If you're in Canada and haven't secured Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Collector's Edition for pre-order, EA Mythic has something pleasant for you. The developer just announced that The Source opened its doors, and everyone from Canada can get Warhammer Online from the popular retailer. See the full article for more details.

Corporations, institutions, and business setting up shop in Second Life seems to be the trend now-a-days, and it seems that there isn't any slowing down.

The Washington Post reports that this month, Sears Holdings Corp, in partnership with International Business Machines Corporation (er, IBM) unveiled Sears Virtual Home, a showroom on Second Life. There are also reports that Circuit City Stores Inc. have built a showroom in Second Life with IBM's help.

As trendy as it is at the moment, industry watchers are warning that the popularity of setting up shop in virtual worlds could backlash. Gartner Group analyst Steve Prentice has said earlier this month that SL was "heading toward the peak of the hype cycle" and faces the possibility of growing disillusionment among its community.

Playing it safe, the showrooms that Sears and Circuit City are just that, showrooms. Visitors can browse products, but they cannot purchase. However, despite the caution, there are hopes that consumers will eventually be able to redesign areas of their own homes (with the products) using the virtual online showroom.

Paul Miller, senior vice president of direct commerce at Sears had this to say:

The real goal here is to introduce people to the brand and in doing so, increase people's level of awareness. Does that translate into sales at some point? I think so.

About a month ago, we reported about the lowdown of IBM's deal with the Linden Lab created virtual world, Second Life. Now, we have some more info for you. IBM plans to announce on Friday that they'll be working with Circuit City to explore retail business models in virtual worlds. Both companies want to discover how the SL environment can be used to improve customers' experiences with retail brands.

IBM is dead serious about this virtual project of theirs as they already have around 1,000 employees who are spending some time to get to know SL more. They also have a business unit who are doing nothing but working on future SL projects. Well, their business plans better be really good as they'll be facing stiff competition with Sun Microsystems and Dell.

IBM's Ian Hughes said that the company is considering creating a virtual world that would be used by their 340,000 employees for internal communications and meetings among other things. For now, the IBM-Circuit City partnership produced a 3D store wherein SL citizens can stroll around to take a look at virtual representations of consumer electronics products and try them out.

So just how much IBM moolahs are spent for this project? No specifics were mentioned but IBM's virtual world efforts is apparently part of a group of 10 initiatives wherein IBM has committed US$ 100 million. That's a lot of dough.

Just this summer, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) launched a new initiative that would definitely strengthen its video game ratings system: the "seal of approval" and its mystery shopping program were initiated.

Not only will these new programs strengthen the ratings system, it's also supposed to boost public awareness regarding games and their ratings - or at least that's what they're hoping to happen.

Included in these new programs by the ESRB is dubbed "Commitment to Parents." This will require retail stores who have signed up for the program to agree to train their sales staff about the board's rating system, promote the said game rating system and set up a system for complaints made by consumers regarding sales violations.

ESRB's programs may have been implemented during this crucial time that the gaming industry is under scrutiny by a lot of politicians and parent groups. Some people though are considering this move by the board a mere show as their rules regarding the sales of games are voluntarily being heeded by most retail stores.

Rocky Mountain News conducted its own mystery shopping experiment where they used a 15-year old kid to try and buy Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from five major stores - Wal-Mart, Best Buy, GameStop, Circuit City and Target. He wasn't able to purchase the game, meaning these major retail stores are enforcing these ratings.

According to ESRB's president, Patricia Vance, since most stores already respect the rating system for games, it's up to the parents to respect (or voluntarily follow) the ratings. Vance said that most of the time, the parents are the reason how underage kids get their hands on games with a 17 and above rating - thus, the "Commitment to Parents" program.

Let's just see if these new programs help in getting politicians' and concerned groups' eyes off the gaming industry soon.