Anime/Manga
An Iowa man is being prosecuted for owning allegedly obscene manga showing minors having sex. This case definitely merits keeping an eye on – a guilty verdict may mean American publishers of hentai and yaoi being a lot more cautious about what they bring over.
Video Games
World of Warcraft may be adding some optional features at an additional fee in the future, including character customization. Whether players pony up the extra bucks remains to be seen, but if it works, expect the other online games to follow suit.
The PSP is about to get a software upgrade that will allow it to connect directly to the Playstation Store and download games. Playstation 3 will get a software upgrade at the same time that includes an in-game screencap tool.
Wedbush Morgan analysts have declared the game industry recession-proof, saying it will continue to be profitable during tough economic times.
Atari Inc. has been acquired by Infogrames, a French publisher that was once its majority shareholder. Atari will now be a subsidy of the company.
Technology
MySpace is expanding its MyAds service, which allows advertisers to micro-target users for its Google-like ads by parameters such as age, sex and geographical location, combining it with user interest categories including specific keywords within each category.
Publishing
Long Island, NY tabloid newspaper Newsday, which was acquired by Cablevision in July, has suffered an 11% drop in revenues this year over 2007 figures. And the news continues to be gloomy for the traditional paper industry.
Film
More movies are being released directly on DVD nowadays, and it doesn’t necessarily mean the film is poor quality, according to U.K. paper The Guardian – a lot of it has to do with today’s "carpet bombing" approach to film releases and how a film has to guarantee a large amount of "butts in the seats" on the very first weekend. Interesting especially for what it says about changes in the entertainment industry over the last couple of decades.