OPM Feeling a Little Blu

While the U.S.’s Official Playstation Magazine stopped its presses at the beginning of the year, the U.K. is receiving the announcement, they can expect Blu-ray cover mounts beginning in June.

Issue number seven of OPM, which goes on sale June 1, comes packed with the first playable Blu-ray disc featuring demos of SCEE and third-party titles. The specific contents of the medium have yet to be announced.

Published by Future in the U.K., the company intends to support multimedia content and “unique user-generated content.” Official game and movie trailers pumped out in Hi-Definition capability are also promised to be featured on the future discs.

"We are delighted that Official PlayStation Magazine will deliver to its readers a monthly playable disc, and the world's first cover mounted Blu-ray disc,” commented OPM Publisher Matt Pierce. “Future has worked closely with Sony since 1995 to offer playable demo discs for Playstation, Playstation 2 and Playstation Portable and we will be working hard to ensure gamers get the very best content for their PS3 as well"

Avid Playstation 3 owners in the U.K. will be able to snag the disc off shelves for the price of 5.99 €.

Nintendo Supports U.S. on Piracy Effort

Do you think game piracy isn’t a big deal? Nintendo does and it has commended the strong support it has received from the United States government in response to rabid piracy in China.

The company estimates more than 7.7 million counterfeit video game products from more than 300 Chinese factories or retailers have been seized from the country in the past four years. In response, the U.S.’s trade representative is seeking formal consultations with China regarding its failure to meet obligations of the enforcement of copyright and intellectual property protection set forth by the World Trade Organization.

Since many Chinese piracy outfits keep low numbers of stock and no records of sale, only one prosecution has been carried out, according to Nintendo, and many producers of the material continue to do so even after confiscations. This year, Nintendo has forwarded evidence regarding piracy in China, Hong Kong, Brazil, Mexico and Paraguay. In 2006 alone, the company is estimating a worldwide loss of $762 million due to pirated products.

To help those who don’t follow the industry worldwide, I’ll try to help you understand the situation before you say “Wah, wah! Nintendo just recorded it’s biggest year ever, cry me a river!”:

For those of us in the United States, piracy tends to bring up the thought of people downloading and sharing ISO files and burning them to a disc, but overseas piracy takes a different angle as well. Companies have notoriously hacked and ported ROMs of video games into cartridges they commonly sell on the market.