Always helpful! You can watch a report by Ohio local news affiliate WBNS here showing what happened when they took a simple computer problem to three major computer repair services -- Circuit City's Firedog, Best Buy's Geek Squad and Micro Center's... dude. Alternately, you can apply common sense to know you should never go to any of these places.

Photo source here.

Industry and multi-console news

• EA has proposed a take-over of Take Two. Gamespot has a Q&A with EA's CEO about it. However, Take Two has dismissed the deal for now, saying EA undervalued their business and the offer was only being made now to get in on the coming wave when GTA4 launches. Take-Two says they'll be willing to talk about a price after the game ships.
• GDC: Kim Swift and Erik Wolpaw give a post-mortem on Portal.
• GDC: Mike Capps and Jeff Morris present an Unreal Tournament III post-mortem.
• GDC: Steve Fawkner talks about the trouble in getting a publisher to believe in Puzzle Quest. Gamespot also has a preview of their next game, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix.
• GDC: Peter Redding talks about Far Cry 2 and its inspiration, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
• Take a guess. More GDC: Game designers rant on making games that matter.
• Street Fighter IV will come to US arcades, though Capcom is having trouble finding a distributor for it. Most of them now only deal with ticket games. Several specialty arcades have already special ordered cabinets from importers, though.
• The Australian government is considering adding a new R18+ game rating to go beyond their current strongest rating of MA15+. This would hopefully cut down on the number of games that are refused classification and are thus essentially banned.
• Play This Thing talks about why we need game criticism and why game reviews aren't it. "I'm sure the newspapers of early 19th century America ran reviews of the novels of James Fenimore Cooper; they are utterly forgotten, and should be, because by nature they were of interest only to the readers of the newspapers of the time. Contrariwise, Mark Twain's Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses is still considered an examplar of literary criticism."
• Joystiq has video of Jonathan Coulton playing Still Alive in Rock Band.
• A GTA-like board game called Don't Drop the Soap has become the focus of some controversy mainly because it was created by the son of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, the same woman who voted in 2006 to legislate video games in Kansas because “Video games and music lyrics promote violence…" A Republican legislator is now calling for an investigation of the board game and its ties to the governor.
• Insult Swordfighting has the results of some not entirely scientific stress tests on modern console controllers.

PC and mobile news

New content: Neverwinter Nights 1.69.8105 beta 6 patch
New media: CryEngine 2 reality test video -- A side by side comparison between that "colored balls bouncing down the street" Bravia TV ad and a recreation of it in CryEngine 2

• GDC: Developers from Crytek present a Crysis post-mortem.
• The developers of Penny Arcade Adventures say they're aiming for a new episode every four months.
• EA has announced Sims Carnival, a YouTube-like site where users create their own Sims-themed games.
• The US intelligence community -- there is one -- is working on software to detect violent extremists in online virtual worlds like World of Warcraft. It looks like they've got some work ahead of them, as they don't even know what normal behavior looks like yet. "Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world." Won't he be surprised when he finds out that everyone sounds like a violent extremist online.

Nintendo news

New media: Boom Blox gameplay footage, Mario Kart Wii trailer

• GDC: Louis Castle talks about the development of Boom Blox.
• If you're ready to just give up over the whole mess with Guitar Hero III on the Wii, Activision is now offering full refunds.
• The creator of WiiWare title Eternity's Child is already working on his next game: A DS game called Imagination is the Only Escape about a young Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied France imagining a fantasy world to escape the horrors of the Holocaust.

Sony news

New media: Secret Agent Clank gameplay footage, Patapon trailer

• More details on Wipeout HD have come out of GDC.
• There are also new details on the second card set for Eye of Judgment.
• LucasArts is now prioritizing PS3 development.
• The Home beta should see a significant update this week.
• According to an email from retailer GAME, Gran Turismo 5 will not hit the UK until 2009.

Microsoft news

• The 360 HD-DVD player has been officially discontinued.
• GameSetWatch examines the royalty rate changes for Live Arcade games.
• Details have been released on the next batch of Ace Combat 6 DLC.