- Take-Two has fired its auditor. As the article reminds us, this follows the very public, very ugly resignation of the chair of Take-Two’s audit committee. The stuff of nightmares for an investor…
- Microsoft has acquired Peter Molyneux’s Lionhead Studios. Will this help make Lionhead the next Maxis? Or the next high-profile flop?
- Interesting transcript of a debate over the connotations of the term “user-generated content.” Normally, I hate this sort of thing; it feels like a meaningless game of semantics. But perhaps it would be useful to employ a term (“authentic media” is suggested) that bestows more respect on creative users. But then, there’s objection to my use of the term “user”, too. Oh, screw it.
- Interview of Andrew Pedersen, Executive Producer of Pogo (EA’s casual game service). Useful insights in general, plus these quick facts: 11M monthly visitors, 300K concurrent users, and 1.2M subscribers paying $30 per year for premium access.
- Via Arstechnica, word that people who play EA’s Xbox 360 games online are automatically subscribed onto EA mail lists, and that requesting to be unsubscribed strips you of access to online play. Can’t say I understand EA’s thinking, here; there’s already some (mostly negligible) risk in auto-subscribing customers to a mail list without explicit consent … slapping irritated customers with a penalty for delisting themselves seems like a great way to seriously piss people off.
