EB Games Australia has apologized publicly for a Grand Theft Auto V publicity stunt at one of its stores. Apparently a Grand Theft Auto V display in one of its Queensland stores used sherbert as fake cocaine.

"Regrettably, one of our EB Games store locations in Queensland set-up an unauthorised display within the store in support of the launch of the Grand Theft Auto V video game," Debra McGrath, EB's national brand, events and marketing manager said.

During its Tokyo Game Show press conference today in Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment president Andrew House said that his company wants to sell five million PlayStation 4 consoles in the first four months of availability. Sony hopes to hit this goal before the end of its 2013 fiscal year, which closes at the end of March 2014.

"Our plan is to sell 5 million PS4s by the end of 2013," House said.

A prominent member of the Australian-Chinese community is speaking out against "Whore of the Orient," the latest game from L.A. Noire creator Brendan McNamara and Australian development studio Kennedy Miller Mitchell.

This week Nintendo of America announced that it plans on knocking $50 off the retail price of its Wii U console in September and that it would launch a special Wind Waker HD Limited Edition Wii U Bundle that includes the game, the Wii U console, a specially branded Zelda gamepad, and a digital copy of the Hyrule Historia book.

While America is getting all of this, apparently Australia is getting a big fat goose egg.

Australian nurse Katrina Fincham had struck it big by playing World of Warcraft. After earning around $75,000 by farming and selling gold in the popular MMORPG from Blizzard, she decided to convert that cold hard cash into cold hard gold bullion. After doing that she put it in her wall safe at her Adelaide home. All was right with the world, but then something horrible happened: her house was robbed and her wall safe was emptied!

Sony Australia is in a dispute with the Australian Taxation Office over $53 million AUD, which comes from five years of tax adjustments (back taxes owed and penalties) that the company believes are in error. A Sony Computer Entertainment Australia spokesperson confirmed the news with GameSpot, but added that its PlayStation business in Australia has not been affected by it. Sony is appealing the assessment.

The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA), the trade group representing the interactive entertainment industry in Australia, thinks that the rating system there is a mess and that the board that oversees it is more a hindrance than a help.

IGEA CEO Ron Curry says that the whole system needs to be overhauled because the classification system is dysfunctional and administered by a handful of government bureaucrats. He thinks that the system needs a serious revamp and that it needs to be administered by members of the industry instead.

After being refused classification and losing an appeal on the first submission, Saint's Row IV has finally managed to secure a rating in Australia by the Australian Classification Board. After a modified version of the game was resubmitted, the Australian Classification Board classified the game as MA15+. At issue was a mission that contained the use of "alien narcotics" which improved the super powers of players for a limited time within the game. Publisher Deep Silver and developer Volition decided to remove the mission from the game.

Take Two Interactive's and Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V passed through the Australian Classification Board review process and survived, earning an R18+ rating for the region. Many were concerned that the game might end up getting refused classification on its first pass through the process much like Saint's Row IV and State of Decay did earlier this year. Saint's Row IV still remains effectively banned in the region, even after the game went through a second review earlier this week.

You may have noticed that video game prices in Australia are much higher than most everywhere else.  If you haven't noticed...

Video game prices in Australia are much higher than most everywhere else.

It's true, so long as they weren't banned, your favorite titles can run you 50 to 100 percent more Down Under than Up Over and that sucks.  Well, it sucks for Australians.  I live in America, but I am nothing if not empathetic so I feel for my gaming brethren with the funny accents.

It looks like the unedited version of Saint's Row IV will not manage to get an R18+ rating in Australia. Re-reviewing the original decision, a three-person panel of the Australian Classification Review Board reaffirmed the ban and refused to classify the game. This effectively bans the sale of the game in the region on all platforms.

On this week's show (Episode 62) hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about the very public meltdown and rage-quit of Fez developer Phil Fish, Nintendo's decision to remove content from the next Super Smash Bros. game because of the Internet, Australia's hypocrisy when it comes to game ratings and drugs; and the results of last week's poll on Game Politics. Download Episode 62 now: SuperPAC Episode 62 (1 hour, 1 minute) 56.5 MB.

The Australian Classification Board has refused classification on several games in recent weeks because they featured interactive drug use, but as web site Stevivor points out (thanks to Cheater87 for the link), different rules seem to apply to making and selling drugs.

You may recall that way back in June that Saints Row IV was officially the first game to be refused classification under the new ratings system in Australia. The Classification Board rejected the game (effectively issuing a ban on the sale of it in the region) because it contained content that the board felt was above and beyond the highest rating a game can get in the country - R18+.

Undead Labs' zombie-survival action game State of Decay is no longer banned in Australia. The game has been granted an R18+ adult rating by the Classification Board, paving the way for it to be sold in Australia. Undead Labs resubmitted a modified version of the game that removed and replaced the contents that the Board found to be beyond the pale - interactive drug use that directly benefited gameplay.

The results of research conducted by Morgan Tear and Mark Nielsen from the University of Queensland (Australia) concludes that playing violent video games does not diminish prosocial behavior (in other words, it doesn't make participants anti-social as some research has claimed). The results of the research was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE.

GameSpot Australia is reporting that Undead Labs has resubmitted its zombie themed action game State of Decay to the Australian Classification Board.

Undead Labs' State of Decay is the second game to be refused classification in Australia under the country's new ratings system. The game was refused classification because it includes interactive drug use that "aids in gameplay progression," or rewards the player for engaging in drug use.

Writing on the Undead Labs forum, executive producer Jeff Strain shared the bad news with fans.

Yesterday we reported that Saints Row IV had earned the dubious distinction of being the very first game to be refused classification under Australia's new age rating system for games. Now GameSpot has figured out exactly what got the game banned. Two things managed to get the game bumped from an expected R18+ rating to basically being banned in Australia.

Saints Row IV earns the dubious distinction of being the very first game to be refused classification under Australia's new age rating system for games. The ratings board announced that Saints Row IV "includes interactive, visual depictions of implied sexual violence which are not justified by context. In addition, the game includes elements of illicit or proscribed drug use related to incentives or rewards. Such depictions are prohibited by the computer games guidelines."

Monash University researcher Dr. Andy Ruddock from the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies and Brendan Keogh from the School of Media and Communication at RMIT (both in Australia, in case you didn't know) will host a seminar to discuss how better collaboration between media effects researchers and games studies researchers can find common ground and work together to improve understanding on the effects of violent video games on real world behavior.

The Australian Classification Board has held back the release of Undead Labs' open-world zombie survival title State of Decay for Xbox 360 in the region, according to the developer's official Facebook page.

Gamers in Australia have managed to raise $550,000 for the Starlight Children's Foundation as part of Starlight Week 2013, which took place in 400 EB Games (owned by GameStop) stores in the country April 29 - May 5. The week-long event offered in-store competitions, promotions, and donation drives.

Starlight CEO Louise Baxter expressed his gratefulness to EB and gamers in the country for their hard work and generosity:

A new television ad for Dead Island: Riptide has been banned by Australia's Advertising Standards Board, despite appeals by its local distributor AIE that the content it was banned for was "contextually relevant" to the game. The content that got the ad yanked for broadcast was a couple committing suicide to avoid getting ripped apart by a pack of zombies.

Update: This Kotaku story citing an unnamed Microsoft rep. notes that the Kinect does not have to be on all the time:

"Yes, you can turn the system completely off," the Microsoft rep said. "This would use no power and turn everything off. We’ll share more details about how it all works later."  Article author Stephen Totilo speculates that this involves pressing the console's power button.

Australia's Bureau of Statistics has released an interesting game for iOS devices that uses real census data (circa 2011) from the country's various towns called Run That Town. Players build a town using real census data (which can include the real town they live in… in Australia) and run it.

Staff at L.A. Noire developer Team Bondi have been laid off after the company's in-development title Whore of the Orient was unable to find a publisher, according to a report on MCV Pacific. According to Superannuation Warner Bros. backed away from a potential publishing deal "right before last Christmas," the publisher never officially or publicly confirmed that it had anything to do with the project.

Sega has confirmed with Kotaku that it plans to close its Brisbane-based development studio later this year. Sega said that it would close Sega Studios Australia later this year, but gave no particular reason for shutting down the operation.

The publisher says it will shut down Sega Studios Australia later this year; no rationale provided.

Now that Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition has managed to get an R18+ rating in Australia, Warner Bros has decided to give the mature rated PS3 and Xbox fighting game a release date. It will hit Australia on May 1 and will be priced at $39.95.

Media Molecule co-founder and studio director Siobhan Reddy has been named Australian Woman of the Year in the U.K. for 2013. The award is sponsored by Qantas Airways and the networking organization Australian Business.

Reddy was born in Sydney but migrated to the United Kingdom in the 1990s. She is in charge of the Guildford, U.K.-based studio that developed the LittleBigPlanet series and is hard at work on its latest IP called Tearaway. She was honored with the award last night in London.