Gee, I wonder if the fact NPD doesn't count ANY big box stores in the US might skew the results? I wonder...NOT. Come on, people, NPD is not the total count of sales. All that can be said is, 'they might be used a a "guide" to sales' as long as the game isn't something a Wal-mart buyer would buy like...err sports games, music games, movie ip games. Then of course in many states box-stores are the only store within 100 miles for gamers . [That would be 799.998 furlongs for you fine Englishmen.]

So yeah, except for huge selling segments in gaming in half of the United States the NPD count covers everything. [face hand]

The sad part is someone silly and foolish at SCEA or SCEE leaked this. What Sony shoudl do is only tell full details to people who NEED to know full details. There were likley people who knew about GO simply because Sony has too many management meeting with people that don't need to know everything.

Sony should send someone to Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Program. These people have been doing hush-hush projects for years and likley know how to structure organaizations that need to 'build things' with thusands of people collaborating, yet can also keep secrets. Sony doesn't need to be as secure as 'The Skunk Works' but there are likley managment methods that can be adopted that reduce leaks.

I wasn't sure it was going to be what it’s was presorted to be, but to not publish it seems like a 'censorship' backlash. This of course isn't really censorship because it likely can get picked up by another publisher, but the whole point of outcry was "This better be good" not "Nobody should make this", so responsibility Konami had was to make sure it was good.

The backlash against this decision ‘not’ to publish should be just as strong. Sadly people are weak simple minded things they will bitch about the idea of this game more then they will bitch about a publisher making it harder for a game to see an honest airing of it point of view.

People might as well just read "Revolutionaries at Sony: The Making of the Sony Playstation and The Visionaries Who Conquered The World of Video Games” by Reiji Asakura.

Much of what is presented here in short form is explained far more fully and in far more interesting manner in the book above. If you even hope to understand the first PlayStation system you need to read Reiji Asakura's book. Better still the books is actually very interesting full of backstabbing and twists. Of extreme interest is how people at Sony actively tried to sink the whole project and even employees intimately involved with Sony’s early efforts in making games actively tried to kill the project in favor of Philips CDi.

I think like most articles on the subject is has a theory about why more women are needed, but then drifts into fantasy land. I find its ironic that they article settles into the comedian’s trick of making social observations like “Women are like this and men are like that...PUNCHLINE. Ha Ha!

If I were to say to women gamers I know “Men want to win and women want to socialize” they’d sneer at me as their fist landed on my nose. All gamers play for all sorts of reasons, and I would bet and most people want to do both. If you looked at not how they self-identify their actions but just looked at their actions we’d see mean socialize about as much a women play to win just as much.

That is what is wrong ever time ties discussion comes up the arguments fall into deep stereotyping be before you hit paragraph three. And nobody wants to examine the games made when women were either. In most cases if you did that you’d find that the game made are usually games gamers of both sexes play. A women designer would be under the same industry wide pressures to produce the same games. Or am I to understand developers don't look at the bottom line when a lady is present? Am I wrong that Lara Croft would be in a head-to-toe mu-mu and not shorts and t-shirt if a woman made it? I don’t think I’m wrong in either case. Women in charge or men in charge would change very little in the substance of games, the characters portrayed or the amount of skin, course language or sexual innuendo.

Why?

Because women in the industry wouldn't be caricatures either, they would be professionals who would have to fight within the same market pressures as always. Women in the industry have so far defied the stereotypes and produced not games for women but for the most part games for gamers.