Steven Savage

Video Games

Electronic Arts has said it will lay off staff, with some reports putting the figure at five to six percent. The company's profits have been dropping, and the announcement comes one day before the release of its latest quarterly finance report.

Midway has given interim CEO Matt Booty, who has held the position since March, a nod for the permanent job. The company has had some struggles as of late, so apparently, they believe Booty is the man who can return them to their glory days.

Konami is expecting an 88% jump in profits for the six-month period closing Sept. 30, largely driven by the latest installment in the Metal Gear Solid franchise. A single hit title can carry an entire company in these tough economic times, it seems.

Nintendo's highly-anticipated DSI is said to be hitting the stores next summer, sooner than initial reports that placed its release in the 2009 holiday season. The dual-camera device will be released in Japan tomorrow.

Technology

Is the on-again, off-again Google-Yahoo search deal crumbling? A new report from the Wall Street Journal indicates that Google could walk away from it for good as early as next week. The deal has been mired in antitrust legislation up until this point, so its failure comes as no surprise.

If you're a designer of iPhone apps, your future seems assured – demand for app designers has risen by 500 percent over the last six months.

Publishing

More details have emerged about the cutbacks at Conde Nast. Men's Vogue, which was thought to be scuttled entirely in initial reports, is being cut back to a bi-annual instead - which means it may as well have been scuttled.   

Anime/Manga

The Japanese general trading company Sojitz Corporation announced on Wednesday  that it will dissolve ARM, the subsidiary that promoted anime licensing and distribution in North America, by next February. The move is not expected to affect its licenses with Funimation.

Video Games

Atari, the old console maker, is making a name for itself as a distributor nowadays. The company has signed a deal with CDV Software Entertainment USA to exclusively distribute the publisher's console and handheld titles released under the CDV USA brand in North America.

Another "oops" for a major company: Guitars for Wii music games made by Rage have been found to cause chemical burns because of a circuit board defect that causes the controller's AA batteries to leak if not installed correctly. Given the popularity of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, we're guessing there's more than a few of those out there. However, there's also good news for Nintendo, as it looks like its Wii Fit may bypass Grand Theft Auto as the best-selling game of the year.

Think you're programming games for the stereotypical geek? Think again – a new study shows that gamers are more active, both social- and sports-wise, than non-gamers. Gamers are also shown to be the influencers of their friends and family when it comes to pop-culture trends.

Technology

Yet another sad sign of the times: Citing slower gadget sales due to the current state of the economy, Sony is reducing its anticipated income for 2008/09 by 38 percent.

Comcast, which upset a lot of people with its anti-P2P measure, is now offering faster Internet speeds. It remains to be seen whether that will win back some of their lost goodwill.

Samsung is offering streaming Netflix content with the purchase of select Blu-Ray players. This may be the biggest move yet toward bringing streaming video onto televisions and into the mainstream.

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.