When Nintendo first started advertising the newest Mario game for the Wii U - Super Mario Bros U - it claimed that the game was capable of being displayed in 1080p. It turns out that that little advertising bullet point isn't true, and now Nintendo is pulling the claim for any advertising related to the game.

A message on the game's official website stated:

"Experience Mario like never before... in full 1080p HD, only on the Wii U console!"

According to a Joystiq report citing an independent investigation by security firm Barracuda Networks, over 80,000 Google Chrome users have been affected by fake versions of Rovio's new game Bad Piggies. The fake versions of the game are accessed from the Chrome web store, which apparently installs a plug-in that displays advertisements for popular web sites.

Bridgestone Tires has responded to a Sony lawsuit claiming that a recent Bridgestone tire ad featuring actor Jerry Lambert infringed on its IP. Sony alleges that Lambert was playing fictional PlayStation executive Kevin Butler in its new ad which featured lab technicians playing Mario Kart on the Wii. According to a Bridgestone representative, the actor who plays Kevin Butler simply appeared in the commercial as one of the company's engineers.

Kevin Butler may once have been the face of Sony's PlayStation 3, PlayStation Network and the PSP platform as the fictitious Vice President of various made-up departments within the company division. But apparently Sony has decided to sue the man (actor Jerry Lamber) that plays Kevin Butler and his company - advertising firm Wildcat Creek - over the Kevin Butler IP. Sony claims that Wildcat used the character in an advertising campaign for Bridgestone Tires, with a "Butler-type character" wearing a lab coat testing out Mario Kart Wii.

The United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that the Hitman: Absolution game trailer, Attack of the Saints, did not glamorize violence, or violence towards women. The agency made the ruling after several complaints were filed about the trailer and some in the media pondered the message the trailer was trying to send about the trailer featuring sexy assassins disguised as Catholic nuns who Agent 47 attacks in an ultra-violent fight scene.

In Episode 20 hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight throw all conventional limitations on time out the window as they discuss the "Adults Only" ESRB game ratings category, political ads in games, and all the news about the Wii U. Download it here: SuperPAC Episode 20 (1 hour, 27 minutes).

If you thought that the only safe haven from political ads was your favorite video game, think again! Electronic Arts will start serving up ads from President Barrack Obama's campaign in the hopes of capturing the attention of the young and hip gamer demographic.

The dynamic advertising campaign will appear in many of EA's console, mobile and casual games leading up to the November election. The Obama campaign hopes to recapture some of the younger voter demographic and encourage early voting enthusiasm in the process.

Square Enix announced today that it is launching a new web-based gaming service that will allow consumers to play console quality, high definition games in their browser. The service is called CoreOnline, and will feature a micro transaction-based system.

The first titles released are Hitman: Blood Money and Mini Ninjas, with other games such as Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Tomb Raider: Underworld, and others to follow at a later date to be determined.

According to Courthouse News, Apple has been ordered to pay $2.1 million to lawyers related to a class action lawsuit for its "iPhone 4 Death Grip" legal battle. The company settled the class action in February.

According to a Financial Times report Apple has been fined AUS $2.25 million ($2.29 million USD) by the Australian government for falsely advertising that its new high definition iPad was compatible with high-speed 4G networks in the country.

As if you didn't have enough distractions on Xbox Live, Microsoft has decided to create new ads that take advantage of the Xbox 360's motion sensing Kinect technology. Coming to Xbox Live this fall, the ads (called NUads) will let consumers choose an ad-inspired adventure - a little mini-game you can play while you soak in the deliciousness of being served up information about this or that product.

UK advertising regulator the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has flatly rejected three complaints filed against Electronic Arts over the ending for Mass Effect 3. The complaints claimed that EA falsely advertised the extent of how much players could alter the ending to the game by their in-game actions.

The point of contention for those that filed the complaint was an EA ad that claimed that "the decisions you make completely shape your experience and outcome."

If you are going to fake an endorsement then you probably can't do any better than good old Mario, Nintendo's number one mascot. The billboard (pictured to your left) shows Mario posing with Acapulco, Mexico mayoral candidate Pepe Guerrero.

The billboard carries that tagline "Pepe Guerrero es tu bro," which roughly translates (according to Google Translate, at least) to "Pepe Guerrero is your bro." 

A new Sony patent will allow the company to pause your gameplay while it serves up advertising. Delightful. In the illustration submitted with the patent, cars are racing against other cars and some louder speakers or warning lights are show. The gameplay pauses and then a soda ad appears. After the ad is served the game resumes.

A post over at the Better Business Bureau blog by Marjorie Stephens contends that EA may have committed "false advertising" when it was promoting Mass Effect 3. The author of the post says that when EA talked about how the game's ending would work, they may have described it in a way that was misleading to consumers. Marjorie Stephens then list two examples from EA on the ending:

The once promising in-game advertising agency IGA Worldwide continues to struggle, and has laid off nearly a third of its employees, according to a VentureBeat report.

While Microsoft might not appreciate it too much, Reddit users have found a way to block the ads (which many find to be obnoxious) being served up post-Xbox Live dashboard update. People tired of seeing that Chuck Norris World of Warcraft ad (for the record I love that ad!) in the Xbox Live dashboard got together on Reddit and created two work-arounds. One involves blocking the ad server in your router - assuming that it supports it. Another method is to reroute your traffic with the free OpenDNS service.

Ford is sponsoring what it calls the "largest Words with Friends" game ever to promote its all-new Ford Escape. The public gaming event will take place tomorrow at 11:00pm - Wednesday at 12:00am at Hollywood Blvd and Highland Ave or on the company's Facebook page via a livestream.

AXA Equitable, a life insurance company in Farmington, Connecticut, has created a video game to introduce life insurance to women in their 40s. AXA's Pass It On! launched on the web in September and now a mobile application is heading to more portable devices. Pass It On! lets players pick an avatar and walk the streets of New York City collecting gold and avoiding expenses. The character can also buy permanent life insurance (represented in-game as a gold shield worn as a backpack) or term life (a silver shield).

A web ad for EB Games Australia is being called sexist, with one game developer calling it "massive step backward" because it enforces stereotypes about men, women and games. The online ad, "A Man's Guide to Trading" shows a man being nagged by a woman outside of an EB Games store about spending money. After she leaves he goes in and the clerk suggests that instead of spending cash he should trade in some games. He does just that and then uses the money he saved to buy the woman a fancy dinner. The ad ends with the woman dusting while the man plays Arkham City.

According to a new report on worldwide trends in video game advertising from DFC Intelligence, advertisers spent over $1 billion in 2010 using video games as a platform in North America. The activities included in-game advertising, around-game advertising, and advergames. By 2014, DFC Intelligence predicts that advertising in and around video games in North America will double to over $2 billion. On a global basis, advertising in video games will reach $7.2 billion by 2016, up from $3.1 billion in 2010, the group predicts.

New research from the University of Texas notes that players have trouble remembering brands advertised in action games with violent content. According to the new study, ads that appear in violent games actually may have a negative effect on the brand being sold with those playing the violent games they are being advertised in.

Deep Silver's Dead Island trailer has been awarded a Golden Lion in the Internet Film Lion Category at the 58th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The video, which some considered a bit controversial, showed a family holiday interrupted by a sudden and mysterious zombie outbreak, with several family members attacking each other after being infected. The trailer was created by Deep Silver together in cooperation with animation studio Axis Productions.

Concerned about the on-going negotiations between the NFL Players Association and the NFL, one analyst offers his worst-case scenarios on the impact of EA Sports' next Madden Football game.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter is saying that as much as half of Madden's sales could be lost if a lockout cancels the entire NFL season. Keep in mind that that is a worst-case scenario. Pachter is the only analyst willing to offer a prediction on this.

"If the season is only delayed a week or two and fans aren't alienated, there would be only a very small impact," Pachter told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week. "If delayed through Thanksgiving, the impact would be far greater."

While that's an extreme prediction and probably not very likely, Electronic Arts COO John Schappert is not taking any chances. He says that the company has planned on "the most conservative assumption, meaning no season."

Update: Ubisoft has blocked its own video in the United States on YouTube. Watching the video brings up the following copyright notice:

"We Dare - Have a spicy evening !"

This video contains content from Ubisoft, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

Original Story: A promotional video for Ubisoft's decidedly adult Wii Party game, We Dare, will either make you cringe or laugh. Is the video some clever joke marketing or are these people serious? It's hard to tell..

This party game is supposed to be played with your "very attractive friends" and asks you to engage in some questionable behavior using the Wii Remote.

The mini-games will lead to some promiscuous behavior or a fistfight with a friend. To quote that classic comedy song, "Hands off my wife, the party's over."

Game | Life is the latest outlet to talk to psychologist Carole Lieberman about her recent "games cause rape" comments to Fox News. Much like every other outlet that has sought out an explanation for those outlandish comments (or some evidence to back those comments up), Wired instead finds a wall. And let's face it, there's no back pedaling from the fantastic conclusion that Lieberman drew in that Fox News article.

The most interesting comments don't come from Lieberman in Wired's piece - they come from Iowa State University professor Douglas A. Gentile, who soundly squelches her claim that there are "thousands of studies" that draw some sort of correlation between sexual scenes in games and real world sexual assault.

Digital Development Management, a business and talent agency for video games and digital entertainment, has named veteran video game and interactive entertainment executive Paula Cuneo as its new Brand Director. Cuneo has worked for such companies as Microsoft and Activision.

As Brand Director, Cuneo will be responsible for spearheading DDM's brand business by becoming a direct partner to major brands and agencies contracted by DDM to establish product strategy in the video game sector.

Cuneo joins DDM from Massive Inc., the wholly owned in-game advertising subsidiary of Microsoft. While at Massive, she held the title of Director of Business Development and was responsible for managing the company's product placement and business development initiatives. During her tenure, Cuneo helped secure new content and partnerships, building the network to over 70 titles and serving over 300 top tier advertisers.

The Advertising Standards Authority, the government agency in charge of monitoring ads released on television, magazines, and public posters and billboards in the UK, has banned a poster for Sony's Move and the game The Fight: Light's Out. The ad was banned after the agency received eight complaints - two of which strongly objected to one of the men being tackled being "black." The ASA said that the ad features men of "slightly different skin tones" but did not ban the ad based on those complaints..

Instead the ASA banned the ad because it could "condone or encourage violent behavior" in children. Of course, playing in the schoolyard could also encourage the same kind of behavior..

Publishers Clearing House did something bizarre this week and it did not involve a gigantic check. The sweepstake company and magazine seller bought Funtank, an online video game company that is best known for creating advertising-based games (adver-games) for companies such as Trident, Walt Disney, and Toyota.

Financial terms related to the acquisition were not disclosed but we do know that Funtank co-founders James Baker and Scott Tannen will continue to run the company.

While the motives for this purchase are not fully understood, one could guess that Publishers Clearing House is looking for new and exciting ways to engage people on the Internet and get them to buy whatever their marketing partners are pushing to them. Since gaming is second only to social networking according to Nielsen, the deal makes a lot of sense.

Whatever you think of the ad for Call of Duty Black Ops, it sure has captured the attention of the public, and it’s still generating press weeks after its debut. The ad cleverly captures the interactivity of videogames and further dizzies viewers with appearances from Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel.

Aside from the violence being portrayed, the other real sticking point with critics seemed to be the youthful looking girl blasting away with a shotgun, pausing only for an enraptured smile. The female who played shotgun girl? The (aptly named) actress B.K. Cannon, who has also appeared in episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, ER and House M.D.