Steven Savage

First of all, we'd like to point out that geekdom invaded the Academy Awards last night in a way it hasn't since the heyday of Lord of the Rings – La Maison des Petit Cubes became the first anime to win an Oscar since Spirited Away when it took the animated short prize, Steve Jobs' company Pixar took the animated feature Oscar with WALL-E, and the late Heath Ledger was named Best Supporting Actor  for playing The Joker in The Dark Knight. Couple that with the media blitz over Watchmen, and it seems that the geek audience is being taken very, very seriously by the mainstream film industry.

Video Games

Atlus Online will make its American debut with steampunk free-to-play MMO Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent, from a Korean developer. If more international online games come over here, that will definitely open up new job markets for localization teams, so this is a Good Thing.

Sony is closing its European PSP instant messaging service. More bad news for a platform that has struggled outside its native Japan.

More problems for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures developer Funcom, which lost a ton of money due  to the games's underperformance – but the company says it still plans to invest heavily in the game, launching Age of Conan in Russia and Poland. This looks like a case of "what not to do when your game is failing" in the making, and as such, is worth keeping an eye on.

Technology

In the Steve Jobs health watch, the Apple CEO is skipping the company's annual meeting for the first time during his tenure. We still think the company will continue to thrive with or without Jobs – based on the momentum of the iPhone and iTunes alone – so don't cross them off your resume list.    

In the insult to injury department, Microsoft announced it gave some of its laid off workers too-generous severance packages and is asking for its money back. And this is a lesson in "how not to gracefully let people go."

Netflix will offer streaming-only service plans, most definitely a smart move in the age of broadband video and a way to keep the company from becoming a dinosaur.

Women's publishing and advertising company is looking to make money off Twitter through micro-blogging widgets, such as one launched last night for the Oscars. This allows users to provide a steady stream of commentary on a sponsored site. We have a feeling this is just the first micro-blogging cash-in of its type we're going to see: Yammer, a Twitter-like service for businesses, is looking to broaden itself with a suite of new features. 

Publishing

Simon and Shuster reports sales decline: Definitely not a surprise given the catastrophic effect of the economy on book sales in general.

More newspaper bad news, this time from Pennsylvania: The parent company of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Phildelphia Daily News has filed for bankruptcy protection, as has Yardley, PA-based publisher The Journal-Register Co.  

Job Market

When the Search for a Job Becomes a Full-Time Quest: The Kansas City Star shadows one unemployed job-seeker. A portrait of what far too many people are going through right now.   

This week proved that no matter how big you get, you can have your ups and downs, and they don't come any bigger than Microsoft.

With all this going on, you might imagine that some companies would be breaking out the survival plans, and that's exactly what Sega has been doing. The former-hardware giant-turned-software-company has a strategy that includes emphasizing its Sonic brand and creating more Mature-rated titles for the Wii. This may seem a strange contradiction until you realize that Sonic is now known to two or three generations of gamers, and Sega recently scored a success with the violent House of the Dead: Overkill.

As for Nintento, they had mixed news from the Nielsen company: They're getting a broader audience and less play, meaning a lot of people consider them their secondary console, not their primary one.

So with all that "down" going on, what was "up?" Cell phones, once again. In addition to the Windows announcement, Android made appearances in the form of a price cap on Android apps and British manufacturer Vodaphone saying it would offer a Google phone. And it's been rumored that Dell is about to throw its hat in the smartphone arena. (We might add that phones aren't a guaranteed road to riches for everyone, though, as Sprint lost more than a million customers.)

And one very big-money segment of the entertainment industry that quietly flexed its muscles was the tween audience – Wizard 101, a free-to-play MMORPG aimed at this audience, passed the one million user mark. In the rush to create the next blood-soaked Grand Theft Auto, many people forget that this demographic group can mean heavy brand loyalty and big success – just look at Disney's entire teenybopper empire. It most definitely doesn't hurt to play to the High School Musical crowd.

Video Games

Time Warner has purchased 10 million more shares of Eidos and now owns about 20% of the company. This looks like a win-win on both sides. Tomb Raider company has been through some bumpy financial times as of late, and this new move should shore them up considerably. Meanwhile, Time Warner gets a big stake in the Lara Croft franchise, a proven cross-media success.

Is Electronic Arts headed in a more highbrow direction to help save itself? The company may have canceled its Need for Speed franchise, which focuses on auto racing, and has announced it is developing a game based on Dante's Inferno. The Dante project could be a game-changer for the company in either direction, and is worth keeping an eye on. 

Activision Blizzard has sold Chilean subsidiary Wanako Games to Montreal-based Artificial Mind and Movement. As Wanako's specialty is the up-and-coming field of downloadable games for consoles, this is definitely a forward-looking move on Artificial Mind's part. (Plus, it may mean more games jobs opening up in the Montreal area!)

Is the industry truly recession-proof? Bloomberg seems to think that Nintendo is, but the rest of the gaming business, not so much. The report especially cited the price of Sony's Playstation 3 as a factor in making the device undesirable in this economic climate. More bad news for Sony, which has fallen twice as far behind the Xbox as it was when the systems launch, according to an analysis by the Gamasutra blog. Furthermore, CNN says the PS3 is dying on the shelves. Sony's story is definitely a cautionary tale of corporate hubris – just because you had one massive success, that doesn't mean people will automatically buy your followup at any price.  

Sports games continue to be among the most popular on all consoles, and 505 games is throwing a new competitive arena in with all the football and baseball titles – swimming. The company is developing multiple titles in conjunction with Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, for both console and handheld devices. And in a piece of good news for West Coast game industry types, the British company is opening a new studio in Los Angeles to work on the titles.

Apple is now touting the iPhone as a gaming console, saying it may even be a threat to the DS. This is to be taken with a major grain of salt – in fact, the entire shaker, given that the device has yet to really prove its mettle in the gaming arena (although it did score the latest release in the Katamari Damacy franchise)  - but at least it shows that the company will very much be open to game development for its handheld. 

Technology

Google just can't seem to stay out of the news. The company is taking heat from the Wall Street Journal , which is accusing it of abandoning its support of network neutrality by approaching major internet service providers "with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content," making sites like YouTube run faster than their competition. Google is loudly denying this, but the inevitable further investigation of the claims should prove interesting, especially in light of how close they came to antitrust claims in the failed Yahoo ad deal. Meanwhile, it seems to consider its Chrome browser much more of a level playing field, allowing a company outsider to add code to the project.

Palm, which is still trying to stay alive in an iPhone world, is planning a massive product launch next month, featuring a new Linux-based OS called Nova. This is the latest appearance of the suddenly-hot Linux, which is rapidly looking like a must in the toolbox of software developers for all sorts of platforms.

Ways to Monetize Twitter: Industry experts offer suggestions on how the infuentual but unprofitable microblogging tool can be turned into a money-spinner, including merchandising, selling ads within tweets and offering a "Twitter Pro" version. Some of the suggestions are good advice for anyone planning to build a social networking system.

BitTorrent's initial $17 million funding round may have been reduced, which could be very bad news for the file-sharing service, which has had a bumpy ride of it lately. It's interesting that a lot of people perceive BitTorrent to be a massive success (especially considering the extent of its use in the anime community), but this proves a sobering reality – you can have a ton of users for your product, but you can't make a living of it without the funding. 

Economics/Geekonomics

Investors may be too optimistic about consumer recovery: A caution that even if the holiday shopping season tuns out to be more successful than expected, that doesn't necessarily mean the economy is recovering.