"Diablo was a seminal game, yes. But years later, action RPGs have a lot more diversity. For my money, I prefer Oblivion or the upcoming Fallout 3. I respect the Diablo franchise, but I was hoping that Blizzard would blow me away with something new it hasn't yet tried. Sadly, it didn't." the only thing i'll say, is in regards to that, Diablo is more than just an action rpg. its in the fairly specific sub genre (or sub sub genre maybe) of dungeon crawlers (or rogue clones, whatever you prefer to call it). for it to stay...Diablo...that inherantly means there're some conventions of that subgenre it needs to follow, or else you'd have more whining than the 15k ppl complaining about big shoulders. "innovation" only goes so far until you've left the genre completely this is relevent cause of the complaint that "Oblivion or Fallout 3 are better and more innovative", they are also not intended to be like Diablo, or Rogue, or any game of that lineage (arguably Fallout 3 doesn't even follow Fallout's lineage, but who really didn't expect them to use the Elder Scrolls template. one should note though, they now get the aforementioned complaints about not being true to Fallout). Oblivion is its own beast complete with completely different motivations for play than Diablo packs. thats something fairly important to keep in mind. expecting Diablo to be like Oblivion is just silly, and leads to the rather poor (and critically shallow) habit of critiquing via replacement (Game A is how everything should be. if Game B is not like Game A, it simply sucks. further analysis unneeded beyond this basic premise) instead of critiquing based on personal merits (if the game is poor, its poor because it itself is poor). And this is a habit far too many game critics fall into. comparisons are useful for gauging what was a better implementation of a concept, but not for wholesale replacement of game design. and comparing concepts is fairly dependant on the concepts being relatively similar (which is why using two examples of a games whose game designs aren't motivated by the same goals as Diablo is fairly poor)

tooki Foulu625, I completely disagree with you. Random everyday people don't DESERVE the right to come to E3. Yes, I'm sure it would be nice for any gamer to have the opportunity to go to a trade show like E3s of the past, but a scaled down E3 that cuts out all of the non-industry nobody's allows the people who are there to do work get their work done more easily and more effectively, thus theoretically getting better information back to us gamers who could never go in the first place. It also, in theory, gives smaller, less well known developers the opportunity to get their games shown whereas in the past they would have had to compete with the gaming giants that have almost limitless budgets. --------------------------------------------- except as Shoemaker, pointed out, at this point if you only want "the people there to work", the console makers and the publishers are holding their own private events that give the media better info, better shows, and better organization than E3 ever did just because they can plan it all out to their specific goals. if thats your reasoning, there are frankly better shows to use and cover now. as for your second arguement, that wasn't really the case though was it? that theory is all fine and good but the actual result was quite the opposite. there have been many smaller, lesser known devs that have publicly stated that with E3's shrinking came a shrinking of who could actually BE AT E3. in past E3s, it wasn't about competing with the likes of EA. they were never going to win that fight and smaller publishers and devs are quite well aware of that. but basically if you weren't hooked to a major publisher in the first place, it went beyond how much you could/had to pay for the show, you didn't even get a space at the '07 show. at least with the old system, yea, they didn't get big media coverage, but they weren't going to anyway. i know some of these people, like i said, they're well aware of the way the industry works. but it was large enough that the small devs at the very least got their little corner of E3 to show their wares to any who were interested. with the shrunken E3, that little corner no longer existed, and thus, quite the opposite, the smalled lesser known developers likewise didn't exist.

Dryker In a sentence: Stop being Sony. Yes, Sony and Microsoft are both in the business of making money, but Microsoft genuinely seems to be interested in advancing the medium more than making a buck, where as Sony is just money-grubbing. Microsoft seems to subscribe to the philosophy, "Build it and they will come,"- make a great product ( well-rounded ) and it will sell. Sony seems to be trying to corner any particular market in order to secure every last dollar of the user's entertainment budget. Its blatant and insulting! I don't know the exact figures, but I believe Bill Gates donates more money than Playstation 3 is making and Bill Gates is ultimately at the helm of the Xbox 360's future. Whose at the helm of Sony's future? I don't know and I don't care. PS2 was a fluke in my opinion, spurned by the throngs of loyalists spilling from the barge of 3D gaming on the PS1. For Sony to convince me to buy a PS3 they would have to not be Sony. Can an old dog learn new tricks? --------------------------------- no...MS isn't trying to corner the everything in home entertainment market. they're recent forays into Apple's territory were just accidents.

smurf-66 how come 1up did not do an artical like this after gdc? hmmmmmmmmmmmm or even ign. ----------------------------------- i don't read 1Up cause their reviewers tend to be horrible. but as for IGN, they've run several "what does the PS3 need to do" or "what did the PS3 do wrong" features since its launch. if they don't now, its most likely they don't feel like reiterating what they've said in a previous feature already. in fact in previous features, IGN's said pretty much said all 10 of the above before.

Pastree = when the 360 launched last year, i heard way too many people who outright said there wasn't a single game in the launch list they really wanted, yet they went and dropped $800 dollars. now with the Wii, so many ppl talk about innovation, revolution, changing gaming...and can't name more than Zelda, Red Steel, and Wii Sports as far as actual games are concerned. so thats a situation that pretty much affects every system, not just Sony. if thats an issue, none of the systems deserve any of the accolades they get.

diegoman1 doesn't anyone wonder why their sending more to the us then to its own country? I guess their scared because the 360 is so far ahead of them in the us. 360 power! --------------------- or it might be because there are more consumers in the US to begin with. granted at 500k units that might be a moot point, but nonetehless, its pretty much standard practice to send to most units to the bigger market.