There is suddenly a lot going on. Enough for this bonus edition.

• Korean government to invest $200 million in gaming. They want to become a world force in the industry. A repeat of their policy with steel making, consumer electronics, ship building and car manufacture. And precisely what the Canadians are doing. These guys understand what is happening in the world. Yet still the British government don’t get it. For a small fraction of what they have spent bailing out incompetent bankers they could have built a thriving, world class games industry in Britain. Instead they do everything they can to thwart us. Amazingly gaming in the UK does not even get the benefits that the film industry gets. And Keith Vaz is given credibility when he spouts half truths to the House of Commons.
• Xbox 360 attach rate is 8.1 games. This is remarkable when you consider how many millions of these machines were only recently bought. And 360 third party games generate more turnover than the Wii and PlayStation PS3 combined. No wonder so many publishers are voting with their feet when it comes to choosing which platform to support. Once you discount the occasional, casual, “toy” user Microsoft are winning this generation hands down.
• Microsoft Live Arcade sales have tripled since the revamp with NXE. That is an amazing success story. Live now has 14 million members. People think I have a bias towards Microsoft. But I don’t. I am only reporting it how it is. And Microsoft’s success in this console generation is quite simply staggering.
• In a survey of 4,500 teens on Habbo the Xbox 360 came top of the Christmas wish list. With a third more votes than the PS3. And just beating the soar away Wii. And all three consoles beat the iPhone. This is a good bit of research because it is a large sample size, geographically dispersed, of one of the key demographics.
• EA stock falls nearly 25% in two days, from an already stupidly low position. And we all know why. The company is now worth less than five and a half billion dollars. This puts a huge amount of pressure on John Riccitiello to do something drastic to sort the company out. We may yet see more interesting new coming from this quarter.
• Ubisoft looking at three acquisition deals worth about 5 million euros each. So these will be for fairly small developers. Not Codemasters or Eidos. But it is indicative that the game industry is still in full M&A mode. And also that Ubisoft are building on their fantastic success with acquisition growth as well as their prodigious organic growth.
• Playing video games improves elderly brains. This is pretty much what you would expect and builds on previous research. And is all the more reason for politicians and newspaper editors to be forced to play them.
• 5 reasons Disney should buy Electronic Arts. It is nice to see that the financial experts are coming round to what this blog has been saying for a long time.