"If the entire front cover of a video game box was covered by an age rating, do you think parents might notice?"

Whether they notice or not doesn't matter if they don't care, which seems to be the case of the people that complain about violence in video games.  I mean, if you can find the tiny, often near-invisible rating on the back of DVDs, you have no excuse for not being able to find the larger, black-and-white rating on BOTH SIDES of game cases.

Also, I hope that sticker can be taken off, because it is noticeably ugly.

That poor Stormtrooper.

"Seeing as Wario Land and the math game don’t come out until September, it’s possible that these large rating labels could be a new USK standard as suggested by GoNintendo."

That's right, this will be standard. On May this year, Germany decided to tighten the Protection of Young Persons Act. The bigger labels are part of this resolution.

This is indeed the new standard in Germany. Those are the result of an amendment which became effective on July 1st 2008. According to the new law all games sold in Germany must have this oversized logo in the future. However publishers have been granted a transit period till 2010 meaning they can sell boxes with the old logo until then, afterwards only those with the new logo on it.

P.S. If you thought those looked fugly on a PS3 box take a look a NDS box... the logo takes approximately a quarter of the front... cheers to our government for this "brilliant idea"...

They could have at least made it square instead of diamond..

That seems a bit much... what we have in Australia seems to be a bit more suitable...

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/all/boxshots2/933036_94743.jpg

A rectangle in the bottom left with a different color for each rating, and descriptors next to it. Cant get any more simple that that really

- Tim Kowalenko

The answer is obvious! Germans have shitty eyesight.

-Entertainment isn't the reason the world sucks. It's the reason we know the world sucks. For information on games and psychology, look up: Jonathan Freedman(2002)Block & Crain(2007)Grand Theft Childhood, by Harvard researchers Larry Kutner&Cheryl Olson

They do have a colored age rating in Germany.

Nearsighted politicians need the big print, so it's perfectly understandable that they would support such ridiculously oversized ratings.

I don't get what the big fuss is about. If there is bigger ratings that means there is less for parent groups to whinge about, it becomes buyer beware. I understand the whole "thin end of the wedge" but that is what government and oversight is about.

What we need, and it's something that industry groups bang on about is education, this IS education. Tell me a parent can't see that german rating. Here in Australia we have similar coloured rating stamps. they are not that big but they are obvious and they are on the front, spine and back.

Somewhere along the line parents became stupid and required the government to raise their kids for them. I admit that is what we shoul be changing not labels, but this is a start.

 Ratings are just another form of censorship. Parents, not the government should decide what games their children play.

Maybe if the ESRB had ratings that big, those asshole parents would actually see it instead of being ignorant or blind.

You know, maybe it's just me, but the ESRB label, while smaller, seems to be more visible. Probably the higher contrast.