Now that digital distribution is in the limelight as the alternative to brick-and-mortal retail for independent game developers, we're starting to see the same old controversies we've seen about limited retail space in the past: smaller, independent titles getting overshadowed by more well-marketed mainstream titles.

The results are in. Video game players can rejoice -- they're the majority now, according to a Pew Internet & American Life survey. Over half of the U.S. adult population plays video games.

Congratulations to "The Guild" and creator Felicia Day. The online mini-series, which premiered its first season last year to much acclaim and over nine million views, has worked out a very interesting deal with Microsoft for the second season. The show creators will retain rights to the content and revenue for non-game related channels, but Microsoft gets an early premiere of the content and rights to sell advertising with an unspecified revenue split throughout the initial series run.

"LittleBigPlanet," which was slated to be one of Sony's biggest exclusive releases this year, has been causing Sony no end of headaches, first with a launch delay to apply a patch removing lyrics from the Koran from the game's musical track, and most recently with a community blowup surrounding the moderation of user-created content. Early in the game's lifecycle, it seems that Sony and Media Molecule, the game developer, were a bit overzealous when it came to taking down user-designed levels for age-inappropriate content and copyright infringement.

This past week an article from ClickZ got some love for its extreme take on the state of the industry. Which was of course that consoles are going to die to the masses of newer, younger casual games. Of course, the author of the ClickZ article didn't actually qualify any of his opinions with numbers. I mean, it's obvious that casual games are going to eat consoles alive, right?

Big news this week ---news that is going to ripple well beyond gaming. Starting Nov. 19, in concert with the launch of the new Xbox 360 Dashboard, the console is going to be able to stream video from Netflix,in HD.

The PS3 thus far hasn't had incredible luck with securing exclusive titles -- aside from "Metal Gear Solid 4," the platform's exclusives haven't been the huge sellers that games like "Halo 3" and "Gears of War" have been for the Xbox 360. This month, however, Sony was scheduled to release what was (and still is, in all likelihood) shaping up to be a major hit -- "Little Big Planet."

"Fable II" is set to launch this coming week -- it is a highly anticipated console title from UK game studios Lionhead, a sequel to a fantasy-based game for the original Xbox. The game promises dynamic alteration to the character and game world based on user behavior. Oh, and this post has very little to do with the game itself. In fact, the game is besides the point. What's been very interesting are the marketing efforts surrounding the game, and how those tie together with the title. There is some serious ground being broken here.

Last week Forbes published an article declaiming that video game publishers are shifting their attention to the casual game market, stating that the bulk of growth is coming in the casual sector -- a major reversal from just two months ago, when the mag declared a "Casual Gold Bust," saying that the casual games market was so flooded, developers were having difficulty carving out a niche there. The article's thesis revolves around "Spore," the recently released god game that allows you to shepherd an alien race from single-celldom to galactic empire.

It's been an interesting week for casual gaming. One of the items that got a lot of press was the announcement that a PopCap sponsored add-on for World of Warcraft would allow players to play Bejeweled during their in-game downtime. This was a neat story: A corporation bringing rogue IP back into its fold in a symbiotic manner. A nice alternative to the Scrabalicious route.