OK, today must have been some weird confluence of MMO news, because here I am posting for what, the fifth time in an hour? Anyway.

New York Times has an article on the new BarbieGirls world, yet another Webkinz/etc-ish world. I could swear I had mentioned it here before, but if not, here’s a decent summary.

Girls soon learn that some of the dress-up items, like that green purse with sparkles, are reserved for those who own a $60 Barbie-shaped MP3 player, left, due out in July. When the player is plugged into the U.S.B. port of your Windows computer, the virtual baubles are unlocked, along with V.I.P. access to the virtual pet store.

Insert my typical “what is the mainstream game industry thinking, are they noticing this, etc” sort of rant here, of course.

Here’s Splume.

It’s free and it’s in open beta. “Metamo” is their shop/mall sort of thing. Looks sort of Habbo-ish. But of course, it’s all in Japanese; fortunately, I have someone fluent sitting about six feet away. I’ll update this post as I learn more.

edit:

Custom protocol for streaming 3d assets. Nobody was around, but it’s 4am in Japan right now. You had to register, and a client download for this custom browser. The sign-in process was a bit clunky. Lots of graphical glitches, z-sorting problems, etc. We couldn’t figure out how to chat, but there were lots of emotes. We were a monkey in a floating crab flying saucer thing, with robots arms. There were 5 avatars to choose from. Very cutesy art overall. Doesn’t look like it’s really expected to be played outside Japan right now — we had to pretend we were from Hokkaido, and it wouldn’t take a non-Japanese name.

Via 3pointD.