News From Kotaku:

Damn how did this one happen.  A Florida woman picked up some Pokemon valentines at her local Dollar General store, and found a blade in the cute little heart-shaped lollipop.

I really hope this was just an accident, and not some asshole trying to get his jollies off putting razors in  some kid’s candy.

Full story here: Ouch 

News From Ars Technica:

Well, all the shovelware is finally catching up to our little gaming machine.  The Wii has the lowest average scores of all the consoles.  PS3 is on top at an average score of just over 72% and the 360 is right behind it at about 70%.  Wii however, is at the bottom  at a 64% average.

Is this bad news for Wii owners?

Not really, in fact it’s good news if you ask me.  We are getting all the shovelware this generation.  That means the system is selling.  If you look back every console generation, the top system has always gotten loads of crappy games.  The good ones are what make them memorable.  Take a look back to see how many PS2, PSX or even NES games were just horrid.  Yeah, we will keep getting the bad games, but we also have the Nintendo exclusives.

No need to panic or be angry.  Just enjoy being at the top.  Developers get the hint when No More Heroes outsells Ninja Bread Man.

Original Article Here: Wii Averages 

Well, I couldn’t update yesterday because of my Internet connection.  My apologies to our readers…both of you.

I did find this really cool 16-Bit painting of Samus on Kotaku:

Well, I have to wake up early for work tomorrow, and its almost 3 AM, so I guess I should hit the hay. I will leave you with one more quick update.

Japanese Game Sales

News from Next-gen.com:

Activision predicts that the Wii will continue to dominate in 2008 selling somewhere over 6 million units.  The xbox360 will be second with somewhere between 4-5 million, while the PS3 stays behind at 3-4 million.

I think that the Wii will continue to do well, but perhaps they are giving the PS3 a little less credit than it deserves.  It is a very powerful system, and now with Blu-Ray winning the format war maybe things will pick up a bit for Sony.  Then again, Microsoft may adopt the format.  It will be an interesting year.  Glad to be a part of it.

Full article here: Wii 2008 

News from Ars Technica:

Matthew Jeffery of EA warns that a game degree at a college may not be the best way to get into the industry.  In a nutshell, he says that game industry degrees are so abundant that there are many graduates coming into the field.  He thinks that anyone interested should get a traditional degree such as computer science, rather than narrow their horizon by limiting their potential options to only one field.  Too many people graduate, cannot find jobs in the game industry, and have no knowledge of any other field.

Read it here: Game Degrees?