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Canada's game industry awards itself

With a growing number of high-end studios springing up in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, Canada’s video game and animation industry has officially come into its own.

With a growing number of high-end studios springing up in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, Canada’s video game and animation industry has officially come into its own.

But while this is a phenomena that largely flourished in separate tech potato patches – largely powered by young, entrepreneurial Canadians who saw both the market and the potential in our educated but under utilized workforce – independent companies have recently seen to put a unified face on our national video game and animation industry. If you can build a proven tech industry, so the wisdom goes, they will come – look at Silicon Valley.

The entire game and animation industry racks up over $30 billion in worldwide sales, and projections continue to be rosy as video game revenues are beginning to surpass the motion picture industry.

Although it’s a loose national association at this point – companies are extremely competitive and often battle over skilled workers – it’s about to get a lot stronger with the inaugural Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts ( www.ceaa.com ). All of the nominees for the award are now posted on the website, with Ubisoft and Electronic Arts garnering most of the attention.

The ceremony will take place Sept. 14 in Vancouver, with companies, programmers, animators and other industry personnel recognized in 45 different categories.

The award statues, called Elans, will be appropriately presented by Canadian sci-fi star William Shatner in two major categories – animation and gaming. As well, 13 students will be recognized for their efforts and contributions to the industry.

Games not so bad says industry

While Canadian gaming companies are celebrating their recent successes, the International Game Developers Association is fighting back against a growing number of politicians, parent groups, and religious organizations that are complaining about violence, sex and language in video games.

The association is not denying that many popular titles are violent, or the fact that "Mature" ratings are being slapped on a growing number of games. Their beef is the fact that they’re being judged by a double standard – for example, about half of the movies released by Hollywood are rated "R", while "M" video games only account for about 15 per cent of titles.

Furthermore, they believe the standards are being enforced differently – a review of retailers found that more than half will deny "M" video games to minors 17 and under, while only seven per cent will stop minors from purchasing "R" movies.

Blu Ray vs. HD DVD – tomato vs. tomatta?

With both the Sony-backed Blu Ray and Toshiba-backed HD-DVD high definition DVD formats officially on the market and movie studios preparing to release the first salvo of titles for both players, the format wars got a little more interesting this past week.

As predicted, Microsoft is releasing a companion HD-DVD player that connects to their Xbox 360 console, which many expect to retail for around $200 U.S. That brings the company’s console more or less even with the Sony Playstation 3, which will come with a built-in Blu Ray player.

When it comes to overall price, however, buying an Xbox 360 plus the HD-DVD player (plus a wireless connector, plus Xbox Live), is now more expensive than buying a once perceived as overpriced PS3. And the PS3 comes with a 60 gig hard drive (versus an external 20 gig drive for Xbox 360), as well as an HDMI output for easy high definition connectivity.

But the benefit of going with an Xbox 360 is still evident. If Blu Ray eventually beats HD DVD in the format wars, all you’re losing is about $200 for the external player compared to $400-$800 for a regular player.

With the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 facing off in the market this fall, the console wars should be interesting to say the least. Experts are predicting that Sony will once again lead the market when all is said and done – buoyed by heavy sales in Europe and Asia – but only by a marginal number of consoles as Nintendo and Xbox 360 gain significant ground on the Playstation empire.

The good news for consumers who don’t care about the console wars and are more worried about the Blu Ray vs. HD DVD battle, several companies are already looking at ways to produce a player that can handle both formats. In other words, if you’re worried about buying the wrong system (whatever system winds up as the Betamax of 2K7) hold on a little while – in another year you may not need to choose at all.

Website of the Week

www.pogo.com is the creation of Electronic Arts. It’s basically a free gaming site where people can sign up to play a wide range of fun and often extremely challenging titles, from strategy games to card games to two dimensional arcade-style games. My current nemesis is Poppit! – damn you Level 4!

The bonus is that players can rack up actual tokens that can be used to buy products and enter draws for prizes and money. It takes a lot of tokens to amount to anything, but if you’re going to be playing games anyway…