I'm going through the GameSpot reviews, as I often do, trying to figure out what to buy for the month (Other than Ys: Ark of Napishtim and Megaman Powered Up for PSP, I'm getting those come hell or high water), and information's as good as ever.  However, one important piece of information is missing: A game's ESRB rating.

I don't know about anyone else, but there are times when I wanna buy games for my nephew, whose mother is very concerned about the games her kid plays.  As such, it would be very nice to see the rating of a game in a review, as it's a very critical piece of information.

Of course, I'm more in the know than most people who go to game shops, but even I can't possibly know the rating of every single game that comes out in a year in advance of a review.  That's way too many ratings to learn.  And imagine some parent stumbling here looking for information on a game.  This is something that's needed!

The gaming industry claims to give a damn about keeping innapropriate games out of the hands of kids.  GameSpot could do a lot to help the cause by displaying a game's rating - and the content discriptors - in a game's actual review.

It seems that analysts' far-flung predictions are hurting Sony.

Of course, as a huge company traded on a large stock exchange, Sony should be worried about analyst predictions affecting their bottom line.

Of course, I have to wonder just why people are selling stocks of a multimedia juggernaut based on the opinions of financial analysts who have been wrong about the games industry so many times in the past it's not even funny.  Seriously, these are the same people who thought that the original PlayStation had no chance against the Nintendo 64.  We all know how that turned out.

Let me break something to everyone here:  No one knows jack (explative) about the PS3 at this point, save that the specifications aren't even finalized yet.  Can we please stop acting like the sky's going to fall in the Sony camp?

One of the most important things that has to be understood in regards to the PS3 is that the things people are pegging as the most expensive features - the BD-ROM drive and the Cell processor - are at the very least partly in-house Sony technology.  This allows Sony to get them at prices far lower than what the average Joe analyst gets them for.  As such, any analyst speculation is nonsense until Sony releases some measure of final component charges.  This isn't like the 360 where all the parts were outside products and people could just ask the part dealers what they were charging Microsoft.  For all we know, it could cost them $5 for those two technologies.

People need to stop going nuts over this already.  Sony's PS3 is going to come out at least in Japan this year, and it's probably not going to cost that much more than the premium X360.  It's just common sense that they'd try to remain competitive.

Just get your preorders when you can.

The latest Freeplay has gone into bashing Fight Night Round 3 for having the King (of BK fame) as a playable charater.

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is.

Yeah, the King doesn't necessarily belong in a video game.  However, who doesn't like the King?  He's gotta be one of the most kickass mascots ever.

Also, this isn't anywhere near as bad as Need For Speed Underground 2, which had the Cingular logo on screen at all times.  And it certainly isn't as bad as games like Yo! Noid or Cool Spot which used to infest gaming in the old days.

In other words, I don't see the big deal.

Now if only they had Ronald Mcdonald in the game too, that would make a cool grudge match.

(Rant mode on)

I understand full well that you have to keep up with people in the gaming industry as well as with the companies and games.

However, why the hell should I care about a guy who used to work at a glorified garage operation crashing his Ferrari?

It amazes me what passes as news sometimes, really it does. From Snoop Dogg forming a gaming league to the various company job openings that get touted as news, GameSpot's news section sinks more and more into mediocrity and eventual irrelevance. Meanwhile, they ignore things that actually do matter. Why exactly is some Sweedish mobster slamming into a pole newsworthy, but homosexuals being harassed by World of Warcraft GMs isn't?

Here's a tip, GameSpot. Instead of giving us sensationalized garbage and fueling the Hot Coffee nonsense, how about reporting on things that actually matter?

(Rant mode off)

The idea that the massive layoffs we're seeing in the gaming industy is not indicitive of a larger problem is a fallacy.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that more and more people every day are putting down the controllers, or at the very least losing all interest in Western games.  Yes, we have one or two games a year that appeals to the casual, one game a year customer, but that doesn't support an entire industry.

One could have almost seen the writing on the wall.  Throughout the PSOne era and well into the time of the PS2/Xbox/Cube, most mid-to-large developers and publishers have all but abandoned their niche markets, instead choosing to sink multiple millions of dollars into uninspired games in the hopes that they'll get that one mainstream hit.

And make no mistake, it's usually only one mainstream hit a year.  Outside of Madden - Which seems not to be helping EA nowadays - how many games go on to multi-million unit sales?

There's maybe one or two a year.  Three if a new entry in the Grand Theft Auto series comes down the pike.  The rest of the games on Gamestop's shelves are lucky to sell 500,000 units.  Companies like Atlus seem to understand this, and have focused on small runs of games for a dedicated fanbase, thus keeping profitable.  Think of it, when was the last time you heard about massive layoffs at Atlus USA or BioWare, Blizzard, or similarly efficient companies?

I've never heard of them myself, because these companies are formed for the purposes of sustaining a profit by satisfying people who actually care about playing video games, not trying to turn gaming into the new movie industry.

For the better part of five years, we have watched our beloved hobby degrade into a disposable product for mainstream consumption.  This may be good and fine for passive pursuits like movies and music, but when the price of a game is $50-$60, that whole "disposable" thing just doesn't work anymore.

The point is this: The growth of the gaming industry has far outpaced the ideas of those at the helm.  In their lust for money, the bigwigs at EA, Atari, UbiSoft and others have turned their backs to the only reliable market they ever had.  Now that reliable market is shrinking, and it's still just as hard to get mainstreamers to buy your product.

This isn't just about the transition to new hardware.  This is an industry ripe for a massive collapse.

Stick a fork in the GameCube, it's done.

No one appreciates the fact that some games need to be delayed more than I do.  It's clearly better to have a game delayed than to have it suck.

However.  Nintendo is either milling about just moving the project to Revolution, or the release dates for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was originally decided using a dart and a calendar.

Now, were Twilight Princess a PS2 game, there'd be no problem, as there's still plenty of content for the PS2 to keep people occupied in the meantime.  However, the GameCube's been dead as a dodo for over a year now.  People have already played and beaten the good GameCube games, and Nintendo hasn't been on the home console player's mind since January 2005.

Indeed, it's pretty clear that Nintendo's focus is on the DS.  Of course, with Sony breathing down their necks in the only market they have left, they should be worried.  However, there are plenty of people who own GameCubes, a good many of whom have that as their only system.  It's not fair to them to string them along and offer nothing else in the meantime.  Sorry, but Super Mario Strikers isn't going to cut it.

Of course, Nintendo's had this problem for a long time.  The Cube has very few action games, no RPGs, and a glut of adventure/platformer games.  What few action games are on the Cube are ports of PS2 titles, which it hasn't been getting of late.  This doesn't bode well for the GameCube only owner, and it's why I do everything in my power to steer people who can only have one system as far away from the Cube as possible.

Funny thing is, from 1996-2000, you could have substituted the GameCube with the N64 and not edited anything else in this blog.  Why?  Because Nintendo has had this problem for several years now, and it's become a disturbing sign of the times for the big N.

It's odd for me to write the blog, because I really want them to do well.  However, if they're not willing to at least release a game that GameCube owners might want to play, why make a system?  It's becoming more and more apparent that they'd be better suited as a third party.

Well would you look at that?  The UMD movie format just fell on it's ass.  You know, I would have never guessed that a format that costs as much as DVD, has fewer features, and can only be played on the PSP would fail.

Actualy, yes.  Yes I could.  Easily, as a matter of fact.  The UMD movie was ill-concieved at best, downright idiotic at worst.  How anyone thought that a PSP-only format that costs as much as a DVD and has less content would do well is beyond me.  Seriously, if I want to watch movies on the go, I'll get a portable DVD player for around $150-$200 and use my DVDs.

Of course, this is Sony we're talking about, the same company that saw the Betamax format go into oblivion due to mismanagement.

However, this is much worse than the Betamax format.  Sony was planning for the UMD format to propel the PSP into dominance over the DS.  Just one look at any game store's PSP section will tell you that the UMD movies were considered more important.  With the UMD movies being eventually phased out by everyone save for Sony, the PSP will now have to sell based entirely on its games.

My prediction?  The DS will leave the PSP in the dust unless Sony and Co. start making lots and lots of great games very quickly.

Today's Freeplay's got me in a tizzy.

Giving David Jaffe's view - that video games are like porn in that the stories aren't that important - the light of day is insulting.

I don't know about you, but there are very few games I can play without having some sort of story as motivation, and all those games fall squarely into the puzzle and one-on-one fighting genre.

Furthermore, story is critical to the role-playing genre.  I know I'm not playing Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest because they have great action sequences.

However, even if I were to take for granted that game stories aren't important (Which I never will), the idea that story alone determines what is art is laughable at best. 

Paintings tell no stories.  Is the Mona Lisa not art?

Sculptures rarely tell stories.  Is Michealangelo's David not art?

Most music tells no stories in most cases.  Are the songs of Elvis Presley, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, Aearosmith, Rage Against the Machine, and others not art?

The fact is that, even if story were taken out of the equation, modern games could not survive without the other elements mentioned here, save perhaps for sculpture.

Graphics deliver to us a view of many worlds that could never have been visited otherwise, displayed brightly and with vivid detail.  That dark corridor fills us with fear.  Our blood boils as we walk through the ruined remains of a city.  A smile comes across our faces at the bright, shining sun with eyes as it looks down upon the Piantas.

Music influences our feelings in games.  Foreboding ambiant sound fills us with tension.  Fast-paced rock sends us frantically shooting at anything that moves.  The rousing symphonies of Nobuo Uematsu fills our spirits as we march into glorious battle.

In other words, don't lecture me and tell me what is and isn't art.  We have art museums where crucifixes encased in jars of urine are displayed as art in this country.  I dare anyone to tell me that such displays deserve the title "art" more than the works of Shigeru Miyamoto, Tomonobu Itagaki, or (dare I say it) David Jaffe.

Blizzard recently backed off its threat to ban a player for advertising an LGBT guild in World of Warcraft.

There are three things that dissapoint me about this.

One: That a clearly bigoted Blizzard staff went after this girl for trying to form a guild where gays, lesbians and bisexuals wouldn't be subjected to constant hurt by the homophobia that pervades most online games.

Two: That it took an outcry from huge swaths of World of Warcraft players and protests from a number of gay rights activist groups to get Blizzard to rescind its warning and apologize to the player.

Three: That GameSpot gave no coverage of this at all.

I find it sickening that one of the better gaming news sites will do everything it can to help fan the Hot Coffee flames, but won't say a damned thing when a multi-million dollar gaming company decides to attack a player for her sexuality.

To the GameSpot staff, I say this:  Every one of you should be ashamed of yourselves.  Your silence regarding this clearly important news issue says volumes about where you stand both on showing the dark side of the gaming industry and on gay rights.

A raspberry to Blizzard.  A raspberry to GameSpot.

Reggie Fils-Aime is at it again.

In another concession to the fact that Nintendo will never be relevant in the core home console market again, Reggie spoke in flowery speak about moving on to the non-gaming market.

He also mentioned how much simpler and more accessable games are going to be on the Revolution.  I couldn't help but see this as code for "we're making games for stupid people."

It seems that Nintendo has totally missed the point, just like it did with the N64 and the GameCube.  People aren't turning away from the consoles because they're so boring and your handheld is so wonderful, they're just not buying anything because 2005 was a slow year, with no major releases besides God of War and Resident Evil 4.  Oh, and the transition to the next generation is also playing a role.

In other words, this is normal.  It's not some massive gamer rejection of the PS2 and Xbox.  It's just what happens four/five years into a generational cycle.

Of course, this isn't to say that I'm rooting against Nintendo.  However, I would rather pay $400+ to play creative games that immerse me than $200 to play Brain Flex.  This is something Nintendo needs to understand.

Yeah, it's critical to bring in new gamers, but to see Nintendo willing to all but completely turn its back on the hardcore gamers that have supported them for over 20 years is sickening.  Sony proved that you don't have to talk down to people to get them to pick up the controller.

What do I want from Nintendo then?  Maybe instead of making a new controller, they should try to make a few new IPs instead of relying exclusively on Mario and Zelda.  Putting some advertising into games like Fire Emblem would also be nice.  Also, I'd like to see them focus on the narrative potential in gaming.  Not to say that their games should become the FMV fests that Final Fantasy has become, but the gaming medium has so much potential that's being wasted.  Goodness, look at God of War!  That was one of the most beautiful, artistic, creative games to come down the pike in a long time, and it didn't rely on a stupid gimmick.

In closing, I really do want to like Nintendo.  I think that their doing well would be a good thing for the industry.  But they're not going to do better by acting like they're the end all be all of creativity and innovation because they came out with an interesting tech concept.

And for the love of God, give us hardcores some games to be excited about!