I just finished reading Game Over: Press Start to Continue: The Maturing of Mario by David Sheff and Andy Eddy awhile back. Since it had such a nice business slant, I posted my review over at my business blog at wannabeMogul.com–even though I really read the book because of my incredible urge as a childhood Nintendo fanboy.

If you haven’t read this book and want to learn more about the gaming industry, read it. I suggest checking Half.com or Amazon to try and pick up a used copy.

The book is a great read even if you aren’t a Nintendo fan.

The really interesting part of the book is how it sheds a light on what Microsoft might have been thinking when they launched the Xbox and how much Nintendo’s plan for the NES might have influenced that.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I have often pondered as Seth Godin did why more money isn’t saved by the consumer when they choose to make a purchase online rather than in a physical store.

When you purchase an item online rather than in a store, you could argue that you are saving the company the expense of stocking the item and hiring an employee to check you out and bag the item. If you are already covering the cost of shipping, shouldn’t there be more savings?

The same goes for online rentals. In reality, it’s just a file server spitting out the file to you, so why pay as much as you do a service like Blockbuster–or even Netflix–who stocks and distributes a physical copy of the media from a staffed distribution center? Even counting costs associated with producing and serving the file over the Internet and rights payments, Apple has to be making more money off each rental than Blockbuster.

Is Apple just trying to prevent a complete breakdown of the rental industry by pricing their rental service close to what is actually charged by Blockbuster or are they simply looking to make as much money as possible while they can?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

It all started with a Kotaku post under “Rumor” that Jeff Gerstmann, longtime editor and game reviewer at Gamespot, had been fired because of pressure from Eidos, publisher of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, after Gerstmann gave the game a 6.0/10. Eidos has a huge ad campaign running on Gamespot that had to be redirected from pointing to the review to pointing at the official Kane & Lynch site after word of the review score got out.

A Penny Arcade cartoon later, the Internet was full of gossip and no comments as everyone sought to get to the bottom of it all. The text review of the game was edited, and the video review disappeared under fishy circumstances.

Since then, there has been some moving and shaking, but nothing has been really determined. Gamers seem to be coming to a boil all over the Internet about this latest controversy because if indeed Gerstmann was fired mainly for not catering to the advertiser, it threatens game journalism’s integrity.

The most disturbing piece of the whole mystery comes from an anonymous commentator on Valleywag known as only “gamespot.” Kotaku summed up his several comments. Together, they paint the picture that Gamespot is becoming more and more advertiser-friendly and business-controlled with less editorial control. That’s not exactly what gamers want from their game review houses, so it is really getting people riled up now.

This whole situation is disgusting with each new bit of info popping out through the cracks. Enjoy your brand-building CNET family, you just pissed off your core readerbase. Have fun living that down. When you start wondering why your hits are plummeting into the crapper, just look back to this.

-Nikilii, commenter at Kotaku.com

My personal take on this whole situation is that there must be some hidden facts that we just don’t know yet about this situation. Even though the timing seems right if Gamespot was going to make a drastic move like this and get all the gamers upset–considering the big game push for the holidays is on a down swing–I don’t think that Gamespot would have overlooked the timing in relation to the Kane & Lynch fiasco. They would have had to realize that they should wait just a few weeks simply to offset any suspicious correlations.

Most journalistic institutions also understand the need to keep the business end of things away from the editorial side, and I wouldn’t jump to blame Gamespot of trying to combine the two until there was more hard evidence.

Rumor is that more will be heard officially on Tuesday.

Until then, gamers can only wait, argue and speculate over whether they should be suspicious of one of the major gaming hubs of the Web.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!