Hey it's been a long time since my last blog post eh? Well my old PC gave up on me for the XXth time and I simply had enough of it so I didn't bother repairing it, plus hey it's a 8 yrs old PC so come on I had to finally upgrade no? Well I just did, I went ahead and bought a laptop. Here it is:

Looks pretty nice huh? Sorry if the image is too big, I still don't have photoshop on it to resize it well. There's still a lot of things that need to be setup in that laptop. For those of you who wonder, this is a HP Pavillon DV2934CA... it's pretty strong though for gaming it isn't so much. But hey since I'm not really a big PC gamer I don't think this truly matters huh? I mean I only play Counter-Strike and you don't need much for that game .

Anyway I've been busy working this summer, things are going pretty good so far. I didn't have the chance to mention this but at the end of June I got myself a PSP Slim. I think it's pretty good, definitely better then the original PSP, it's more comfortable and games run better on it. Plus Daxter was simply amazing! I also got myself Manhunt 2 which was decent, Megaman Powered Up which was pretty cool. Also I got myself the 2 Fire Emblem and Kirby GBA games. So yeah a lot of games this summer but not so much time to play them. Oh and I'm also playing Okami on my Wii right now. So I do plan on getting myself a DS Lite next month but as far as the Xbox 360 goes, I'm not really in a hurry, I think I'll get it around October maybe but I'm 100% positive that I'll get it this year.

Also I've been busy cleaning up and ''renovating'' the look of my room lately, so far the result is this:

You may also recall this picture of my room, use the 2 to compare. I'm not done yet but the final look shouldn't be much different then this expect for the fact that it's obviously going to be cleaner.

So enough about all that, E3 came and went, what are your reactions? Well my reaction is that this E3 wasn't so good really. I mean espeacially for Nintendo who missed out a great opportunity to reveal some great stuff for the Wii and possibly the next DS. No, all we got was a nowhere woman coming on stages to speak about stuff that nobody cares about, Wiispeak (which is ok, maybe), Animal Crossing which Nintendo apparently considers a hardcore game, Reggie making a fool of himself on stage like last year and some weird guy with a crappy hair styIe playing Wii music. Yeah that was all awesome . You guys might say that Sony won it again but deep inside all they did was announce some stuff that (again) nobody cares about and announce some services to the PS3 which have been available on the Xbox 360 since the dawn of time.

And Microsoft? I'd be generous and say that it was decent thanks to the FFXIII announcement but still... what disappointed me the most from E3 was the lack of a new Zelda announcement. Well technically it HAS been announced but there was no trailer... nothing! Iwata only said that the Mario & Zelda team were hard at work... TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW!

Anyway, I'm still setting up some stuff on my laptop and getting to know Windows Vista a little more and at the same time I keep myself busy with my summer job. You guys can expect some blog posts from me this summer, glad to be back .

Scratch that, the future of any entertainment media!

Yes those who know me well know that I'm a download freak, a VC freak and an all-new Wiiware freak (soon-to-be XBLA and PSN freak). That's all cute and all but why exactly am I like this? Well simply because I think that in the future, games (as well as movies and music) will only be available trough download. Does that ring any bell to you guys? I share the same vision as Bill Gates.

Why so? Well with growing expansion of the Internet and piracy it would be really stupid to ignore downloadable content which combat piracy on it's own ground; the Internet. This was the primary focus of the iTunes store. Music was being pirated like there's no tomorrow on the Internet (Napster, Kazaa... you name it! ) and the main focus for Apple was to fight that kind of piracy in it's own territory. What did that do? It helped the music industry from dying.

I don't think this simple example proves much or can easily convince you of what I'm trying to say... so why don't we do a rundown of some of the biggest advantages of downloable games (I want to speak about games here ) ? So here are some advantages of having downloadable games over disc-based games:

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1- More effective against piracy

Like I mentioned above, having downloadable games is pretty much fighting piracy on it's own grounds. Also, hacking a device is much harder then hacking a disc. Well ok you're not technically ''hacking'' the disc but you know what I'm saying. What you might tell me now is that Xbox's and Wii's have been already hacked and that people can get VC/XBLA games illegally. Well that's because those consoles were not built primarily and only for downloadable content (espeacially not the Wii). So if a video game console company builds a console that is made only for downloadable content then they would take much more extra care in building a system that would be extremely hard to break unlike today's consoles. Of course hackers can always find ways but still... so can companies to fight them. If a console offers only downloadable games, companies could control to which consoles these games would go, like for an example; if somebody is about to download the game, the console could be scanned to see if it's clean and if it's not... then brick the thing! Ok this may sound a little absurd but that's only one of the ways that a company could come up with.

2- No limit to a developer's imagination

AKA, no disc storage limit. That would made somebody like Hideo Kojima and me (who are both perfectionists) very happy. So basically this would allow for much more rich and detailed games like Metal Gear Solid 4 to see the light of day. So there's no limit to what a developer could include in his/her games which could result in a growth of very big games like (again) Metal Gear Solid 4, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Okami, GTA4, etc... Plus if a console can stay permanently connected to the Internet (like the Wii), this would allow for a easier process to DLC for games; you'd wake up in the morning to see that you have a new sword available in Zelda or a new gun in Halo without the need of putting a single disc for that to happen to a single game only.

3- Much more friendly to new and non-popular games

Ever felt sad that such gems like No More Heroes didn't sell well? Then downloadable games are for you! Those kind of games would no longer be ignored by the mass public simply because Halo or GTA is sitting right next to it. Every single games would share the same type of spot no matter which is more popular which could show to the consumers that all those games are equal (in some way). So games like No More Heroes, Okami and so on would have done much more better in terms of sales then they have previously did as disc-based games. And also this would be awesome for independent studios seeing as they won't even need a publisher.

4- CHEAPER!!!

Yes downloadable games are also our wallet's best friends. There's no box to be made, no disc to be produced and absolutely no shipping! So all of this would result in much cheaper games then today. So the price of a full game could go from 60$ CDN to 30$ CDN or even less! I think this simple little thing could make gamers and developers alike extremely happy seeing as the gamers could have more money in their pockets and developers would still be making profits but maybe even more since people could buy more games then before due to the low prices.

5- All of your games in only one place

Who here has problems finding some place to put all of these game boxes or simply hates constantly changing discs? I know I do. Well with downloadable games you would have your console in your room and nothing else. No discs, boxes or whatnot. So switching between games would be faster then ever and it would also be easier to manage all of your games. This category suits portable consoles even better; you could have all of your games in your handheld so this way you can enjoy any of them on the go without the need of having to switch between game discs. So this would entirely eliminate the process of having to choose a game on Saturday morning to play with your handheld during work and just regretting you didn't pick the other one.

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Of course there are much more reasons to prefer downloadeable games over disc-based games like the fact that a downloadable game can't be discontinued (or at least, extremely rarely), also that bug fixes could be automatically be updated thus preventing such stuff as the GTA hot-coffee mod and that with an eventual growth of independent games this could offer much more choices to the gamers.

But hey I can't fit all of that in there. Since Microsoft pretty much shares the same vision as me, I do believe that the next Xbox might not have a disc slot and that every games on the system could only be downloaded. Or at least that's what I'm hoping . With the rise of XBLA, PSN and VC/Wiiware... there's no doubt that the gaming future that I envision will indeed come to a reality soon. This is how I view the future of our industry, how do you see video games in the future?

So after whinning about the Canadiens' lose on my last blog post, I did mention that I was going to get an HDTV very soon. Well the day right after that, I did . I went to Futureshop with my father and finally bought my very first HDTV. To be precise, this is a Samsung 32'' HDTV and also one of their new series (the 450 one... or something). So when we got back from Best Buy-owned Electronic Store, I quickly opened the box to install my brand new million-pixels rectangle magic box. I've had some small difficulties with it's stand but it all worked out and I also kept my promise; here's a picture:

Looks good huh? Also about that wooden stand; I bought it 2 weeks prior to this purchase and assembled it myself with my father and let me tell you that it was quite painful indeed . You guys can also see my Wii from there along with my controllers at the bottom left and my Gamecube stuff at the bottom right. The up-right section is (you might have guessed) for my eventual Xbox 360. How I'll manage all my games when I'll get it? We'll all find out this summer . btw the antenna aren't coming out of the TV but actually from a receiver behind it.

So far I'm really enjoying this TV and I've got to say; it really feels good to finally be part of the HD era. Still the only problem is that I cannot do a single thing in HD yet! I don't have the cable and let alone a HD-compatible satellite receiver or anything. I've connected component cables to the Wii and configured the whole thing but still... Mr Samsung has beat the crap out of it . Well it's not that bad, at least I can now play my GCN games in progressive scan mode. But the graphics are jagged. So my true HD experience will have to wait until this summer when I'll get my Xbox 360... THEN I'll have some true HD fun.

But surprisingly Wii games aren't too bad on the HDTV, I played Brawl and it wasn't so bad but Godfather was just plain awful in terms of graphical performance. What's even more surprising is that the VC games look pretty good too; Super Mario Bros has a very simple palette of colours so there's no big problem there but Zelda OOT didn't look bad at all. But still, for my true HD gaming experience I'm going to have to wait a little longer.

Also since I've taken a picture of my TV, I thought I would take a picture of my room:

Please note that this is still a work-in-progress, I'm still changing some stuff here and there in my room but in general that's how it looks like. Plain simple right? See I DON'T have a giant Miyamoto poster , so enough with those bad-mouth rumours! Also notice the Montreal Canadiens banner on top, I've had this for more then 10 years in my room believe it or not and it's starting to age a lot. Maybe I'll remove it someday, maybe not. If I do I'll replace it with something else in relation to the HABS. Also take a look at my prehistoric PC. Oh and about that; I've been recently thinking a lot about getting a Laptop this summer. I'm still not fully sure but I think I might.

So what am I going to do from now on? Well first of all I'm going to reduce greatly my activity on this site since the finals are coming soon and well I'm not going to be gaming much until June 12th (my last exam day). But I'll still be updating this blog. So yeah this is all for now, game on everybody and get yourself an HDTV if you still haven't!