Gamers might be happy to know that yesterday a Florida court hearing presided over by Judge Dava Tunis recommended that Jack Thompson be banned from practicing law and be eligible to reapply ten years from now. If this is upheld, Thompson will not be able to practice law in the state of Florida for the next decade, but that does not mean that he cannot in other states where he has applied. It will look bad on him, but not keep him from practicing law elsewhere.

During the proceedings, it was reported by GamePolitics that Thompson first argued over where the podium would be placed and then stormed out of the hearing after the judge said he could submit his 4,500 word objection to the court but not read it aloud. Thompson also claimed that Judge Dava Tunis had “no right to hear his case” before he threw said hissy fit.

Because he left the courtroom, Thompson was unable to argue any mitigating factors to the Bar’s recommendation for disbarment, and Judge Dava Tunis’ recommendation will be included in her official report. The report is due to be submitted to the Florida Supreme Court by September 2.

Over on Kotaku, they have posted the 14-page objection written by Thompson and here is an excerpt:

“I am ‘guilty’ of being right and ahead of the curve when it came to Howard Stern and as to Grand Theft Auto. Because I took on Bar complainant, Al Cardenas, the Howard Stern Show is off terrestrial radio and his influence diminished,” said the soon-to-be-not-lawyer.

“Because I took on this cop-killing, woman-bashing video game, the Presidential race is now addressing the issue and this particular video game. Try to get me disbarred. Go ahead, do your worst, Referee Tunis. I will continue to do my best.”

I completely forgot about the Howard Stern thing. Another reason for me to egg Thompson if I ever see him walking down the sidewalk.

If the Florida Supreme Court takes these recommendation to heart and does indeed disbar him, we still will not hear the end of it – at least until he is disbarred in every state in which he has a license to practice law. Although based out of Florida, he received permanent disbarment from practicing law in Alabama in 2005 according to ars technica. So lets keep our fingers crossed that once he looses in Florida, that will be the end of his law career – however even if that happens, we will probably never be rid of him.

Via: GamePolitics

There was bound to be a long tail on a game like Grand Theft Auto IV and its impact on hardware sales. It’s already been a month since the game was released, and we’re beginning to see some of the post-launch numbers that we couldn’t get from the April NPDs. According to Chart-Track, the Xbox 360 has sold 18% more consoles than the PlayStation 3 in the UK since GTA’s launch, Eurogamer reports.

In addition, sales of the game are also higher on 360, with a 57% share of sales for the game in its first four weeks of availability. Approximately 1.3 million copies have been sold between the two consoles, which would place it as already having outsold last year’s best selling game, FIFA 08.

There’s a good point that Eurogamer made which is worth keeping in mind. You should take these numbers with a grain of salt because the PS3 already saw a boost in its sales from the release of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, so there was only so much more GTA IV could do. For the full year thus far, the PS3 has sold 10% more systems than the 360 has; prior to GTA’s release, it was twice that. So while the numbers may be a bit misleading, it does seem clear that GTA has been extremely helpful to the Xbox 360’s case in the UK.

Looks like Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello is hoping against all hope that EA does eventually storm Take-Two’s impenetrable castle. That could only be his “true” reasoning behind him recently purchasing almost $1 million in EA stock the day after the publisher extended its offer to buy Grand Theft Auto firm Take-Two. Yes, I italicized that for a reason.

Riccitiello bought the 20,000 shares which equals to $976,000 in stock, and this is the second such purchase the CEO has made since rejoining the company in 2007 which means that he is banking on becoming even richer than ever before. Mwha ha ha ha!

“John believes that senior executives should be invested in the company,” a spokesperson for EA stated. Yeah, right. Sure it is only appropriate that a CEO own stock in the company they work for, but Riccitiello now owns 47,294 shares and approximately 75,000 exercisable options. That is a truck load of power right there. Plus, with the recent offer to Take-Two being on the table until June 16th, John better hope that his Voodoo Priestess pulls out all the stops for him oe else she will have to go back to peddling her wares to tourists on the streets of New Orleans.

Via: GamesIndustry.biz

If you’ve played GTA IV, watched any trailers for the game, or even watched TV recently, odds are you’re already familiar with the voice of Michael Hollick. He’s the guy who lent his talents to bring the main character of Niko Bellic to life. So he should be pleased with how well the game is selling, right? Well, not really. It seem Hollick has received a total of around $100,000 for his 15 months of voice over and motion capture work, but that’s it. No royalties, no residuals; just the flat rate he and the other actors in the game received through the Screen Actors Guild. And while $100,000 for one and a quarter year’s worth of work isn’t bad, it’s a paltry sum when compared with GTA IV’s $600 million worth of sales; not to mention the fact that, were this almost any other form of recorded media, Hollick would be entitled to millions. Unfortunately, it seems the Guild has yet to work out agreements when it comes to video games and even the internet.

“Obviously I’m incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity,” Mr. Hollick, 35, said last week over dinner in Willamsburg, Brooklyn, shortly after performing in the aerial theater show “Fuerzabruta” in Union Square. “But it’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it. I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it’s the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.”

Of course, while it’s easy to say that an actor making such a large contribution to a game should be compensated as such, Hollywood has a different view on the matter:

“What drives video games is not Tracy and Hepburn; what drives it is the conception of the creative director,” said Ezra J. Doner, a former Hollywood executive who represents entertainment companies as a lawyer at Herrick, Feinstein in Brooklyn, N.Y. “The actor whose appearance or voice is used is more analogous to a session music for a band. The session musicians don’t get residuals on the sales of the CD. They get paid a session fee. It’s not like the star quality of Tom Cruise that’s getting people to buy that video game.”

Admittedly, she’s got a point. Personally, I never knew who voiced Niko up until now, and I frankly didn’t care. It’s certainly an unfair situation, but the popularity of a video game really is driven by a slew of factors; and the actors behind the voice work just aren’t one of them. Really, the only time I think I’ve ever known who was doing a voice in a video game was when it was a performer who had already been established in Hollywood (like Ray Liotta as Tommy Vercetti in GTA: Vice City).

Via New York Times

Okay, with Microsoft out of the way, it’s now Sony’s turn to give their spin on the NPD Group’s data for last month. Of the three current-gen consoles, PlayStation 3 sold the least in April (albeit by an extremely slim margin) and, overall, Sony platforms didn’t have a particularly good month. So what angle would Sony take?

The main talking point focused on year-over-year sales growth. The PS3 sold 127% better than last April, which isn’t huge, but software sales were up 410% to over two million units, thanks in large part to Grand Theft Auto IV.

Sony was also proud that, with 1 million copies of GTA sold, 23.6% of PS3 owners in the U.S. had purchased a copy, which is a 29% higher attach rate than GTA had on Xbox 360. (According to their math, the game had an attach rate of around 16.75% on 360.)

I found it somewhat amusing that the press release claims the PS3 “continues [its] blockbuster year” when, from a hardware standpoint, it really had a poor month. But that’s a minor gripe; what else do you expect from a press release.

Hit the jump for the full press release. Read the full article

As expected, Microsoft continued to tout the fact that the Xbox 360 has surpassed 10 million units sold in the United States. Since they first made the announcement a few days ago, they’ve bumped that figure up to 10.1 million sold.

Surprisingly little from the press release Microsoft sent out had to do with figures that would stem from the 360 having been on the market for a year longer than the competition. That could be because they dedicated an entire portion of it to talking about how wonderful Grand Theft Auto IV has been performing on the 360. They even say it’s “outselling the other platform’s version by nearly 2:1 in the U.S.” — “other platform”? What’s up with that?

Hit the break for the full spinjob.

image via CrunchGear.com

Read the full article

According to at least one business news source the CBS buyout of CNet is part of growing trend involving companies trying to reach gamers. It’s all about demographics.

In the case of CBS-Cnet, the so-called synergies lie in core demographics. By the very nature of Cnet’s tech focus, its audience features the increasingly hard-to-reach 18-to-34-year-old men who prefer ”Grand Theft Auto IV” and ”Indiana Jones” to TV viewing — unless there’s a ball game on, of course.

The article mentions the recent Blockbuster offer to Circuit City and Microsoft’s attempted hostile take over Yahoo! as well. The common theme is the growing influence of gamers on the economic market. Yes gamers we shall rule the world! It’s only a matter of time.

via The Deal.com

Sony has announced that a new firmware update has been released for PlayStation 3, which will bring the current version up to 2.35. If there are any features being added, Sony’s not saying, as PlayStation.Blog brings word that it’s a “minor update to improve stability of some PS3 titles.” Grand Theft Auto IV, perhaps?

Check back later today for an update on what’s been added to the PlayStation Store.

Okay, so if GameStop is any indication of how the rest of the retailers in the U.S. sold Grand Theft Auto IV, Microsoft saw its system cash in on 64% of sales for Rockstar’s game, while Sony only got 36% of the love in the game’s first week. But, as the numbers show, the PlayStation 3 actually had the better performance when you compare the number of systems that have been sold. (Thanks to Level Up for doing all the math so I didn’t have to.)

After reaching out to both Microsoft and Sony, Level Up got two very different takes, as you’d expect.

Microft’s Aaron Greenberg (the same one that ripped the PS3 recently) had this to say:

I think many people have been surprised to see how well GTA IV is selling on Xbox 360 given the history of the franchise. These sales results add GTA IV to a long list of franchises that have switched over from Playstation to find a new home on Xbox 360 similar to what happened last year with titles like Madden and Guitar Hero. As you have covered on Level Up in the past, the majority of third party franchises are being developed first on our platform so they end up playing best on Xbox 360 and when you combine that with Xbox Live, we expect this trend to continue as more multiplatform releases hit the market. With that said, it is fantastic to hear that we beat PS3 two to one on Grand Theft Auto sales from a major retailer like GameStop.

Sony marketing VP Peter Dille offered this take:

GameStop probably does a little bit better with the early adopter crowd. There’s a larger installed base right now on Xbox 360 than on PS3. So it’s not surprising that there’s going to be more selling on Xbox 360 than PS3. Having said that, we’re really excited about the ratio. If I had an installed base advantage of 3-1, I wouldn’t be crowing too much about a 60-40 sales advantage. We think it’s not as high as what GameStop’s telling you, if you look at [the full picture on] the national level. They’re outselling us, but not by that same margin, and it’s because of their installed base lead. With an installed base lead that’s close to 3-1, if you’re bragging about a 60-40 software split, it’s clear evidence that the Playstation 3 consumer is overindexing on GTA IV, and the Playstation brand loyalty that we’ve been talking about is bearing itself out in the marketplace as we speak.

Dille’s right, as the numbers proved, but does anyone else find it funny that for once Sony is actually using its smaller install base as an argument in their favor?

via Level Up

Microsoft went pretty number-crazy after Grand Theft Auto IV was released, claiming that 40% of new consoles sold with a copy of GTA, sales of the 360 increased 54% over the week prior to GTA’s release and, most notably, that about 60% of all copies of GTA sold in the US were the 360 version. We now have another source to back up that claim — GameStop, which says that 64% of all copies sold were for the 360, compared with 36% on PlayStation 3, in the game’s first week of availability.

There’s no doubt that this has to do with the larger install base of the 360 here in the US. But how exactly did the game perform compared with the relative install bases? As of March, the NPD group reports that 9.9 million Xbox 360 systems and 4.1 million PlayStation 3 systems had been sold. Now, without including the number of systems sold in April (which shouldn’t have too drastic an impact on these numbers, anyway), the 360 holds 70.7% of the total 360 and PS3 systems sold to the PS3’s 29.3%. So with 64% of the copies of GTA being sold on 360, Microsoft’s box actually underperformed compared with PlayStation 3.

You can see how the two companies will go about spinning sales of the game, but at least we can begin to see the reality of this matter.

via Level Up