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Joystiq

ESA's mediocre game pack raises $2.6 million for charity

by Alexander Sliwinski on Jul 28th 2008 9:00PM

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) announced today its pack of odious unremarkable games sold to sponsor children's charities has raked in an astounding $2.6 million. The ESA Foundation, the philanthropic branch of the industry's lobbing group, will divide the cash among five charities (which we've listed after the break).

The charity pack included software donated by Disney, THQ, Ubisoft, Sony Pictures, Microsoft and Pixar. It was sold by 17 retailers and organizations agreed to waive associated fees and royalties, meaning as much cash as possible went to the children. No word yet if something similar will be done this year, but imagine the cash the charities could get if the games were actually good?!

The recipients are:

Web Wise Kids
Work, Achievement, Values & Education Inc. (WAVE)
Hopelabs
Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
Computers for Youth

Tags: charity, entertainment-software-association, esa, esa-foundation, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (26)

I suspect more than half of the sales were by people buying it on the cheap and flipping it for store credit.

Or it was a gift from parents that don't know anything about videogames.

Parent: "Well looky there! Three Great games for the price of One. Now that's a bargin. Timmy will love this and my level of coolness of a parent will skyrocket to OH SO Jolly Great Cool Daddyo."

Now imagine the face of Timmy....it's so sad....and kinda funny...in a sad way. Heh Heh.

Ohh man it suck when I was a kid and my dad will by some of the worst Dreamcast games ever.

I asked him for Resident evil and he got me Urban Chaos, I ask for Marvel vs capcom 2 and I got Mortal Kombat Gold..

good times though.

At least some kids even GET games bought for them. I had to buy mine all on my own and never expected them as a gift since my mom was opposed to me playing games. Heck, back when I was a young'n, I'd take anything if someone else was willing to pay for it!

My parents were the same way, Saria...they were vehemently opposed to my gaming habit, so they made me pay for it all myself. I had to save for almost a year to get my hands on the Sega Genesis bundled with Sonic 2. Ironically enough, when I moved out to go to college, they didn't mind me gaming so much because it kept me out of trouble, for the most part.

"Imagine the cash the charities could get if the games were actually good?!"

That's EXACTLY what I was thinking. Mediocre or not, though, it's great to see stuff like this happen. And I don't care if it's all for PR; the charities don't know the difference between honest good-deed money and publicity money.

Turning the bad into something good. I see. Except, they meshed 3 bad things to get something good. This reminds me of the "KFC FAMOUS BOWL". Mmmmmmmm....heartstopping.

Ironically enough, all proceeds went directly into the prozac funds for the children who have been victimized by this bundle. Pope Benedict was heard saying, "See? Suddenly child rape is not so bad by comparison."

that just ain't right

I laughed out load unapprovingly.
I feel so conflicted.

Geebus, Shep... I don't know how to respond to that beside a simple "lol"...

I need a change of pants after that one...wait, that sounded bad...

Its because the games are so rubbish that they are donated by the publishers at all. If all games were good and sold well, the publishers would never give them to charity and the children would never get the money.

See, bad games do have a purpose!

Except Cars, and Open season sadly sold tons...

Great photoshopped cover!

Anyway to draft the orange box? Or... should it be more of a children's game!?

thank you for clearing up the false advertisment left on the box by the careless printing company...
joystiq +1

Open Season wasn't that bad of a game. I know, I played through the whole thing 100% so I could record the sound track (big fan of Shawn Clement's work).

Now there's a confession I never thought I'd read when I woke up this morning...

Lijik:

Seriously?!?! I'm not hatin' on you for it, but why would you need to play through the whole thing to record the soundtrack?

When you collect badges you unlock little short clips of concept art and movie stills. Just to be sure that there wasn't any unique tracks composed for one of them (which there was actually, one of them expanded on the Skunk mission-get theme) I had to collect all of the badges.

If you mean recording the soundtrack in general, its because I'm pretty awful at deencoding music streams. Its much easier for me to play through a five hour game and record the music as I go.

psychonauts couldn't even DREAM of making a sliver of that pot. :(

I'd buy Halo 3 for charity... and I don't even like Halo in the least!

Cars isn't bad, especially if your son (or daughter) loves the movie (like mine does).

Cars is a good game. I've said this before on this site.
It's a miniaturized version of Forza and it's well done even though it's a licensed kids game.

Well looking at the bright side those are like 3000 easy gamerpoints that requiere no effort whatsoever.

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ESA's mediocre game pack raises $2.6 million for charity

Reader Comments (26)

Posted: Jul 28th 2008 9:04PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2008 10:13PM Deadpool said

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Posted: Jul 29th 2008 1:27AM Saria the Cat said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 8:55AM xGeneral DEATHxDEETH82 said

Posted: Jul 28th 2008 9:13PM Saria the Cat said

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Posted: Jul 28th 2008 11:17PM Lijik said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 12:13AM DeathChimp2000 said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 8:58AM xGeneral DEATHxDEETH82 said

Posted: Jul 29th 2008 12:28PM Lijik said

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