My name is Ian Drinkwater, and I want streaming pornography on the Playstation 3. I want it sold from the Playstation store. I want to be able to click on a menu selection and choose from Goopy Load Wunders 9 or Teasing A Tasmanian She-devil. I want all of this, and I don’t see any good reason why I shouldn’t receive my wish. While there are countless valid arguments for the prohibition of porn from the PS3, I don’t think any of them are solid enough to keep my beautiful dream from coming to fruition.

I don’t have any sort of moralistic argument in support of porn. That debate is old-hat, and either you watch porn or you are miserable and kick kittens. I have done some research, and this is precisely how the two groups break down:

People who dabble in the pornographics

People so unhappy they go straight in the “Right Hand Turn Only Lane”, spend their time writing Left 4 Dead manifestos, try and tell me I have a chemical addiction or two, and still write checks at the supermarket.

I’m arguing against this argument I usually hear:

You want pornographic movies to be sold on a gaming console marketed to kids. And let’s be real, no matter what sort of restrictions you put the console, them kids will always find a way to get around it.

That’s the sort of shit my girlfriend came at me with when I initially broached the topic of PS3 porn with her. I described what I found to be Heaven to her:

Babe, you don’t understand! There’s this network, and you click on it, and they sell movies. Well, the dude from Vivid (do you know what Vivid is? Oh, okay, good), wants to put porn on the network. You could just click on a button and get porn! Isn’t that amazing?!?!!?!?!?

It freaked her out, because I was actually yelling “QUESTION MARK, EXCLAMATION POINT, QUESTION MARKRRRRRK.” I had lost it. Let me tell you, if you combine porn with caffeine, my head almost pops off.

But yeah Ian, you want on porn on something marketed for kids.

Not really. Not at all. Listen, the PS3 is an expensive piece of impressive technology. This isn’t some Nintendo 64, or even a Wii. It’s got Blu-Ray, it has equipment that is significantly more complicated to set-up. Kids who are in little league are not going to be the majority demographic here. That’s not what Sony is marketing towards. Their core audience is people like me. In their twenties or so.

Wonderful girlfriend hopped onto the Internet. With the clickety-clack of the keyboards she asked Mr. Google if I was right. Mr. Google has become the great ender of debates for my generation. Everything can be proven with minimal keystrokes.

Do you think I’d bring this up if I was wrong? Of course not!

Via Gamer.blore:

Nielsen Media Research tried to prove the point by tracking usage data by age and gender for all three of the home consoles. Console activity in all National TV Panel homes was measured.

The PS3 generally seems to appeal to the older generation, with no young kids anywhere in the mix… Both males and females saw the largest usage amongst the 18 to 24-age range.

In an interview about the Playstation Network, where this porn would be bought, PSN director of operations says the PSN demographic is:

Via Kotaku:

Primarily male. The average age is 28 years old, in usually the middle- to higher-income range. They over-index against those with graduate degrees.

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The newest Final Fantasy XIII clip to leak from god knows where and uploaded by god knows who to the internet shows clips from the newest trailer that was totally secret and not shown to the public. How do I know? Because I find this at Kotaku and they were like “This is exactly like the stuff we saw and you didn’t. Because it was secret. But we saw it anyways. We saw the secret clip. That you didn’t.” Check out the video after the jump.

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I like keeping it real with ya’ll. When I’m running on raw emotion, I’ll admit it. And so for full disclosure, I’ve bought both of the games I’m about to discuss.

The very same day that I report that Arkham Asylum has sold TWO MILLION ZOMG copies, EA CEO admits that Madden sales are dropping:

Via Kotaku:

Madden NFL 10 leads the NPD Group’s top ten with 928,000 units sold on the Xbox 360. That’s a drop from last year’s cool million. And while Madden sales were up year-over-year on the PlayStation 3, the game suffered on the PlayStation 2 and Wii, with the sports game moving less than half of what it did on the PS2 from the same period last year.

All told, Madden NFL 10 managed to move 1.9 million copies across all platforms in August, down from the 2.2 million-plus Madden NFL 09 managed last year.

Now listen, that’s still an insane amount of copies. But I’ve always looked at Madden as something primarily for frat boys and jocks. And not cool frat boys and cool jocks. There, I covered myself. So to see it getting outsold by a comic book character‘s video game makes me swell with glee. It’s juvenile, but I cackled a little bit to myself. Sorry EA! Sorry your recycled money-machine that really doesn’t change much every year isn’t printing out the cash like it usually does.

C’est la vie, blowhards!

If you haven’t been reading DC’s Wednesday Comics then you’re either stupid or crazy. Provided you’re not both, go to your local comic shop right now buy as many of them as you can. Yes, they’re that good.

Those of you who have been picking up this weekly treat have probably already decided which strips are worthwhile and which aren’t. To me, the only real toss-away strips are Metal Men (apparently DiDio writes an interesting story about as well as he edits), Teen Titans, and (until last week, anyways) Caldwell’s Wonder Woman. Other than that, we’re talking straight-up comic-book masterpieces.

One of these masterpieces is Superman. The story is simple enough — Superman is having some sort of existential crisis and he travels about while trying to figure out what it all means. The execution, however, is perfect. Arcudi’s writing and Bermejo’s pencils depict Kal-El as both iconic and humanly relatable. Kudos to them.

But what I find most breathtaking about this comic are the colors. When I fold open the newspaper-style strip, my eyes explode and nearly knock the lenses out of my glasses. I don’t even know what to write…the colors of this Superman strip are just perfect. Vibrant, warm, welcoming, heavenly.

So once I realized that I was in love with the colors, I decided to contact the woman responsible: Barbara Ciardo.

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Arkham Asylum sells two million copies in two weeks. Good god damn! Pay attention, gaming companies! Usually comic book/movie video games eat raw ass. Tons of it. Gobble them out. And maybe the titles, while craptacular will sell to a few mouth-breathing fans and diehards. But spend some time on a comic book game, and what happens? Shit blows up! Arkham Asylum is one of the highest rated games of the year. It’s selling a million copies a week. And more importantly, Eidos has just established a franchise. Churn out crap, and maybe you’ll trick people into buying a title. But blow their god damn heads off, and you’ve gotten repeat customers.

Seriously, anything that follows this game up will be automatically bought by many, including me, because it’s the sequel to Arkham Asylum.

It’s simple, you can churn out slop and hope some tardholes pick it up. Or you can be the rare company that doesn’t rush out a comic book or video game movie, and reap the rewards.

Welcome To The Future! Where you’ll be snorting stem cells to fix your Alzheimer’s:

Via New Scientist:

STEM cells show promise for treating a range of neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s, strokes and Alzheimer’s, but it is tricky getting them into the brain. Perhaps inhaling stem cells might be the answer – if mice are anything to go by.

Other options all have their drawbacks. Drilling through the skull and injecting the stem cells is painful and carries some risks. You can also inject them into the bloodstream but only a fraction reach their target due to the blood-brain barrier.

The nose, however, might be a viable alternative. In the upper reaches of the nasal cavity lies the cribriform plate, a bony roof that separates the nose from the brain. It is perforated with pin-size holes, which are plugged with nerve fibres and other connective tissue. Since proteins, bacteria and viruses can enter the brain this way, Lusine Danielyan at the University Hospital of Tübingen in Germany, and her colleagues, wondered if stem cells would also migrate into the brain through the cribriform plate.

To test their idea, they dripped a suspension of fluorescently labelled stem cells into the noses of mice. The mice snorted them high into their noses, and the cells migrated through the cribriform plate. Then they travelled either into the olfactory bulb – the part of the brain that detects and deciphers odours – or into the cerebrospinal fluid lining the skull, migrating across the brain. The stem cells then moved deeper into the brain.

Hold on Nana! We got your ass, just uh, snort these cells.

If you know me, you know that I buy all multi-platform games for my 360. Why? Because I’m a douchebag, duh! Just kidding about the d-bag part. But seriously, why? Because they’re better. Apparently European Microsoft Czar Chris Lewis agrees with me! Go figure!

Via Destructoid:

We have a great journey through to Christmas,” boasts Lewis. “There are key titles that are exclusives but also great cross-platform titles that will just work better on Xbox Live. And in terms of content and networking, we have more content partnerships for Xbox Live.

Countless friends of mine want to punch me in the face. Listen, I’ll break it down for you. And here’s a caveat and please don’t disregard this: I’m buying Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3, and should policy and quality shift, I will flow with it. I’m not a blind fanboy. Click the jump for my reasonings.

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Pepsibones has been vociferously arguing that the Disney acquisition of Marvel could actually be super disco breakin’ and shit. He proposes that the deep-pockets that have picked up Marvel could actually benefit fans. How so, you ask? Well, if comic books are in fact dropping and dropping in sales, they may be willing to eat the cost moreso than if Marvel was alone. Why would they be willing to do that?

It’s easy.

Marvel and DC have long since been using their comic books as thinktanks for movie ideas, t-shirts, theme parks, et cetera. In other words, they’re a the testing ground for more lucrative propositions. And if Disney is willing to eat the cost on this comic book R&D, they should do us a favor as well.

Drop the cost of comic books. If they’re capable of eating cost, why not make the average comic book cheaper? Them shits are currently bordering on $3.99. If they were halved in price, being the sucker I am, I’d be more inclined to pick up some of the slop out there. Like the fifteen Avengers titles.

Pepsibones isn’t alone in his sentiment, Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool reported that Disney may be thinking the same thing internally in a good article:

Via Bleeding Cool:

However, what if Disney was preemptive? What if Disney want to do something that makes a big impact on the comics business. It may make less money, it may cost them in instant revenue, but it also may reignite the kind of buzz that will help the slew of Marvel and Marvel-related films and merchandise.

What if the comics, rather than creeping towards the $3.99 price, suddenly dropped. To $1.99. Across the board.   Sales would rocket, market share would sour, other publishers would be squeezed off the shelves, plastic rings or no plastic rings,   comics revenue would fall. But buzz would increase, increase, increase.

C’mon Disney. Do all of us Marvel zealots a solid and drop the price. We know you can afford it, you gobble up companies like I eat slices of pizza. Careless and with no regard for the ramifications.

I’m suffering severe BSG withdrawal. No, seriously. I’m watching the series again not only with my heterosexual lifemate, but also my girlfriend. Thankfully, I got something new to look forward to. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, the movie directed by Billy Adama himself has received a DVD street date. On October 27, 2009 you’ll be able to receive this next hit of BSG crack, on Blu Ray and DVD.

This movie seems pretty ballin’, since it depicts the initial total obliteration of human kind through the eyes of the Cylons. Sweet. Honestly though, it could just be Colonel Tigh taking a crap while Adama couches him through his conspitation and I’d be excited.

Also, it’s weird, since the movie hasn’t been dated for its showing on Sci-Fi (do you really think I’m going to call it SyFy?), and yet it’s received a DVD release date. Whatever, I ain’t hating. I need this shit. You need this shit! So say we frakin’ all!

[Thanks to Oh Mars for the heads-up on this]

Left 4 Dead was dope as hell. Valve announced they were going to release a sequel. L4D fans rejoiced, right? Well, most of us. But then there’s always the dillholes of the gaming community. They grumbled that it was being shoved out, blah blah blah, too quickly, blah blah, I am angry nerd gamer, play with semen crust on my fingers. They even wrote a manifesto. They’re turds.

Valve, who sweats awesomeness flew two of these absolute vaginal discharges out to play the game. Yes, Valve paid for two haters to come check out L4D2, and show them how fucking insipid they are. And are you surprised to learn that these two angry nerds and their manifesto (LOL) quickly gave way to the truth? Even they now realize L4D2 is going to be super-ballin’-time:

Via Destructoid:

“Things seemed balanced and ‘tight’ and did not feel like a rushed job. While we were visiting their offices we personally witnessed what can only be called a small army of artists, coders, mappers hard at work, which explains the rapid transformations in artwork that we’ve all seen,” grovel the turncoat boycotters, known by the impressive handles of Walking_Target and Agent of Chaos.

“What we can say with confidence is that the quality of gameplay in Left 4 Dead 2 is not in question; and it will only get better.”

Most nerds are just neglected buttheads who have so much time on their hands they’ll write manifestos and boycott games out of misplaced angst. That, or write a blog. Or both. They love hating because they hate not being loved. Or something.

If I knew that hating crap would let me play and experience it early, I’d hate a lot more. For the record, POWERS THAT BE WINK WINK, this is a list of things I hate and need to be persuaded about:

Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Bayonetta, Uncharted 2, Avatar, Star Wars Episode XII, the last season of LOST, American currency, and time travel. So please change my mind about these awful, awful things.