It's become clear that earlier this month, when I was singing the praises of "Gears of War" for its role in the Christmas success of the Xbox 360, my attention was totally misplaced. Apparently, the top gaming experience on the 360 this year isn't turning your opponent's head into a fine red mist from 500 feet; it's sneaking up behind him and slipping him a burger while dressed in a strangely creepy king costume.

If there's no such thing as bad press, you can count Sony's disastrous PSP viral marketing effort a huge success. Otherwise, marketers everywhere might want to take what's happening to Sony on the Web right now as an object lesson in how not to market to gamers.

According to numbers released this week by the NPD Group, Sony's PS3 is limping into the holiday shopping season in third place. Largely because of the inclusion of the Blu-Ray drive, which Sony is hoping will be its competitive edge over its console rivals, the company's only been able to supply a trickle of consoles into the country. So it's looking very, very unlikely that Sony will make its target of a million PS3s sold before the end of the year.

I have to confess myself a bit of a Second Life skeptic, which would appear to put me in the minority in the media world. Companies that have made their entrée into the virtual world include Edelmen, Reuters, Pontiac, and a handful of ad agencies.

In a Sunday interview with popular podcaster Major Nelson, Electronic Arts' Chip Lang, vice president for online commerce, provided a good example of how game developers and marketers should not use the Xbox Live Marketplace--not if they want to please gamers.

As Sony's most faithful console warriors begin to line up at retail outlets across America, the outlook for the Playstation 3 as a platform for reaching people online is pretty gray.

This week Microsoft's Bungie Studios and Peter Jackson's Wingnut Studios announced that the "Halo" movie, anticipated by millions of gamers, has been postponed indefinitely after studios Fox and Universal, who were financing the film as a joint venture, pulled out.

As a supporter of the idea of in-game advertising, I'm happy to see big brands getting involved in the medium. But campaigns in games have to pass the laugh test, and sadly, Nivea's recent game advertising effort doesn't quite hack it.

This week, in-game ad firm IGA was put in hot water by rumors that the advertising technology placed in the highly anticipated "Battlefield 2142" monitored users' browsing habits to target in-game ads, which take the form of billboards and posters strewn around the war-torn, futuristic cityscapes of the game world.

There are magazines about everything--cigar smoking, thug life,unidentified flying objects--and now for one of the most popular genres in gaming, massively multiplayer online games.