There have been a number of incidents in which online predators have used online gaming services such as Xbox Live as a means to facilitate lewd relationships with minors. A newly purposed Texas bill (HB 22) aims to force convicted sex offenders to register their online handles and gaming persona. Depending on how strictly you interpret the bill, this may bar sex offenders from being able to utilize the internet to access commercial social networking sites. Read: Increasing the overall scope for future applications.

While this bill has not passed the Texas House or Senate, the Lone Star state has launched a major campaign to combat online predators. Being a resident of Texas I find it difficult to believe that such resources to police such a proposal exists. However, I do see the need to limit predator access to minors, but is HB 22 the way to go?

[GamerPolitics]

Well, this is the second instance where I find myself extremely jealous of you PLAYSTATION®3 owners out there (the first being Little Big Planet). In a quasi-Halloween surprise EA announced that a “special” Mirror’s Edge demo will be jumping onto the PlayStation® Store October 30th (that’s today kiddies), and landing on the Xbox LIVE™ Marketplace on October 31st.

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While this is just a small tidbit of news, it shows great promise. Team Ico’s head honcho Fumito Ueda says he’s interested in pursuing the development of a smaller scale game for PSN. “As long as time permitted and I had the opportunity, yes,” yes said in a recent gamesTM interview.

Because the team is still very busy making their next major project, a full-fledged PS3 game (which is going to be “really good”), we shouldn’t be expecting this hypothetical PSN game to be coming out any time soon, but it’s good to know they will keep developing for years to come.

[videogaming247]