The Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association and ESRB is none too pleased with the National Institute of Media and the Family s report card grade the game rating system received. (Was that enough acronyms for you?)

The industry received a D+ overall, though one could question NIMFs bias on this and the IEMA does.

Check the jump for the full statement:

We were pleased to hear that there was plenty of positive news regarding retailer ratings education and enforcement: 71% are educating the public about the ESRB rating system; 94% have a policy not to sell/rent M-rated games to persons under age 17. It is important to emphasize that the NIMF "secret shoppers" were turned down 56% of the time when they attempted to purchase M-rated games. This turn-down rate is a significant improvement since 2000, when
only 19% were turned down. This overall trend demonstrates strong and growing retailer commitment to video game rating enforcement, although clearly we are not yet where we want to be as an industry.

We were disappointed to learn that the NIMF continues to unevenly weight the results of their sting operations (judging the effectiveness of retailer enforcement stemming the sale of Mature-rated games to minors). The fact that they weight their conclusions by individual stores rather than by actual real-world market value is significant, both to the statistics as well as to the
practical realities of sales. Not weighting the data evenly by market share may well account for the NIMF sting results quite literally swinging wildly back and forth over the past five years.

We have repeatedly requested that the National Institute on Media and the Family disclose their methodology so that we may better understand how they cull their results and been denied year after year.

-Hal Halpin, pres., IEMA

NIMF, never one to be unbias, has also refused to communicate with the ESRB. The ratings board also released a statement saying that the NIMF research is flawed and ignores "any and all conflicting evidence."

The record should reflect the fact that after last year s Report Card we contacted NIMF so that we may better understand their criticism and work together, but no response was forthcoming. Their silence is an unmistakable indication that this is not about working cooperatively in the interests of video game consumers, but rather is about NIMF imposing its own narrow values and morality on the rest of the country, regardless that it has little evidence to show that parents agree with their point of view.

Download the ESRB's full statement here

IEMA [Official Site]