//beconfused

Electronic Arts to acquire BioWare and Pandemic. I’m just a little disappointed. Both are good good studios. I much prefer EA to stop buying game studios. One day, perhaps there will be like 5 game companies in the world only - EA, Vivendi Universal, Nintendo, Microsoft and Square Enix. This came a week after Microsoft and Bungie split up which I thought was quite surprising actually.

EA To Acquire BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) today announced an agreement with Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holding Corp. — the owner of both BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios. This acquisition gives EA a strong competitive position in key genres in interactive entertainment: action, adventure and role-playing games. The two studios have been recognized for creating some of the highest-quality games in the industry.

BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios have ten franchises under development, including six wholly owned games. BioWare Corp. is currently developing the highly anticipated Mass Effect, which will be published by Microsoft in November, and is in the early development stages of a massively multiplayer online game. Pandemic Studios is redefining open-world games with its upcoming Mercenaries 2: World in Flames™ and Saboteur™, in addition to several unannounced projects.

Pandemic Studios and BioWare Corp. employ roughly 800 people across four studios located in Edmonton, Canada; Los Angeles; Austin; and Brisbane, Australia.

“These are two of the most respected studios in the industry and I’m glad to be working with them again. They’ll make a strong contribution to our strategic growth initiatives on quality, online gaming and developing new intellectual properties,” said John Riccitiello, EA’s Chief Executive Officer. “We also expect this will drive long-term value for our shareholders.”

With this new gobble, EA just became stronger.

Read more at Kotaku.

Microsoft is in talks to buy Facebook stake

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft Corp. is in talks with Facebook Inc. about making an investment in the social-networking startup that could value Facebook at $10 billion or more, according to people familiar with the matter.

Microsoft’s approach to Facebook in recent weeks with proposals to invest in the fast-growing site is part of the software giant’s effort to catch up with the Internet rival Google. If successful, Microsoft’s talks with Facebook could give it an up-to-5% stake in the closely-held startup — a stake potentially valued at roughly $300 million to $500 million, the people familiar with those talks said.

The people familiar with the matter said that the discussions are still preliminary and Facebook could wind up not taking an investment from either Microsoft or Google. Factors in the discussions include the valuation the suitors would offer to Facebook and other business considerations they could contribute to sweeten any deal.

A Facebook spokeswoman and spokesmen for Microsoft and Google declined to comment.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Microsoft previously had an arrangement to serve advertisements at Facebook. Social Networking is kinda the in thing this year, isn’t it? Google has Orkut already, although the membership haven’t been exactly impressive. Somehow Facebook just have something special I guess.

Sony Pictures has openly invited Toshiba and Microsoft to join the Blu-ray Disc Association. The IFA event saw an official announcement from Toshiba and the HD DVD Promotion Group about the lowering of prices for both HD DVD stand-alone players as well as for laptops with HD DVD drives, trying to fight the format war on price points.

Here is some of the points Blue-ray camp brought up:

“Never thought the price was an issue… when it comes to investing in a state of the art entertainment system with HD-Ready television and surround sound system, having to spend a bit extra to get Blu-ray, we feel, isn’t going to drive customers away. It’s the bigger picture we are looking at”.

Never thought that price is an issue? Someone should be fired here.

“The DVD format was good, but profitability only lasted for a couple of years before there was no money to be had in the hardware market”, said Marty. “We believe consumers are smart enough to realise the benefits and pay the extra accordingly.”

Actually the Blue-ray camp is being rather honest isn’t it. Everyone wants profit. The point that “consumers are smart enough to realize the benefits and pay the extra accordingly” irks me though. I am apparent quite stupid so please enlighten me.

“People aren’t interested in downloading videos at the moment. The internet is a good way of delivering music but not video”, said Eklund. “Blu-ray has a good 8 to 10 years before the Internet catches up.”

What?! People not interested in downloading videos? They actually wanted to if the price actually is more friendly. Look at what they’re doing with BitTorrent. And YouTube, which streams video is quite popular isn’t it? I conclude that this guy don’t use the internet, spend all his fortune on Blue-ray disk and is stabbing a HD-DVD voodoo doll right now.

Full report at Pocket-lint

Just last week Venturer Electronics announced a US$199 HD-DVD player. HD-DVD is region free. I don’t support either formats, but I certainly feel paying a thousand for a player is ridiculous. We shall wait and see.

Not sure if you guys have actually seen this, the Odex parody video:

XEDO Holocaust

And just in case you don’t know what is Odex:

In Singapore, the piracy of Japanese animation has gotten quite a bit of press coverage. I know many people downloading anime. One of the local anime distributers, Odex, decided to start demanding payment from people who download from sources such as BitTorrent. While they’re generally and lawful to pursue this matter, their approach is not favorable among the local anime community.

They demanded a monetary settlement from the downloaders of about $3000 which they claim is the fees that were spent on issuing the lawsuit. Such bullying tactics has caused several to boycott Odex products. I looked at Odex products at HMV feeling disgusted by their ways. To worsen matters, ISP Singnet and Starhub revealed their subscriber details.

But as the Odex saga is coming to an end, it’s interesting to watch the supposedly good guys turn bad and hated all around town. Odex didn’t do anything wrong when they start whining people are downloading their anime. It’s the all suing thing that just sucks. I think there’s plenty to learn from this. Don’t be overly righteous. And be more sensitive to what you say in forums.

I was searching through CASE (Consumer Association of Singapore) with Google and I found this little section where they tell you some CASE tales. One of which goes this way:

A consumer had been using a set of kitchenware from a direct sales company for several years, but then received a phone call from a lady, asking for permission to send personnel to her flat to check the kitchenware. She agreed, thinking that she was calling from the company. The ‘technician’ that came to her flat told her that the kitchenware was defective, and not safe for cooking food. She was ‘persuaded’ to purchase a new set of kitchenware (and paid S$1,000 as deposit), which she later found out, was from another direct sales company instead. She approached CASE for assistance and advice.

CASE wrote in on behalf of the consumer to the 2nd direct sales company, citing that it had violated the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act, by making misleading/false claims, and by not informing her of the 3-day cooling-off period. The vendor eventually made a partial refund of S$800 to the consumer. (Source: CASE)

(more…)

My mother just got cheated by some salesperson and is to pay $3200 for a wok and 6 lame designer pots that she doesn’t need. I’m sorry I’m just fucking pissed with the 2 salesladies.

They came to our house at 2, my mother let them in and it was a prearranged meeting. They gotten hold of our contact because my mother bought pots and pans from them 30 years ago. Can you believe it? Thirty years ago! God hasn’t created me that time.

And today, they came and start introducing. I have nothing against them trying to sell a product. They talked till 5. I was a little afraid that my mother would buy the product so I went to check on her.

Me: What are you selling?
She: A set of pots and woks, they win a Red Dot Design award and… (I don’t remember what she said, she talked for 5 minutes while I was eating an egg tart.)
Me: How much does it cost?
She: Oh, you can’t buy it.
Me: (puzzled) So why are you here?
She: I am here to conduct a survey.
Me: No, you’re selling something. How much does it cost?
She: You cannot buy this outside one. This set is exclusive.
Me: So how much does it cost? (I was feeling so what-the-fuck that time.)
She: This one is only available because your mother is a customer and she bought another set of pots and pans 30 years ago. She can trade in and get these new set of pots and woks in an exclusive deal.
Me: How much? (By then I am losing my patience.)
She: 3000-plus.

Conduct a survey. My ass. This type of sales tactic I see before like a hundred times. I left the house and my mother convinced me that she would not buy it. And guess what, my brother just informed me my mother decided to purchase it. (more…)

PARTY princess Paris Hilton is $60 million out of pocket after her billionaire grandfather - appalled by her jail term for drink-driving offences - axed her inheritance.

Family patriarch Barron Hilton was already embarrassed by his granddaughter’s wild behaviour - notably when her home sex video was leaked on the internet.

But the 79-year-old considered her 23-day sentence last month the last straw.

“He was, and is, extremely embarrassed by how the Hilton name has been sullied by Paris,” says Jerry Oppenheimer, who wrote a biography of the clan called House Of Hilton.

“He now doesn’t want to leave unearned wealth to his family.”

Hilton senior, the only member of the family left with a sizeable stake in the huge hotel chain, has let it be known that he intends to donate to charity the $2.4bn he will gain from this month’s sale of the company to private equity firm Blackstone.

[via Digg, original source is News.com.au]

Please note that the above article is a hoax, please read more at TMZ.