Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Grand Theft Auto IV is still a long time from store shelves, but the teaser trailer has caused a typical Rockstar Games stir amongst conservatives. Exactly what Rockstar wants.
The popular and controversial Grand Theft Auto franchise has been both lucrative and legal intensive enterprise for Rockstar games and their long time publisher Take Two.
The release of the trailer for number four in the Grand Theft Auto series has seen a similar reaction by the public, with gamers in their thousands downloading glimpses of the product they will undoubtedly be saving up for now.
Meanwhile, Gaming Media has been pulling the teaser apart frame by frame to get and angle and insight into what may be in store for budding video gang members all over the world.
The setting for GTAIV is Liberty City, the fictional metropolis first introduced in the Liberty City Stories GTA for the PlayStation Portable system a few years back. Liberty City looks remarkably like real life New York City, right down to the Brooklyn Bridge and Statue of Liberty!
And it is this link that has supposedly caused some form of outrage from New Yorks top levels, irritated at the association of their home town to a game franchise at the top of most radical conservatives’ list of ‘bad things in society’.
"The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers," New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement.
Meanwhile Raymond Kelly, the real life New York City police commissioner said, "It's despicable to glamorize violence in games like these, regardless of how far-fetched the setting may be,"
To tell you the truth, I don’t see these statements as complete outrage, simply the comments of a politician toeing the company line when it comes to video game conservative commentary.
Ask Mayor Manny Dias of Miami Florida how he felt about depiction of Grand Theft Auto III set in Vice City, or to put it another way, a digital Miami. Most likely you would have elicited a similar response. However, if you had asked Bloomberg at the same time, you would have also elicited a similar response.
It does not matter what link there is to a real life city in Grand Theft Auto. The vast majority of conservative politicians would have almost word for word made the same statement as Bloomberg or Kelly. It is their job.
Still for Rockstar and Take Two, the result is desirable. Raise the hype bar for an upcoming release, this – apart from the excellent games themselves – is what they do best.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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