Well, a lot has happened in the last month. The biggest being that I have started a new job and I'm now into it over my head. While the company looks good and seems to run a tight ship, I can't get over the feeling that I know absolutely nothing. Which, I might add, is very true. Hopefully, in a few months I'll sort out in my head what I'm suppose to do and how to do it. I just hope my boss has the patience to match.

Anyways, on the game side Guild Wars has been put on hiatus until chapter 2 comes out later. Right now, I'm in EVE: Second Genesis again. I was in this game at launch a few years ago, and I'll be the first to say that it's come a long way. The interface got a much needed overhaul with the Castor patch, Exodus and Cold War help flesh things out and Red Moon Rising (the newest content patch, Dec/05) has really brought the game to a level that few can match.

MMORPG's are like some wines, and that they get better with age. But this really depends on how much the developers and the community support the game. If either side dwindles away, then the game is gone. If both sides stay around, then that game can be out there far longer then it's operational life. (Meridian 59, Ultima Online).

Which catagory EVE ends up in is still unknown, but from the way things are going, it's on track to be one of the games that stays.

Well, as some of you may have read, Working Designs has offiicially closed up shop this week. When I first read the news, I honestly wasn't surprised. With near silence coming out of Working Designs for the last year or so, it was believed that they either had a super secret project going on, or the ship was sinking.  Sadly, it was the latter case as the gaming commmunity found out today.

Working Designs was one of the pivotal companies that made me into the heavy RPG gamer I am today. With games such as Lunar: The Silver Star (as well as Silver Star Story and Eternal Blue), Dragon Force, Iron Storm and Growlanser Generations; Working Designs gave me a library of games that still cannot be beat.

Also, for a time, Working Designs had a smaller brand (Spaz) for shooters after that genre died and went away. Thunderforce, Raystorm and others kept the shooter genre going during the later PS1 days. They also stuck to a game until it was finished, despite incredible obsticals that they ran into. Things such as missing code (Magic Knight Rayearth), non-popular platforms such as the Sega Saturn, or quantity of material (Growlanser Generations), Working Designs made sure they could deliver the product even though the delays could (and did) span over a year.

When Growlanser Generations was released, I wrote here that I bought the game on principle even though I didn't have much money at the time. I believe back then that if this game didn't sell in the numbers needed to at least cover the expenses of localizing it, that Working Designs was finished. Unfortunately, my purchase wasn't enough to save the company.

Thankfully, there are other companies to help pick up the mantle of bringing over niche titles. Atlus USA being one of them, Nippon Ichi another. They have a tough shoes to fill, but I hope and believe that the spirit of Working Designs will continue on even as the company closes.

Well, here we are again. Another round of 'next-generation' consoles coming out from our good friends at the big 3 (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo). As we empty our bank accounts on the new hardware and their launch games, we will also be looking at our old systems and throw them into the closet along with the PS1, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc.

Or maybe not. From what I've seen of the next generation systems, I can honestly say that I'm a litte bit underwhelmed. Right now it seems that the big advance is in the raw power of the system and the leap in graphics. Problem is that graphics are no longer able to make the huge leaps that they did in the last generation. Even today the PS2 makes some good looking games and the perception of the leap in graphics is going to dwindle. The leap from 16-bit to 32-bit was big because we went from 2-D to 3-D graphics. From 32-bit to todays graphics was a major leap in that they we're cleaned up a lot. But from this generation to the next, I can hardly tell the difference in all honesty.

So now, the big companies can no longer count on graphics alone to push sales. That to me is a good thing. Too many games have relied on all graphics and no gameplay, and the software companies are going to have to work on something else to bring customers in. Like gameplay, or something like that.

I think Nintendo was the first to figure this out and why they have put some weight into graphics, but not the whole basket of eggs. The are pushing things in a different direction, and I believe that direction is being dictated by one other thing.

The video game market and industry is stagnant when it comes to bringing in new customers. Most of the big 3 customers are from the previous generation and have been playing video games for years. But where are the new customers from the middle age or women markets? They are virtually non-existant. And one of the reasons is because our industry caters to the customers it already has, rather than making efforts to attract new customers to this exciting medium. Try teaching a non-video game player to play FFX or Metroid Prime, and you'll see what I mean. About 99% of the time they get frusterated and give up within minutes, usually for the reason that it's too hard to understand for them. What we as gamers may not realize, is that we bring in a lot of fore-knowledge when we start a new game. Many of us don't even play through the tutorial and can just jump in and figure out how to play. This is due to the fact that we have been playing with video games for years and can adjust to them because we know them and how they work.

So, in order to attract new customers into the medium, the industry has to be able to compensate or at least lower this barrier of fore-knowledge so that someone outside the medium can pick it up. Realize that many of the earlier games had simpler play mechanics and we're easy to play, yet still challenging. (Pac-man for example)

And this is the direction that I think Nintendo is going. Why the controller looks like a remote and has fewer buttons. Why it doesn't support HD because most of the current marketplace doesn't have HD. Why they haven't used games such as Grand Theft Auto which brings in a certain stigma of notoriety. (See Warren Spectre's comments) Nintendo is trying to bring in the untapped potential of the larger marketplace of parents and women so that we as a medium can continue to grow outside of our traditional customers. Now, if it will work without alienating their (Nintendo's) traditional customers will remain to be seen. But if there is any company that can bridge the digital divide it is Nintendo, with it's history of family oriented games as well as a proven track record of bringing in new ideas and making them work (Game boy, analog control, and the Dual Screen system).

So, will I pick up the other 2 systems? Probably, when they bring out the games that I want to play. But the industry as a whole? I believe that Nintendo is onto something here that will continue to bring in new life into our medium.