Are you ready to totally destroy some people on vacation who felt like trying out a Wii game? Get to your local mall or Six Flags next month! This summer, Nintendo is holding a Wii Games: Summer 2010 competition, with initial matches held throughout the country, culminating in a final showdown in Los Angeles

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Michael Rawlinson, the director general of trade association ELSPA has told GamesIndustry.biz that the most important result to come out of the general election will be a strong and stable government that is capable of making decisions. Anything else, he said, will be bad for the games industry and for the country as a whole as parliament is “paralysed” and unable to support key industry issues such as education, IP protection and tax breaks. However, he said that ELSPA’s job was to work with the government that is formed “whatever colour it is”

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The South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has announced two new policies aimed at stifling so-called video game addiction among the country’s youth. Dubbed the “nighttime shutdown,” users ages 19 and under of certain online games will be required to select one of three mandatory six-hour blackout periods set for the middle of the night, during which a user would be barred form online access to the particular game. The blackouts will be instituted for a number of popular online games, such as Maple Story, in the second half of this year.

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Market intelligence firm, Niko Partners, has released some of the findings from its latest report into China’s videogames industry, predicting that the online games business in the country will be worth an estimated $9.2 billion in 2014. That’s up from £3.57 billion in 2009 and a predicted $4.5 billion for this calendar year, working on the basis of a compound annual growth rate of 20.9 per cent over the next five years.

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Conservative leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg are lending cross-party support to the British Inspiration Awards, a new initiative to honour the UK’s creative sectors, including games, film and the arts. The executive committee for the awards is being led by Nintendo’s David Yarnton, and it will also be a charity-facing event with 100 per cent of proceeds split between Games Aid and The Dallaglio Foundation.

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Heavy Rain has been officially banned in the United Arab Emirates . The news comes courtesy of Kotaku , which confirmed a report on the ban from website Middle East Gamers .

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[ Image credit ] We’ve been following this story for quite some time now. Australia is currently debating a new R18+ rating , which would allow more mature games to be released in the country uncensored.

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Just three short years after the CES 2007 announcement that Microsoft’s Mediaroom software would turn your Xbox 360 into an IPTV set-top box, Microsoft is finally ready to deliver on that promise (and no, the 2008 BT rollout doesn’t count ). “I’m happy to announce that later this year AT&T will also enable subscribers to U-verse to enjoy [the new Mediaroom 2.0] service on their Xbox 360 consoles,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told his keynote audience.

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Australians have gotten the short end of the gaming stick for some time now, with several games either receiving edits or simply being banned because of the country’s lack of an adult classification. Now you can be the one doing the stick shortening thanks to the free downloadable title Ban This Game! , which lets you click on arguably offensive materials to ban them while South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson and Minister for Broadband and Communication Stephen Conroy look on approvingly. (We’ve got a brief video after the break if you’d like to see it in action.) If you’d like to take your activism beyond clicking 50 Cent and giggling, there’s loads of more info on the game’s Facebook page .

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Frontier has announced it has partnered once again with Square Enix for the release of LostWinds sequel Winter of the Melodias in Japan. The game will be released in the country on December 22. “We’re very pleased to be joining forces again with Square Enix to bring the sequel to gamers in Japan and Asia.” said David Braben, Frontier’s chairman and founder Read more..

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