Hey, Who Put the ESRB in my Smart Phone?

If you use applications bought through AT&T, Microsoft, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, U.S. Cellular, or Verizon Wireless, then get ready as they’ve struck a deal this week with the ESRB to use the same rating system that the videogame industry has used since 1994.

Other providers are still forthcoming with their implementation of the ESRB rating system, but the companies I listed previously are part of the Wireless Association and will be working on their own timelines to establish the rating systems for their products.

According to the ESRB president Patricia Vance:

“Over the last several years, there has been a veritable explosion in the number and variety of devices and platforms on which to consume interactive entertainment, and mobile devices are a key driver of that growth.

So we are proud to partner with the wireless industry in lending our expertise and credibility to the development of a rating system that effectively fulfills our mission of informing consumers while meeting the needs of this rapidly growing and evolving segment of the interactive market.”

If you are interested, go check out the ESRB pdf regarding the news as they discuss how they plan on implementing this for developers releasing their wares across all platforms at the same time.

by Alan Smithee

I sit upon my throne as the owner/shogun of this site, WatchPlayRead. But it wasn't always so. I too have had blogspots, I've done other community blogs, I've even written professionally for other sites out there...yet none of them provided the content I had a real passion for. It is then that I became tired of being a small cog in a big machine, and of writing about nothing but game news after game news article and the periphery that comes from such schlock, like knowing who Michael Pachter and Bobby Kotick are. I decided to start MediaWhoreNetwork.com and ran up my post count there for about 2 years, commenting about any and everything that I wanted to. I even started a weekly podcast that I feel has come into its own. It wasn't until earlier this year that I realized that having the word "whore" in your URL might be a bit limiting to my potential audience. I then made the website and its branding move over to WatchPlayRead.com.

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