Although using an image of "Bum Fighting" would have been insensitive, that probably would have accurately portrayed the feeling of watching publishers Interplay and Atari fight over Dungeons & Dragons rights. Big Download reports the once great publishers have settled a D&D licensing dispute, with Atari agreeing to purchase all rights that Interplay had to the franchise and canceling a $1 million promissory note.

Wonder what we could get the two companies to do for a block of cheese and a bottle of Listerine?

Sony needs to get its story straight.

On the one hand, there's Ken Kutaragi, top chihuahua of Sony Computer Entertainment, who says that the PlayStation 3 has a product life span of 10 years. One full decade! Long live Blu-ray!

On the other hand, there's Jamie MacDonald, VP of SCE Worldwide Studios Europe, who claims that digital distribution will overtake physical media (such as Blu-ray discs) within five years. Blu-ray is dead!

What's going on here? Is Blu-ray a tax on people too thick to subtract five from ten?

Well, SCE's MacDonald backtracked a little bit, explaining to GameDaily, "The thing about Blu-ray discs - and this is the crucial thing - is that not any time soon will you be able to download the amount of content you need for a big triple-A title down a typical 2, 4 meg broadband connection. That's not going to happen now or in the next year."

Tell that to Fios users, MacDonald. 30Mbps downstream will chew thru one of them fancy Blu-ray discs pretty fast. The real question is how long it'll be before the rest of us have access to fiber in the home.

Nintendo's apologizing to European customers because they've had to temporarily switch to cardboard game boxes as a result of shortages afflicting that territory, according to Gamasutra's David Jenkins. Nintendo, ever sensitive to gamer needs (and we can't fault them there), is tossing a coupon into paper boxes offering customers a plastic case once supply issues have been resolved.

We admit, those are some high quality plastic cases, but c'mon. The DS cartridge is tiny and holds just 128 megabytes of content. Does it really need to ship with plastic that weighs many times more than the product (3.5 grams)? It's environmentally irresponsible. We understand that large game cases help titles fight for attention on a retail shelf, but there's no reason that they can't do that fighting using more responsible materials.

Comprised of bits, games should be the most environmentally-friendly products to distribute. Nintendo (and other industry players) should use this opportunity to examine packaging.