i cant see it anymore either.  All i see is just the pic address.

Nintendo tops EA in annual industry list
Game Developer magazine added reputation feedback to methodology
By Kristin Kalning
Games editor
Updated: 9:36 p.m. ET Oct 19, 2007

This year, Mario trumps 'Madden.'

Maybe not in overall revenues, but according to the top 20 publisher's list, put out annually by Game Developer Magazine, Nintendo leveled up on Electronic Arts this year.

How? It wasn't pure financials, although Nintendo was competitive in that respect. And it wasn't due to number of releases: Nintendo shipped just 32 games last year. EA shipped 116.

But this year, for the first time, the list-compiling people at Game Developer decided to add in another factor '” reputation. They asked game industry professionals to rate publishers and leave comments about them. Based on those results, Nintendo got the brass ring.

'Nintendo is a really well-regarded company in the industry right now,' says the magazine's publisher, Simon Carless. 'Electronic Arts has some reputation problems.'

Nintendo's George Harrison says the company is 'pleased to be recognized' but in the same breath said 'consumer recognition is the thing that's most important to us, and drives our business strategies.'

And EA? They're not buying it. They point out that the difference between the rankings of the two top companies is less than 3 percent '” hardly an upset. And they say that adding a squishy thing like reputation into the methodology undermines the validity of the survey.

'Our claim as being the number one publisher in the world remains undisputed,' says EA spokesperson Holly Rockwood. 'This claim is based on revenue and purely from a business perspective '” it is what we are measured by on the street. '

But Carless says there's more than one way to go about ranking top publishers. Revenues are important, sure. But companies that ship games on multiple platforms '” 'Madden 08,' for instance '” have a built in advantage. He says adding reputation to the mix evened things out a bit '” and made things more interesting.

'The list is based on opinion, which is one of the things that makes it entertaining,' he says.  'Any top list is necessarily subjective. But alongside the subjectiveness, there is lots of salient data.'

The magazine used five different criteria to compile its rankings: Reputation, revenues, number of releases, average review score ratings and detailed responses from developers who'd worked directly with the companies. The magazine tracked data from September 2006 to August of this year, and put out the call for anonymous comments on their Web portal, gamasutra.com, at the end of this summer.

Because the comments are anonymous, there's no way to know for sure that a grouse about Konami's salary package, for example, actually came from someone who works at Konami. Or that EA's negative reputation responses weren't just from someone with an axe to grind. But Carless says that he's confident that they received honest responses.

'We tracked IP addresses to make sure that all the responses weren't from the same person,' he says.

That did happen in one case: NCSoft. The staff at the magazine noticed that a lot of the positive responses about the PC publisher were coming from the company's Korean headquarters.  So, they docked the company down to an 'average' reputation rating.

For the record, NCSoft denies that the voting was an organized effort.

"If people want to participate individually, they're welcome to do so," said company spokesperson Mike Crouch.

Here are some other interesting developments in this year's top publishers list:
# Sony dropped four slots this year, from No. 4 in 2006 to No. 8 in the most recent ranking. This is mostly due to fewer releases, but Carless says reputation hurt them too. Although developers were asked to comment specifically on the software side of the business, the company carries around 'reputational baggage' from the beleaguered PlayStation 3.
# Microsoft saw its ranking slip three slots, to No. 9, due to a limited number of releases that garnered mixed reviews from critics. 'Gears of War' was the first big hit for the Xbox 360, which helped keep them in the top 10. Developers gave the company high marks on the reputation part of the survey, but detailed feedback saw criticism of the company's organizational structure. (And as always, I must point out that MSNBC is a joint Microsoft - NBC Universal venture.)
# French publisher Ubisoft shimmied up the rankings this year, from No. 8  to No. 4. Carless says the company was smart to see the potential in casual games, and has enjoyed strong sales from 'Dog/Catz' relaunch and 'Rayman Raving Rabbids.' The company was second only to Nintendo on the reputation survey, but took some hits from external partners on the detailed feedback. The magazine has offered up the Ubisoft profile as a freebie on its gamedevresearch.com Web site, as an incentive to sell the rest of the report.
# And finally, a moment of silence: Atari, so dominant in the 70s and 80s, has dropped off the list. Declining revenues and a poor showing on the survey contributed to its exit.

So, does this annual ranking impact what you, the consumer, see on the retail shelves? Not directly. But companies with good reputations attract smart people. Ideally, that leads to better games.

What do you think of the top 20 list? How does it match up with the publishers that you like the best? Weigh in on our discussion board.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21380484/
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A few years after I left high school, my aunt (who works in the school district) told me about my old assistant principal.  He left his wife and two kids for a student who just turned 18 and graduated. I dont know if he still works there, but I"ll have to ask my aunt about it.

Lex Luger Suffers Stroke

Written by: Marty 'Halo' Holmes - October 19th, 2007

According to a source closely associated with the Cow Palace convention this weekend in San Francisco, Larry Pfohl, aka Lex Luger, suffered a stroke in his hotel room this morning and currently has no feeling from the waist down. More to come.

Source F4Wonline