Hey everyone is it just me or has the gaming industry hit a bit of a bottle neck with developers simply going through the motions of making yet another "clone"? Let me eleborate a bit here, we look at the NFS series of games, the best really being underground 1 and 2. After that EA sort of lost touch with itself in regards to what made their games good. Most wanted wasn't bad but it didn't have the full content of customization that U1 and U2 both had. Then pro street was released and I never played it but from what other's told me it wasn't worth getting at all. So I waited until undercover was released. This took the open world of U2 and crossed it with some of most wanted. A great game but very long and I found myself in the rut of having to get enough experience in the tiers to go onto the next part of the story. So here I was driving for hours on end just for that purpose. Mmm......yep EA took the fun out of it fast with that. Despite all of its short comings EA has done well overall and continues to make some great games.

Those of you who have played NFS: porsche 2000 as it was called here in australia, I think overseas it was NFS: porscheunleashed. This was the first sort of gran turismo stye NFS game that really had it all, except for the customising part. U2 this with the URL which was one of the best parts of it. When EA partnered with criterion and I think later they bought them out and made the burnout games, they were onto something good that only got better.

Now onto something that has been bothering me for a while and I think most 360 owners will agree here. (Oh just to make it clear I have a ps3 and have played the original xbox and seen the 360 in action. I have nothing against 360 owners, I just don't like the controllers and the way that microsoft likes to monopolize everything.) Anyway, as we all know halo was released on the xbox with only about 5 other titles at the time of its launch. Sony having had the backing of game developers from its psone already had one up on microsoft and were able to release more games on the ps2 release. At the time of the xbox release halo was a xbox exclusive and yet microsoft don't own the game, bungi does. It also went onto pc as well. (Sure the ps2 owners got killzone which was good in it's own right, killzone 2 was very bad though.) Then metal gear solid 2 is cross platformed and released onto the xbox.......which was a good thing for both xbox users and konami. mgs 3:snake eater is sony exclusive only......the xbox could have easily handled the game.Then only last year msg4 is released again only as a sony exclusive. It annoys me when this happens as the developers in this case konami leave everyone else short. Games that are made in house by sony or microsoft, I can understand them being exclusive to that system as that makes sense. God of war is a good example there. Now I do know that some game developers either prefer to stay with who they are used to working with and won't do multiplatform releases. The 3 franchises that spring to mind here are jak and daxter, ratchet and clank and crash bandicoot.

EA is one of the few that have released there games cross platform, also total games who have released the lego series of titles star wars, indiana jones and batman have all been cross platform releases as well. It makes you wonder when will they learn. The benefits are obvious with cross platform release as they make more money and the consumer is also happy. Can you imagine if hawx was a ps3 exclusive title? There would be a few people annoyed for sure.

Lastly the one company that missed the boat serveral times over. Nintendo.... With the 2 big boys sony and microsoft taking charge nintendo has tried in vain to market to a much younger audience. Both sony and microsoft have marketed the games to all ages. Nintendo's wii is a bit silly in regards to the games being dvd format but the system can't play dvd movies, way to go nintendo. If you look at their history it took them ages to go from cartridge to cd based games. Sony did it from day one. Sure they have made some games for adults, but the system itself is very limited in it's graphic capabilities. The gamecube was very nice to look at when a game was going, but the wii is horrendous. It seems that nintendo takes one step forward then 3 back. Nintendo may sell well in it's native country of japan but overseas it's not doing well. If they are not careful I think nintendo could end up in a very bad place. I know I have left other things out, but I'm just saying what I think is relevant. Who knows I could be way off and nintendo may yet do something unexpected.