Yes, it seems there's plenty of idiocy to go around in the gaming industry this week.  And yes, we have a teensy bit of drunken Hollywood omake. :)  So hang on tight as we go through the bag of stupid.

---Good riddence to E3---

Yes, E3 is being downsized.  And by "downsized," we mean killed.  Yes, the ESA has decided that now's a great time to turn E3 into a small, invite-only event.  This is stupid on two fronts.  First off, while the non-media entry into E3 was getting just plain rediculous, the invite-only nature of this new event brings out a new concern.  Just who is going to get the invites?  The people that the major publishers can "trust" to say only positive things?  This turns E3 from the most important event in the gaming world to the most irrelevant, as no one cares for PR shilling. 

Secondly, the fan reaction, as demonstrated by Gamespot forumgoers' reactions, is rediculous.  I can safely say that I got the most out of the E3 spectacle this year from the Big Three's press conferences, especially Nintendo's and Microsoft's.  No doubt, the companies will now be able to time their press conferences for times that are more in line with their actual progress.  No more rushed E3 builds, no more hour-long lines getting in the way of game coverage.  If anything, this will make things much easier for GameSpot and company to get their hands on games, as they don't have to deal with every kid who made up a fansite just to get in.

E3, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

--- Minnesota anti-game legislation axed---

In a move that no one was surprised by, Judge James M. Rosenbaum struck down a Minnesota game law that would have called for the fining of minors who tried to buy or rent M or AO rated games, citing games' protection under the First Amendment, and completely rejecting Minnesota's "evidence" of clear psychological harm to minors.  I loved this little barb Judge Rosenbaum threw at Minnesota attorney general Mike Hatch:

The First Amendment . . . was certainly established to keep the government from becoming the arbiter of what constitutes 'worthless' or 'disgusting' speech. The Court declines the State's invitation to enter into an evaluation of this kind."

The whole ruling can be read here: http://www.gamepolitics.com/images/MN-final.pdf

You know, I don't know who's dumber: The states trying these inane laws that everyone and their mothers know will be overturned, or the Gamespot forumgoers screaming doom and gloom every time a new unconstitutional law gets passed by another opportunistic batch of politicians.  The fact is that there's no way to prove that violent games, in the abscence of other violent media, injure minors at all.  We have nothing to worry about.  The ESA is big enough to protect itself, and there's nothing Jack Thompson and Co. can do to stop it.

--- Pay me $20 for me to tell you about the game you'll be spending $60 on! ---

As you all know, ESPN and EA are making a "making of Madden 07" documentary.  Not so bad, since EA and ESPN have been making out in the deep, secluded areas of the gaming industry for years.  What is surprising is that it's going to be a pay-per-view event.

What.
The.
(explative)?

I understand that EA has made billions of dollars exploiting the same two million people every year with their barely changed roster update series, but this is simply rediculous.  How can anyone be stupid enough to spend $20 for an infomercial?  This should be on late night TV, right there with the Juiceman and the Gazelle.  Anyone paying for this nonsense shouldn't only be ashamed, they should go ahead and blow their own brains out.  Such people should not be allowed to breed, they're that stupid.

--- Mel Gibson is responsible for all the wars in the world! ---

Yes, even as we giggle at the gaming industry's incompetance, we can spare a moment to laugh at the misfortune (and complete idiocy) of those outside of gaming.  Just type "Mel Gibson arrest" in Google and you'll find a whole bunch of articles pertaining to this anti-semite's drunken escapade.

For those who don't already know, Mr. Gibson was arrested in Malibu, California a few days ago for driving under the influence of alcohol.  Field sobriety tests showed that he had an alcohol level of 0.12, well above California's 0.08 limit.  However, that's not the end of it.

Allegedly, he tried to evade capture, something you just don't do when the cops want you.  When he was caught and put in the back of the cop car, Mr. Gibson screamed incredibly stupid things at the cops, among them:

"f---ing Jews!"
"I own Malibu!"
"The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world!"

And then Gibson topped it off by asking the sheriff "are you a jew?"

You know what, I love drunkards.  Why?  Because you always know what they think.  I remember back when The Passion of the Christ came out a couple of years back.  It was one of the most hotly discussed films of 2004.  I remember how upset the Jews were, claiming that the film was anti-semetic because it blamed the Jews for the death of Christ.  Accusations flew that Gibson, whose father is one of many moronic Holacaust deniers out there, was himself anti-semetic.

You know, I think those accusers were on to something there.

Now, he's trying to apologize for his behavior and his language, the way Hollywood people do.  Personally, I'd be surprised if he really gets help for his alcoholism and prejudice.  PR is an amazing thing, especially when you've got another movie on the way like Gibson does.

Way to end your career there, ace.

---

Anyway, there's our bag of stupid for now.  I'm sure we'll be looking through it again in the future, but in the meantime, see you next week for a (hopefully) normal blog post!

First item on the agenda, Squeenix kicks 2,000 players, either temporary or permanently, from Final Fantasy XI.

Here's a question: Why the hell are you going to use a bot program on an MMO?  Isn't the whole point of a game to, I dunno, play it?  This has got to be the craziest thing I have ever heard.

Now, don't get me wrong.  Final Fantasy XI, like many MMORPGS, can be a rather monotonous game.  One can only kill so many mobs before it gets incredibly boring.  However, bots don't solve the problem.  All they do is make it easier to get tons and tons of Gil in order to facilitate real money trade (RMT).  These slimeballs are the ones that have made it damned near impossible to buy stuff in the game, thus making it even more impossible to play, thus encouraging more RMT.  It's a vicious cycle.

If you ask me, games makers need to clamp down as hard as possible on these idiots.  They ruin the game for everyone, and no mercy should be given them.  Death is too forgiving for them.

---

Next, Robert Parungao wrote a thesis for the University of British Columbia suggesting that videogames are racist.  The games he used in his study?  Grand Theft Auto III, Shadow Warrior, Warcraft 3, and Kung Fu (a game by a small-time Japanese company called Irem in the NES era).

First off, the Grand Theft Auto series makes fun of everyone.  There are caricatures against everyone, including white people.  It's seriously a game series that hates everyone equally, so it's the wrong series to talk about racial bias.

As for the rest... Yeah, really freaking contemporary.  I know that if I wanted to talk about the games industry of the 21st century, I'd use games that were released before 1998.  Furthermore, Kung Fu - a child of the 80s, for God's sake - is by a freaking Japanese company.  If you ask me, Asians have every bit the right to talk about asian culture.

You know, it amazes me just how far people will go to be offended at things.  The culture of political correctness infesting North America is reaching a critical head.  Not to sound like I like racism (I'm a Cuban-American myself), but at some point we have to decide as a culture whether we really value free speech or want to become this liberal sanctum where no one says anything that has the possibility to offend anyone ever.  Personally, I'd rather be thrown a racist barb every once in a while than live in a sterile, Demolition Man-style society.  But hey, that's just me.

---

Lastly, I just want to say one more thing about the Israel post I did before.  It thrust me into a rather long IM argument with this one guy who could only see the Lebanese side of the conflict.  Maybe it's a difference between European and American coverage of the conflict, but over here we see the battered civilians of both sides.  It's not like Israelis are immune to suffering in this.  I don't want this to become a political blog (anything but that, please!), but before I go back to just gaming, I really want to know from anyone who might be opposed to Israel attacking Hezbollah exactly what Israel is supposed to do.  They don't really need to do much to be attacked, as groups like Hezbollah and Hamas oppose the very existence of Israel.  Negotiations have failed.  The UN refuses to aggressively enforce their own resolution calling for the disarmament of all Lebanese militias (Hezbollah is the last one to keep its arms).  With no help from the international community and the prospect of living in fear for the rest of time, neither prospect all that appealing, what exactly is Israel supposed to do?  By all means, I'd appreciate the answer.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and we'll be back to being games only next time! 8)

Amendment:  Seems Warcraft III was released in 2002... I could have sworn it was older.   Still, not the best selection for this sort of thing.

I don't normally post about non-game issues here.  After all, this is a gaming website, and non-gaming discussion is innappropriate.

However, it's hard to ignore the plight of a peace-loving people who have been forced to fight for their lives yet again, especially when everyone seems to hate them for it.

For those of you who somehow don't know, Israel and the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah have been locked in battle for somewhere around 13 days, in response to yet another kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by the Hezbollah monsters.

What I don't understand is why people are so hard on Israel.  This is a country that has been marked for death in the Arab world since its' creation in 1948, which has been shrouded in fear, looking at hostile neighbors on three sides.  A pregnant woman can't even walk the street or take the bus without fear of a suicide bomber blowing himself up or a rocket falling down on them.  That's no way to live.  Israel has had to develop the most powerful military force in the middle east in order to maintain its' existence.  Their reward?  Derision from the anti-semetic international community.

This isn't to say that Israel is perfect.  However, they don't have much choice but to strike with decisive force.  Hezbollah in particular is more than willing to use civilians as human shields, mounting rocket attacks from packed villiages.  Why?  So Israel will look bad in the international community when they respond.  Of course, no one complains when Hezbollah rockets Israeli towns - which aren't the staging point for Israeli attacks - for the sole purpose of spreading fear among the Israeli people.

I'm so damned sick of all the flak Israel is getting.  Tell me, to everyone who is wagging their fingers at the evil Jews (let's face it, that's what Europe and the Arab world hates about Israel), what would you want your government to do if a Hezbollah-type organization made it clear that your country must die, and they're willing to do anything in order to achieve that.  Now I know that the French would likely roll over and die, but what about the rest of you?  The Dutch, the Germans, the Italians, the whole of you?  I know that, as an American, I'd want nothing less than the full force of the United States military to come down on these bastards, the UN be damned.

Let me make this clear: Israel has the right to exist.  It has the right to defend itself.  And it has the right to pound Hezbollah into powder, even if those cowardly bastards hide behind children to get the UN on their sides.

Give 'em hell, Israel.

Brian Sullivan, maker of Titan Quest, seems to think World of Warcraft is to blame for his game not doing well.

Nothing in the world gets me more upset than people whining and pointing the finger to deflect blame for their latest failure.

Dear Mr. Sullivan: Your game doesn't suck because WoW's taking everyone's time away from other PC games.  It sucks because it's a shallow Diablo ripoff.

However, the problem extends far beyond this whining baby.  The PC games genre has become saturated with graphics-heavy FPS games, RTSs, MMORPGs, and crappy console ports (though I did like Star Wars: Republic Commando very much, nearing the end of my fourth playthrough of that one).  The dearth of compelling content from anyone outside of Valve and Blizzard in the PC space is plainly apparent.  It's not like the golden days my beloved friend Jan-Pieter (sp?) remembers - the days of Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, King's Quest, Gabriel Knight, and a whole host of other memorable games in the adventure genre.  This isn't the dawn of the FPS genre, with memorable hits like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Descent.  Now everything's "generic Doom (or Everquest, or Civilization) clone #9999999999999999" with only Valve, EA/Maxxis and Blizzard to break the monotony.

As such, is it surprising that when people find a game as compelling as WoW, they're going to ignore the rest of the tripe and stick to it for a long time.  It only makes sense.  The PC developers who continue to deliver amazing content aren't going to be affected by WoW one iota.  After all, it's not like Gabe Newell (Valve) or Will Wright (EA/Maxxis) are the ones whining about WoW.  It's Brian "my game is a blatent Diablo clone" Sullivan.  Take that for what you will.

Also, it has to be mentioned that WoW has attracted a whole lot of people who otherwise would have never played a PC game ever, particularly women, who are traditionally scared off by FPS and RTS games.  Some of these people might turn around and try some other PC games when their time with WoW is done.  As such, is it really affecting anyone else?

However, since the rest of the PC gamespace seems to think that WoW is killing their business, what can be done to patch the bleeding?  Two things come to mind:

1. Make something that isn't derivitive.  Do we really need another FPS?  Or more to the point, do we really need another FPS that offers nothing but the chance to kill the same Nazis and aliens we've been killing for the last 15 years?  Did we really need a $50-60 corridor crawl with a foul-mouthed Cherokee shooting generic enemies?  The console space at least has many viable niches in between the mass-market tripe.  Such things don't exist in the PC games space anymore, and it's a sad thing to see.

2. Market those original ideas.  Okay, so you have your brand spanking new idea.  Now make sure we know about it.  Many of the coolest games out there have died a death not because no one wanted to play it, but because no one knew it existed.  Look at Psychonauts, for example.  Witty, humorous, fun little game, but Majesco was too busy pushing that piece of crap Advent Rising to let anyone know about it.  We all have games that we love that never got a fair chance because the publisher never gave them the needed marketing push to make people understand that these games exist.  That's got to end.

And there you are, a sure-fire recipe to beat the hell out of WoW.  Of course, it's important also to be able to get communities around your game.  But in order for communities to form, your game needs to be compelling.  This is the mistake many MMOs make - the games are plain and generic, and merely hope that a community will spring up without their involvement.  Yeah, I'm looking at you Auto Assault.  The game must make the community, not the other way around.

Either way, until PC gaming gets out of its rut, expect WoW to rule the roost for a long time to come.

I find it funny that the most hotly anticipated news coming out of EA's Summer Showcase is Valve's uber HL2 pack for the 360 and PS3.  For those who didn't read it, HL2 Episode 2 will ship for the PS3 and Xbox 360 with pretty much all the HL2 content that has been made up to now.  HL2, HL2: Deathmatch, HL2: Ep1 and the like are going to all ship in one package for the 360 and the PS3.  While $60 for all that is a steal, I have only one question.

Why the hell should I care?

I have had Half-Life 2 since its release on the PC, and bought HL2Ep1 when it came out over Steam.  I have a PC that I paid more money than I can really afford for, that can easily rape the 360 at this point in time.  However, many of the most anticipated games on the 360 have been PC ports, most notably Battle for Middle Earth II, Prey, and now HL2 Episode 2.  Why the hell should I care about PC ports to the 360.

This isn't to bag on PC ports.  Far from it.  They serve a very important purpose, most notably to get to the majority of gamers.  However, when people are getting hot and bothered over a port of the now ancient Half-Life 2, I'm getting the feeling that there's something seriously wrong with the 360 in particular and next-gen in general.

It's no secret that the Xbox 360's linup is in dire straits.  There's dreadfully few games to choose from, and many of them are ports from the Xbox 1, PS2 or PC.  Sorry, but the majority of a system's games shouldn't be ports like this.  The 360 needs new content made for it in order to achieve Microsoft's goals of snatching market share away from Sony.  At least we know that the PS3 and the Wii will get tons of original content from Japan, where PC gaming is virtually nonexistant outside of bishoujo "games."  The 360, which has failed colossally in Japan, doesn't have that source.

So where does that leave me, an Xbox 360 owner who also has a pretty damned nice PC?  Up the creek without a paddle, it seems.  Obviously HL2 here is a massive pack that anyone who hasn't played HL2 up to this point should probably look at, but what about other games?  Why would I have ever gotten the 360 Prey, when the regular edition for that console costs as much as what I paid for the special edition for the PC (soundtrack download for the win!)?  Why would I want to get Battle for Middle-Earth II for the 360?  Hell, with this nonsense with Chapter 2, I'm regretting getting the 360 version of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.

In short, Microsoft definately needs to get off its rear end and get some games out for the 360, lest the company ends up going back behind Nintendo in the console war.

The PSP "white is coming" billboard is perhaps not the best way to go about promoting a product.  It's certainly understandable why some would see the ad, which depicts a black woman being held threateningly by the jaw by an angry looking white woman, as offensive.

However, when politicians start running their mouths in a different country than the ad ran in, any real chance at civil discourse is effectively tossed out the window like the anti-gravity chocolate at the beinning of Conker's Bad Fur Day.

Now I'm hardly going to fault the NAACP.  They'd have likely gone after Sony whether this was a video game system or a TV.  That's what they do, even if they're being a bit overzealous in attacking a European advertising firm.

No, my anger is directed at everyone's 2nd favorite frothing anti-game nutjob, Leland Yee.  His wonderful game restriction law was frozen in court and is likely to be tossed right out.  He's made no effort to try to work with the ESA to make people more aware of the ESRB and its meanings.  Instead, he does everything in his power to demonize the gaming industry, hoping against hope that enough judges will be swept in the inane hysteria that they'll become just as prejudiced as he is and help him ban violent videogames from existence?

What I want to know is where the hell is Mr. Yee half the time?  Where is he when unrated versions of movies like Hostel and Ultraviolet are released and sold to pretty much anyone, regardless of age?  Where is he to rant about how Hollywood won't cast a black man in any lead role other than an action hero or a clown unless the movie is directly about race relations?  Where is he to talk about the generally derogatory depictions of minority groups in most film?  Where is he to talk about how black rock or pop bands can never get a fair shake, relegating blacks to stereotypically black forms of music?  Where's his outrage at the fact that a young woman can't achieve success in the movie or music industry unless she's willing to strip for the camera?

He's apparently either too blind or stupid to see that the movie and music industries are every bit as racist and sexist as the gaming industry, if not more so.  Then again, that's what politicians do best, isn't it?  For lack of anything resembling real solutions to real problems, they go for the quick PR grab, never mind the fact that your laws have no shot in hell of withstanding judicial scrutiny.

And in all the fervor, the actual ad has almost become a non-issue.  It's a damn shame too, because there are questions to be asked.  Is Sony really trying to denegrate blacks with this advertising?  Would anyone give a crap if it were a black woman grabbing a white woman threateningly in an ad for a black system?  Do people in the Netherlands, or the whole of Europe for that matter, find the advertising objectionable?

I'd love to hear some intelligent discussion about this billboard.  Instead, we get Mr. Yee's hysteria.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother voting.

In news that will surprise absolutely no one, the 360 will not see its price drop this fall.

To be honest, I don't understand how this rumor ever gained steam.  Home systems never see a price drop in the first year.  The 360 has been selling briskly.  Hell, it's the cheaper of the two real next-generation systems as it is, so a price drop would simply be overkill.

Allow me to give you all a reality check: $399 for the Premium bundle is less than $499 for the PS3 base system, whose only edges over the premium 360 are a completely unproven technology (blu-ray) and a few more USB ports.  To really get above the 360, one has to spend $599 for the Wi-Fi, memory stick, SD flash and HDMI capabilities.  At that point, you're spending enough for a 360 and a GameCube+, er, Wii (assuming a $199 price point for Nintendo's console).

Now before anyone mentiones the GameCube+, both Microsoft and Sony have already made it clear that they're not going after the same customers as Nintendo.  Truth be told, no one is going after the same customers as Nintendo.  Sony and MS are after the 18-35 male demographic, plain and simple.  Nintendo, for all its talk of trying to lure in more people to gaming, has made no real move to indicate that they're going to do anything other than aim at the 12 and under crowd and their diehard fans.  To put it simply, the GameCube+ isn't in the same market as the real consoles.

So that leaves MS and Sony.  Anyone who's seen Sony behave in the months following their E3 disaster knows that they've long since lost focus.  Check out this little gem:

"Well, I'll give you an example; Kazunori [Yamauchi, producer of the Gran Turismo series] would kill me for this: Imagine Gran Turismo shipping on a disc with one car and one track. And then you can browse, online, a dynamic circuit of vehicles that's growing every day because either the car manufacturers are adding new vehicles or we're adding new vehicles. And you can see a specific-type car that's being called up and say, "I think I'll play with that one. Let me download and play it." Maybe the business model allows you to play it for a day; maybe the business model allows you to own it forever. But that content is now yours on your hard drive. Or [maybe you could download] new tracks, new music, whole games."

(Courtesy of 1up.com)

Now, with Sony off in a friggin' dreamworld and Nintendo clinging to its' most reliable audiences, Microsoft if poised to become the dominant force in the gaming industry.  Put simply, there's no reason at all for a price drop, and to do one now would be complete and utter insanity.

In other words, stop waiting and get you a 360.  The core system IS only $299...

Time for this week's loony bin...

You know, call me old fashioned and all, but I think that work should entail, you know, being productive.  It is work, after all.  Mind you, this is true from the lowliest sewer maintenance worker all the way to the President.  However, I must admit to feeling especially disturbed when it's a judge doing the in-work gaming.

Imagine this scenario: You're on trial for murder.  On one side, you have the prosicution, and they have several eyewitnesses to the crime, and you look suspiciously like the one they saw doing it.  On the other side, you have your parents, teacher, clergy, the police chief, the dog catcher, the pizza boy, the local S&M Mistress and the employees of a Burger King (because you enjoy good food far too much to go to crappy McDonald's) all vouching for you having invited them to the local drive-in movie theatre.  However, while the judge is perfectly attentive to the prosecution's case, (s)he decides when your case starts that it's a great time to beat that one level of New Super Mario Bros. that's been bugging him/her for three weeks straight.

I'm guessing you'd think that sucks.  You'd also be right.

Obviously, I'm not going to go all Jack Thompson and talk about how the gaming industry is evil and can only corrupt the moral fabric of American society.  We all know that gaming can be a wonderful diversion.  However, there are certain places where playing video games would be woefully innapropriate.  These include:

In class
Work
Driving
Crossing the street
Conducting nuclear research (NU CLE AR, not Nucular)
Bicycling
Rock climbing
Skiing/skating
Participating in athletics
Juggling
Firing a gun, particularly one with a really hard recoil
Doing a handstand
Practicing yoga
Bouncing on a trampoline
And last but not least, preciding over court cases.

However, I can only see the hilarity that would ensue when one of these game violence bills reaches the Supreme Court.  Imagine, if you will, Hillary Clinton and Co. try to push this federal gaming regulation through.  The ESA sues, the government appeals, and it goes through the federal court system until it reaches the Supreme Court.  The big day arrives when the two sides will speak in the case that will forever decide if gaming is reduced to children's fare or not.  And on the bench, nine Supreme Court justices have their DSes out, trying to get the fastest Boss Rush time among them in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.

That, my friends, would be beautiful.

Okay, it seems Microsoft can't make up its mind.

Seems like John Porcaro doesn't think they're done with Xbox backward compatibility just yet.

Mr. Porcaro, a member of Microsoft's global marketing team, assures us that they're not done just yet, and have support for another dozen titles planned in the next couple of weeks.

Personally, I don't know just who I'm supposed to believe.  On one hand, we have Peter Moron saying that they're not going to support the feature much longer.  On the other hand, we have other members of the marketing team insisting they're not done.  I wish Microsoft would make up their friggin' minds.

That being said, hopefully they can get the rest of the Prince of Persia games on the list.  I wouldn't mind being able to play Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction on my 360 either.  Maybe they could put up Blitz: The Leage so 360 online gamers can have a decent alternative to Madden.

Indeed, there's a lot of titles I'd love to see on the Xbox 360 backward compatibility list.  One can only hope that John Porcaro wins out over Peter Moron.

With the almost non-stop drive Sony's made to alienate its most loyal fans, I suppose it was only a matter of time before Microsoft tried to steal some of Sony's thunder.

Apparently, the boys at Microsoft are going to stop working on backwards compatibility because we aren't concerned with it.

I am of two minds about this:

On one hand, the original Xbox was not a proprietary Microsoft hardware.  The stuff inside it was not owned by MS, but rather by the parts manufacturers, most notably nVidia (now working on the PS3) and Intel.  This of course is no longer a problem, as MS owns the custom processors they had IBM and ATI make for the 360, but that still leaves the fact that they couldn't include hardware emulation without seriously driving up the price, due to the royalties involved.

This left the issue of software emulation.  Anyone who's ever worked on emulators for the Genesis or SNES knows full well that for software emulation to work, the system needs to be many, many times more powerful than the system that's being emulated.  This is why we've only seen ZSNES, Kega Fusion and MagicEngine really become near-perfect emulators in the past four or so years.  Added to the cost of paying royalties for the emulation of parts that are not owned by MS, the effort of implementing efficient Xbox compatibility just wasn't feasable

On the other hand, I'm furious.  This was a feature that was promised to gamers when the system came out.  It was the sole reason I personally bought the hard drive (let's not kid each other, that thing's never gonna get supported by games other than Oblivion for any other purpose than a giant memory card).  It was also one of the features distinguishing the Premium Pack from the Core.

Add to that the fact that both Nintendo and Sony will have near full backward compatibility, and this looks even dumber.  Sorry MS, but Sony set the standard with regards to backward compatibility.  Now, when asked why the PS3 costs so much, they can say "we didn't cut corners by not implementing full backward compatibility like Microsoft did."

To top it off, Peter Moron had the nerve to say that no one's concerned about it!  If the almost consensus negative response from Gamespot readers - some of the most devoted gamers out there - is any indication, many, many people do care, and many more will consider this in their future purchasing decisions.

Of course, this isn't the first time Peter Moore has betrayed gamers.  His refusal to market the Dreamcast assured its demise in North America.  It's only fitting to see him ruining the Xbox 360 in the same manner.  However, the stakes are much higher.  Many people, myself included, paid $400 for the 360 at a time when software is dreadfully slim.  This is not the time to be pulling this on the core audience, not when your competitors will have this feature.

So where does that leave Microsoft now?  Now, unless people really like Xbox Live Arcade (yay, Geometry Wars, broken Uno, and games you can get on so many collection discs it's not even funny) or really want to play Oblivion, there's no reason at all to buy the Premium Pack.  Everything other than Oblivion works just as well without the hard drive, so there's no real reason to bother.

Isn't it always nice when you get ripped off?