anonymous reader writes "Julian Murdoch over at Gamers With Jobs posits that the recently released Lord of the Rings Online, for all it's flaws, is a new kind of game — the Destiny-Locked RPG: 'The reason that Story sets LOTRO apart is because you know how it ends. This is a luxury World of Warcraft simply can never have. There is no logical end to WoW, where the evil WoW faction of the Horde is victorious, and every member of the good-aligned Alliance dies. The viciously PvP nature of EVE Online means that the story can only sit on the sidelines and inform, not take center stage. But in LOTRO, the game is the story. In this, the game has far more in common with Oblivion than it does with WoW.' The argument here is that a game in which the outcome is known is fundamentally a different (and possibly better) form of gameplay than that the current rage of emergent-gameplay sandbox weak storied games. A challenging idea." It's not so much that the game's ending is already known, as that there is an ending.

ahoehn writes "Amanda Schaffer has written a refreshingly balanced piece about the connection between video games and violence. Instead of regurgitating the typical reactionary voices in this debate, she looks at what scientific studies suggest about the issue. From the article: 'Pathological acts of course have multiple, complex causes and are terribly hard to predict. And clearly, millions of people play Counter-Strike, Halo, and Doom and never commit crimes. But the subtler question is whether exposure to video-game violence is one risk factor for increased aggression: Is it associated with shifts in attitudes or responses that may predispose kids to act out? A large body of evidence suggests that this may be so ... Given this, it makes sense to be specific about which games may be linked to harmful effects and which to neutral or good ones. Better research is also needed to understand whether some kids are more vulnerable to video-game violence, and how exposure interacts with other risk factors for aggression like poverty, psychological disorders, and a history of abuse.'"

C|Net passes on the words of Forrester analyst James McQuivey, who lambasts Sony for failing to live up to the opportunity the PSP presented. Though the handheld has certainly been doing better of late, it's hard not to point out that the PlayStation Portable's sales numbers flag in the face of the DS's incredible popularity. McQuivey also makes a point of stating how well the system could have done at taking a slice of Apple's death-grip on the downloadable media market. "'The thing is, Sony could have been all this,' McQuivey said. 'The Sony PSP is one of the best portable entertainment media devices that anyone has come up with in years. It has a relatively big screen, plays video beautifully, has good storage and audio. It could have been the first big mobile carrier for TV shows and movies.' Instead, the mobile-video play of one of the world's largest electronics companies is straggling behind Apple, has shaken the confidence of supporters--especially in Hollywood--and added to the woes of CEO Howard Stringer."

Just weeks after Too Human producer Denis Dyack confronted the folks at 1up, he's now talking to Gamasutra about many of the same topics, and seems to be pining for a very different games industry. Specifically, Dyack takes exception to the whole concept of incomplete games being seen by the press, the large and now-deceased glitz and glamour version of E3, and the enthusiast press in general. His big complaint seems to be that enthusiast press folks want things to be good. "I guess I'm really against the whole notion of the enthusiast press. Being so enthusiastic that they want things to be good. I think if our medium is going to become mainstream, and we're going to be considered an art form, we need true critics like the movie industry or even the music industry where people go up and literally critique something, and it's a profession to critique it. In order to critique something, it has to be done."

Shack News and the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo are reporting that sourcecode for the MMOG Lineage III may have been stolen. As the third Massively Multiplayer game in a huge-selling South Korean series released by publisher NCSoft, over a billion dollars may be lost as a result of this theft. "The Seoul Metropolitan Police said Wednesday that seven former NCsoft employees are suspected of having sold the technology to a major Japanese game company. The seven left the Korean firm in February and allowed the Japanese company to review the software during a job interview. Police believe that the technology might have been copied during the demonstration."

Via Joystiq, the news on David Jaffe's blog is that Calling All Cars will be released soon via the PlayStation Network. The first downloadable title from one of Sony's AAA developers, this marks the start of what should be a string of high-profile games for the service. The initial post about the game 'going gold' appears to have been taken down but Jaffe reviews the reviews that have been released so far, and gives PS3 owners an idea of what they can expect. "Has it been worth the wait? Reviews are slowly coming in, but IGN is calling it 'Sony's first truly original, must-have title on the PlayStation Network' and claiming it bests just about everything on Xbox Live Arcade. Strong words; we'll see for ourselves [this] week."

Real Money Transfer (RMT) is a contentious subject among MMOG players, but not something usually addressed by major news organizations. Joystiq has up a post on the BBC's coverage of gold farming in World of Warcraft , with a reporter 'live from Ironforge' addressing the issue. "The BBC has taken a straight look at Chinese gold farmers in the World of Warcraft. We'd fear for our own jobs when MSM begin competently portraying game news — thankfully, gold farming is old news and has already been well documented in the last two years, so we feel relatively safe. The piece takes a look at your typical Chinese gold farming operation, with some nifty use of green-screen by the reporter being magically teleported into the game. At least it wasn't another WoW game addiction piece."

The Wall Street Journal is taking Wiimote hacking seriously. A front-page article from this past weekend discusses the many uses to which enterprising hackers have put the Wiimote, the motion sensing piece of the Wii console. Included is a video of a few of the projects in action. "Tim Groeneboom, who lives in the Netherlands, uses his Wii-mote to spice up his deejay act. He was inspired by a video on the Web of a California music student bobbing in front of the computer in his room and making jabbing motions with the Wii-mote to splice different tracks. During his second gig with the Wii-mote, Mr. Groeneboom, 22, says he was able to roam up to about 100 feet from his deejay booth and still be able to control how the music blended and do some sound effects ... Aaron Rasmussen has a sporting purpose for his Wii-mote. At his Garden Grove, Calif. software company, USMechatronics, he and his partner stuck a tennis racket in the 'hand' of a $40,000 industrial robot and then tweaked the Wii-mote to control the robot's arm so it can hit back tennis balls on the factory floor. 'This is what we do to relax,' he says."

If you were to just look at downloadable content this week, Wii and 360 owners would have a lot to cheer about. Virtual Console downloads include the (under-appreciated) Legend of the Mystical Ninja and the original Castlevania. Xbox 360 owners can finally sink their teeth into the board-game spectacular that is Settlers of Catan. Classic titles Millipede and Centipede will also be on offer via Xbox Live Arcade. Unfortunately, there are some less cheery things to discuss as well. Virtual Console sales are down, apparently, and some analysts are questioning whether Nintendo's success may be bad for the industry overall. As for the 360 ... the Elite may be bringing back some old problems. 'Red Rings of Death' have already been reported with the just-released consoles, and DRM issues with Live Arcade titles on the 'upgraded' system are making some new owners frustrated.

marcellizot writes "It has taken a while for handheld consoles to crawl from the primordial 8-bit slime to today's apex predator polygon juggling brutes. To illustrate just how much things have advanced over the last 20 years, Pocket Gamer has pulled together a few facts and figures in pretty chart form. Pitting the vital statistics of the critical handhelds of today and yesteryear against one another, there are some interesting facts to be gleaned from this infotainment extravaganza."

The New York Times is reporting on the popularity of Dance Dance Revolution in augmenting school gym programs. Adopted by educators as a way to fight obesity among young people and encourage participation, the article states that by the end of the decade some 1500 institutions will be using the game in classes. "As Leighton Nakamoto, a physical education teacher at Kalama Intermediate School in Makawao, Hawaii, put it: 'The new physical education is moving away from competitive team sports and is more about encouraging lifetime fitness, and D.D.R. is a part of that. They can do it on their own, and they don't have to compete with anyone else.' Mr. Nakamoto said that he had used the game in class for four years and that his school had also installed the game in its "Active Lifestyle" room, where students are allowed and encouraged to play in their free time."

Splitt3r wrote with a link to the Kotaku site on Shigeru Miyamoto's Nomination as one of this year's 100 most influential people at the Time Magazine site. "PRO: Most successful game designer, creator of Super Mario, Donkey Kong and The Legend of Zelda, whose new platform, the Wii, is currently the top-selling game console. CON: His perfectionist tendencies often result in games being significantly delayed and, despite the Wii's gameplay innovation, its graphics are far behind the competition." Voting is currently ongoing at the site, if you're interested in swaying the vote.

carolinamagi asks: "I've got an original Playstation collecting dust in my garage that I only use when I've got a fix for Final Fantasy VII. I know the original Playstation is a dated system but I can't help but wonder if there are any 'after market' or non-game mods which others have tried (with success) to give their Playstation some new life. The catch is that I'm a total novice when it comes to mods (although I am handy around the house and around a computer) and I would still like the ability to play games with my modded Playstation. Any ideas?"

GreenTea writes "Some of the latest mobile phones in Japan come with motion sensors that let users detect motion or play action games like those on the Nintendo Wii console. The D904i from NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile carrier, contains a tiny motion sensor that detects shaking and tilting, company spokesman Nobuyuki Hatanaka said. 'The software supports three main types of motion: shake, rock and roll. Shake can be used for actions such as rolling dice and shuffling MP3 decks. Rock interprets right, left, up and down gestures to generate traditional cursor-style user input commands. Roll offers joystick control by responding to tilting motions used in navigating games, maps or Web pages.'"

darkhitman writes "According to a Kotaku post yesterday, Blizzard has confirmed that they'll announce a new product at their World Wide Invitation in Korea next month. The statement issued by Blizzard verified that they 'do intend to announce a new product [...] next month" and "plan to revisit [Starcraft] at some point in the future,' but did not confirm the rumor that the new game would be Starcraft 2 — but we can certainly hope."

Last night a debate hosted by the XFire gaming chat/social network service went into depth on the subject of game censorship. Participants included notables like Entertainment Consumers Association President Hal Halpin, Sacremento Assemblyman Leland Yee, Escapist Editor Russ Pitts, and GamePolitics blogger Dennis McCauley. Transcripts are available of the discussion both on and off the main floor, and both make for some very interesting reading. From the Escapist post on the event: "On the whole, it would seem that everyone, from the senator on down, is concerned about adult-themed content in games and how to preserve the gamemaker's rights to create such content while simultaneously keeping it out of the hands of minors. The devil, of course, is in the details. Exactly how to go about doing that - and defining the types of content to be restricted - is where we all seemed to disagree wildly."

An anonymous reader writes "Sun Microsystems appears to be shifting its focus back to research, after several years of promoting its commodity servers and Java software. Earlier this week, it talked about its new Andy Bechtolsheim-designed video server in the New York Times. Yesterday, it invited reporters in to preview its plans to develop faster switches, new programming languages, and 3-D virtual workplaces. Robert Sproull, director of Sun Labs, made clear that Sun has big ambitions. 'General purpose computers have to be rethought,' he said. Among the projects close to leaving the labs is Project Crossbow, an evolution of the networking stack in Solaris; Project Sedna, a next generation switch for storage-area networks; and MPK20, a virtual workspace built on top of Sun's Darkstar gaming server."

Even though sales are up on the operating system side of things, Microsoft's games division is still struggling. The Entertainment and Devices division lost $315 million, with sales slipping some 21 percent. That's 22 percent down from last year. The quarter overall saw $929 million, down 21 percent over last year during the same quarter. "Microsoft says the drop in sales came primarily because of decreases in the sale of Xbox 360s. During the quarter, the company shipped a half million consoles, as compared to 1.7 in the third quarter of 2006, that being the first full quarter in which Xbox 360s became available. Sales of Xbox and PC games decreased 44 percent over the company's first three quarters to $393 million, which the company puts hand in hand with the decrease in console sales."