I’m not the only one who has compared the insanely addictive “TypeRacer” to educational typing tool Mavis Beacon. The creator of the game Alex Epshteyn told me so over e-mail.

Epshteyn is a 26-year-old programmer who created “TypeRacer” all on his own (play it here, if you missed it). He’s been programming games for years, including a multiplayer strategy game influenced by “Master of Orion” and a multiplayer take on “Desktop Tower Defense.”

All of his creative works play on the competitive nature of gamers. Epshteyn even likens “TypeRacer” to an emerging sport. “Typing is a skill that can be improved with practice and pitted against people, just like any athletic pursuit,” he said.

He’s not a hardcore gamer. Epshteyn hasn’t even played “Typing of the Dead”! For the developer of a typing game, that’s just criminal. But I’ll let it slide.

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Right now, I can buy a 120GB hard drive to drop in a PlayStation 3 for $69.99 from NewEgg.com [Update: I'd previously listed this as $44.99 with an incompatible drive]. To do the same thing with an Xbox 360, it’d cost me $179.99.

But why does it cost so much?

Microsoft has claimed that comparing their plug-and-play hard drive is akin to comparing apples to oranges, that Microsoft goes the extra mile to ensure the customer can simply slap their hard drive on a machine and it’ll work.

MTV Multiplayer contacted iSuppli, a company with a long history of examining consumer gizmos to discover their real cost. We had them look at Microsoft’s 120GB hard drive and estimate whether — or how much — the company’s marking it up.

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Gamers responded strongly to a study presented by the Electronic Entertainment Design and Research Group (EEDAR) at the MI6 Conference in San Francisco this month.

EEDAR’s study suggested not releasing demos resulted in better sales and marketers should start designing Achievements. MTV Multiplayer’s astute readers brought up some smart criticisms of the EEDAR’s results. Said Multiplayer reader JFK:

“Gears of War, COD4, Rock Band and Halo had no demos, but they didn’t need them due to their marketing and general market anticipation. The very AAA games were more likely to not need demos to get sales.”

Gregory Short and Geoffery Zatkin, the heads of EEDAR, spoke with Multiplayer yesterday, and don’t necessarily dispute JFK’s claims.

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I’ve been a busy little San Francisco reporter lately, scuttling from one event to the next, checking out secret games I can’t discuss until weeks later.

I’ve previously mentioned how these events seem to be happening at the same time. There’s a reason for that, and there’s a reason why they start happening specifically in April: it’s part of the ramp up to the Electronic Entertainment Expo in mid-July.

Every company holds their own, personalized event that every nearby outlet flocks to. Just yesterday afternoon, Namco Bandai held a Gamer’s Day (they called it an Editor’s Day) that went into the early evening, after which I immediately walked a few blocks to a smaller Valve gathering, where they were showing new bits of “Team Fortress 2″ in a bar-turned-net cafe.

It wasn’t always this way. You can thank the “new” E3 for that.

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I still can’t find “Tetris DS,” but my search during these last couple of weeks has had me talking to Capcom, Electronic Arts and Atlus. I’ve been learning about how to survive the gaming economy.

But it hasn’t gotten me any closer to “Tetris DS,” and no one (even GameStop wouldn’t return my calls or e-mails) could specify when a typical game’s shelf life ends.

Maybe they don’t want to speculate about their own products. “Okami,” a new IP with hardcore appeal, didn’t last long, but Capcom wouldn’t timline their last re-order. “Resident Evil 4,” however, they said will be actively selling for two or three more years.

I decided to ask an analyst instead. Evan Wilson, senior research analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, said there was no answer. When pressed, he caved: the average game has only “a few months” before the industry moves on.

That’s a generalization, of course. An “average game” could last longer depending on the time of year, the health of the platform and genre competition. If you don’t want to buy used, however, you’re looking at just a few months time.

Sorry, Capcom, but Electronic Arts doesn’t agree with you.

Capcom recently told me the life cyle of retail products is “shrinking.” That idea wasn’t hard to swallow given the impetus for the questions I’ve been asking publishers lately: the Multiplayer editorial team’s inability to track down a copy of 2005’s “Tetris DS.”

The Capcom take is that, as the industry has grown, the amount of time a title is viable for sale has lessened.

EA disagrees. Jeff Karp, EA’s head of North American publishing, told MTV Multiplayer that the life cycle is increasing in most respects.

Karp was speaking from the perspective of a publisher whose games have a mainstream appeal far larger than “Devil May Cry” — “The Sims,” “Madden NFL”, etc. A good chunk of EA’s business is annualized franchises and expanded content.

Does that mean life at retail for games actually is increasing, or is EA simply a publisher excellent at producing IP with extensive lifespans?

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For Capcom, publishing a game on the scale of “Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney” is an exception. They are a company of blockbuster, mass-appeal hits.

Atlus, on the other hand, isn’t. Catering to a niche demographic interested in very Japanese, very hardcore RPGs, Atlus is candidly aware of their smaller appeal.

They’re okay with that, but it isn’t without drawbacks. Fans often complain how difficult it is to find their products even at launch. “There’s no malice in it,” said Atlus public relations lead Aram Jabbari to Multiplayer. “I wish we could produce to demand.”

Sometimes Atlus just doesn’t know when a title is going to go outside their internal expectations. With last fall’s “Odin Sphere,” the publisher stuck to their traditionally conservative estimates when finalizing production orders for the game’s launch, when the title was suddenly hit with an enormous amount critical acclaim and fan attention.

As a result, demand outstripped supply, and retailers didn’t have enough copies of “Odin Sphere” to truly satisfy everyone at launch.

Atlus admits they didn’t realize the game’s potential (sounds familiar to Capcom’s reaction to “Dead Rising”), but Jabbari is quick to point out that when you’re dealing with a publisher as small as Atlus, every dollar counts.

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Remember how difficult it was to find the first “Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney”? Contrary to message board conspiracy theories, that wasn’t actually Capcom’s fault.

When I tried (and failed) to buy “Tetris DS,” it made me wonder. How does a publisher predict demand? How do they figure out how many copies to manufacture and ship, and when (and why) do they halt production lines?

I’ve been speaking to different companies to figure that out. One of them was Capcom, a company with strong Japanese roots and a large Western audience. They, along with the rest of the industry, wrestle with this every day.

Christian Svensson, Capcom’s VP of business development and strategic panning, admits it’s extremely complicated. Not only does Capcom have to convince retail to order en masse at launch, but the sales cycle itself is changing as the industry grows bigger and bigger.

“The sales life cycle of a product is shrinking,” said Svensson. If a game undersells its first month at retail, it’s finished at retail. Often, though, it’s quicker: if a game underperforms its first week, it is more than likely “dead on arrival.”

Here’s how Capcom tries to prevent being in that position.

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Have you tried to purchase “Tetris DS” recently? Totilo tried to. So did I.

We couldn’t find a copy anywhere. It’s going on eBay for as high as $60. The situation is even worse at Amazon. It’s not in stock at EB Games, Best Buy or any other retailer.

Nintendo claims the title is still in production, but right now, there’s no way to buy it. That got us wondering.

How does a company decide when to put a game out to pasture, after months or years of success?

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