With the start of every year, people look back on who was lost to us over the past year.  Heck, the Oscars even has their tribute section where you go, "That person was still alive!?  I thought he/she died years ago."

So lets take a look back on the things that have left us and those that soon will.

Consoles

X-Box - With nothing new slated for the system until the multi platform release of Ghost Rider, this system is done and gone.  In fact, it has been dead for so long I don't remember what the last significant release was, excluding multi-platform games.  No one probably cares though because they have moved on to the 360.

Gamecube - This was on life support for years, just waiting for the release of Twilight Princess so the plug could be pulled.  Rest in peace Gamecube.  Wii will remember you.  (I couldn't help myself.)

Genres

Space flight sims -  Wait a second. I will amend that to any game that has combat in space.  But I can already here people saying, "What about the X games and Star Trek."  It is true.  These games do exist but with the horribly steep learning curve of X and the utter garbage that the Trek games are, thanks releasing a bunch of them at the same time Bethesda, don't expect to see any games like this for a long time.

The Not Quite Dead

Adventure games - These only live as full games in the lands outside of the US.  Countries like Canada, with its subsidised game development, and the European Union keep this genre going.  Here in the States small developers can only forge ahead by releasing games in chapters.  I still remember when all the big PC games used to be adventure games.

CD's - Why are these things still around?  When I bought my copy of Call of Duty 2 for the PC.  It came on 6 cd's and they barely fit on the spindle in the case.  I thought to myself, "Self, this will be the absolute last time you see cd's for a major release."  I couldn't have been more wrong.  These things still exist as a way to deliver a PC game to a player. 

Things That I Wish Would Die

FTW - I don't know who started using this but I would like to track them down and hurt them.  Saying "random thing" FTW does not make your point unbeatable.  In fact it makes you point weaker.  Now I realise that I just guaranteed a thousand responses with FTW in them.  And then just added a thousand more because I gave everyone the idea.

XD - Nothing I have ever read has ever made me laugh as hard as this emoticon would leave you to believe and I have read every book by the master of satire.  Yet people use this all the time. A more likely response should be "chuckle" or "ICS" (for I cracked a smile, just made that up).

The thought that when someone dislikes something that you like, that they are transferring that dislike of the object to you - The essence of fanboyism laid bare.

    To me this decision does not come down to money but which of the Big 3's marketing campaigns I can stomach the most. 
    Microsoft turned me off right away with the name of its system. Doesn't 360 mean that you came around right back to were you began or is the console meant to be some kind of sick skateboarding trick.  On top of that, Jay Allard seemed so fake every time he came out with his shaved head, earings, and hoodie under a suit jacket.
    Sony and Nintendo were off to a good start before E3 when they were just talking about games and the console but they are in danger of losing my support with those fake E3 user testomonials. 

With this new generation of consoles, it shows that graphics have come a long way but still have much farther to go. What I am talking about here is the pervasiveness of making everything shiny. You get shiny cloth, shiny grass, shiny concret, shiny metal (that actuall makes sense), shiny wood. It is like everything was recently hosed down with water, soaking in oil, or coated with some polyurethane. Very few things in the real world throw off that much shine and it would go a long way making a game look better just to tone down the shiny effect.
On a side note. I finally saw Perfect Dark Zero in action and I must say that it took gameplay mechanics back 10 years. Wow, this is really showing the power of the brand new system. I can't jump and the dude's armor falls off his chest as I shoot him in the leg. Oh Great!