Good post-E3 gaming article

[Angelo]

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/crash.html

Highlights:

we still watch TV sitcoms, and they've looked the same since color TV was invented. Kids still play basketball, more than a century after that sport was accidentally invented by a rural turkey farmer looking for a quick way to get dead birds into the round hole of the carcass chute. So what's different about video games?

The difference, is that most people are only playing games for the novelty of it.

What does an art form that relies on novelty do when it can no longer offer up anything novel? Think I'm crazy? Would you call Nintendo's Hiroshi Yamauchi crazy?

Okay, you would, but in between strapping kleenex boxes to his feet and wearing a giant raw squid as a hat, the 114 year-old console gaming guru speaks wisdom. And he believes gaming has hit the wall as far as graphics go.

The numbers speak for themselves. If online play is what's going to save gaming, it won't save it in time for this generation.

Sony and Microsoft will wind up losing money on their consoles this time around. Nintendo won't, because they quite frankly don't seem to have that much invested. I think the pool of gamers, for the first time in 20 years, will shrink.

We Original Gamers, the hard core, bought every machine that came on the market for two decades. But for a whole lot of us OG's, the game consoles we own now will be the last we'll ever buy. There are millions of us, and it's just a matter of time.

And I mean it's literally a matter of time. I'll pop in a DVD because a movie only requires two hours from my busy schedule of work and home repairs and chasing kids off my lawn.

I'd say "Discuss," but I think that's rude.  Besides, what else are you going to do in a discussion forum?

[Ventrue]

While I think a lot of what he said is true. I also say a lot of what he said is out of emotion because as an old gamer he cant keep following the console generations anymore. More elaborated thoughts when I confirm some stuff (I want to know if that thing about PS3 only working with HDTV is true or if it does work with normal TV as well);
However, I totally agreed with him on the online game issue

What will it look like? I for one am on record predicting that a massive expansion of the MMORPG market is on the horizon at some point, a new form of online play that relies less on competition and more on MySpace-style human interaction

I have been a hardcore MMORPGamer before. I've done in 1 year and a half what the veterans that played Ragnarok Online for 3 years couldnt do. But I quit it when I noticed how much it was costing me in time and lack of social interaction. I decided to play FFXI. But quit that too because I realized the main problems I found out with RO was present in every MMO.
MMOs arent relaxing as of now. If you want to fully experience a MMORPG you will notice they are stressful, they are time consuming, the costumer service still needs to improve, the servers need to be more stable, the RMT situation needs to be controlled... Not all MMOs suffer of all these problems, but all of them fall under at least two or so. The mainstream MMOs (WoW, FFXI and RO) atm dont give much of a chance to casual gamers or busy gamers (people with a life, per say). And even hardcore gamers have to work a lot when the RMT situation is too messed up (like on RO and FFXI). But you arent supposed to work for games when you are a player.

[Dice]

The numbers speak for themselves. If online play is what's going to save gaming, it won't save it in time for this generation.

Aside from a prize few, I dont think online play has his that pinacle, and there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Sony and Microsoft will wind up losing money on their consoles this time around. Nintendo won't, because they quite frankly don't seem to have that much invested. I think the pool of gamers, for the first time in 20 years, will shrink.

Quite opposite, I feel.  If anything games are becoming a much bigger deal, IMO.