Above, Australasian retailer Dick Smith Electronics makes a questionable choice in photo model/product prop combinations. According to Australia's ratings system, that kid legally wouldn't be able to buy Gears of War without being accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Industry and multi-console news

• The two largest owners of shares in Take-Two have cut down their holdings, while another shareholder is suing the company after management moved to give itself a pay increase.
• Eric Peterson of recently-acquired developer Vicious Cycle talks about the benefits and drawbacks of having your company acquired.
• Army of Two has debuted at number one on the newest UK sales charts.
• Gamasutra has extracts from a postmortem of Call of Duty 4 appearing in the newest issue of Game Developer magazine.
• This week's Rock Band tracks come from Black Tide, Paramore, and Serj Tankian. They're priced at $.99 each to offset the fact that you've never heard of them.
• Next Generation pulls out the charts and graphs to examine game revenue broken down by ESRB rating.
• Gamasutra has a feature examining the use of Parkour in video games, and how authentic these representations are to the real life activity.
• GamesIndustry.biz has an interview with Harmonix' Greg LoPiccolo. Among other things, he mentions that they want people to be able to introduce their own music into the "Rock Band ecosystem."
• Contrary to earlier reports, you can pause in Dead Space. Where the rumor came from is that you can't pause to change weapons or ammo.
• Gamer.tv has a twenty minute video feature centering on Battlefield: Bad Company.
• Square Enix has declared an intent to give all their games simultaneous releases worldwide from now on.
• University of Delaware student paper The Review has an article on Christian games that starts out well: "He shoots three times. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The enemy is down; he blows up three rocks to his left and victory is his. This sounds like a scene from the popular video game, 'Counter-Strike,' but it is not. It is from 'Exodus,' a popular Christian video game created by Wisdom Tree."
• The LA Times has an interview with Gore Verbinski about his plans to develop games, but you have to register to read it.
• A Texas District Attorney is under investigation for using public money to buy a gaming computer.
• Konami and Play.com have had to disqualify a leading player in their Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 tournament due to cheating.
• Valve has released the slides from their GDC presentations on their website for your perusal.
• Black Wing Foundation has announced third person shooter Salvation for the 360 and PC. I like how the press release just casually mentions "World war and death of genetic replicants of Christ and Antichrist drastically changed the mindset of people" as part of the back story with no further explanation.

PC and mobile news

New content:
Galactic Command: Echo Squad SE demo, Lost Empires: Immortals demo
New media: Starcraft II Zerg gameplay footage, Spore on the iPhone demonstration

• Matrix Games has announced Panzer Command: Kharkov.
• Bioshock is now $29.95 on Steam.
• Ars Technica has an interview with Audiosurf creator Dylan Fitterer.
• Amazon's deal of the day is Pirates of the Burning Sea for $29.99.

Nintendo news

New media: Eternity's Child first gameplay footage, Target Terror screenshots -- Spoiler: It's still hideous

• WiiWare has gotten an official date in Japan of March 25. There will be nine games available at launch, ranging in price from 500 to 1500 points.
• Tetris has also been announced for WiiWare.
• Joystiq has video of the final match of Nintendo's official Brawl tournament in New York.
• Wii Fit will be coming to Australia on May 8 for AU$149.95.
• IGN has launched Super Smash Bros. World, a site to download user-created levels or upload your own.
• People are reporting spotty online play in Smash Bros. Brawl, likely due to the sheer number of people trying to do it.Playing with friends seems to work fine, it's the "with anyone" fights that are the problem.
• Joystiq also reminds that there are ways to get voice chat during an online Brawl match -- you can use Xbox Live. Or PSN. Or a phone.
• France's national football team has been barred from playing the Wii by their coach to avoid risking injury.
• Eurogamer continues their list of cult classics on the Gamecube.
• A listing for Elebits 2 on the DS has appeared on Gamefly's website.
• A pirated copy of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronices: Ring of Fates spreading around the Internet is giving people a "Thank you for playing" message after about 10 minutes. It's unknown if this is a mislabeled demo copy, a fake deliberately circulated by Square, or the full game just reacting to certain hardware (like when Super Metroid would give you its anti-pirating message if you used a Game Genie without putting in the master code).

Sony news

• NIS America has responded to complaints that Disgaea 3 looks like a PS2 game, saying the "PS2 lacks the processing power and memory capacity to support Disgaea 3." They claim "the character sprites for Disgaea 3 take 3~4 times the amount of labor to create compared to Disgaea 2."
• Top-down shooter Novastrike has been announced for the Playstation Network for Q2 2008.
• If you pre-order Haze at EBGames Canada, you can trade it back in for full in-store credit if you get it back to them within a week. ...What?
• Amazon has Eye of Judgment with the Playstation Eye camera for $46.92.

Microsoft news

New content: Rock Band tracks, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic - Elements maps, classes and weapons

• European 360 owners can't play Army of Two online with American 360 owners.