Teasing plans to "make entertainment history" at E3 next month, Microsoft spun NPD's April 2010 retail video game revenue report as a tale of irate ex-NSA ops, multiplayer betas, and "industry-leading" attach rates.

From famine to feast to famine again, April 2010 retail video game sales plummeted 11 points in year-on-year numbers after last month's rally. According to NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier, April was the industry's worst year-on-year decline since July 2009 and the fourth worst in year-on-year percent declines since September 2000.

Ouch.

Rumblings of a true next-generation PlayStation Portable just won't go away, with the latest chatter pegging next month's E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles as the likely venue for its unveiling. Meanwhile, sales of Sony's current PSP models — including the new PSP Go — are taking a turn for the worse.

Gaming site MCV says it has a "senior industry source" who claims that unnamed gaming publishers are already "laying the ground[work] for an offensive on a brand-new iteration" of the PSP, with one publisher "waiting on a specific announcement from the platform holder" — i.e., Sony — "before it can reveal its future PSP plans."

Wonder of wonders, Sony's PlayStation 3 may have finally inched into the black after years of splashing around in an ocean of red. The company claims it turned the road in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year which runs from April to March, posting a profit for the first time since the PlayStation 3 went on sale back in November 2006.

Sony Corp's conservative profit estimate suggests the road to recovery for the Japanese electronics maker is still bumpy as it braces for unfavourable currency rates and tough competition.

Sony has shed jobs, shut factories and cut procurement costs to better compete with global rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co in TVs and Apple Inc in portable music, and is hoping to reap the fruit of its restructuring.

Have you recently snagged a PS3 because of some game, say Sony's God of War III? You're in the minority, according to consumer habit tracker Nielsen. The company interviewed over 700 gamers aged 7 to 54 around the time Sony's myth-marinated action mashup launched and found just 12 percent eyeing the PS3 for "a specific game."

Does Red Dead Redemption have a resolution problem on Sony's PlayStation 3? Is it even fair to call a "sub-high-definition" resolution choice a "problem"? Will anyone who doesn't own both systems care? Is raising the point a waste of space? Am I standing on the lip of a lava pit goading readers to push me in?

Tahoma or Sans Serif? DVD or Blu-ray? S-Video or HDMI? Electronic paper display or LCD? We choose technology--yes, fonts are technology--based on visual parameters all the time. While it's silly to dismiss a game because of minor visual disparities on one platform versus another, it's just as silly to pretend those differences aren't there.