In an announcement that shouldn’t surprise regular GigaOM readers in the slightest (warning signs emerged as far back as last February, and reached crescendo pitch in November and December), Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. just announced that CEO Ken Kutaragi, the “father of the Playstation”, will leave his post in June and become an “honorary chairman of SCEI”.

By most appearances, his new title will be an “emeritus” position in the sense attributed to Rupert Murdoch, when he showed a Newscorp exec the door: “The ‘e’ means you’ve been given the elbow and the ‘meritus’ means that you bloody deserve it!” Unsurprisingly, most analysts attribute the departure to the Playstation 3’s poor performance against the Wii, and worst blow of all, as compared to the Xbox 360.

Not entirely deserved, however, for despite the numerous missteps in its development, pricing, and marketing, the PS3 ultimately failed because Kutaragi succeeded with the PS2 so well. More

Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger for Xbox 360, announced earlier today, might sound cool to some, but to us it seems like a ploy to sell more high-margin peripherals, like keyboards, thereby boosting company’s game division revenues. After all, that tactic has worked well for Apple and its iPod line-up.

It is a wily move by Microsoft - after all, to instant message someone you would need a QWERTY keyboard-based device, which no surprise, Microsoft will start selling later this summer at an undisclosed price as an attachment to existing controllers.

Unless the first 10 million 360 adopters upgrade their controllers, don’t expect ubiquitous IM use from them. Even then, it’s unlikely what is being sold as a game machine will transform into a secondary messaging box over night – if ever.

In the interim, gamers will need to rely on the cumbersome on-screen virtual keyboard to communicate with friends. Yeah right – trigger happy gamers are going to do that.

Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Morhaime was listed number four on PC World’s most influential 50 Internet personalities this week right behind Sergey Brin/Larry Page, Steve Jobs, and Bit Torrent’s Braum Cohen. His name was above many other recognizable intenet figures: Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Chad Hurley and Steve Chen (YouTube), Craig Newmark (Craigslist), Matt Mullenweg (WordPress), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) to name a few.

“In the world of online gaming, there is World of Warcraft and there is everything else. With 8 million players worldwide, Blizzard earns about $1.5 billion a year on WoW… As with Second Life (#17), entire real-world businesses are based around the game.”

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It’s hard to imagine a world where people are completely upbeat about the odds of the Nintendo Wii. It’s not like half of the news on the Internet is about how great the Wii is or how many puppies it has saved from drowning. Well, since the Wii is so put upon, I feel that I must report some good news about it for once. According to an analyst at Merrill Lynch, by 2011, 30% of all American households should have a Wii. More

Even though the European Wii launch wasn’t exactly what Nintendo was hoping for in terms of hardware available (Nintendo had much less stock on hand than originally intended), the U.K. sales charts reflect that Nintendo had a very strong showing. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, one of Nintendos oldest and most succesful franchises, debuted at number 5 on the ELSPA sales charts, and according to David Jenkins of Gamasutra, of the 50,000 consoles sold in the first 12 hours, 33,000 buyers bought that game. Wii Play, which is unavailable in America at current but is an extra controller with a few mini games such as billiards and table tennis, debuted at number 9 while a few third party titles debuted in the top 40.

Other notable entries on the chart are FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association), still going strong at number 1 after 11 weeks, which is unsurprising considering how popular soccer is in the rest of the world if not in the United States. Need for Speed Carbon is in the number 2 spot, with Pro Evolution Soccer 6 at number 3 and Call of Duty 3 at number 4.

Last year, we saw IGF winners, such as the makers of Cloud, go on to sign deals with Sony for PS3 development, and Darwinia is now available on Steam. Past winner, Alien Hominid, went on to become a PS2 game. With the Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network, independent games are going to become more and more mainstream and are rapidly becoming a viable source of income. The IGF is a great place to look for the designers of tomorrow.

The Independent Games Festival has released its list of finalists for this year’s main competition:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize: Aquaria - Bit Blot; Armadillo Run - Peter Stock; Bang! Howdy - Three Rings Design; RoboBlitz - Naked Sky Entertainment; Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games.

Best Web Browser Game: Bubble Islands - dot-invasion; Gamma Bros - Pixeljam; Samorost 2 - Amanita Design.

Design Innovation Award: Armadillo Run - Peter Stock; Aquaria - Bit Blot ; Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games; Toblo - Digipen Institute of Technology; Toribash - NABI Software.

Excellence In Visual Art: Castle Crashers - The Behemoth; Golf? - Luke Hetherington Company; Aquaria - Bit Blot; RoboBlitz - Naked Sky Entertainment; Samorost 2 - Amanita Design.

Excellence In Audio: Bone: The Great Cow Race - Telltale Games; Everyday Shooter - Queasy Games; FizzBall - Grubby Games; Aquaria - Bit Blot; Racing Pitch - Skinflake.

Technical Excellence: Arcane Legions: The Rising Shadow - Slitherine Software; Armada Online - EvStream; Bang! Howdy - Three Rings Design; Blast Miner - Cryptic Sea; Bugs Of War - NinjaBee.

Kris Graft of Next Generation spoke with Brian Kabateck, one of the lawyers representing Kevin Ray, a Xbox 360 owner whose Xbox 360 failed after the October 31^st Live update, about what they expect from the lawsuit. Kabateck’s firm is seeking $5,000,000 in damages, but is overall unsure of how much the award will actually end up being. Kabateck had this to say about Microsoft’s claim of paying all fees associated with console repairs:

“If that were true, that would go a long way to solving the problem. Unfortunately, all the reports we’re getting is that Microsoft is saying ‘Send your Xbox in and for 140 bucks we’ll fix it.’ In our opinion, they’re turning their screw-up into a profit center.”

Microsoft has yet to respond. If Microsoft will pay for replacing the consoles, then there shouldn’t be a problem We’ll just have to wait and see.

Judge Matthew S. Kennelly issued a permanent injunction against legislation that would make it mandatory for game stores to post extra signage and put secondary stickers on game boxes, reinforcing game ratings. As reported by Gamasutra, a federal judge has set a deadline of next Monday to outline how the state will pay for legal bills accrued by the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) and other defendants. The state will have to come up with a way to pay the defense $510, 528.64 worth of court costs and legal fees. This legislation would also put in place a penalty system that would charge stores $1,000 for selling Mature games to minors, as well as $500 fines per sign offense for the first 3 and then $1,000 for each offense afterwards.

The video and computer gaming industry has already adopted a standard for games known as the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board). Thankfully, this legislation backfired, and has done the same in a few other states such as Michigan and Louisianna.