I couldn't be bothered for PS3, but I will be in line for this one.

Portalz: you're missing his point. If MS didn't have billions to lose on Xbox, the platform would be *dead*--there never would have been a 360 (they didn't even come remotely close to recouping the *billions* they lost by the money made on software licensing fees.) No other company but MS could afford to throw away such huge sums of cash in an endeavor that was a failure on a massive level. If you like their forays into gaming, great. But do not kid yourself: the Xbox brand has yet to have a single profitable quarter and likely won't have one any time soon (that 10 million sold by EOY is looking pretty dubious at this point.)

"But thank god Rivendale is here to set us straight about systems he's neither seen, played or experienced."

Well, if it makes you feel better, I've played both and he's right. All better now?

P.S. If rumble interferes with motion control, someone better tell Nintendo-they, magically I guess, managed to include both.

Calling all barking moonbats!!

are you saying that region-free gaming is an important feature in winning the console war? Are you insane?!

Matias:

Tip: stop getting your ill-informed talking points from Al Gore.

That is all.

Let's see: more teachers and books or a gadget. Yeah, real tough call...

I think some of you are failing to understand how much $100 is in exactly the places this thing would be used.

And whoever said rural China, India, etc.--these people don't have PLUMBING and you want to give them a notebook computer?!

blah: and like a good liberal, you won't modify your behavior one bit--you;ll continue to purhcase whatever Stevie J. decides to shove up your 'socially conscious' exit pipe (and like it.) Put your $$$ where you mouth is or do us all a favor and spare us your moralizing.

Note to 'socially conscious' Apple consumers: Steve doesn't give a damn about your posing--he wants your $$$. The end.

Note 2: I have a two Macs, and numerous iPods so I am not a hater but nor am I some brainless Macolyte that ties up my political identification with a company that wants my $$$ above all else.

"The current emphasis on multiple video cards is a poor band-aid for the fact that GPU manufacturers can't keep up with game programmers."

Or perhaps the programmers aren't up to the job and their laziness breeds insane hardware reqs? This has been going on in the PC arena for going on a decade (or more if you remember good ol' Origin and how they'd practically force you to upgrade to play their games.) Console programmers manage to squeeze far, far more out of 5 year old hardware than the average PC programmer can get out of a 6 month old video card despite working on the same API for years on end. Hell, if programmers, artists and devs et al scaled *back* on their system reqs, they'd get their games done *much* quicker and *much* cheaper. Does anyone honestly believe that we *need* Unreal Engine 3 (and its requisite hardware requirements) to run another, standard issue, FPS?

The root 'evil' in vid card design is this: numbers mean everything. If ATI is going to double the tranistors on their card for a marketing/performance edge, NV is forced to follow suit (and vice versa) until it spirals into the completely out-of-control situation we find ourselves in today. And *nobody* at ATI/NV is going to step back and think, "yeah, let's sacrifice a gen or two to our comp to make our tech more efficient and cleaner-running" as it would amount to corporate suicide.

Nintendo could launch the Wii now, in November 2006, or November 2026. It doesn't matter. I know that I'm NEVER going to buy one. If I had to keep it, I wouldn't take one if you gave it to me.
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Thank you for sharing that illuminating post.