'The Interview' Controversy Sheds Troubling Light On Video Game Acceptance

Prepare to wave goodbye to your social life (and workplace attendance figures); **GTA V ** is very nearly upon us. The latest entry in the award-winning criminal sim franchise, the series' fifth core installment arrives later this month to cap off the 7th gen of consoles in st

Moving on to GTA V's setting - it's big. Actually, big is a completely insufficient word to describe Rockstar's new and improved Los Santos. Art Director, Aaron Garbut, explains that "When you include interior and exterior spaces together, Los Santos is bigger than the worlds of Red Dead Redemption , San Andreas and GTA IV combined, with room to spare." That statement boggles the mind. However impressive that fact may be, we can only hope that Rockstar isn't merely aiming for quantity, with GTA V .

The big movie news cannot be ignored: Sony decided it will not go forward with it's plans to release The Interview, a Seth Rogen film about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Sony was hacked and received threats, while the number of respectable movie chains who would take the film was dwindling. All at once, the internet (save for a few rogue supporters) cried out about free speech, bowing to terrorist demands and all-around support for Rogen and his now-canceled film. The equally troubling news is that no one cares when this happens to a video game.

To help put that figure into another perspective, after just one day on shelves, the money that Grand Theft Auto V has generated would put it as the 40th highest grossing movie release ever, making more money than Inception and Spider-Man in their entire worldwide runs in cinemas. Of course, the price of a game is more expensive than a movie ticket, and there is some room for inflation differences, but that it serves as a stark comparison especially when you consider the time frames being compa

Trevor's actor was also asked how he felt about the infamous torture scene, in which he replied that since "it was one of the most technical scenes [in the game] so I didn't feel much about it." He had to concentrate so intensely on pulling off the difficult scene that he had no time to feel outraged, upset or really any other emot

Tweets about Hatred are much more skewed, and conversation about GTA 5 Mods|https://gta5Play.com/ V, much discussed in the video game press, seems to paint a two-sided issues. Defense of Target's decision as not censorship and a positive step toward equality were just as rampant, if not more so, than concerns over the kind of precedent their move set. Consider this, if it's not censorship for Target to pull the game, what if all retailers pulled the game? It's well within their rights, but it would achieve the exact same effect as a blatant censorship did. Thus, a de facto censorship - a universal lack of availability that's not necessarily enforced by law.

According to IGN , Rockstar Games parent company Take-Two Interactive revealed that GTA V made $800 million dollars in its first day of trading, to which they are quite understandably "thrilled" with. The company revealed that the game became "the highest first day retail sales of any title in the history of the company and the Grand Theft Auto series." For a company that has the entire back catalog of GTA , as well as games like Red Dead Redemption , that is no small feat. But that statement might still be selling this success sh

The NPD Group released their full statistics and chart for January 2016, with the top 10-selling physical releases for January 2016 listed below (platform listings for each title are ordered by top-selling platfo

I think it was really useful on the PS2-ear games for bringing these somewhat simplistic characters to life. But when we went to PS3 and 360 I think it would become a distraction if you were like, 'Well that's a famous person.' Suddenly these characters start to feel like they were alive a lot more and you need that to sell them. As long as you have good actors, not knowing them actually is an advantage in terms of bringing the game to life. I can't see us moving past that for major parts in the game.

Grand Theft Auto V will continue to sell like hot cakes and it will be very interesting to see just how large the gross number becomes over the course of the next week, hopefully with a solid number on units sold surfacing. While it is utterly futile to compare a game and a movie, it would be fascinating to see just how it compared to some of the biggest ever movie releases, especially as the series won't be transitioning to the big screen its

The NPD's results also shared an 81% drop-off in sales for previous generation of platforms with the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii, while sales of the 3DS and PlayStation Vita have marked a 21% decline. In terms of software, physical game sales accounted for $212.7 million, seeing a 10% decrease year-over-year from $235.6 mill

Following its dominance for overall game sales in 2015, Call of Duty: Black Ops III once again took the crown for the top game sales of January 2016 with Xbox One as its top selling platform, while several regulars like Grand Theft Auto V , Minecraft , and the EA Sports franchises all took a place on the cha