Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The company that operates World of Warcraft in China, The9, has told the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) that it will go bankrupt unless the game's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is approved by the regulator.
Reports last week claimed that The9 was having trouble getting the game past the regulators. A substantial sum was paid the the game's developers, Blizzard Entertainment, in April last year to secure the license, and without the sale of the expansion The9 will not be able to recover the cost. An article on JLM Pacific Epoch reports GAPP has said that the issue lies with the game's unhealthy content, which was the same problem faced by WoW's first expansion, The Burning Crusade. This resulted in a delay while the game had to be redesigned to remove some of the scarier aspects, namely covering exposed bones on skeletons and replacing corpses with graves.
*~*~*
There has been something of an outpouring of bile directed at NBC for its decision to change the name of the Sci-Fi channel to Syfy.
"Syf" is the Polish word for "total bloody mess." (It seems to have its roots in the lesions of syphilis.) And "Syfy" would be, well, the plural.
The Sci-Fi channel doesn't actually present all that much programming that might strictly be defined as science fiction.
However, I suspect that somewhere beyond the arguments for wanting a name the channel can trademark is an argument that the phrase "science fiction" has become a little old.
*~*~*
With DS sales continuing their astronomical climb and people still snagging Wii consoles off of shelves faster than you can say: "Your princess is in another castle," Nintendo's doing pretty well for itself in these difficult economic times. It's doing even better today on news that the lawsuit filed against it two years ago by Fenner Investments has been dismissed. The suit alleged that Nintendo inappropriately infringed on a 1998 patent relating to the monitoring of the position of analog joysticks in the Wii and GameCube.
*~*~*
After getting an earful from disgruntled testers of its revamped home page, Yahoo is working on a new incarnation that will dramatically speed up access to e-mail.
The new home page, code-named Metro and due to launch later this year, will let users customize what they see and install a range of applications. But upon beginning "bucket testing" last September, in which different subsets of Yahoo users are involuntarily presented with variations of the new home page, Yahoo found out it was making it too difficult for people to continue with their accustomed practice of dropping by the page to scan for changes, said Burke Calligan, senior director product management for Yahoo front doors, in an interview at Yahoo headquarters here.
In particular, people were incensed that it took too many mouse clicks to glance at their e-mail inbox. But changes are coming to fix that, Calligan said.
"We have moderately addressed it in this round and we're going to radically address it in upcoming testing," Calligan said. "We've rethought the flow and design based on feedback we've gotten from users. I think users will...feel much better about it."
Reports last week claimed that The9 was having trouble getting the game past the regulators. A substantial sum was paid the the game's developers, Blizzard Entertainment, in April last year to secure the license, and without the sale of the expansion The9 will not be able to recover the cost. An article on JLM Pacific Epoch reports GAPP has said that the issue lies with the game's unhealthy content, which was the same problem faced by WoW's first expansion, The Burning Crusade. This resulted in a delay while the game had to be redesigned to remove some of the scarier aspects, namely covering exposed bones on skeletons and replacing corpses with graves.
*~*~*
There has been something of an outpouring of bile directed at NBC for its decision to change the name of the Sci-Fi channel to Syfy."Syf" is the Polish word for "total bloody mess." (It seems to have its roots in the lesions of syphilis.) And "Syfy" would be, well, the plural.
The Sci-Fi channel doesn't actually present all that much programming that might strictly be defined as science fiction.
However, I suspect that somewhere beyond the arguments for wanting a name the channel can trademark is an argument that the phrase "science fiction" has become a little old.
*~*~*
With DS sales continuing their astronomical climb and people still snagging Wii consoles off of shelves faster than you can say: "Your princess is in another castle," Nintendo's doing pretty well for itself in these difficult economic times. It's doing even better today on news that the lawsuit filed against it two years ago by Fenner Investments has been dismissed. The suit alleged that Nintendo inappropriately infringed on a 1998 patent relating to the monitoring of the position of analog joysticks in the Wii and GameCube.
*~*~*
After getting an earful from disgruntled testers of its revamped home page, Yahoo is working on a new incarnation that will dramatically speed up access to e-mail.
The new home page, code-named Metro and due to launch later this year, will let users customize what they see and install a range of applications. But upon beginning "bucket testing" last September, in which different subsets of Yahoo users are involuntarily presented with variations of the new home page, Yahoo found out it was making it too difficult for people to continue with their accustomed practice of dropping by the page to scan for changes, said Burke Calligan, senior director product management for Yahoo front doors, in an interview at Yahoo headquarters here.
In particular, people were incensed that it took too many mouse clicks to glance at their e-mail inbox. But changes are coming to fix that, Calligan said.
"We have moderately addressed it in this round and we're going to radically address it in upcoming testing," Calligan said. "We've rethought the flow and design based on feedback we've gotten from users. I think users will...feel much better about it."
Labels: nintendo, sci fi, WoW, yahoo
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