Welcome back to Jetsetter, Digital Trends’ weekly look at the international gaming scene. The United States is the biggest game market in the world by a wide margin. Given how many games are made to suit the American palette—Call of Duty and Madden NFL just to name two—it’s sometimes hard to remember that there are 6.7 billion people beyond our borders making and playing games. Jetsetter is here to give you the tiniest glimpse into the immensity that is gaming in the other 195 countries covering the planet Earth.
Jetsetter is also intended as an open dialogue. If you’re in Polynesia and your next door neighbor is cooking up some sweet Nintendo DS homebrew game, let us know in the comments section below. Anything you want to tell us, any feedback at all, will only make the column better so hit us up or hit me up on Twitter at @ajohnagnello.
* Keiji Inafune brings Soul Sacrifice to PlayStation Vita.
The former head of Capcom Japan and creator of Mega Man Keiji Inafune is getting back in the business of making games absurd violence. Japanese video game magazine Famitsu announced his new game Soul Sacrifice in its Wednesday issue. A collaboration with Marvelous AQL (the company behind the never-ending Harvest Moon series), Soul Sacrifice is a multiplayer action game where you have to sacrifice things to cast spells. What kind of things? Trees, magic rocks, that sort of thing. The juicy spells though, those need you to give up a body part. Gross. More than one Japanese all star is helping on Soul Sacrifice. Joining Mr. Inafune is Yasunori Mitsuda, the composer behind Chrono Trigger and other great RPGs, will be handling the soundtrack.
* United Kingdom begins parliamentary procedure to adopt PEGI rating system.
While the US uses just the Entertainment Software Ratings Board’s system for age rating video games, the UK has to date used two. Most commercially made games use Video Standards Council’s PEGI system. Games featuring sexual content meanwhile come under the jurisdiction of the BBFC. After a two-year-long process though, PEGI will become the sole classification system for games in the UK. Only games that receive an R18, meaning it’s extra baudy, will receive classification from the BBFC going forward. PEGI has been, by and large, as reliable as the ESRB. The UK is nowhere near as stringent as Australia or Germany when it comes to refusing classification for games.
*Rovio celebrates Angry Birds’ 1 billion download milestone.
Hooray for Finland’s favorite sons, Rovio. Angry Birds, the ubiquitous mobile phone game series that made Rovio into one of the most profitable game studios on the planet, has been downloaded 1 billion times across all different versions including the recently released Angry Birds Space. Rovio’s terrifying little game and the ocean of merchandise that surrounds it earned the studio just under $100 million in revenue last year. Good for Finland! It’s nice that they have a super power in the mobile business considering Nokia’s pretty much done for.
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