The UK-based Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) is trying to show that the PEGI system -- which it supported in the great BBFC ousting of '09 -- is by no means weaker than the BBFC ratings that used to be oversee the region. Speaking with MCV, the group took the opportunity to warn publishers: "Abuse [the] new system and risk your future." Publishers may face fines of €500,000 ($696K) if they lie on the questionnaire, which allows PEGI and the Video Standards Council to determine an appropriate rating for their games.

ELSPA's statement and teeth bearing are to ease concerns that PEGI won't be strong enough for the UK when it's implemented this holiday. ELSPA is essentially using a "see, we told them to play nice" tactic to save face, just in case the rating system it supported has an incident.

The UK-based Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, or ELSPA for short, has a new face on board. Seasoned game designer David Braben and his crack team of devs at Frontier Developments have joined the trade body, no doubt wooed by the organization's rumored regular meetings to play Twister.

Braben wowed early gamers with his influential space sim, Elite, as well as its 1993 sequel, Frontier. Braben's latest release strayed far from his roots, however, in last year's WiiWare platformer, LostWinds. In joining the ELSPA, Braben says he hopes to help the organization deal with such issues as piracy, ratings and used game sales "swiftly and efficiently." Still, given that the studio's current project, The Outsider, was first announced in 2006, and we're still waiting on Elite IV, we're not convinced speed is how Braben and company roll.

A recent survey conducted by YouGov for the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) revealed that most UK citizens want an independent body to issue game ratings. GI.biz reports that a majority of those surveyed also said that they would prefer to see games use the same rating standard as movies. The BBFC hopes to use this survey as leverage in its bid to become the UK's primary game ratings body. Currently, the BBFC only rates games with a certain level of mature content, though that may change thanks to last year's Byron Review.

The BBFC competes with Europe's PEGI ratings, which already appear on UK game releases. The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) argues that the PEGI system is superior to the BBFC. Said ELSPA director general Mike Rawlinson, "Gamers no longer just play with their mates but play online, and we need a system that reflects this situation and protects their interests," adding that the PEGI system is the "right solution for child safety." Rawlinson further states that ELSPA will be promoting the PEGI system with a "multi million pound campaign" designed to get the word out to UK parents. Finally, he says that ELSPA has conducted its own research with YouGov that supports its argument.

The irony of all this, of course, is that this fight is being waged to make ratings less confusing.

ELSPA/Gfk-ChartTrack reveals that Mario Kart Wii was the top-selling game across the UK during 2008 in the "individual SKUs" category. EA's FIFA 09 (it's a soccer game) took the top spot in "all formats." MCV notes that Nintendo hardware holds six of the ten spots on the individual list and several slots on the all format list. Not exactly surprising, given how the region has embraced the Wii.

NPD will release its year-end report covering the US this Thursday. For now, check out the most popular titles among the masters of Marmite after the break.

Sure, LittleBigPlanet may have had a rough start at first, but it seems the wrinkles are smoothing out and things are on the up-and-up. In the UK, total sales for the awwww-inducing Sackboy sim have hit well over 200,000 copies prompting ELSPA (Electronic Leisure Software Publishers Association) to award the title with prestigeous gold status.

Edge notes that the healthy sales figure was due to a strong TV campaign which ran throughout the holidays -- such as commercial spots like the one embedded above. Sources also tell Edge that LBP is due any time now to receive Platinum status (300K copies sold and onward). Hometown heroes Media Molecule must be grinning ear-to-ear.

Not many games become diamond-sellers -- that is, pass one million sales -- in the United Kingdom. According to ELSPA, only nine titles have managed the feat since it started recording sales in 1999. As of today, a further two have joined that elite group, and both are close to our hearts: Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit.

They've taken their sweet time getting there, however. Fellow diamond-seller Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas took just three weeks to break the seven-figure landmark in Britain, while Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit took 32 and 30 weeks, respectively. On the other hand, there's no doubt that both epitomize the "evergreen" appeal of popular Wii titles -- whereas games like San Andreas had a very explosive start and then faded, the Nintendo pair are still in the top five in the latest UK charts.

Hit the break for the full list of titles that broke the magic one meeeellion mark.

Otherwise known as the Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association (an organization working within the British games industry), the ELSPA isn't happy about the abundance of R4 flash carts in the hands of DS owners. Nor is it happy about the availability of these little devices, which -- homebrew applications aside -- people are using to play pirated DS ROMS. If you want an R4, it's easy to buy one from Amazon, eBay, or a wealth of independent online retailers.

According to the ELSPA, "The supply of these items is an infringement and an offence under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Trade Marks Act 1994." So, how did they get onto shelves in the first place? Clearly the yawn-inducing law behind it all is more complex than simply "they are illegal," otherwise the shops wouldn't still be selling them. Which they are.

Long story short, it's a mess of regulations and red tape, and we've heard it all before. It's hardly a crystal-clear situation where legal teams "will take action where and when appropriate." If a blanket ban of selling flash carts suddenly falls over England, and police start breaking down doors of R4 traders, we'll let you know. Until then, get out there and buy some good games, and use any external device responsibly.

In a raid executed last Sunday, 85,000 "discs" of pirated software and other counterfeit goods were seized at an East Yorkshire market. One notable bit of contraband brought in by the haul was a pile of carts marked Volume 9 DS Games, each cart loaded with £6,000 ($11,859) of DS games according to the Entertainment Leisure And Software Publishers' Association's team of "forensics experts."

The ELSPA reports that the Volume 9 DS Games carts have been circulating for the past month and contain approximately 200 commercial releases, which explains where the £6,000 estimate sprung from (£30 x 200). We did the math -- well, actually, our calculators did the math -- and you would have to mow about 593 lawns to raise enough money to purchase that many games. That is, of course, assuming you're not one of our smart (and handsome) readers who follow our regular posts on video game bargains.

We know a few of you out there are pirates -- you make sure to rub it in our face whenever we lament about overpriced new releases and expensive imports. Have you bootlegged anything close to £6,000 of commercial DS games? Have you packed all those black-market ROMs into one cart to create your own Volume 9 DS Games collection? And how did you end up spending the money that should've gone to the people who worked hard to create the products you filched?

After the Daily Mail's startlingly incompetent take on Dr. Tanya Byron's recently published review of games and internet media in the UK, we're more than happy to see less dubious discourse emanating from the Entertainment and Leisure Publishers Association. Speaking to MCV, ELSPA director general Paul Jackson cited several concerns with the report, chief among them being its recommendation of two, potentially confusing ratings systems.

"The way the proposals currently stand, there will be a BBFC standard on packaged goods – the number of which will presumably get smaller as gaming goes more online – and there will be the PEGI standard online when you're downloading," said Jackson. "We think it will be clearer if there was one standard." Jackson suggested that the report needed to be more "future-proof" and more considerate of the growing number of games being sold online. "It's incredibly important that we protect children and to do that we need to future-proof this process, but it's not quite there yet."

Also not quite there yet is the director general's belief that the industry alone should foot the bill for a consumer ratings education campaign. "I want to make it completely clear that a public marketing programme has been key all along in the educational process," he said. "We'll be talking to the Government about who pays for what. We're very keen to play our part, but all of the stakeholders needs to step up to the plate."

We already know that Nintendo alone can't smash all the R4 devices that allow for easy downloading and piracy of DS games. But could the aid of Europe's ELSPA help Nintendo complete its total smashing plan? Probably not, but that hasn't stopped the European trade organization from lending its help to Nintendo in battling the widely available device.

How exactly they'll help isn't yet clear, though. In a cryptically vague statement to MCV, ELSPA said they were "evaluating the R4 game copying device" and "working closely with [Nintendo] to consider the next step in the UK." While that statement doesn't reveal any concrete plans, it also doesn't rule out any potential "next step." S.W.A.T. team raids, tanks in the streets, nuclear strikes --they're all potential piracy-battling strategies that aren't eliminated by this statement. Pirates, start digging your fallout shelters ... NOW!

Apparently the outrageous claim from the ELSPA's Intellectual Property Crime Unit manager, John Hillier, that 90% of North American DS owners are pirates, was outrageous to him as well. A spokesperson for the organization told GamesIndustry.biz that the quote attributed to him in the incendiary Sunday Post article was inaccurate or even fabricated.

According to the spokesperson, "[John] didn't quote The Sunday Post on any figures whatsoever." The spokesperson asserted that the Sunday Post conflated quotes from Hillier about R4 sales in the UK with an article from Singapore about DS piracy in that country (hence the 90% quote, which is still likely to be ridiculous). The specific article isn't named, but we believe it's this one. It's amazing that a quote about the UK plus an article about Singapore somehow generated a statistic about North America. But who cares about facts when you're busy alarming the public?

In a recent chat with Scotland's The Sunday Post, John Hillier of the ELSPA (Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association) warns retailers that the R4, a popular DS flashcart capable of running pirated and unauthorized software, could ruin businesses and the gaming industry. In the scaremongering piece, Mr. Hiller throws out an unsourced statistic: "In America it's thought 90 per cent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s."

90%? Considering the near-ubiquity of the handheld and its expanded casual audience, we highly doubt that even 9% of DS owners in the US have a flashcart of any sort, let alone know of their existence. Though we don't consider ourselves supporters of piracy, stating a false figure like that as fact just to rally people to his cause is unconscionable.

In a way, we kind of wish the R4 was that popular, but not for any illegal reasons -- it would likely result in more homebrew projects and a much larger homebrew audience. Mr. Hillier will hear none of that, though: "The R4 has shifted balance of power in the piracy industry to the consumer -- and that is hugely worrying. That's why we intend to stop trade in these chips wherever we can."

No, ever-vigilant commenters, this is not a double post -- just further proof that the rest of the civilized world thinks that gamers are a bunch of Cheeto dust-coated fatties. As part of the UK Department of Health's £372 million action plan to reduce obesity, the UK government will work with the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association to make sure that game companies continue to create parental controls on how much time their offspring can spend playing video games, watching TV, or surfing The Innernette.

We're sure this will be very effective in lowering your nation's total weight -- if not, you could always invent some sort of national monthly sandwich allotment to try to curb overeating; or maybe require all comfortable armchairs to deliver powerful electrical jolts into anyone who has been sitting for longer than twenty minutes. Yeah, that sounds great.