ELSPA unveiled their anti-piracy plans for 2007 and they're taking off the kid gloves and taking on online and digital thieves. According to ELSPA Director">Paul Jackson, ELSPA director general, the organization is not only ready to tackle both political and public opinion battles but is "perfectly prepared to deal with the new forms of theft that are coming forward."

This year ELSPA aims to forge a closer tie with the UK Government in five major areas:

• Promoting education for new industry entrants
• Highlighting the economic importance of the UK games industry
  
• Taking a stronger stance on piracy.
• Promoting the public's understanding of the educational and social benefits of gaming
• Demonstrating the importance of games as a part of digital and creative culture

But it is the organization's anti-piracy unit that gets the most "weapons upgrade" this year. ELSPA is funneling more resources for combating online and digital theft and plans to lobby for stronger laws. In addition, ELSPA is seeking additional powers for Trading Standards, the police and Customs on the issue.

"Our aim is to a lot more in-depth investigative anti-piracy work, as opposed to the anti-piracy work... in the past. And that needs a different type of anti-piracy unit, which is what we've been constructing," said Jackson.

According to Transgaming Technologies, more than US$ 3 billion are lost worldwide to video game piracy every year.

From NPD's report "Kids & Digital Content" comes these very interesting information: even two-year old toddlers are now into videogames. The study looks closely at how kids between two and fourteen years of age acquire and use digital content for their computers, portable digital music and/or video players, cell phones, and video game systems.

NPD reported downloading and playing games is the most popular activity followed by watching downloaded movies, television, music videos or online streaming video content. The study says kids play games at an average of 44 minutes in one sitting.

By the time kids are 7 years old, more than one in 10 are downloading content in some form. In the 10-year-old age bracket, 22% of all kids included in the online survey are downloading. Half of all 14 year-olds included in the study were into downloading digital content.

How many kids with access to the Internet are actually surfing the net? The figure is a big 75%. Almost half of them are online and surfing the Internet without any assistance. Only 25% are surfing the Internet with their parents or someone else. The top sites visited by kids include Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network. MySpace and Yahoo! are also fave surfstops.

"Without a doubt, kids are digital content natives, seamlessly navigating between traditional and digital sources of media without missing a step," said The NPD Group. "To kids, there is nothing new or novel about digital sources of entertainment. The real challenge for marketers is to be one step ahead of their competition, providing the content and technology kids crave."

The Hollywood's worst nightmare is back! For quite some time, the movie industry thought the arrival of HD-DVD, Microsoft's bet in the next-gen video format wars, meant the end of the plague of piracy.

Then muslix64 came along claiming victory over the system's supposedly unbreakable security. Was it real or just a hoax meant to increase the incidence of stroke among movie studio execs?

Now the reports are coming in from people who took the app for a test drive. muslix64 has indeed succeeded in tearing down HD-DVD's security walls! In addition to the confirmation and gratitude for his efforts, muslix64b also received advice to protect his identity against possible legal actions the movie and content industries may take.

For details of the decryption codes' confirmation, please click the "Read" link below.

If you're in search of bargains, you best head for Circuit City before January 20. The store is currently offering a number of games with price tags that carry US$ 20 discounts. Among the titles listed on the bargain blocks are:

Xbox 360

• Eragon: $39.99 (reg. $59.99)
• NBA 2K7: $39.99 (reg. $59.99)

Nintendo Wii

• Rayman Raving Rabbids: $29.99 (reg. $49.99)
• Red Steel: $29.99 (reg. $49.99)

PSP

• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories: $29.99 (reg. $49.99)

Once again the special prices apply only until January 20. Nice treat really, if you ask us. Off you go so you can use the extra $20 clock on the "Read" link below to shop and save.

We interrupt the game news with hardware "news" (more sales figures, an exec says something quotable, intercorporate politics, and questions about game format).

Parts of the porn industry may have "sided" with HD-DVD, but according to NPD sales figures, Blu-ray is still way ahead. Not that the HD-DVD Xbox 360 add-on isn't moving: the MS hardware sold an impressive 92,000 units in the last two months of 2006! But Sony's Blu-ray has sold 687,000 units in the PS3.

Still, Richard Parsons, CEO of Time Warner (Time Warner supports both HD-DVD and Blu-ray) says the PS3 sales figure doesn't necessarily mean Blu-ray is winning the format war. "Do I think that the game console platform is really going to drive the conversion?" Parsons said, "I don't think so. People get those things [PS3s] to play games, not watch movies."

The real winner will be determined by the sales of HD-DVD and Blu-ray players. Or both could end up as losers with some companies opting to manufacture a compromise. Warner Brothers is fielding Total HD, a disc that can play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media. Meanwhile, LG Electronics has its Super Multi Blue player which plays both formats.

What would be interesting would be a hybrid HD-DVD/Blu-ray format. That should end all this brouhaha about which HD-DVD versus Blu-ray, so we can finally stop arguing about disc players and start talking about what matters most: game titles. Right? Right?

There are optimists who see half-empty glasses as half-full. Then there's the super-optimists who see an Olympic size swimming pool where the rest of us see a puddle. THQ is definitely a super-optimist. The company predicted its total sales for this financial year will hit US$ 1 billion dollars.

However, THQ didn't just pull that massive figure out of hat. The company raised its total sales outlook this fiscal year following the outstanding performance of its franchises such as Cars, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007, and Avatar: The Last Airbender that surpassed even THQ's expectations.

At the end December 31, the company earned US$ 475 million (above the projected US$ 400 to US$ 425 million). For the fourth quarter, the company expects about $146 million in sales.

"THQ's platform strategy served us very well this holiday with stronger than expected sales of mass-market franchises... across key current and next-generation hardware systems," said a very happy Brian Farrell, the very happy president and CEO of THQ. "This performance combined with our successful original property launches exclusively for next-generation systems have positioned THQ to achieve the significant milestone of $1 billion in sales for fiscal 2007."

Warhound, the shooter first announced for the PC, is now on its way to Xbox 360. In Warhound, gamers take on the role of a gun for hire - an elite mercenary whose office is anywhere in the world where conflicts need to be settled when everything else has failed. You serve everyone from presidents to businessmen and ordinary folks asking for speedy resolutions for festering conditions. Players get to choose a mission, get the job done, clean up the mess, and disappear into thin air.

Warhound from Techland features the following:

• SOS messages coming all over the world
• Gain the license of an Alpinist to climb harder, learn to operate new land and sea vehicles,  practice shooting and test weapons
• Each mission has a number of ways to reach the goal depending on player abilities
• Enemies are revived while missions can be repeated many times
• Buy better weapons and trade the equipment found on the battleground
• Buy information about the target
• Complete tasks to earn specialist level, build reputation to attract new orders and climb to the  top of the rank

 

Forget Trump and Rosie! If you're looking for spewing acid, the rumble is on between Microsoft and Sony with MS firing the first shot. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz at CES 2007, the general manager of MS game development group Chris Satchell called Sony's Playstation Network and Xbox Live "killer" a "disaster."

Not to be outdone, Peter Moore, Microsoft's interactive entertainment business vice-prez, said "It is not in Sony's DNA to be able to get that up and running from zero." According to Moore, unlike Sony, MS took four years to get to where it is today. "It's going to take them a couple of years to get up to speed on this. And I'm not sure that they necessarily have the talent, or that it's built into who they are as a company."

We've never heard such fighting words of this magnitude since Rosie called Trump a "pimp" and Donald called Rosie a "degenerate."

The full interview with Satchell will be posted by GamesIndustry.biz tomorrow. But you can read the full interview with Moore by clicking on the "Read" link below.

In the classic Christmas film "It's a Wonderful Life" Zuzu Bailey says "Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings." But in stores and malls everywhere, every time the cash register goes cha-ching a sale is made. For GameStop, the recent holiday shopping spree sent its cash register ringing to the tune of more than US$ 1.7 billion.

That's over US$ 1.7 billion made within the nine week period, beginning Black Friday, where everyone seems to be afflicted with the shopping madness.

GameStop says some of the sales were generated by the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360. But it was definitely the year of the DS with 918,000 units sold in November.

On the game side, GameStop listed the following titles as best-selling items:

• Gears of War
• Final Fantasy XII
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• Guitar Hero II
  
• WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2007

According to GameStop digits, total holiday sales in 2006 was up by a full 29% compared to 2005. And that, we suppose, is the best gift GameStop got for Christmas.

Unfortunately, wishing on a star doesn't always work. Case in point: Battlestar Galactica MMO for Xbox 360. The title actually made it to EBGames' Coming Soon list but that's as far as it goes. According to 1UP, Vivendi SA is a video game developer; formerly known as Vivendi Universal">Vivendi Universal Games issued the following statement about Battlestar Galactica MMO:

EBGames has removed the information because it was not accurate. Vivendi Games has not announced a Battlestar Galactica game. We cannot comment any further as it is our policy to not comment on industry rumors.

Oh, well, it was fun while the rumor lasted.

However, 1Up remains optimistic as BSG writer and director Ronald D. Moore seems determined to hitch his ship to a star. He's just trying to figure out how to turn the sci-fi series into a game that "everyone in the U.S." wants to play.