game news bits

• California has passed the bill requiring game retailers to post signs defining meanings of the various ESRB ratings. It has happily lost most of its teeth en route to being passed: previously it was to require Mature-rated games to be kept separated from other games, as though they were pornographic. It has yet to be signed into law by the Governator.
  
• WarioWare (Made in Wario) will have movement-tracking as part of its control scheme.
• Sony may integrate EyeToy cameras into PlayStation 3. I will weep if they include a camera, but fail to up the standard number of controller ports to four, as Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube and Nintendo64 all have.
  
• There may be no region encoding on the PSP choice quote:

Although Sony has enforced region locking on its consoles in the past, the practice makes little sense on a handheld device, since people are expected to carry their systems with them on trips abroad and must therefore be able to purchase software outside their native country or region.
On the question of UMD movies, Reeves said that the company was hoping to offer significant incentives to get people buying the format. "I think they will come up with quite a few surprises", he said, "so that you'd want to buy a movie on UMD as well as having it on DVD. Maybe."

It seems shortsighted to acknowledge that people will want to take their portable with them to various locales and buy and play games, but not want to get movies. Buying a movie or two before a flight seems like a natural extension, provided that region-coding wouldn't hamper the activity. As for buying the movie twice, I don't see it. Other than putting promotional games on the UMD with the movie, which can only be underfunded efforts by definition, how can it can work? Soundtracks for portable listening, included for free?