I don’t know what’s more impressive: his speed, his girth, or how hilarious this video is. Any which way, this guy just took the top spot in my list of heroes over 400 pounds. Sorry Marlon Brando.

I was delighted to be given the opportunity to attend and cover the Games and Mobile Forum / LA Games Conference for GotGame. The conference was at the Hotel Roosevelt on Hollywood Boulevard, directly opposite Graumann’s Chinese theater, on the Walk of Fame. A glittering setting for a games gathering!

This was a conference for industry insiders: game company executives talking to each other and to representatives from related business, focusing on “The Future of Connected Entertainment.” To a gamer, hearing about the industry from this point of view was an eye-opening experience.

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For some time now, most of us have had access to the Wiimote. Before this era of gaming, however, there were plenty of attempts at unique gamer interaction, including in the forms of the Power Glove, Light Guns, and even Sony’s Eyetoy (which now seems to have gone the way of the dinosaurs). Now, in an intriguing bid for attention, SusiGames has demoed the Susisphere: a remote-linked sphere that so far isn’t doing much more than letting vaguely interested show floor goers run around a convex dome, while blasting rotating spaceships with a mod-linked Wiimote.

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Ubisoft, one of the world’s most prolific video game publishers, announced last month that it has acquired Gameloft’s development studio in Pune, India. The studio, established at the end of 2006, currently has a team of 120 developers and testers, with a goal of 200 within 12 months and 500 “in the coming years.” They will be concentrating on porting Ubi’s titles to handhelds and strengthening their testing teams.

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That’s right. On top of being a gaming console, a Blu-ray DVD and media player and, in the future, an online virtual environment, Sony’s Playstation 3 can also be converted to a fully functional PC.

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The Nintendo Wii is a next-generation console with game graphics worse than most PS2 titles. It’s also the best-selling ‘next-gen’ console, yet it seems incapable of producing titles for mature audiences. To make things even stranger, the developer hoping to turn the Wii into a console with both Xbox 360-level visuals and games for an adult demographic is none other than High Voltage Software, creator of such stinkers as White Men Can’t Jump and the PlayStation Portable edition of 50 Cent: Bullet Proof. The proposition sounds a bit optimistic, but it might just be crazy enough to work

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Who says that you can’t mix work with play? Probably your parents, when you’ve got a big assignment due. However, next time they say: “Quit that game and do your homework” simply respond, “I am taking a stress-reducing and mood-improving study break,” because according to a recent PopCap study, playing games may be just that.

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Sony has done it again.

And by this, we mean that Sony has once again delayed the launch of its next-gen virtual world, the Playstation Home. Sony originally announced the project at the GDC last year, with plans for an open beta in Fall 2007, but pushed it back to Spring 2008 after it was realized they couldn’t meet the launch date. Now, Sony has announced that they are pushing that date back once again, this time scheduling the open beta for sometime in Fall 2008, with an expanded closed beta this summer.

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