We get a lot of press releases sent to us. Myself, it’s not unusual to see near a hundred of them hit my inbox in a day. With that much competition, its hard to capture our attention. But when I glimpsed an email saying that development studio “Bloober Team” is announcing the first title being developed exclusively for the iPad, and their calling it “Gender Wars: The Battle”, I couldn’t help but sit up and take notice. When I then read that the lead designer described the game like this,

“In a way, and I understand that it’s bit bold to say, we would like to create something similar to Metal Gear Solid for iPad.”

I start to scratch my head and a confused look passes over my face. Gender Wars? Solid Snake?

But it doesn’t end there so I am posting the original press release in full (minus legally sensitive info, of course) after the break so you can read it for yourself. It’s one of the stranger ones we have ever come across and was either written by some kind of genius, or someone on acid.  We’ve also posted the game’s sole screenshot to be released so far. (For those not sure about clicking through, the screenshot does not contain any images of Gender-specific anatomical parts battling it out.)

Here are both the screenshot and the press release:

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PopCap Games may not be a company known to many hardcore gamers, but it is a hugely significant and powerful player in our industry. That’s because it is one of the biggest developers and publishers of casual games. While they have done a few more serious titles such as the turn-based strategy game, Shattered Union (actually published on the original Xbox and pC and well worth picking up), nearly of their games are light-hearted, simple, addictive, pick-up-&-play focused and small enough to be played entirely in your browser or on your cellphone. Some of their more well known titles like Bookworm and the Bejewelled games are available over Xbox Live, the Playstation Network,  the Wii Channel, and soon DSiWare too. This means they can get to far greater numbers of potential customers than a company that chooses to focus solely on disc-based PS3 titles.

So that they could raise 22.5 Million isn’t that surprising, nor is their CEO’s mention of expanding “into social media and reaching new geographies.” Instead, what caught my attention was the mention of some of that capital possibly going for “potential aquisitions”. They may stay entirely focused on small, casual titles, but it would be very interesting to see them bring a studio under their wing that allowed them to try their hand at bigger titles with higher production values. Whatever they do, PopCap has a lot of imagination, and this influx of cash should only bring more fascinating titles from the minds behind games like Plants vs. Zombies.

The NPD Group just released a study which found that there has been a significant increase in the total number of female gamers over the last year – up as much as 28%. While the report does break things down in detail, it fails to give any hard numbers that might be of real help to many of the male gamers who spend the majority of their life online. Specifically of concern, but conspicuously omitted – what are the real odds that the party’s scantily-clad Elven warrior-priestess you’ve been chatting online with for weeks isn’t secretly wielding a sword? Or the possibility that the flirty new shooter calling herself “ImH0t4W11″ in your Conduit clan doesn’t carry an extra piece in her belt?

Unfortunately, science may never be able to give us those kind of specifics. However, the report was able to offer this ray of hope for those so concerned:

“These types of players ["extreme" femal gamers] account for just four per cent of total gamers, says the report, however their playing habits have become a little less extreme. While they still spend an average of 39 hours a week playing games, that average is down seven hours from 2008.”

GamesIndustry.biz has a few more specifics of interest from the very dense report.