Microsoft's Don Mattrick seems to live in an alternate universe where throwing gasoline on a fire puts it out. It doesn't in this one. Speaking to GameTrailers, Mattrick said that consumers who are concerned about connectivity issues - for example soldiers that might deployed overseas or someone deployed on a submarine - have an option for this generation: buy an Xbox 360.

A Russian coder and hacker known only as "Barabus" has ported Ska Studios popular "M" rated XBLA action game The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile to the PC. But before you celebrate, this PC version of the game is not an official port and doesn't exactly have the blessing of Ska Studios founder James Silva. It is basically pirated version of the game.

Barabus defends his action by arguing that the developer of the game should have made a PC port himself and that by not doing so is "not very nice."

Sony has released a trailer for a new PS Vita game that lets you be a men's room attendant called "Men's Room Mayhem." In the game - coming to the PS Vita "soon" - players direct patrons to stalls and urinals, keep the men's room sparkling clean, break up fights that might occur, and deal with other situations that apparently crop up in public bathrooms all over the world. The game avoids some of the other more unseemly things that happens in public restrooms, thankfully.

Say the name of an Electronic Arts title you'd like to see come to the Wii U. Okay, now let me break the bad news to you as gently as I can: There are no games from Electronic Arts coming to the Wii U in the foreseeable future. Not one title. Not even a Sims game.

"We have no games in development for the Wii U currently," company spokesperson Jeff Brown told Kotaku yesterday.

Facebook has blocked an app that lets users play a game of "Russian Roulette" with their Facebook account. The social suicide game was a little too over the top for Facebook, apparently. Like the real-world game involving a gun with one bullet in it, the app gives participants a one-in-six chance of deleting their Facebook account. Social Roulette was brought to the attention of Facebook by an automated system that deals with "negative user experience."

Swedish MMO developer MindArk announced today that a recently discovered moon in its long running MMO Entropia Universe was auctioned off for $150,000, or 1.5 million PED in the game's virtual currency. The winner (?) of that bid was Jan Terje Egeland (whose Entropia Universe alter-ego is "Modified Akoz Power"), who MindArk claims will be able to share revenue with the company from all activity on the moon.

Andrew Eisen obsesses over all the games that aren't coming to the Wii U in his latest video. Will he be able to name 50 games not coming to the Wii U (that are coming to other platforms)? Will his sister be able to name just one title that is coming to the Wii U and one other platform and not on another? Will Andrew's head explode by the end of this video? Watch it and find out!

In a post today on the blog for DayZ - the zombie survival game he is working on (perhaps you have heard of it or have confused it with The War Z - it happens a lot) - which was originally built as a mod for the first-person shooter Arma 2, DayZ designer Dean "Rocket" Hall announces that he is taking a "two-month sabbatical" to go climb Mount Everest in Nepal.

New Jersey State Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Union) plans to introduce legislation to ban violent video games in public places. The Assemblywoman has proposed a law that would ban all "M" rated and "Adults Only" games from public places such as amusement parks, movie theaters, bowling allies, retail stories and other public places. It is a move similar to what the Massachusetts Department of Transportation did on its thruways earlier this year.

According to this Bloomberg report citing an anonymous source close to the "situation," the next Xbox (which is codenamed "Durango" or is currently being called the Xbox 720) will not be backwards compatible with current generation Xbox 360 discs. Other rumors have indicated that the system will be pretty expensive - reaching the price point of close to $500 for the premium model of the system, though a cheaper model will also be available.

This Destructoid article citing a thread on NeoGAF calls into question a Kickstarter campaign to send a little girl to "RPG camp." The Kickstarter campaign, "9 Year Old Building an RPG to Prove Her Brothers Wrong!" by Susan Wilson asked for $869 to send a little girl to RPG ca

Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are now protesting the treatment of aliens. Yes, they have decided that they will hand out fliers at the launch event of StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm in Irvine, Calif. tonight. The launch event, which will have several members of Blizzard Entertainment on hand at the Irvine GameStop, will be treated to the kind of ridiculous protests that only a group like PETA can put on. So what will they be doing at the Heart of the Swarm event?

If you need a laugh to end your Friday on then this story over at The Verge will probably do the trick. In it a Time Warner Cable executive responded to a question about Google's impressive broadband speeds on its new Kansas City broadband fiber network by saying that its customers don't want the blazingly fast speeds that a gigabit internet could provide. Wait, what?

Ars Technica points out a new scam trolling internet users with legal threats demanding cash settlements for alleged incidents of infringement. An organization calling itself the Internet Copyright Law Enforcement Agency (ICLEA) recently sent out copyright infringement notices to victims warning them that "if this matter is not settled by Friday, March 1, 2013 then you may face serious potential criminal and/or civil charges filed against you.

As Republicans and Democrats publically spar over sequestration, House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has decided to throw "wasteful spending" into the mix by mentioning research on smoking machines, a free cell phone program, and even the use of video games for research on the elderly into the national conversation (here is a great explanation of what 'sequester' means, if you are interested).

Update: Many of our readers pointed out that the question in the poll about video games was directed at Republican respondents, which explains why it was skewed negatively towards video games. Thanks to everyone who pointed that out to us.

It's one thing for North Korea to threaten the United States of America via a propaganda video, it's quite another for them to steal the footage of the nuclear blast from Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3! But that is exactly what they did, according to an analysis of the footage over at Forbes.

Quest Academy in Las Vegas, Nevada is a charter school that is supposed to spend the funds it generates to give children a better education, but the school's principal had other ideas on how to spend the money, according to Action 13 News.

Politico put together a top-ten list of violent video games that are being mentioned by anti-game forces as part of a culture of violence influencing people. While they are citing groups like Common Sense Media and the National Rifle Association in their gallery of gruesome games, the most notable thing about the feature is how dated all the selections really are.

In a bizarre move, Kickstarter issued a message to backers of the Android-based high definition console, the Game Stick. The crowd-funding site told backers that the device, which has already been fully-funded and is working on stretch goals, had become the subject of an intellectual property dispute. Because of this Kickstarter said that - under the law - it was required to remove the project from the "public view" during the dispute process. They said at the time that if they could not put the project back up within 30 days than the Kickstarter campaign would be cancelled.

Nintendo of Europe has finally explained the odd restrictions on 18+ content (which includes reading information, looking at screenshots, and watching video) in place on the European Wii U eShop. It turns out that German law is affecting when everyone (adults and children) can look at mature content. Last week Eurogamer found that it could not look at information on the eShop during certain times (11pm to 3am). This included info on the 18+ rated games ZombieU and Assassin's Creed 3.

Apparently taking cues from 'Cinemax' or 'Showtime After Dark,' Eurogamer has discovered that the European Wii U eShop prohibits all consumers from accessing mature-rated games and content during the daytime hours.

This is sure to put analyst Michael Pachter on someone's naughty list: Recently he said that Activision needs to start charging a fee for the multiplayer portion of its Call of Duty games. Wedbush Securities industry analyst Michael Pachter made his comments during the Digital Game Monetization Summit in San Francisco, California (as reported by GamesIndustry International). During his presentation he said that Activision made a serious mistake when it didn't implement a subscription-based model for Call of Duty multiplayer.

If you are looking to buy Fable II on Xbox Live, then you might be out of luck - at least for a little while. Apparently Microsoft has pulled the game from its Xbox Live marketplace. The game is no longer available through the Games on Demand service on Xbox Live or via Xbox.com.

In a weird, odd twist a Kickstarter campaign has been started to fund a donation to another Kickstarter campaign. While that is pretty much the length and breadth of British author Drew Wagar's appeal to the Kickstarter community, there's a little more to it than that.

After a few days of not being able to use the "@" character in passwords, Netflix has said this morning that the problem is now fixed. The problem relates to the new Netflix app that was launched this weekend alongside the Wii U's retail release in North America. Netflix subscribers that used the "@" character in passwords were forced to change them because the character was not allowed in the Wii U app. Now Netflix says that everything is fixed.

Over the weekend Joystiq reported about an interesting lawsuit filed against THQ by a tattoo artist named Chris Escobedo. Escobedo alleges in his lawsuit filed against THQ for using a tattoo he designed for MMA fighter Carlos Condit. Condit's likeness appeared - with the tattoo designed by Escobedo - in THQ's UFC Undisputed 2010 and UFC Undisputed 3.

Microsoft has apparently filed for a patent that uses a camera device to determine how many people are watching a given piece of entertainment to make sure the consumer isn't abusing the license they purchased... The patent the company has filed for is titled "Content Distribution Regulation by Viewing User" and allows content providers to "regulate the presentation of content on a per-user-view basis."

Here is a deeper, more alarming description of the patent:

An exploit related to code in the hardcore mode of Borderlands 2 for Xbox 360 is making the rounds and developer Gearbox Software is warning players about it and how to avoid it altogether. The problem apparently is not related to other versions of the game on PC and PS3. The exploit is supposedly tied to the hardcore game mode known as "Graveyard mode that was left in the game code by Gearbox Software. It apparently wipes the progress of players who come in contact with other players, much like a virus.

Earlier this year it was rumored that gaming and geek culture network G4 would be changing its format to support the "GQ" demographic, and that much of its most popular programming would either be reformatted or discontinued. Today we learn that it looks like its most popular programs will face the latter and not the former. Polygon is reporting that the network's two most popular shows have been cancelled.