To some people, it's as if the Disney Channel suddenly decided to air R-rated films.

A parents' watchdog group, the National Institute on Media and the Family, says Nintendo has abandoned the family audience that made its Wii gaming system such a success.

Nintendo's crime? Last week it allowed game publisher Sega to release the ultraviolent "MadWorld," which has gamers involved in gladiator-styled fights to the death.

And that's not the only worrisome release on a console that allegedly skews to a younger demographic. Rockstar Games' "Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars," which hit store shelves on Tuesday, plunges Nintendo DS gamers into a bloody power struggle within the Chinese mafia.

Both games carry an M rating, indicating they should be sold to gamers 17 and up.

They aren't the first M titles to be released for Wii or DS. And while the content of each is best suited for grown-up gamers, neither game can be said to take violence to some new height.

So, what's the controversy? At the core, the video game industry faces a public perception not unlike what the comic book industry went through in the 1950s.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, only 25 percent of gamers are under 18 and the average game player age is 35. Yet the perception persists that video games are children's entertainment.

"Parents are still uninformed about the video game industry," says Gaz Deaves, video game records manager at Guinness World Records, which last month published its 2009 Gamer's Edition. "They treat systems like the Wii and the DS as a protective, walled-in garden."

That's reflected in the kinds of games parents are buying. Half of the top ten best-selling games in 2008 had the all-ages E rating, and the top three games sold ("Wii Play," "Mario Kart" and "Wii Fit") were E-rated, according to the NPD, a market research company,

But "owning a video game system is like having a DVD player. There are no restrictions to what you can watch on it," Deaves says.

And in the case of "MadWorld," that includes the ability to push your opponent onto a set of spikes, beat him with a road sign until the screen drips with blood or tee off in a game of "man-golf" in which heads are used in place of golf balls.

Sega and Nintendo did not return calls for comment. Rockstar Games declined to comment.

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/1482619,CST-FTR-vid18.article

(apologies for the terrible title of this article)

Oh I do so love when those conservative groups get a reality check. ^.^

Thank you!  Geez, people, it's just the player--you still need to go to a store and BUY the f**king software!  (Excuse my profanity)

but dont the wii and 360 both have parental controls that you can set so they wont play games with certain ratings?

These same people would also have been upset when Manhunt 2 and Tenchu: Stealth Assassins came out. It's a good thing that they never heard of those games.

Yeah but apparently parents are too dumb to know anything about 'parental controls'

yup, they sure do. even the PS3 has this.

"Parents are still uninformed about the video game industry,"

I think that sums up the issue entirely. Ignorance on the part of the parents and these groups is not Nintendo's fault and they shouldn't have to take crap for it.

Parents honestly need to take the time to educate themselves in what they are buying for their children. It's not unlike any other thing your buying for your children. There are things there made for kids, and things there that are not made for kids. Consoles are unique as they are made for both groups, thanks to parental controls. You can control the content you access. It's not that difficult to research either really just typing either XBox 360, Wii, or PS3 parental controls. Then reading up. Heck, it's all in the manual of the console too.

It's not that difficult, it's alot easier to set the parental controls on your console than complain at companies and "hope" something gets done. But you and I know, that nothing will happen from complaining at companies.

Who cares? Sega and Rockstar won't. Quite the opposite - it might stop a parent buying a console for their kid but it wont stop the profile of the sotware being raised on platforms with a huge userbase.