Daily News Spin — May 4, 2001 (Friday)

XXX = $$$

This has nothing to do with games, except that when we're not thinking about games, we're probably thinking about sex. Porn is the engine driving the Internet, according to this Eroticabiz story.

So, if total Internet traffic is 42,000 terabytes a month and 80% of that is Web traffic, then about 33,600 terabytes of files cross the Web each month. If we estimate that 40% of that traffic is adult graphics and video streams (using the low end of the estimated 40% to 80% range), then porn accounts for 13,400 terabytes (13.4 million gigabytes) of Web traffic every month.

If we take a reasonably low estimate for bandwidth of $12 per gigabyte (midway between rock bottom wholesale of $4 per gigabyte and standard retail of $20 per gigabyte) and multiply that by the 13.4 million gigabytes of adult Web traffic, you get a very commanding number -- $ 160.8 million a month, or $1.9 billion a year. To be sure, this is a rough estimate, but even at half that, or one-tenth, porn sites are worth hundreds of millions, if not billions, to the Web-hosting industry.

That's just bandwidth costs associated with porn. It doesn't factor in advertising revenue and user fees that are generated by porn sites. The world won't end with a bang or a whimper. It will be destroyed by a massive six billion person orgasm once we're all connected to the Internet.

You need a cell phone and a satellite to play this game

The Sunday Times of London has a story about a new mobile phone game that uses global positioning data as you fight other players.

Sven Halling, chief executive of It's Alive, said the game was aimed at "hardcore" computer games players aged 12-30. "You get a message saying something like, 'Your opponent is now 400 metres to the east of you,' on the corner of a given street. That means you try to get close enough to 'fire' and then you get a message saying he has exploded in a cloud of smoke and flames. You also get points towards your score."

Fredrik Greberg, 29, a business consultant from Stockholm, sends up to 30 text messages a day in his quest to kill or be killed. He said: "It's a lot of amusement having the stress of knowing that someone is looking for you."

Another blow to ECTS

ECTS is the European version of E3, though on a smaller scale. It's not exhibited much growth, lately, with a number of companies skipping it. Now Sony has announced that they will not attend the show, instead hosting their own show. Not a good thing for the future of ECTS.

Fantasy hair!

Movie Zone has a nice intereview with Chris Lee, the producer of the Final Fantasy film. This article provides a good overview of the movie, too. Here's one amazing little factoid about some of the difficulties in doing the animation:

Action was hard like Gray jumping onto the ship at the end of the film. Also, getting reactions [down] and creating Aki�s flowing hair. Aki has 60,000 individual strands of hair, which took 20% of the entire production time to create and render.

The article also states that Aki will be Maxim's cover girl next month. She's a hottie!

The power of the GeForce 3

This screenshot of Giants that Stomped has reposted is pretty amazing looking. Yes, we need one of these cards.

Incredibly slow news day grinds on....

Well, today takes the cake and eats it. Never in the history of this hot-winded industry have we found so little that's worth linking to. We probably missed a half-dozen interesting stories, so we'll see if we can't add some more news to the page as we stroll into the weekend.

60 Serious Seconds with Sam

We played Serious Sam. Lots of monsters were killed during the making of our 60 Second Review. Better read it before the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Monsters makes us take it down.

Trouble in Japan

MSNBC has a story about the depressed Japanese videogame market. Sounds grim:

GAME SALES are down in Japan� way down. The industry is so down that companies generally considered successful are posting dangerous losses.

Sony Computer Entertainment and Square Soft, two companies that posted record profits only a few years ago, both reported big losses. Namco had a tough time in its arcade business last year and closed its Wonder Eggs theme park. Sega has also closed several arcades, including its Shinjuku Joypolis theme park.

The article mentions that cell phone games may be a big growth industry.

3am

Classical violinist Joshua Bell is really just a gamer, though a gamer with a violin worth millions. The guy used to lug a full desktop PC around on tour to play Quake. He's hardcore.

One of Gathering's employees died from an asthma attack. Doug Myers was 36. Gathering has posted some thoughts about and pictures of Mr. Myers.

On a happier note, Gone Gold registered its five millioneth visitor. Congratulations to Rich Laporte and the people who help make his site one of the best gaming sites on the 'net. And, as long as we're patting them on the back, we should mention that they have news that the Star Trek Voyager Elite Force expansion has gone gold.

You've probably seen stories about it already, but there's a new educational shooter that takes place inside a woman's vagina. It's designed to educate players about AIDS prevention. If you're in the mood to go inside a vagina, here's the link.

Microsoft hates open source software, according to this article. Gee, they'd rather sell us stuff than have us use free software. We wonder what their motives are?

Someone set her up the bomb! Here's a story about a woman who was going to plant a bomb at a rival nightclub who was killed when her dog set the bomb off.

Here's a story about some ants that tricked a man trying to exterminate them with a flamethrower. They hid under a flammable bush, and the bush exploded when he tried to burn them. The insect world is devious.

Meanwhile, coconut ants are invading Nebraska. They are the only ant that smells like coconuts when you squash them.

Click here to read yesterday's news