This week, several things cropped up on the radar which collectively suggest some sort of tipping point. Or, I suppose, more likely that the point has tipped and we are starting to see the effects.

The first announcements were released in conjunction with the event, Casual Connect. Sony Online announced the relaunch of Station.com, a portal for the casual experience of games, including access to trials of Sony's MMOs. Nickelodean announced plans to spend $100 million over the next two years on casual games and virtual worlds. Oh, and did I mention that casual games are still dominated by female players?

Gamasutra didn't pick it up, but this week also saw the news that Barbie Girls, a virtual world aimed at, you might guess, preteen girls, experienced astonishingly explosive growth, reaching 3 million users in sixty days.

And you thought WoW was popular.

Then in recent game announcements, Ubisoft released details on a new series of games specifically for girls. The Imagine series include aspirational games based on professions, like fashion designer, veternarian, and figure skater. There's also a virtual baby doll with Imagine Babyz. Throw in Imagine Equestrienne and I'm so there.

Speaking of things equine, Atari is coming out with a horse-riding simulation game, My Horse and Me. The language in the official PR is carefully gender-neutral, speaking very coolly of the "Horse-enthusiast community", but you cannot convince me that in North America, at least, this game is not targeted specifically at horse-crazy girls between the ages of seven and fourteen. Which is to say, nearly all girls.

You may also have read that the PS3 has finally sold 1 million units in Japan eight months after launch. It took the Wii six weeks to reach the same milestone. Why? In part because flocks of non gamers (many of them women) bought a console, some, I've no doubt, for the first time in their lives.

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Except that Sony lost its sense its sense of shame so very long ago. It amazes me that someone thought an obnoxiously "hip hop" fake fan site was a good idea.

If you had any sense at all you'd just take down that blight on the internet right now.

This makes me embarrassed to be a gamer. I mean, *that* is what you think is going to work on us? It doesn't.

I wonder how much the marketing company was paid for this?

I think it's only fair play. You deserve to know why we can't give you information. Luke Smith lays it all out for you, and you can read for yourself some of the ridiculous bullshit we deal with. If Square's gonna send us something like this, well, we're gonna tell people.

What makes this insanely crazy is that their policies are about a game that has already come out in Japan. We're getting an import version (like every other game pub). BUT we're expected to adhere to their schedule of embargoes. They're trying to dictate exactly what happens and when it happens to an extent that reaches into the realm of ridiculous.

I think it's important to expose this, because maybe it'll embarrass them. God, I hope it does. And I hope it provokes some changes.

Gamers are pissed and Nintendo is brilliant.

Wii. A lot of people hate it. I'd say the quick growth of posts over the last day has proved that a lot of gamers think the name is silly, ranging on childish. Not a few have declared it's the worst console name ever. Some have asked what Nintendo was thinking. The major news outlets have picked up the story.

Which is why I think Nintendo is so smart in using "Wii" as a name.

Awesome public health advertisement uses the video game metaphor to encourage the use of contraceptives in young women and girls.

Thanks to Nicole from Quebec to pointing me to this!

David "Masters of DOOM" Kushner contributes a story on the presence of women in online gaming spaces like EA's Pogo. We've known this for a while of course: there are LOTS of female gamers online, but because they are classified as "casual" gamers we don't hear a lot about them. As the industry expands, though, that's going to change.

A related article in AdAge adresses attempts to market to these female gamers - for example, Coca-Cola's Vanilla Coke Mystery Game.

Maybe you've heard the story of the Merzbow Mercedes? Swedish record label Releasing Eskimo put out a special limited edition of Japanese Noise musician Merzbow's "Noise Embryo" album in an unusual format: a used Mercedes 230. When you turned the car on, the CD player started playing the album, and it was impossible to stop it or turn it off without turning off the car.

This got me thinking about all the weird game-related schwag we've seen over the years. Currently, I'd say Tecmo are the reigning schwag champions, with their Kasumi body pillow and their Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball swimwear, but let's not neglect the days of yore, when Infocom classics were accompanied by magazines, pens, sundials, and more. No fantasy game worth the plastic it was printed on came without a cloth "mapkin." Even some modern freeware has associated schwag available for purchase. And who could forget the seminal Rez Trance Vibrator?

Mere t-shirts are for uncreative Philistines! What are the best pieces of gaming schwag you've encountered? What schwag would you love to see (if only to marvel at the audacity of the marketing department who okayed it)?

This morning, CNN reports that Japanese video game maker Taito will rerelease the all-time classic Space Invaders -- from the accompanying photograph, apparently the somewhat less classic color version -- to the United States in an arcade enclosure. Taito plans to sell the units through Namco, which retains U.S. distribution outlets, for a reported 300,000 yen. That's 24 million rupiahs. Seriously, though, it's a chunk of change. Approximately US$2,800. Immediately, you must be thinking, as I was, that Taito's marketing people have lost their pachinko balls; or they're shipping the units through Thailand, where the pressboard arcade enclosures are stuffed with special, organically grown all-natural "padding" and then ferried along to North America.

I was working on my favorite open source 3d game engine yesterday when I chanced to glance over at my AIM list and saw this ad staring back at me.

Well, if that don't beat all. It makes sense, really. Final Fantasy XI requires an interweb connection, so their target audience overlaps with AIM users quite nicely, especially as we come up to the big winter gift-swap. Has anybody actually done this to figure out what the mission is? Do they just stick you on a big spim list?

While we're at it, how about a rousing round of "what's your favorite videogame marketing innovation?"

Microsoft has been steadily back-pedalling their beefy sized console and controllers. For the Japanese market, they released a special, smaller "S" controller. Originally, this was made to cater to smaller East Asian hands, now ithe S size controllers ship standard with all machines since most people have sub-Paul Bunyan sized grabbers. Besides that, the machine itself is a Buick. Rumors have been bandied about in the last few months that they are working on Xbox 1.5 with a smaller footprint.

Smaller controllers, compact console - it seems Microsoft no longer wants to be known as the swollen game device maker. So why are they going in on this promotion with McDonalds?

"For many years we've allowed our customers to Super Size their meal combos, giving them larger fries and drinks with their sandwiches," said McDonald's vice-president of marketing Carrie Yang. "Now, in cooperation with Microsoft, we're giving our customers an even bigger option - Xbox Size!"