Good news for the hearing-impaired—Microsoft’s new controller-free technology appears like it will support the use of American Sign Language (ASL).

In a U.S. patent application, as noticed by SlashGear, Microsoft lays out the basic framework behind Kinect.

One section, illustrated in an image on SlashGear, shows a person making sign language gestures that Kinect can understand.

More:

One recipient of a rare and controversial item granted last month to 100 players of Valve’s Team Fortress 2, is turning a negative into a positive and has organized a charity drive that will see owners of the items delete them in order to benefit the Child’s Play charity.

The item in question is the Golden Wrench, used by the game’s Engineer class. John Tran, the man behind the charity drive, received one of the items, but claimed, in talking with Bitmob, that they were not randomly distributed, as Valve had earlier stated.

Elena Kagan, in a 63 to 37 vote, has been confirmed as the 112th Supreme Court Justice.

Five Republicans from the Senate supported her, while a lone Democratic member—Nebraska’s Ben Nelson—voted against her appointment.

While the Supreme Court now features three female Justices for the first time, perhaps more startling is the fact, as pointed out by the Washington Post, that all nine current Justices come from one of three Ivy League schools, Harvard, Yale and Columbia.

The 50-year old Kagan replaces 90-year old John Paul Stevens.

The Post also says to keep an eye on the relationship between Kagan and Chief Justice John Roberts, which the paper billed as “intriguing,” writing:

Pac-Man will be the first game to be inducted at the International Video Game Hall of Fame in Ottumwa, Iowa with four days of ceremonies starting Thursday. Certainly The ghost chomping, power pellet eating Pac-Man deserves such an honor. The Hall will have 29 inductees that includes Pac-Man as the first game with the help of Shigeru Miyamoto, Namco founder Masaya Nakamura, and gaming champs Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe and Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel.

Supporters of the International Video Game Hall of Fame are hoping that this event will spur some funds for the museum, which has a goal to eventually collect more than 100,000 coin arcade and home video games produced in the last 25 years. A tall order for sure, but something that the founders - like William Day of Twin Galaxies - are committed to. Day and Otummwa officials compare the museum to the great sports museums in the United States like the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY or the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Ma.

By all accounts the confirmation process of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has been a ho-hum affair lacking any great theater or overtly obnoxious partisanship and will result in her ascension to a position on the nation’s highest court.

As the Senate debates her nomination (a vote seems likely for this Friday), here are a few takes on the process and thoughts on what could happen from around the Internet.

Politico:

Conservative and liberal judicial activists generally agreed that the struggle over Kagan’s nomination has produced fewer fireworks and drawn less public attention than any nomination since President Bill Clinton tapped Stephen Breyer in 1994.

Los Angeles Times:

The sense of anticlimax was palpable in the Senate chamber, as the debate got underway to scores of empty desks.

Minneapolis-based retailer Target has raised some eyebrows concerning a $150,000 donation the company made to a “Republican-friendly” political group in the state.

As if choosing a political side wasn’t enough to anger some Target shoppers, the contribution to MN Forward is also being used to run ads for Republican Gubernatorial Tom Emmer, who, according to CBS News, opposes same-sex marriage, angering another whole segment of consumers.

The embedded video shows former Target customer Randi Reitan, who has a gay son, returning a full shopping cart of merchandise to Target in protest over the donation.

Target donated $100,000 in cash to MN Forward and another $50,000 in brand consulting.  CBS also reports that Target’s fellow Minnesota-based retailer Best Buy donated $100,000 to MN Forward as well.

R4 cards, which allow Nintendo DS owners to run their own code, homebrew applications and, in some cases, illegal copies of games, have been outlawed in the UK.

MCVUK carries word that a London High Court issued the ruling in a case against Playables Limited, decreeing that the R4 cards are now illegal to import, advertise or sell. Defendant Wai Dat Chan had attempted to argue that the cards should be legal since they allow users to run homebrew applications, but the court ruled that “the R4 must first must circumvent Nintendo’s security systems before it can work, therefore making it illegal.”

Nintendo, which apparently was the plaintiff in the case, issued a statement saying “Nintendo initiates these actions not only on its own behalf, but also on behalf of over 1,400 video game development companies that depend on legitimate sales of games for their survival.”

A proposed bill currently sitting in front of France’s Parliament seeks government assistance in promoting the risks that the overuse of videogames might have on that country's youth.

GP Reader Soldat_Louis pointed us towards the possible legislation (translated) and also broke down for us exactly how the bill made it from the country’s “Children’s Parliament” all the way to the real one:

Fans concerned that Atlus would shut down its Demon's Souls servers need not worry in 2010. According to a Game | Life report, the servers for the popular action RPG for PS3 created by From Software will continue to be online for at least another year. Atlus said this week that it would continue to support online play of the PlayStation 3 game Demon’s Souls through at least March 2011.

With some publishers looking out for their bottom line (shutting down servers for older games) as opposed to supporting fans, Atlus has proven that it cares about keeping fans satisfied well beyond a 12 month window. And if you're going to support a game it should at the very least be a game that fans have enjoyed - and continue to enjoy - playing.

Atlus also announced that it will shift the game’s "world tendency" color to "pure white," which means that online play will be a little easier - at least for a few weeks.

If you haven't tried one of the PS3's best RPG games of 2009, you probably should go out and buy it.. now. I predict that you will be pleasantly surprised at how great this game is.

The Library of Congress’ Copyright Office looks into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) every three years in order to ensure that its harms are “mitigated.” The latest such inquiry has led to the establishment of legal protections for those who choose to jailbreak their cell phones, as well as for those who break protections on videogames in order to “investigate or correct security flaws.”

An AP story stated that the triennial investigation offers exemptions to the DMCA in order to “ensure that existing law does not prevent non-infringing use of copyrighted material.”

Other exemptions handed down included:

Intel's investment arm is apparently keen on Dave Perry's streaming game technology company. According to Mercury News, Intel Capitol plans to invest an undisclosed amount of money into Gaikai, which is set to launch later this year. The company also revealed that online content delivery infrastructure Limelight Networks will be making an investment of some sort.

Gaikai is all about streaming content, with a particular focus on games. Earlier this year Perry showed off World of Warcaft playing on an iPad - much to the delight of WOW addicts. Gaikai's platform was developed by company co-founders Andrew Gault and Rui Pereira.

While financial terms of the deal were not revealed, Gaikai CEO David Perry said his company is relying on servers running Intel's Six-Core processors. Perry added that Intel's chips allow them to stream more games simultaneously while offering users a premium experience."

"Having Intel Capital buy into our vision as much as we buy into their processors makes this a great deal for both companies," he said.

MCVUK carries word from the Video Standards Council (VSC) that a mandatory shift to the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) ratings system in the UK will not be legally enforceable until April 1, 2011.

The UK’s Digital Economy act dictated that PEGI would become the single system for rating games, replacing a current implementation that utilizes PEGI in conjunction with British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) ratings.

While the Digital Economy bill passed in April of this year, the delay was blamed on it not yet being “made effective.” A portion of a statement MCV obtained from the VFC reads:

Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) President Hal Halpin was given the opportunity to make a post on Sony’s PlayStation blog in order to talk about why Schwarzenegger v EMA should matter to American gamers and to urge them to sign the ECA’s Gamer Petition.

Halpin began by stating, “At stake: gaming in America. Yes, you read that correctly.” He continued:

In the time since the Court’s announcement there has been a lot of media coverage, both from the enthusiast outlets and the national press. A disturbing theme that you’d find too often in the consumer comments is one of apathy. Perhaps it arose from winning in each of the violence in video game cases. Maybe because, from our perspective, it’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that we could lose — the logic seems pretty obvious.

EA.com Editor-in-Chief Jeff Green took to his corporate blog to write about why gamers should care about Schwarzenegger v. EMA.

Agreeing with EA CEO John Riccitiello, who said that a Supreme Court decision upholding the California law would “screw us up in a real way,” Green argued:

… it could have a chilling effect on the gaming industry as a whole--both the makers and sellers of the games, who will have to seriously think twice about the kind of product they can and want to sell, out of fear of ending up in jail. And therein lies the bigger question at hand. Because if you substitute books or movies or music in the previous couple sentences, you can see just how wrong this is.

At the ongoing Develop Conference in the UK, a representative from GameStop Sweden and the CEO of a new company attempting to make games as easy to play and share online as YouTube videos got into a bit of a dustup over used games.

GamesIndustry.biz details the flare-up between GameStop’s Niall Lawlor and InstantAction chief Louis Castle. Lawlor told Castle that the used game business helps GameStop preserve its margins, but that, “We don't like being in the used business, it's very difficult to manage.”

Lawlor said that without used game sales, GameStop would not be in business.

Castle answered that selling used games would quicken the demise of brick-and-mortar stores, adding, “While you're preserving some margins, used is accelerating changes. He continued, "I can see the train wreck, it's coming. Pretty soon everyone is losing money. Used is accelerating the decline of profitability for publishers. The oxygen is being sucked out of the room.”

Because the California law at the center of Schwarzenegger v. EMA is unable to specifically define exactly what entails a “violent” game, one practicing lawyer predicts a win for the game industry when SCOTUS eventually hands down its ruling on the legality of restricting the sale of such games to minors.

The lawyer behind The Fine Print blog notes that free speech under the First Amendment “has never been unlimited,” especially when it comes to minors. He details two of the better known exceptions:

First, child pornography is outright censored in the United States; it is illegal to make, sell, or own, no freedom whatsoever. The sale of pornography to minors is also restricted, on the theory that while adults can choose for themselves if they can “handle” pornography, children won’t know until it’s too late that something is too much for them or harmful to their well-being.

A couple days ago we detailed problems kids might have with 3D imagery, whether in TV or videogame form. Now a new report that emerged from the UK reports that 12 percent of the population may have visual impairments that make their brains “unable to correctly process the individual images that are transmitted to it via our [their] left and right eyes.”

The Eyecare Trust story, as pointed out by Edge (Thanks IndustryGamers), claims that such a malady would lead to “inconsistency in viewing the three spatial dimensions (height, width and depth) required to enjoy 3-D films in all their glory.”

When not deflating the findings of game-hating researchers, Texas A&M International University Associate Professor Christopher Ferguson often conducts his own studies, including a recent example which indicates that violent videogame players handle stress better than non-players and can actually feel less depressed and stressful following a session with aggressive games.

The Hitman Study: Violent Video Game Exposure Effects on Aggressive Behavior, Hostile Feeling and Depression (press release) was authored by Ferguson and his fellow TAMIU colleague Stephanie Rueda. The study included 103 students from a “Hispanic-serving public university” in the Southern U.S. 62 were male and 41 were female, with 98 Hispanics, three Caucasian and two who declined to answer.

According to a study from EEDAR - conducted by SMU Guildhall, gamers think more positively of games that get better reviews. Using PopCap's Plants vs Zombies, the study divided 188 people into different groups. One group was shown positive reviews, another group critical reviews, and a third group was shown no reviews at all.

At the end of the play session, all participants were offered a choice of $10 in cash or the game. Around 20 percent more of those players who were told that Plants vs Zombies had reviewed well chose the game than those told the opposite, and all those told were twice as likely to pick the game.

EEDAR believe that the results of its study proved that review scores affect word of mouth, and recommend that publishers employ them in their marketing to a greater extent:

It's hard sometimes to follow the fair-weather friend mentality of analysts, who in one breath claim that a particular sector is "recession proof" and in another preach doom and gloom. The phrase "whichever way the wind blows" comes to mind. Michael Pachter is one such analysts, who many people listen to and believe, and his latest prognostication isn't a good one for the videogame industry; but to be fair, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that, in a bad global economy, every sector is going to feel some pain - videogames are no exception, despite showing some resiliency earlier in this horrible cycle.

Pachter said that, while May was poised for dramatic growth, it fell short and Nintendo's decline during the month was remarkable and surprising.

While Red Dead Redemption and Super Mario Galaxy had excellent sales in May, the industry as a whole took a 5 percent nosedive, according to the latest U.S. videogame sales numbers from retail research firm NPD Group. Overall videogame sales fell 5 percent from the same period a year ago; sales for May 2010 $823.5 million, down from $865.7 million in May 2009.

Videogame software sales had a 4 percent increase over the same period a year ago, thanks mostly to Super Mario Galaxy 2 on the Wii and Red Dead Redemption on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Software sales were 466.3 million, up from $450.4 million in May 2009. Red Dead Redemption title took the top two spots for software sales (Xbox 360 and PS3) with combined sales of 1.5 million units. Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the Wii sold right around 563,000 copies.

Behrouz Minai, the head of Iran’s National Foundation for Computer Games, introduced what is being billed as Iran’s first online game, which was developed with the hope that it will inspire other Iranians to try their hand at creating games.

Asmandez, or Sky Fortress, is described as science-fiction-based and set in a future where denizens of the solar system are locked in battle with robots. The war forces the residents to take off to another system named Limbas in order to start a new life.

Interestingly, the English version game was designed to allow the visually impaired to play it, as it features audio cues. English and Persian versions were created, and the game supports up to 5,000 users.

Minai noted that “Some 10 million people use computer games in Iran, only 100 of which can design and develop video games.”

The Escapist’s Russ Pitts met up with Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) President Hal Halpin at this year’s E3 Expo for a discussion of the Schwarzenegger vs. EMA case, which has ended up in front of the Supreme Court.

After stating that a loss in the case could be “staggering and widespread,” in terms of its impact on gamers, Halpin was asked to describe the what's at stake in “broad strokes.”

He answered:

Beginning August 1, online game operators in China will be forced to take a series of steps to protect online gamers under the age of 18 from inappropriate content and selling or buying items using virtual currency.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, online games created for minors will have to lose any content that would lead to “imitation of behavior that violates social morals and the law.” The regulations deal with content that is horrifying, cruel or otherwise unwholesome, specifically any portrayals of “pornography, cults, superstitions, gambling and violence.”

The virtual currency ban was said to be made possible by a new rule that online game players must register game accounts using their real name.

Gaming operators were also told to “develop techniques that would limit the gaming time of minors in order to prevent addiction, though without specifying what kinds of techniques and a permissible gaming time.”

While skeptical of how well Microsoft’s Xbox 360 controller-free technology will work with disabled gamers, a leading advocacy group still sees it as a step in the right direction.

After witnessing the unveiling of Kinect at E3, AbleGamer’s Steve Spohn initially said that the technology would be “largely useless” to the disabled gamers reading his website, as the “entire point of Kinect is to get you and your friends off of the couch and more active while playing video games.”

After some reflection however, Spohn labeled Kinect’s voice command ability “more mentionable than the motion detection itself,” adding, “voice commands are a form of accessible technology enabling me to play more complex games and to use remote controls.”

Even tough economic times can’t stop the impact digital technologies are having on the worldwide entertainment and media (E&M) markets states PricewaterhouseCoopers, who added that it’s “clear” that consumers are driving these changes.

PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2010-2014 predicts that the global E&M market will grow by 5 percent compounded annually in order to reach $1.7 trillion in 2014. 2009’s total expenditures were pegged at $1.3 trillion.

PwC pegged Latin America as the fastest growing region, forecasting an annual growth rate of 8.8 percent over the next five years, leading to a total of $77 billion in 2014. Asia Pacific was the region with the second most forecasted growth (6.4 percent), followed by Europe, Middle East and Africa at 4.6 percent.

North America was called the “largest, but slowest growing market,” with growth expected to be 3.9 percent compounded annually, reaching $558 billion in 2014.

As Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski grapples with a decision on whether or not to reclassify broadband service in order to wield influence over it, AT&T is playing hardball by threatening to cut back on its U-Verse spending in light of additional government authority.

U-Verse is an AT&T IPTV service that offers high-speed Internet, phone and television programming and counts 2.3 million current subscribers. It is currently available to 24 million homes, a number expected to reach 30 million by the end of 2011. AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told the Wall Street Journal however, that FCC reclassifying of broadband from Title 1 to Title 2 would mean, “…we have to re-evaluate whether we put shovels in the ground.”

Christian game developer Left Behind Games has released details on its lineup of PC titles for the rest of the year, including a pair of games that will pit users against the forces of the Antichrist.

A full 67 percent of U.S. households now own a computer or videogame console used for gaming (down a percentage point from 2008 data) and the average age of the American gamer is now 34 years of age (versus 35 years old in 2008), according to new survey data released by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).

The 2010 “Essential Facts” survey also indicated that 26 percent of all U.S. gamers were over the age of 50, bettering the figure of 25 percent attached to gamers under the age of 18. 49 percent of all U.S. gamers were between the ages of 18-49.

Microsoft’s motion control technology for the Xbox 360, previously known by the codename Project Natal, will be officially marketed under the name Kinect.

The news was leaked by USA Today ahead of a pre-E3 event held by Microsoft last night. The article also detailed a range of games that are in development to leverage Kinect technology, including a Rare-developed sports game entitled Kinect Sports. Kinect could be available as early as this November.