Things not to do this week:

• License a sickeningly-violent game to be created for my cute, family-friendly system and then pawn off all responsibility on another company.
• Claim in print that you’ll pay $1,200 dollars for any PlayStation 3s that anyone finds on a store shelf.

Do these two things and you’ll have a better week than Nintendo and Sony - two multinational corporations that pulled off better pratfalls than Chevy Chase recently.

***

Rockstar Games, no stranger to controversy, is creating Manhunt 2, the sequel to what might possibly be the least socially redeeming video game of all time - and more than that, isn’t wasn’t even a good game - for the cuddly Nintendo Wii; a system that’s been a surprise hit primarily due to it’s ability to bring whole families together to play for the first time since the Pong and Atari days.

It doesn’t take a soothsayer to see that the decision by Nintendo to license the ultra-violent game for their system is going to be a PR disaster. In a response to GamePolitics.com, Nintendo’s senior director of corporate communications, Beth Llewelyn, is bravely trying to head things off at the pass.

“Manhunt 2 is not developed or published by Nintendo,” she says. “It is one of many titles released by third party publishers for our system that appeal to people of all ages and interests. Just as with movies, television, and books, different video games appeal to - and are appropriate for - different audiences. Video game retailers and purchasers are strongly encouraged to follow the age-specific ESRB ratings when considering what software to sell or buy. If parents are concerned about kids having access to inappropriate Wii games, we encourage them to utilize the PIN-operated Parental Control features built into Wii.”

I have no arguments there - and I don’t believe that Nintendo should be forced to become a substitute parent. I’ll defend Manhunt, Rockstar’s right to create it and anyone’s right to play it, despite my plethora of reservations about the game.

After all, you can’t champion freedoms by recommending they be taken away.

The Wii does indeed have parental controls, and if a concerned parent would actually take a few minutes to read the manual, it’s easy to ensure that their child couldn’t play Manhunt 2 on the system.

But the sad fact is that our culture has become a society of witch-hunters, looking to blame everyone’s problems by pointing fingers outward in every direction. Nintendo’s sure to take a beating in the press when the game releases, so the only way it could be worth it is if the licensing fees for Manhunt 2 and robust sales numbers for the title generate enough money for Nintendo to offset the bad publicity.

I wouldn’t count on that - but apparently, Nintendo is.

***

I don’t pretend to understand what goes through the minds of the industry’s bigwigs. Even sensible, likable people like Sony Computer Entertainment America’s new president, Jack Tretton, become prone to saying the oddest, most ill-advised things in a manner so off-putting as to damage their own product’s reputation.

In the March 2007 of EGM, (click for image from Kotaku.com) Tretton states that “If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that’s been on shelves for more than five minutes, I’ll give you 1200 bucks for it.” In the interest of fairness, this interview was actually conducted in January, but as I wrote here on the 24th of that same month, PlayStation 3s were already readily available on store shelves back then, too.

Needless to say, the ace pair of industry shish-ka-bobbers at Penny-Arcade.com jumped on Tretton’s statement with their usual panache.

As for me, I snapped this shot with my cell phone about 90 minutes ago while I was visiting my local Best Buy for an unrelated item, but I thought that just in case Mr. Tretton was serious, $4,800 would make for a nice addition to my daughter’s college fund… had I known that this offer was going to be available, I could have quit my day job a month ago and called it a year.

Of course, this isn’t an entirely fair situation. In these very pages, I’ve discussed the odd world of in-stock vs. out-of-stock hype and how it’s really a lose-lose situation (unless you’re Nintendo, apparently), but I’m still not sure what point Tretton was trying to make with that statement. I can think think of many possibilities, of course, but in the end, the kindest thing I can say about the statement is that is was… unwise.

Unless my $4,800 check’s in the mail, of course.