Take-Two will cooperate with the FTC's probing of the company in regards to Electronic Arts' persistent courtship, according to the publisher's most recent SEC filing (via GameDaily). Last week a U.S. Court set a hearing for June 24 to determine whether or not they company was in compliance with the FTC. According to the latest filing, Take-Two's agreement alleviates the need for a court appearance.

While stating it intends to cooperate fully, Take-Two noted that it would "appropriately limit the scope of its production of information and witnesses ... [We are] pleased that a resolution has been reached that should substantially reduce the economic burden on the Company and focus the inquiry in a way that should minimize the distraction to the Company's employees."

Super mega-huge publisher EA has announced a third extension of its tender offer for all outstanding shares of common Take-Two stock, pushing the previous deadline, which quietly passed by last Friday without so much as a hello, to 11:59PM EST on June 16, 2008. EA notes that as of 5:00PM EST on May 16, 2008, "approximately 6,210,261 shares of Take-Two had been tendered in and not withdrawn from the tender offer." In Take-Two's response, the publisher noted that said shares amount to 8% of the total.

The reason given for the latest extension seems to have less to do with virtuous patience and more to do with those pesky US Federal Trade Commission guys snooping around. "Extending our offer will allow the FTC review process to continue," said Owen Mahoney, Senior Vice President of EA Corporate Development, who added that the $25.74-per-share offer remained unchanged. The FTC sent EA a second request for information regarding the proposed takeover back in April.

Take-Two's Chairman of the Board, Strauss Zelnick, reiterated that the offer was inadequate and continued to advise stockholders to hold on while buyout discussions with "interested parties" continue.

Read -- EA announcement
Read -- Take-Two's response

It's a sad day for those of us who think that a future world entirely populated by desensitized adults trained from birth to be killing machines would be totally sweet. A Federal Trade Commission "undercover shopper" study has found that retailers turned down kids trying to buy M-rated games 80 percent of the time, up 58 percent from the year prior and up from a surprising 16 percent in 2000.

Though the findings are impressive, we don't think retailers should spend too much energy patting themselves on the back. If we saw a 43-year-old FTC agent in a backwards cap and Stone Cold 3:16 T-shirt insisting his name was "Dakota," we probably wouldn't sell M-rated games to him either.

When video game makers fix prices for consumers, it's considered the normal state of business. When LCD makers fix prices for game makers, they get raided by the Japanese Fair Trade Commission. So it goes.

AFP has the report on the investigation on screen-makers Sharp and Hitachi, which have long been suspected of organizing a bid-rigging cartel to limit price competition for portable screens. Between them, the two companies provide all the LCD screens used in the Nintendo DS, though Nintendo couldn't confirm that they were the ones that complained to the commission. No one else involved, included the commission itself, had much comment on the actual investigation, but if it bears any fruit you'll be sure to read about it here.


[Via Engadget]

Attorney Jack Thompson has sent a complaint letter to the Federal Trade Commission for BioShock advertisements aired during Friday night's WWE Smackdown. GamePolitics has the full complaint from Thompson, a portion of it states: "Take-Two... is aggressively marketing its newest Mature-rated video game to kids under 17 years of age... On this Friday's night's 8 pm Eastern time airing of WWE's wrestling program "Smackdown," there were repeated ads for Take-Two/Rockstar Game's Mature-rated, incredibly violent BioShock ... This rampant fraudulent trade practice is precisely what 'Big Tobacco' did with its 'Joe Camel' and other teen-targeting ads, while at the same time lying to Congress that it was not marketing its adult product to kids."

Hey, we had no idea Rockstar had anything to do with BioShock ... oh wait, that's right, they didn't. The FTC has already stated they think the industry is doing a relatively fine job handling itself; however, the FTC does say the movie and video game industry are both guilty of marketing R and M rated content during shows with inappropriate demographics. That's all good and fine of course, but we're just way too busy bathing in the irony of a FTC violence complaint being brought upon the airing of BioShock ads during an episode of WWE Smackdown.

Here's some light weekend reading about politics, the media and gaming. Earlier this week the U.S. Federal Trade Commission released a report about the gaming industry. The real fun for industry folk was seeing how all the various media outlets would report the news and what their headlines would be. Below is the list, shamelessly ripped-off from Dennis McCauley over at GamePolitics, of various media outlets and their take on the report:

• FTC says content curbs fall short - L.A. Times
• Report says the young buy violent games and movies - NY Times
• FTC: self-regulation of violent content working - Beta News
• Children still see ads for violent content - Advertising Age
• FTC scolds marketers about violent content - AdWeek
• FTC: violence still marketed to youths - Hollywood Reporter
• Report: Violence still aimed at kids - Variety
• FTC violence marketing report show general compliance - Broadcasting & Cable
• FTC Report: Violence Still a Problem in Marketing - TV Week
• FTC: game industry self-policing improving - GameSpot
• FTC: M-rated games still marketed to minors - Next Generation
• FTC: games are better regulated than music, movies - Ars Technica
• FTC report: mixed reviews on industry's ability to self-regulate - Joystiq
• FTC: game industry stricter than movies, music - Kotaku
• FTC report praises, spanks video game industry - GamePolitics

As McCauley asks in his headline accompanying the list above, "Were these media outlets reading the same report?" The various headlines make us think of the classic question: If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to see it, does it make a sound? Some say yes, some say no, some say it explodes into various pieces, some say the Earth Mother picked it back up, some say there is no tree. The various headlines and the stores with them is a good read on the diversity of voice in the media -- especially when it comes to gaming.

The Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. has released a new report praising the games industry for making "significant progress" in decreasing both the sale of mature-rated games to minors and the advertising of mature titles alongside teen-marketed television shows, while criticizing them for failing to maintain similar marketing standards with internet advertising.

Other interesting statistics and observations:

• In the five years between 2001 and 2006, sales of M-rated titles to minors have dropped 36% (from 78% to 42%). No other industry was reported to have such a significant decline and only the sale of R-rated movie ticket to minors is lower (39% in 2006, an increase of 3% over 2003).
• Of the parents surveyed, 87% are aware of the ESRB, 70% utilize it and 75% of those familiar with the content descriptors use them.
• Current ESRB regulations do not allow game publishers to advertise M-rated games on sites where 45% or more of the audience is under 17. The FTC report said that they are "not adequately enforcing even this limited standard." Our query, which is not adequately explained in the report's press release, is how the FTC is able to discern the demographic of a website (other than maybe content and grammar usage), and which is it following? Only MySpace and YouTube are specifically cited here. And, to be quite honest, if the FTC were able to effectively discern the demographics found on a site like YouTube, they could sell that data-mining algorithm and make quadrillions in profit.
  

The FTC report also chastises the ESRB for failing to put content descriptors on the front of the box. Said FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras overall, "Self-regulation, long a critical underpinning of U.S. advertising, is weakened if industry markets products in ways inconsistent with their ratings and parental advisories ... This latest FTC report shows improvement, but also indicates that the entertainment industry has more work to do."

[Via Game Politics]

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission yesterday said that companies must disclose ties in word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. These fake grass-roots efforts -- dubbed "astroturfing" by critics -- hire people to endorse products as themselves, rather than as company representatives.

The FTC didn't announce any specific action or fines against this type of misleading marketing, although it may investigate campaigns on a case-by-case basis. The Washington Post covers the story.

Gamers see these sorts of campaigns all the time, from fake commentors who are actually paid marketers to the recent fake-PSP-fan weblog. While this kind of hidden corporate sponsorship makes us distrustful, we think better of companies, like Ubisoft, that disclose ties to its affiliates like the Frag Dolls. We most like the Major Nelson-type relationships, where a weblog spokesperson and a company are obviously linked.