E3 2007: Gut Reactions

I haven't actually watched any significant portion of the news conferences, the Sony conference isn't even over, but I thought I'd share with you my gut reactions about this year's E3.

Firstly, it's obviously very different. If you watched the conferences from previous years you'll note a significantly less active crowd. There are applause and cheers, but it feels unenthusiastic compared to the past. If it wasn't universal, you would think each of the big three gaming companies were in trouble.

Microsoft seems to be attempting to join the mini-games bandwagon with a Viva Pinata game of that flavor. Halo 3 looks absolutely awesome. Microsoft seems content to stay their course for the most part, while attempting to ramp up support for more casual gaming.

Nintendo annoyed a lot of hardcore gamers by focusing largely on casuals with their conference. Most of what was seen will be more of the family fun stuff like WiiSports and Wario Ware. There were tidbits for hardcore gamers (Mario Kart in the first months of 2008, Super Smash Bros Brawl on December 3rd 2007, online play and more), but it wasn't the focus of the show. Expect temper tantrums to continue before hardcore gamers realize that they aren't going to be the sole focus of gaming anymore.

Sony didn't impress me. The incoming games they've described show a lot of great ideas, and that's to their credit. They don't seem to have done anything extremely stupid this conference, so far anyway. However, I am going to level one severe criticism at them, namely the redesigned PSP. There are legitimate reasons for having done this, but the way they seem to have gone about it leads me to believe they are simply trying to duplicate the success of the DS Lite. As much as the DS redesign helped sleekify matters, I don't believe the already sleek PSP is going to benefit in the same way.

It's hard to know what to expect from the rest of E3. It'd be nice to get some news on Spore or Hellgate: London, but I'm not going to hold my breath as the layman is not the target of the new conference.

Nintendomination

Yup, you guessed it. More good news for Nintendo has been released. Aside from reports left and right that the Wii is kicking butt, Nintendo nearly reached 6 million Wiis sold by the end of their fiscal year. However, more interesting are their projected future sales.

Nintendo stated that they project 14 million Wiis and 22 million DSs to be sold this fiscal year. That means that by the end of March 2008, there will be 20 million Wiis and 62 million DSs worldwide. I calculated the rate at which DSs and Wiis are being sold, and it was staggering.

Given the current numbers, Microsoft will need to sell 10 million Xbox 360s to keep their lead. Their latest sales figures aren't promising in this regard. Sony needs to push 17 million PS3s to catch up iwith the Wii. The PSP is already 16 million systems behind the DS. It doesn't look good for anyone trying to beat Nintendo.

In other news, here is a short list of games I wish there was more news for.

1. Spore
2. Hellgate: London
3. Super Smash Bros: Brawl
4. Halo 3
5. Dynasty Warriors 6

Hai, nihonjin desu. Usojanai!

This afternoon I'm going to be posing as a japanese person in order to download a demo of a game onto my Xbox 360.

It makes some sense to me that there might be reasons for restricting game demos to certain regions (e.g Super Japanese Game, Never Coming to America TM) but in the case of one which is being released in all of 4 days... I'm not so sure.

In any case, there's a demo of Armored Core 4 that's been availible to the japanese for a week now. I'm going to get my hands on it before I leave for Baltimore this Wednesday. In order to do this, I must accomplish the following.

1) Create a silver Xbox Live account using a japanese hotmail address.
2) ???
3) Profit.

The not-so-obscure reference aside, the workaround is pretty simple. Take step one, add downloading the demo. The only difficult part is filling in information that is passably japanese without giving out some random japanese person's phone number. I wonder what my old cell phone number was...

Maths

During my lunch break and other moments of rest at work today, I attempted to reengage a sagging and otherwise zombie like mind with some math. Math that many of you will find rather boring as it pertains to video game systems. These were posted in response to other inquiring minds in a revelant topic at slashdot.

There are two major entries here. One on the profitability of Nintendo versus Sony Computer Entertainment, and another on market share in the new generation (set to really get underway in November with the launches of the Wii and the PlayStation 3).

Enjoy, or ignore.

----------
Going to the actual Nintendo website and looking up their profits through each report from 2001 to 2005 I give you Nintendo's profits.

2005: $816,973,000
2004: $316,134,000
2003: $640,640,000
2002: $800,338,000
2001: $726,339,000

This is pure profit. Sales were often in excess of 4 billion dollars. 2004 is lower in profit due to costs incurred in the development of the DS.

None of this is assumption, this is straight numbers taken from Nintendo's fiscal reports free availible at:
http://www.nintendo.com/corp/annual_report.jsp [nintendo.com]

Going to Sony Computer Entertainment Inc(SCEI)'s page, I could only immediately find the numbers for 2005 and 2004 in yen.

2005: 35.5 billion Yen ($302,333,504 by today's conversion rates)
2004: 57.1 billion Yen ($485,916,092 by today's conversion rates)

SCEI made more than Nintendo in 2004, but Nintendo did far, far better than SCEI in 2005.

There's a point to be made that some income and expenditure for both companies during this period would come from the GBA, DS and PSP. However, I think my original point remains that Nintendo remains competitive even with the low market share of the Gamecube. In fact, in that two year period Nintendo soundly beats SCEI.

Quite simply, Nintendo was more profitable than SCEI this past generation despite the incredible market share the PS2 had.
----------

Japanese Allotment: 80k
American Allotment: 400k

Population of Japan: 127.42 million
Previous Japanese Market Volume: 30.31 million (Dreamcast + Gamecube + PS2 in Japan)
Number of PS3s per person: 1 per 1593
Number of PS3s per gamer: 1 per 379
Potential Market Share at Launch: 0.26% (Allotment / Previous Volume)

Population of America: 300.00 million
Previous American Market Volume: 70.8 million (Xbox + Gamecube + PS2)
Number of PS3s per person: 1 per 750
Number of PS3s per gamer: 1 per 177
Potential Market Share at Launch: 0.56%

Combined Potential Market Share: 0.47% (480k) [5.66% relative Market Share]
Current 360 Market Share: 5.93% (6 million) [70.07% relative Market Share]
Potential Wii Launch Market Share: 1.98% (2 million) [23.59% relative Market Share]

Projected March 07 Market Share: 5.93% (6 million) [27.28% relative Market Share]
360 March 07 Market Share: 9.89% (10 million) [45.46% relative Market Share]
Wii March 07 Market Share: 5.93% (6 million) [27.28% relative Market Share]

Addendum:

I used the official company goals/projections. Unofficially Nintendo may have 6 million availible by January, and Sony may fall short of 6 million in March. It seemed unobjective to factor such things in.

6 million for Nintendo is not bad at all, seeing as how the Xbox 360 has been out for almost a year now and has only recently crossed the 6 million mark. The rate at which they produce new consoles in their projections is quite steady and reasonable.

What concerns me are the PS3 forecasts. If taken in two month segments, Sony is practically calling for their production to double or triple itself twice over (.5 + 1.5 + 4.5 ~ 6). Given their continuing supply problems, I'm not certain of how reasonable their 6 million March 07 projection is. If they can manage to succeed in that goal it will be a good thing for them, but I remain skeptical.

Talk like a Pirate!

Talk like a Pirate day is the 19th, which is also incidentally the release date for Saumrai Warriors on the XBox 360 but I digress. In honor of the holiday, I present you the following educational video so that you won't be found a landlubber.

Arrrr!

Talk like a Pirate

Travesty

There's been a lot of experience with travesty these past few weeks. Nothing serious really, but I've encountered various levels of it. A series of events have transpired such that I wonder how many sane people are left in the world, and whether I'll be able to find one of the opposite gender suitable for courtship before my mortal coil is sprung.

Anyway, onto the travesties.

1) The Draenei as the new Alliance race in the World of WarCraft expansion:

This is the smallest of the travesties, and in and of itself isn't bad. I'm looking forwards to running around doing the Tunak Tunak Tan dance, which this race features. However, the travesty was the brutal surgery the history of Azeroth went through to make this possible. Surgery is a nice way of saying that they literally had to rip the whole thing to pieces and sew it back together to work.

The idea as it was presented was that the Draenei were a race who were quite naturally talented with magic. The evil Sargeras offered them power for their allegience, which some of them took greedily while the others fled. These others were chased by their corrupted brethern, who became the Eredar demons of Sargeras' Burning Legion army, and were aided by the Light to evade their pursuers. They eventually settled on Draenor, where after a few millenia of peaceful living were utterly crushed by the Orcs, who were now pawns of the Burning legion. The chaotic, demonic bloodlust of the orcs corrupted many Draenei, mutating their form into the strange and twisted figures seen in WarCraft 3. Most of them look more like the Eredar. These ones crash landed their nethership which they used to escape the orcs after some Blood Elves sabotaged it.

That's jolly good, until several points were sent straight into the heart of this. 1) Sargeras was purportedly disturbed by the existence of demons, including the Eredar, which is partly why he went mad in the first place. 2) Spaceship?

I realize not every game developer can be Bungie and have a supremely anal attitude towards lore, but Blizzard already completely ignored the previously important gender roles of the Night Elves when they made World of WarCraft. It's a travesty what they keep doing to the lore.

2) Halo 2 for PC becomes a Vista exclusive:

If you don't know what Halo 2 is, you don't play video games. If you don't know what Vista is, it's the next version of Windows that Microsoft will find some way of forcing you to upgrade to.

This didn't really bother me until I found more intelligent people than I making the following points.

A) For the cost of upgrading to Vista you can buy an original Xbox and Halo 2 or an Xbox 360 and Halo 3 (when it comes out), depending on what version of Vista you're upgrading to.

B) If Vista was really all that great, it would sell itself and wouldn't need to lean on Bungie for a reason to buy it.

In the end, why does it take so long to port a game to PC when it's been shown time and time again that the Xbox is little more than a PC-in-a-box? Not only that, it's being forced onto an OS no one even has yet.

Travesty.

3) Gunbound:

You may not know of Gunbound, but you may have played many games like it. Worms and Scorched Earth are games which function on similar principles. You have some tank or other object which is horribly beweaponed and lobs shots around an arena at other tanks or objects. Gunbound doesn't deviate here.

One of the unique features of Gunbound was that you had an Avatar. It wasn't just a tank, you had a little person riding it. That person could be decked out in many different outfits, and depending on the server you played on these trappings had bonuses they would grant you. Outfits could be purchased with gold or cash, gold being earned through fighting and cash being legal tender. It was very novel, incredibly cool and overall fun.

After many years of not having access to the game, I finally installed it on Raijin and took it for a spin. The game's as good as ever in the gameplay department, with even a few new tanks since I last played. However, somewhere between then and now travesty struck.

When outfits were purchased before, they were permanent. Your account would be able to sport them unto eternity. Now, the same is true, except the prices are 10x higher to do that. If those Matrix Glasses cost 9000 gold before, they're 60000 gold now for a permanent buy.

Fear not! You can still rent them for a week for 9000 gold... or a month for 18000! It... it just really sucks. There isn't a better way of putting it. Luckily, any items you had before this was done are permanent, so that 27000 Archangel outfit was a real steal. Seriously, imagine if you were paying $2800 to rent that used car for a week. Ugh.

The depths of this travesty know no bounds.

4) PS3 Price:

You knew it had to be here, but the price of this sucker is quite insane. We've been up and down this issue before, but we're likely to see this keep coming up. Sony's PR has done a bang up job of keeping the public grumbling at them over this. I wonder if they're not trying to replicate all the buzz Nintendo got for changing their consoles' name from Revolution to Wii. The difference there is, a Wii by any other name sells just as cheap. Also, the name becomes catchy after a while. The price of the PS3 doesn't grow on you. The more I think about spending $600 for a console, not counting games and extra controllers, the more I grimace. It took a week for Sony apologists to stop sulking in corners and come out to try and defend their beloved PS3. It took 2 minutes to blow their arguments out of the water, 1:52 of which was laughing at the absurdity of their statements.

We've heard the "It's a cheap Blu-Ray" player argument. We've heard the "It's cheap for the power it has" argument. And we've heard straight from Sony the "You'll buy it anyway even without games" argument. These arguments have already been thoroughly rebutted. Honestly, the PS3 is going to be a good system, but come on guys. Seriously, you can come up with better reasons for supporting it than that.

The worst argument yet was that most cutting edge technology is expensive as the early adopters will buy it at any price within reason. Then the prices plummet as it goes mainstream. The idea is that the same is true of the PS3. There are several problems with this argument.

A) The types of cutting edge technology being referred to here are largely technologies where there are multiple competitors making hardware which all does exactly the same thing. Sony TVs, Brand Silly TVs, Panasonic TVs, they all let you hook up VCRs, DVD players and cable to them. Aside from the actual quality of each brand's product, there's little difference. A casual buyer would be just as happy with no brand in particular so long as it worked.

Video game consoles, on the other hand, are extremely focused on brand. There are large, gaping differences between the consoles, and what you buy changes what you can interact with drastically. Imagine if you could only get PBS on a Sony TV, Fox on Brand Silly, and HBO on Panasonic. That's what video game consoles are analogous to. To compare them to technologies like TVs is a severely flawed comparison.

B) Aside from the similar hardware counterpoint, there's the fact that in those competitive hardware fields it's possible to come in late with a good product and enjoy profit. It doesn't matter that there have been TVs for years before, if this new brand does everything the others do it'll sell. That's not to say it's easy to make TVs and whatnot, but there's nothing inherent in the market that makes it impossible for latecomers to succeed so long as they aren't lazy about it.

In the video game industry it's very different. Coming in late is like going to an event at college which offers free food halfway through. Were you expecting food? Sorry, the only things left are the salads no one eats and the deserts that everyone hates. You can't just come in anytime you want and expect things to work just as they would if you came in first. There is food to be had, but it is all scraps.

Now Sony can't be said to be extremely late. They certainly aren't coming in halfway through. However, they're using the same exact strategy for their console they used for the PS2. Overshadow your earliest competitor with far better graphics at E3, charge a lot at launch, use the next generation video format to push consoles. It worked beautifully for the PS2, but Sony is ignoring a great many factors that are vastly different.

i) Sega vs Microsoft

When the PS2 began Sony's second generation of dominion, it was competing against Sega, a financially rocky company that wasn't particularly big. Now that the PS3 is coming, it's fighting another early competitor, but this one is Microsoft. We don't even need to think twice concerning the chance of Microsoft suddenly going bankrupt. It isn't happening this decade.

ii) Sega vs Microsoft Pt 2

Sony amazed us with incredible bonanza's at the E3s prior to the launches of both the Dreamcast and the Xbox 360. However, people believed Sony at the E3 before the Dreamcast. When the one after that came, people were disappointed but there was still a marked difference in graphical prowess between the two systems. It was enough for gamers to feel comfortable with the overhyping Sony had done before, because to an extent they still delivered.

The E3 before the Xbox 360 launched, a similar tactic was used. However, the public took the awesome images with a grain of salt. Only the most zealous of fanboys claimed that all, if any, of the images were not prerendered. Again, the public was ready to forgive that hyping if the system delivered. Unfortunately, this E3 showed that Sony's games looked little different from Microsoft's. The result is a largely dissapointed public, many of whom wondered why they waited, and many others who didn't bother to wonder and just went and bought Xbox 360s.

iii) DVD vs Blu-Ray

DVDs rock. It's hard to refute, although I'm sure my dad could do a good job. They are significantly better than video tapes. They don't wear out as quickly, they give all sorts of options, you can skip ahead with scenes, select specific episodes and largely not have to deal with many of the issues that plagued video tapes. There's a reason why everything's on DVD these days.

Of course, the ill-designed DVD menu is a menace that has come of this, but that is a different travesty for another day.

When the PS2 came onto the scene, there was no question as to the place DVDs would have in the home. People were already buying DVD players and DVDs. Everyone knew they were better, if not necessarily widely circulated yet. While there was some cling to videos that existed, the alure of different language tracks, deleted scenes and director commentary won the day. While some may complain about the cost of buying an entire anime series at only 3 episodes a disc, these are the same people that don't remember that buying cartoons on tape usually involved fewer episodes of lower quality video and audio, and often more expensive per video than we enjoy now per DVD.

The PS3 enjoys no such luxury. It will be one of the first Blu-Ray players on the market, there will be few if any movies on Blu-Ray when it launches, if any in stores. There is not drastic chasm of difference between DVDs and Blu-Ray, like there was for video tapes and DVDs. Most of the public doesn't even know what Blu-Ray is. Ask someone and they'll probably think you're talking about fish.

Travesty.

So I've yet to see the price justified properly. If this trend continues, I may have to beat my Nintendo fanboyism senseless and write a post critical of Nintendo while praising Sony just so that there's something on the internet which successfully does so. I'm actually quite shocked that there haven't been better arguments that the Wii will do poorly, or that Sony will prevail. Whether that's a travesty or not isn't important. What is important is that it's now 1 AM, and I should be asleep, quenching my thirst, or both.

E3: Microsoft Press Conference

If there's one thing Sony lacked, it was style. Nintendo had style and clear goals, Microsoft has style and clear goals. While Nintendo was obviously out to prove they have games for everyone, and a concept that works well, Microsoft is out to prove they have the games and the add-ons.

However, if Peter Moore is the "Zen Master of Gaming", I'm the "Hermitic Tibetan Monk of Supernatural Gaming Principle".

I have to hand it to Microsoft, they aren't giving up on the Japanese market. It's important that they are, because they can never oust Sony or Nintendo from contention if they can't sell well in Japan. However, I remain skeptical of their ability to make much of a beachhead there with the Xbox 360.

I get the feeling that Microsoft is honestly aware of what needs to happen in the industry. They may not know exactly how to do it, or aren't willing to go as far as Nintendo, but the feeling is there that they know that the gamer base must be broadened.

However, I also very much dislike the micropayment trend. While I appreciate additional content, the precedent that games like Oblivion are setting disturbs me. I don't like the idea of spending $5 for what amounts to one character model. I'll spend $5 for 4-6 new maps in a FPS, because that's an entire map worth of new content. Halo 2 had that right, but while I like what Halo 2 did, I must sigh sadly as it is has paved the way for the exploitation of it's own brilliance.

As nice a marketing stunt as tattooing your arms is, I think Peter Moore should have consulted with his wife first, assuming he's married.

I'm skeptical of Windows Vista being the best video game operating system ever, simply because it'll tax my CPU and GPU harder than XP does. Unless Microsoft has finally done something to alleviate the huge morass like problems their OS has, I don't think the "magic" of DirectX 10 will help much. Being a computer science person, I'd like to know the details on how Windows Vista is "built" for video games. Who knows Microsoft, you might impress me enough that I'll buy it because I want it, as opposed to because I have to get it in order to keep getting the software I need.

I need to get better aquainted with the original Shadowrun, so I can understand what exactly was going on with the new one.

I think Alan Wake is a terrible name for a game.

One critique I currently have for Microsoft's conference is that Peter Moore talks too much. While the other conferences featured a central "host" figure, Peter Moore had far too much face time, and really has a voice that grows more annoying the more he talks.

OMG! t3h 3v1l! Oh wait, the nineties ended 6 years ago. Sorry Bill.

Bill, while the integration is nice, the presentation there was pretty boring. Save, of course, for the brief screens of Shadowrun.

Ending the conference with the Halo 3 trailer was oh so classy.

Zero?

If you never played Perfect Dark for the N64, you could probably care less about the following. Otherwise, read on.

The Xbox360 has finally been released, although the weary at slashdot.org will likely not be through with the barrage of related articles for a month yet. With it has come something I have hoped and feared for some time.

Perfect Dark Zero.

Why am I dedicating an entire monologue to this game? Quite simply, I was enslaved by it's predecessor.

Perfect Dark was my freshman year of college. I spent many an hour blasting away my closest friend on campus. He didn't care that we were actually on the same team, he was just annoyed that I gave him his comeuppance after he blew me up.

Needless to say, I have a lot of interest in whether or not the sequel turned out well, or whether there is the potential for it to be salvaged if it didn't.

From what I hear, the gameplay is very much akin to the original. Some people bemoan the jumping (there is none) and the poor controls for beating someone down with a weapon. I'm not so concerned with how it stacks up in comparison to the dime a dozen FPSs out there or even Halo, I want to know how it compares to the original.

In my quest for information, I came across many good and bad things similar to above. However, almost all the information was tainted with either malice towards all things Halo, or malice to anything that isn't Halo. The only information that wasn't so tainted was a list of the weapons.

Perfect Dark did for weapons in FPS games something I've never seen done well elsewhere. Weapons had multiple ways to use them, and unique ways at that. Some guns could fire grenades, some guns could turn into portable sentries, most guns could be dual wielded, it was all amazing. My favorite weapons were all Maian, the Phoenix, the Callisto, and the Farsight.

While the listed secondary and even tertiary functions of the weapons in Perfect Dark Zero is impressive, I am disturbed by the weapons themselves. Quite simply, saying that "many" of the classic weapons are in the game is like saying that "many" people are still employed after a company implodes on itself.

The Falcon is there, The Laptop gun, the RCP, the CMP150, the SuperDragon, the Rocket Launcher, and the Magsec. The shotgun and the magnum are still around as well. They've all recieved interesting changes, which is good. However, the other twenty weapons from PD are MIA. Those aren't the only weapons in the game, there are a total of twenty-four. However, that in and of itself is a far note short of what PD had.

Every gun in PD managed to be unique despite the vast number of them, and while Rare appears to have done a great job of this again, there is the notable difference that there are only twenty-four weapons, a good number of which are from the original game anyway. Not that using the originals is a bad thing, but I would have expects more new weapons in addition to more of the originals.

I am terribly saddened for the most part because a great number of the truly fantastic weapons, such as the Cyclone, the Mauler, the Devastator, the Slayer, the Reaper, the Callisto, the Phoenix, and the N-Bomb, are not present in the game at all. I can understand there not being a Farsight (getting sniped out of nowhere is rather annoying) but the other weapons were not overpowered (you were just as likely to blow yourself up with a Devastator or Slayer), were really cool and unique, and most importantly fun (there was little as cool as pinning a person down with a reaper, and running madly at them when the ammo ran out).

Whether or not the fun simulant variants have returned I could not find out, and it is always possible they and other weapons are unlockable, but my sources claim the weapons lists I read were from a strategy guide, which usually covers just about everything.

Now, given that Halo 2 and Ninja Gaiden received some truly awesome additional content post release, I can see that any problems with the game can be addressed. This is something I am actually happy about, as I like the idea that if something is supremely screwed up in a game for a console, it can be fixed. This won't always be a good thing (Star Wars Galaxies is certainly a cause for concern), but I think overally it will be.

Whether or not Perfect Dark Zero will benefit from this remains to be seen. It sounds like a good game, but I fear that it will remain largely unplayed by me for some time yet, as the Xbox360 does not come out here for a month yet, and after that I will be at home before college resumes anyway. By then I should know more about whether or not the game has any of the 1337 weapons I know and love.

Worse comes to worse, the Revolution should have the original, or barring that, the N64 isn't expensive these days.

All Growed Up

1up.com has a funny comparison of the Dreamcast and the upcoming Xbox 360. If you're not aware of what either are, then don't bother. However, if you are aware that the Dreamcast was SEGA's final console which, while decent, failed to make them money and was scrapped so that they could avoid bankruptcy and continue on as a software company, and that the Xbox 360 is Microsoft's upcoming console which is arriving under both a lot of hype and skepticism, the enjoy the read.

In any case, I read a comment which said a few things of interest. It basically noted that these days gamers seem a little more imperviously to hype, and that they're more aware of what is actually decent and what is fluff. I responded as to why preconceptions such as "kiddie" (which Nintendo's Gamecube got stuck with) and "bulky" (the original Xbox) are no longer important.

If you are lazy, here's the summary. The people who actively play games, "gamers", have already made up their minds on which console they will get and the amount of change in who will buy what per dollar spent on marketing is so small that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will only market to them enough so that there is no perception that any mistake has been made on their part. The focus of all three is on the casual player, because that's where expansion, and a lot of cash, lie.

Now for my comments in full.

"Quite simply, the kids who thought they were too good for a kiddy console have now at last reached a level of maturity where having Pikachu in something does not automatically sell it. They now hate and despise the rat, and the only consoles where you can beat the crap out of the bugger and his pals are Nintendo's.

Basically, as it stands the well informed crowd, "gamers", are pretty aware that the hype surrounding all the players may not be what it cracks up to be. We know that Microsoft will pour money upon the Xbox 360 win, lose, or draw. We know Nintendo will make some incredible games for its controller even if everyone else either botches their attempts or doesn't bother, and we know Sony will ride on the popularity of the PS2. Everything else is hype, speculation, or insanity.

However, it is the casual crowd, the people who watch MTV, the people who still play nothing but Tetris, the people playing the Sims, the people who play the cheesy games on their cells phones and generally the people who are scared of using anything beyond Internet Explorer, Word, and Outlook Express on their PC that are the target of the three companies.

Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft all know that the casual game player doesn't read Slashdot, doesn't hear the word of mouth, and doesn't have any preconceptions about one system over another. Each is targeting these untapped fountain of cash with their crosshairs. Sony plans on using their tech hype and previous popularity, Microsoft is using a jump start on the competition and MTV (casual players are not going to buy more than one system), Nintendo is simply targeting everyone under the sun with a controller people will look at and not be as afraid of as the calculator on Windows.

All the speculation we have here is from a crowd who, for the most part, know what's going on. Biases included, we know more than Joe Somebody on the street when it comes to this. We've already decided which system we'll be getting, and nothing save from a miracle or a tragic mistake is going to change our minds. As such, the big three are only focusing on avoiding blundering with people like us, and and working to get the casual people into the game.

We laugh at the Halo 3 comparison, because we know all the sweeter, juicier FPSs there are. The casual crowd doesn't, they know Halo. Don't underestimate the casual players, they outnumber us, and they more than anyone else will be the determining factor in who comes out on top this coming generation, whether you measure success in marketshare, profit or both."