I've recently become rather upset at the recently new articles about EA making offers to buy out Take 2. This would mean a drastic change for the industry as well as a couple franchises we love. I am a firm beleiver that competition makes for a better product, and if 2K sports is taken off of the market I can expect to see a major downgrade in the quality of our sports titles. If we want an example of how this can change things we can look at the Madden franchise over the last few years. When the NFL liscence was bought out there were no other companies able to make an NFL liscenced football game except for EA. The 2K football franchise ended with the excellent ESPN NFL 2K5. Over the next two years the Madden franchise dug itself a nice little den in a pile of bison feces emerging every fall with peice of product scraped off the walls of it's new dwelling. Some may argue that this is because they were developing for more platforms with the launch of the next generation systems. This is not an excuse. There is no excuse for a company with more money than anyone else in it's field to produce a game with, at the very least, basic and playable controls. There is no excuse for Madden 06.

My opinions on EA and the recent Madden games being said I am not one of those people who beleives EA is the evil corporation that will destroy the industry to create a utopian world only seen as a good thing in it's twisted sick mind. I beleive this company has many things to offer to the industry. I enjoy many EA titles and I loved Madden 08. I beleive that with the amount of money and resources EA has accumulated over the years it should have many things to offer. If EA would spend a little more money on creating the games and allow for more people to work on them with more time alotted to create and polish, we could have a slew of excellent games. EA could be good for the company, they just have to start focusing on the games.

One of the frustrated aspects of EA lies in the fact that they seem to want to run a business first rather than create good games. Many stories can be heard of publishers being crunched for time because of the deadlines EA has stressed upon them, and other tales tell of large scale focus testing. These are not ways to create a great new game. These are ways to create last year's old ones. The problem with this is that it assures these games will sell.

Now then, every time a story about EA is published on any gaming website, we have an avalanche of comments supporting the little guy amongst an aray of ominous "I hate EA" or "EA is destroying our industry" posts. Free speech is fine and addressing issues such as the Take Two Takeover with comments constructed of your own opinions, but one thing I do not understand and cannot tollerate is hipocracy. Many of my fellow gamers and enthusiasts always talk about how EA is destroying the industry yet they still seem to support them. How many copies of Mass Effect had I sold in my store to people who complained about EA, knowing full well that EA had bought out Bioware in the previous month? I can't count on my hands and feet, and the number is still growing.

EA is not the best thing for our industry right now and that's because they do not create what is most important to us: A great game. A semi-recent example of this is Hellgate: London. Admittingly never playing this game I will state that the general word about this game is that it was much in need of more time. If we look at when that game was released it makes a little more sense. On the frontlines of the PC lineup for Christmas, it ended up selling more copies than if it were released at any other time, even if the game was finished upon release.

I was reading up a previous article on Gamespot about the MMORPG games that were released for the holiday season. This included a few sentences about the first-person apocolyptic MMO that is Hellgate: London. Now, to my knowledge, Hellgate: London was always slated as being an EA game. I finished the article and did my sweep of the top few comments and I found a prime example of the hipocracy that surrounds the EA situation. (I have removed the name of the individual)

As a final thought I would like the few people who read this post to examine thier opinions on the large companies in the industry such as EA or Activision. I feel that these are not people we can just hate and forget about. If we have a large scale idealism that these companies are not doing good for the video game industry we have no right to complain and sit around to wait for them to do something to correct it. An example of doing something is not buying the same crappy Need for Speed or Tony Hawk games every year, influence others around us to do the same and make purchases of games that deserve thier attention like Forza 2 or Skate. This will soon become a crisis and it will hurt us all.

Now that E3 has winded down I'm sure everyone's heard about all of thier favourite games and the many exciting new things that are being brought to us and I've decided not to comment on E3 or anything surrounding it anymore.

I'd like to start of by saying that I start my new job tommorrow. I just got a position at an EB Games location in town as thier assistant manager. I'm rather excited about this and I'm almost certain I'll like it. Or Moreso than my other job, which was the Supervisor in the Electronics Section at Toys R Us. I'll keep posting as I delve into the job a little more.

I just purchased Final Fantasy XII in the last few days and today I received Gears of War and Perfect Dark Zero in the mail. (Thank you for the games Microsoft!) It seems I've way too much to eat on my plate. I may end up with leftovers for a week.

So to be honest, in the last 3 days I've slept maybe a total of 6 hours. I keep nodding off now and again but in the end I wake up to watch some more videos, read more articles, or dive into some games that I've been trying to complete.

Now for the most part, E3 has been a rather enjoyable experience this year. I'm a little dissapointed though at how it's being run. I remember the last E3 and the earlier renditions. They were fun and it was just a wild party. The main difference that I'm noticing is that people aren't getting as excited about the games as they once did. Maybe it's because of the lack of a crowd but it's what made me get excited about the games.

I watched all of the conferences live and my expectations were quenched, though they weren't very thirsty to begin with. I wasn't expecting much from Nintendo and I had seen many of the changes that Sony brought out from a few blocks away. Microsoft is the company that really blew me off my feet this year. I think it was partially because they had gone first so they had most of the multiplatform games displayed 12 hours before Sony had thiers, but that suspicion has been brought to rest thinking back upon how the games were presented at the Sony conference. They just seemed to fly by before we had much of a chance to indulge in them. Microsoft just had the whole package that I was looking for.

Microsoft tossed out a lot of important thing this year and the main concept that surprised the hell out of me was the Disney itteration into thier HD download service. One of the traits that Blu-Ray boasted about was it's exclusive supporters. Disney was one of the ones that would obviously give HD-DVD a run for it's money. But it seems as though Disney's being a little more open minded.

As for the Killzone 2 trailer, it was very mundane to me. Environmental eye candy, a ton of excellent character animations and facial movements, and I'm almost certain the sound is good. (They pumped it up a little too much so it was just a few footsteps amid a couple of booming explosions of fuzz that almost blew my speakers.) When it all comes down to it, I'm not certain thsi game's going to have enough elaboration to make it more than just another pretty first person shooter game. We've received no feedback on the actual gameplay except from what we've seen and I'd like to be reassured with a little bit of the story concept. Until then, it's just like it was in E3 2005. Which brings me to another point. It didn't look like to demo they'd shown us before... This was a very big dissapointment. I'm tired of shortfallen promises.

Hating on Killzone 2 aside. Metal Gear Solid 4 and Haze both look like excellent games. Moreso on the Metal Gear Solid side of things. I actually might go out and buy a PS3 when Haze comes out.

I'll have more later in the week. Maybe I'll get some sleep too!

I've been playing pokemon ever since I was a young kid and I was especially proficient when I was younger. I dominated almost every card tournament I entered and my Gold and Silver games were unbeatable by all of my friends and everyone who challenged me. Now I'm old but I still have the same love for Pokemon. As a major collector, I still look out for all of the Pokemon games I can find because they do hold a special place in video game history and what helped shape many genres and video games in general.

Now the exciting news I'd like to share; I am hosting aPokemon Diamond and Pearl tournament at work today. This has been a long and arduous process drawn over the course of a month and a have. Today is finally the day and I'm just preparing for work. Over the course of the month we've had many kids (and adults) interested in the tournament. Overall, I decided on only allowing 32 kids to come. This makes the tournament bracket easier for myself and my co-worker Jeff-san to manage.

We have some great prizes for the kids. We have T-shirts and posters, a large hanging banner, some DS games (Unsure of what they are right now) and some Big Brain Academy fridge magnets.

I decided to do this tournament after looking at the sales figures for Diamond and Pearl the week of the release. We had a massive amount of sales at my store alone on launch date and I wondered "How many of these kids know eachother?" Pokemon is and has always been a social game, afterall. With the new Wi-Fi system I thought it would be nice to gather a bunch of Pokemon fans together so they could meet fellow aficionados and make new friends.

This tournament was a complete shot in the dark and I had the twist the managers' arms for the chance to host this. After months of planning and talking, we finally decided on a date and the final rules. The date is June 30th (Today).

The Rules are as follows.

-Only three pokemon are allowed per battle. (3vs3)
-Each contestant must have thier own copy of Diamond or Pearl and a Nintendo DS
-Only one item may be used per match. (Aside from held items)
-There are no level or Pokemon restrictions.
-There will be no cheating tolerated
-All ages are welcome.

So I sold my World of Warcraft account and took out some of my savings and bought my first Xbox 360 today. I got the 20G Forza bundle and I was also given a free copy on Viva Pinata. These games will hold me over until I can manage to grab some of the others that I've been wishing for.

I decided on the 20G because I've been hearing rumours about a new Xbox coming out towards the Holiday Season and I figured I'd sell the 20G Xbox and bump myself up to the newer model.