In the past couple of years we've seen the beginning of a real change in the way video games are distributed to consumers. The gaming press calls it digital distribution and it's quickly becoming the new threat to GameStop and EB Games. Steam is a digital distribution center that has been running on PCs for years now and it manages to be popular despite the dwindling interest in PC gaming. Microsoft has also recently launched their Games on Demand service for all Xbox360s with a Hard Drive that are connected to the internet, whether it becomes a success or not remains to be seen but now it is possible to purchase full 360 games (and not just casual or retro-centric titles) through digital distribution. All of this could be a huge threat to GameStop and EB Games.

I for one am a huge game collector, I have hundreds upon hundreds of titles littering my room, I have 14 consoles currently hooked into my TV and I have drawers filled with controllers, light guns and accessories and I love it all. I wouldn't give any of it up for the world, when I look at my bookshelves that are filled with game cases or my crates that are filled with loose cartridges it really warms me. But game collecting comes with it's downsides, afterall this collection is my life's work and it took alot of blood sweat and tears to get it where it is. When I'm excited for a new game I have to put down the money up front for the pre-order to ensure that a copy is available for me on the first day. Then I have to schedule a day off work and take 2 hours to ride a bus to the store and then come home. And sometimes the store doesn't even have the shipment of the game in when they were supposed to. But if I had the option to purchase the game online and have it delivered digitally than there wouldn't be an issue, I could take my day off of work and play the game as soon as I woke up. Simply use my credit card and wait minutes for the game to download, and I wouldn't have to cross my fingers hoping that the store had a copy.

And how many times have the game stores tried to screw you over by offering a scuffed"last-copy" of the game that wasn't shrinkwrapped, or offer you an insulting couple of pennies for a game or accessory that they plan to re-sell for 20 dollars. How many times have the staff opened games and played them themselves only to re-seal them and pawn them off as new and for you to take it home and find it doesn't evenwork. Does anybody here really want to support them?, frankly I only want to support the game developers that make my art and if we can cut out the middle man and give them more money than I have all the more support for this shift.

With digital distribution there wont be any trouble tracking down that title that you heard was really good but somehow missed out on a couple of years ago and your money will go to support the developer who made it, not the used game store that bought it for pennies. You wont have to go too far to get it and you wont have to worry about a scratched disc bringing your experience to a halt. Load times could become close to nonexistent because you wont have to wait for the disc drive. I for one am eager for the change and can't wait for the day when it's all on my console's drive. The only downside I see is loosing that box to put on my shelf, but TellTale Games gives all of their download customers the option of having a boxed copy shipped to your house, so it really is possible to have your cake and eat it too.

Back in the late 80s Nintendo had asserted themselves as the dominant force in the gaming industry. With subsequent generations Nintendo's stranglehold on the market had loosened due mostly to Sega and Sony. Nintendo became a much quieter contender in the console race, happily churning out new hardware and software that was geared towards the Nintendo faithful. Much like my feelings towards Sega, a Nintendo fanboy couldn't help but be pleased by Nintendo's offerings year after year despite their "fall from grace". Nintendo continued to make powerful and affordable hardware each generation with new iterations of their famed franchises and all together brand new titles. But that was then, and this is now. The begining of this generation saw a first for the gaming industry though: a former 1st placer in the industry managed to take back the lead they had lost. At first, most of the gaming journalists and fans had congratulated The Big N. They created something seemingly new and revolutionary, plus the early software variety showed promise for the future of the Wii.

U R NOT E

Nintendo's current market dominance hasn't seriously been considered threatened until recently. Regardless of your personal feelings about the Wii, you probably thought it was going to go on to win this generation. Nintendo hit the ground running, but now more than ever, the Wii is a joke. Sony just announced that the PS3 Slim is to be released soon and it comes with a price drop to $299, this is almost as affordable as the Wii ($279). For almost the same price you can get a vastly more powerful console and home theater system with many more AAA exclusives and the same great multi-platform titles the 360 enjoys, most multi-platform titles that hit the Wii are inferior ports. Microsoft announced a price drop that puts the low-end SKU of the 360 (the Arcade model) at $179 and it has the same advantage over the Wii that the PS3 does. But this isn't even half of Nintendo's Woes because Microsoft and Sony have introduced the public to their motion control systems and they seem to have a 1-up on the Motion Plus attachment Nintendo just launched. This means that the one advantage Nintendo had is now gone.

SEGA DOES WHAT NINTENDON'T

Wii sales are down. The past couple months have shown console sales slowing significantly. Why? Because everyone that wants one, has one. And now they find themselves with nothing to play. Did Nintendo really think they could sell hardware without any new software? Nintendo's offerings last year were pitiful, consisting mostly of Animal Crossing and... uh... what else did they release last year? And so far this year we got Punch-Out. It's no secret that the Nintendo faithful that was once well fed has been starved for new entertainment as of late, and hungry mouths whisper the loudest. This E3 Nintendo announced a new Metroid game for Wii, the only problem is that is comes out next year leaving this holiday season looking pretty grim. In fact the only publisher to release great AAA titles this year is Sega. They've released MadWorld, House of the Dead Overkill, Sonic and the Black Knight and The Conduit. These games all have two things in common: 1.) They all push the Hardware to it's furthest limitations and 2.) They're all for the Hardcore and Sega faithful. Any Wii owner who doesn't have these titles should fix that right now because Sega sees a unique oppurtunity in the Wii to make games that simply wouldn't work on the competitions machines (yet). Nintendo just isn't doing their job, but Sega is doing it for them.

With the price cut of the competition's machines and the introduction of new motion controllers the Wii is quickly becoming a tough sell. The console's limitations are becoming much more apparant every year and now it seems as if it is quickly becoming obsolete. 3rd parties have announced a few good titles for the Wii that are soon to be released so I can't see Wii sales coming to a stand still but they probably will be surpassed by the competition. And even if Nintendo wins this generation I can't see it being by much and the long term ramifications for their actions now could lose them the next console war before it's even begun. They need to give people a reason to buy a Wii by lowering the price to match how little you're getting when compared to the competition and introduce better online connectivity. But more important than anything, they need to make games again, and more than just one AAA title a year. Don't get me wrong, My Wii is still my favourite console and the one that gets the most use from me, but I find myself playing PS3 and 360 more than before and there is a reason for that.

I have, am and always will be a Sega fanboy. I am a notorious Sega fanboy and it all started when I got a Genesis at the age of five. Back then it was a two way fight between Sega and Nintendo. Sure there were other contenders but it was just like the soda war between Coke and Pepsi, nobody ever talked about the RC Colas of the gaming industry. Being a Sega fanboy I played Genesis everyday after school and on weekends, and if the topic of Sega vs the big N came up then I would take my place on the flamewar battle field. We had our stupid flame wars back then and where did it get us? Sega won the battle with the Genesis and took control of 65% of the market but eventually they lost the war. No amount of my support for the Saturn or Dreamcast could do anything to help them from eventually losing out to Sony (and trust me, I've given Sega a lot of money over the years).

But that was then, sure we argued over who had the cooler toy but we were elementary school kids. And back then our biggest forum was the school yard, we could never have fathomed something like the internet being our battleground. During Sega's absence from the console war I've been a 3rd party observer. I played games on other platforms and spent a great deal of time with the online gaming community, all the while never really taking sides. But even though I wasn't taking sides, I was avoiding Sony like the plague, I was still bitter about what they did to Sega. I eventually realized that Sega and their games weren't really gone, only their platform was. And so, all of my favourite franchises will continue to live on. Infact they have become a very profitable company since their restructuring and they continue to be one of the big contenders to this day. So this year I bought my first Sony machine, a PlayStation 3.

Why would I lend support to a company that I bode such ill will towards just a few years prior? Why wouldn't I just be a good Sega soldier and kick the enemy while they were down, After all the PS3 is becoming a bigger disaster every month for Sony, isn't it? Well I saw a little bit of the Sega Saturn in the PS3 and I got nostalgic. Think about it, The Saturn had a complicated architecture that was off putting to developers but turned out to be more powerful if publishers were simply willing to put some time and resources into making Saturn titles. And while the Saturn had less 3rd party support then the competition and most multi-platform titles turned out to be inferior on Sega's machine the exclusive titles were really far past what you saw on the competition's machines. Hell, even the consoles price points have a parallel. I saw all of these similarities between the Saturn and the PS3 and began to feel bad for Sony Soldiers because I was in the same position as them back in the fifth generation. I remeber that my machine was 3rd behind the N64 and what I saw as a children's game console. When you think about it the PlayStation was a lot like the Wii. I think when the PSX hit the market it was the beginning of video games moving out of the basements and bedrooms of the hardcore and into the television room for the whole family to play, all because the PSX was designed with less powerful hardware and therefore cheaper than the competition. After that the game designers were more than happy to flood to it with huge library of games to capitalize on it's success with only a fraction of those games being any good.

You see, What's happening in the seventh generation is the exact same as what happened in the fifth, Sony is in the same place that Sega was, Microsoft is where Nintendo was and Nintendo is where Sony was. Sega was the Giant in the generation prior just like Sony today, But because of a few bad design choices they lost their place because of their new bloated and expensive box. The Wii is in first place today because it's doing what PlayStation did more than a decade ago by opening gaming to a whole new audience, much to the dismay of the hardcore. So with all of these similarities I decided to look into the software library for the PS3 and I really liked what I saw. I realized Sony had some great exclusives for their machine and they didn't deserve to be overlooked anymore than the great games on the Saturn like Bug!, Panzer Dragoon, Clockwork Knight or Deep Fear. I've already been blown away by Metal Gear Solid 4, Resistance and Ratchet & Clank Future, and I'm extremely excited about Heavy Rain as both Omikron and Indigo Prophecy simply mental mind f**ked me just a few years back. And hell, maybe I'll pick up Killzone 2 or Uncharted just to try something else.

You see, When I picked up a PS3 I realized something: more than being a Sega fanboy I'm a gaming fanboy. And I'll always be tickled pink when I try something new. And now I'm kicking myself for never having played a Sony console prior to this year because as I skim the PSX and PS2 libraries for what I missed I'm finding more and more great stuff. And so I realized flamewars get us nowhere. All my fighting got me was the loss of Sega as a console manufacturer and missing out on the PlayStation. I'm not saying we should give up brand loyalty entirely, I'll always be a notorious Sega fanboy. But when I voice my opinion about why I think the Genesis is better than the SNES with a gamer on the opposite side of the debate I'll be sure to do so in a thougt out manner instead of resorting to "Blast-Processing" and try to remember that it always comes down to the games and that every machine has good exclusives. There is no reason to resort to flamewars on the forums, Infact maybe you should take a little time out to defect to the other side, or you'll never get a drink of that tasty RC Cola.

*NOTE: To anybody who may leave a comment: What amazing PSX and PS2 exclusives did I miss out on?I'm playing it all on my PS3 and I want to know what to get next.