The new Entertainment Software Ratings Board’s more automated ratings system went live earlier this week, enable the ratings system for North America process game ratings in a more timely fashion. The ESRB streamlined the process to deal with the rapid release of games on digital platforms such as Apple’s App store, Android Marketplace, Xbox Live Marketplace, PlayStation Store, and on Nintendo’s WiiWare.

The new system asks developers to answer an eight multiple choice questions about a submitted game, which is passed along to the ratings board (along with game code on DVD to be reviewed later) with $500 to get a rating for their game as quickly as 24 hours later. ESRB head honcho Patricia Vance says that the ratings board has “contemplated what it might take to deal with thousands of small games being submitted to various platforms on a daily basis, she adds that the new system makes such a gargantuan task a possibility.

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