To gets fans more excited about the soon to be released PS2 game Suzumiya Haruhi no Tomadoi, Akihabara retailer Messe Sanoh have put a life-size Haruhi figure outside their store.

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We previously brought you video of the next installment in the Dragon Ball Z video game series. Thanks to a press release from Atari, we can now announce that it has been confirmed for a North American release this year and will be featured as a next-generation release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (Sorry, Wii-fans. Might be time to consider a second platform if you want this game)

Below we have a few screen shots we obtained from the press release by Atari. Full press release is contained herein after the jump.

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If you enjoyed the Budokai series of Dragonball Z games on the PS2, you might be interested in ‘Burst Limit‘ which will released for the PS3 and XBox360.

Source: Japanator

Update:  A 1000kbps Video Feed has been provided by NAMCO / BANDAI.

Since its inception people have been building innovative mashup applications using the Google Maps API. The otaku niche has so far been unexploited, but thanks to a new mashup by Akihabara Channel this is no longer the case.

The aim of the mashup, aptly named ‘Akihabara Map‘, is to show the location of all the otaku related shops in Akiba (Doujin, Figures, etc). English-language reviews of each store are available by a simple click of the corresponding placeholder pin. Additionally, stores displayed can be filitered to reflect your personal preferences.

I will hopefully be going to Japan next summer, so this map, and my copy of ‘Cruising The Anime City: An Otaku Guide To Neo Tokyo‘, will no doubt come in handy.

Link: http://akiba-ch.com/map/

Media Create, a marketing research group for the entertainment sector (similar to Nielsen Ratings), has issued a white paper for the 2008 Otaku Industry (yes, Otaku-dom is seen as an industry). According to this white paper, Japan’s otaku market stands at approximately $1.651 billion USD or ¥186.88 billion JPY.

The report breaks down as follows (thanks to ANN):

On the other side of the map, ICv2 has released a report on the North American otaku market which expands on the details they provided during a conference at the New York Anime Festival earlier this month, during which time they estimated the market to stand at $400 million USD for DVD Sales and $200 million USD for manga sales.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have gone nuts for gaming. We’ve seen it all from the World of Warcraft feature, “Make Love Not Warcraft” to even Super Mario being featured amongst other video game characters in the recent episode trilogy, Imaginationland.

Well, this weeks episode will be no exception to the emerging quo as the creators of South Park are bringing Guitar Hero into the fray. Dubbed “Guitar Queer-O”, the episode synopsis is as follows:

Stan and Kyle are hooked on Guitar Hero. But Stan’s superior skills on the video game damage his friendship with Kyle.

We’ll have to wait till Wednesday this week to see how South Park manages to make Guitar Hero more hilarious than it already can be at a party.

[ Kotaku via South Park Studios ]

Since I did not have time to post very much this week (lots of deadlines), I will instead post a summary of all that was interesting.

Japanese Second Life Competitor

ANN and others have been reporting on the announcement of a new Japanese virtual world, ‘meet-me’, which is now under development.

Included in the companies helping out with character design are anime studios Production I.G. and Studio Pierrot.

The setting for the game will be a virtual version of Tokyo. Expect to hear about an alpha version of the game late this year.

In releated news, Studio 4°C has announced it will be working on the design aspects of another virtual world called ‘Cyber Megacity: Tokyo’s 0th Ward’.

X-Japan Reunite

After being disbanded for 10 years, the surviving members of Japanese rock group X-Japan have said they will be reuniting to perform a new single and carry out a concert tour. The song will be a new vocal version of ‘Without You’, a tribute to Hide (the bands late guitarist). The first location for the tour will be Los Angeles.

Bleach Movie 2

It has been announced on the official Japanese Bleach movie website that a second Bleach movie will be released in Japanese cinemas this December.

Anime accounts for 26% of searches on Wikipedia

A testament to the popularity of anime outside of Japan, market research group Compete, Inc have released details on their blog which suggest that 26% of all searches on Wikipedia during the month of April were anime related!

The days of the real life Seiyuu (voice actors), at least for amateur anime productions, may be limited; Japanese software companies Animo and Celsys (who specialize in speech synthesis and anime/manga tools respectively) have teamed up to create a speech synthesis package which is specifically aimed at the anime, game, and entertainment industries.

The piece of software, known as Free Speech, will allow producers to easily generate narration and lines of dialogue according to their specification.

Animo and Celsys say that the software should allow independent and amateur creators to considerably reduce their costs.

Via: ANN

With the recent shooting at Virginia Tech, once again the question of whether or not violence in video games can really cause you to go over the edge and possibly even influence one’s judgement.

Self-proclaimed Crusader-Against-Video-Game-Violence, Jack Thompson, whom is never to far away when an event involving younger people and violence in some form and manner occurs, has already come out and stated that he believes the worst shooting in United States history, which occured not even 48 hours prior to this articles publication, is the result of video game violence. A full statement by Thompson has not yet been released. The problem is that Thompson has been proven false and in some cases, a liar in relation to certain claims of video game violence being linked to person’s choose to commit crimes. Like Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, however, I am saddened by the fact people like Thompson are able to get on national television and spew these erroneus, false, and biased statements. The man is also facing a review hearing before the Florida Bar Association which many hope will lead to disbarment (Losing the right to practice law).

However, It now seems though that Jack is not alone in his views. Dr. Phil McGraw (Pictured Left), whom is a relatively well known psychiatrist whom has his own TV show on which he attempts to solve problems with several individuals, appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live last night to discuss the massacre which took place at Virginia Tech. During the interview, Dr. Phil was asked by Larry, the following: “Why, though — OK, you want to kill someone, you’re crazed, you’re a little nuts, girlfriend drops you, why do you kill innocent people?”. In response, Dr. Phil stated the following:

Well, Larry, every situation is different… The question really is can we spot them. And the problem is we are programming these people as a society. You cannot tell me - common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high.

And we’re going to have to start dealing with that. We’re going to have to start addressing those issues and recognizing that the mass murders of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose.

Full transcript available here.

The question that must be asked is can violence in video games really cause someone to go over the edge? In my personal opinion, I find such to be a rediculous notion. Reason, because psychiatrist try to apply “standard” views to people whom have commited these acts. Can you really apply such views though? For someone to pick up a gun and kill any person for any reason, it has to go much deeper than “I played San Andreas and wanted to act it out”. You cannot just simply place the blame on video games. The practice of blaming entertainment for crime goes back a long time, even when graphic novels were once banned because they “incited youth to commit crimes”.

The next time you see Jack Thompson, listen to what he says, but take it with a grain of salt. Analyze his statement down to the letter. Then ask yourself the question, can video game violence lead to persons commiting crimes?

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24 hours after rearranging its entire Board of Director’s and Take Two is already receiving flak from politicians in New York over its upcoming video game, Grand Theft Auto IV, which is set to be released stateside this October 16th and in Europe on October 19th.

While hopeful gamers fawned over the trailer - helping to knock the servers hosting Rockstar Games and IGN to the ground, New York City officials lamented over its featuring of New York as the setting for Liberty City.

According to New York Daily News:

The latest version of an ultraviolent video game will unleash its murderous mayhem on the streets of New York.

And outraged political leaders say the rampant brutality of the game, Grand Theft Auto IV, has little in common with reality.

Commenting on the subject, City Councilman Peter Vallone of the Council’s Public Safety Commitee had this to say:

“Setting Grand Theft Auto in the safest big city in America would be like setting Halo in Disneyland.”

Rayond Kelly, Police Commissioner stated, “It’s despicable to glamorize violence in games like these, regardless of how far-fetched the setting may be”.

Despite these comments, their story seemed slightly biased and in some cases, entirely distruthful. As most people (whom have actually played the game, rather than listen to the negative press) are aware, you can not sell drugs to children, let alone anyone at all. You also do not [directly] advance through the game by killing prostitutes, although it can be done. However, according to the NY Daily News once again:

In previous incarnations, players advanced through the game by killing cops, selling pornography to children and killing prostitutes.

Such can lead one to believe that the writers of the article hasn’t played Grand Theft Auto a day in their lives, however, it is not far from the rhetoric of a certain other critic: Jack Thompson.

This is not the first time the setting for Grand Theft Auto has been in New York. It has been in Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 3, GTA: Liberty City Stories, and even made a brief appearance in San Andreas. Hence, this is obviously not the first time it has drawn negative remarks from New York City Officials. “The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers,” said Jason Post, speaking on behalf of New York City’s mayor.

Known as “Things Will Be Different”, the first trailer premiered for GTAIV yesterday. The latest character of the GTA series (featured right), bearing a rugged appearance and an accent hinting towards a Russian background, states the following as the trailer closes: “Life is complicated. I killed people, smuggled people, sold people. Perhaps here, things will be different.” Given the fact that this is Grand Theft Auto we’re talking about, that idea is extremely unlikely.

Take Two declined to comment on this story.

Below are various screenshots for the upcoming GTAIV.

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