GamePro do a list of 52 of the most Important games ever... manages to ignore Sega and misses the mark by miles..

Starting here and baring in mind this is supposed to be a list of the most important games of all time this list manages to miss the mark by miles. Holy fuck someone hates Sega/loves Sony over at GamePro (maybe they gave them a batch of the PS3s they have lying around doing nothing...) so rather than creating my own list, I'm going to cover just 10 games they missed due to n00bism / stupidity / being 12 years old.



1. Sonic the Hedgehog - Sega Genesis/Master System/Game Gear
Surely this was one of the first battles of a console and caused more playground fights than any other pair in gaming history? Everyone had a favorite, whether it was the furry little Blue Hedgehog, or a fat Italian Plumber but this game started the term "console war" pitting it side by side with Nintendos mascot. If that alone doesn't justify its place on the list I don't know what the fuck will...




2. Sensible World of Soccer - Amiga/ PC / Atari ST(?)
Not a single football game on that list (damn Americans) but this is the first truly classic football game before licensing deals/EA dominance took over. Diehard fans are still creating updates for this game, it was just that good. Management decisions, glorious gameplay and difficulty, in its time this game had it all (and all the player names to boot)! This game is still one of the only great Player Manager football games available to date, 15 years later!



3. Monkey Island - - Amiga/ PC / Atari ST
LeChuck and Guybrush, Guybrush and Le Chuck... what a pair they are! Not the first point and click adventure, but it certainly led the way for Lucas Arts in terms of defining a pretty high standard of comedic script writing and a seemingly limitless number of possibilities for item combinations and actions. With 3 sequels, and numerous other classic Lucas Arts titles that follows (Day of the Tentacle and the brilliant Sam and Max are amongst my own personal favorites) this was definitely an important title for the adventure game genre.


4. Shenmue - Sega Dreamcast
Not only did this game show that a massive budget doesn't guarentee you success, nor does years of planning and script writing, it also showed what it technically possible with the Dreamcast, and within the world of video games. Hoping that the days of not being able to interact with all the objects in a game, Shenmue allowed us to play, fiddle and explore every item of the game, including drawers, cupboards and tables in random peoples houses.

I felt the western release of Shenmue was massively let down by poor (nay, terrible) voice acting which was a turn off for a lot of my friends at the time. If you could look past that, as hard as it was, what you found was a pretty engrossing adventure and quite deserved of a place in the most important video games of all time.


5. Crash Bandicoot - PSX
Crash became the "Mario" of Sonys console and his release into the Playstation catalog was much needed at the time. Crash Bandicoot became one of the first console shifters for the younger PSX audience and is responsible for many a Playstation in the kids bedroom. Whilst nowhere near as good or technically brilliant as Mario 64 on the N64, the Crash introduction as a brand name allowed for many more titles under its licence and yearly updates and versions. They even released a crappy Mario Kart clone or two, keeping all the Nintendo like fun accessible for those with the Sony console, and in terms of the market, I feel that deserves a place on the list.



6. Tomb Raider - PSX
This game became the first game to prove that sex symbols work to sell video games to teenage boys. Lara Croft instantly became the pinup of the day, with rumors circulating of "nude cheats" got the blood pumping to a certain body part that the industry hadn't seen much of before in any other form than cheap sex games. Since Lara there has been a strew of other game hotties, but lest we forget where Sex Symbols in games started to hit the mainstream.



7. Resident Evil - PSX / Sega Saturn
Fuck Resident Evil 4, this is the important Resident Evil. How dare they say that RE4 is more important than the founder of the Survival Horror genre! Where the likes of Alone in the Dark had failed, Resident Evil blasted its way onto the scene with a mixture of fear, tension and great puzzle solving like we had never seen before. RE led the way for Silent Hill, Illbleed, Dead Rising and every other survival horror title ever, showing us what in game tension should be all about.





8. Pokemon - Nintendo Gameboy
Probably the strangest omission I found seen as this is still going and has done more the burn the Nintendo brand into the mind of a generation than any other game, arguably more than even Mario. Pokemon has certainly help keep Nintendo afloat during the hard times of its previous games consoles.

You might not instantly know Pokemon is a Nintendo trademark, but I'm damned if you don't know what Pokemon is. Pokemon and its continuing reign of terror showed the industry how to market to kids and to be able to expand out of solely video games.




9. Double Dragon - Arcade
Ahh... the signs of a misspent youth in the arcade, but Double Dragon led the way for many of the great CPS2 games and arcade titles, including Final Fight, Knights of the Round, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and many other scrolling beat 'em ups. Whips, baseball bats and scary black giants that looked like Mr T.. this game rocked hard! Double Dragon started one of my favorite genres of games, and therefore deserves homage.


10. Katamari Damacy - PS2
Now there are many other titles I could list and justify, but I feel Katamari deserves a place because it proves a point that I have been trying to make for years, and is one of the only games I can recall that does it; it proves that crazy Japanese titles can and do work in the western hemisphere.

This game is truly brilliant, truly Japanese and without its successful launch in the west, it would be unlikely we would've seen the brilliant Loco Roco or a number of other games deemed to Japanese for our differing tastes.



Well, thats my choice of 10 games that should've made it to that list in the top 50. Granted it is somewhat an opinion outside of the top ten (Madden in second can eat my ass..) but really, not a single Sega title in there showed how much GamePro suck balls...

Sony Hates Europe Part 1 : Blu-ray Region Coding map of "Fuck You"ism...brilliant!

Sony Hates Europe... Part 1

Sony hates Europe, it really does. I can't quite put my finger on it quite yet but it really does hate us Europeans. Whether it be the long delays on releases to our region, higher prices or just shitting on us all round, Sony just loves to take a dump on us Europeans.

I am presenting evidence that Sony does indeed hate us in part one of my ever growing rally of materials on Sony with the

Blu-ray Region Coding map of "Fuck You"ism...brilliant!

The above genuine Sony map is the new region coding mechanism for Blu-ray discs. The breakdown is as following:

Region A:	Region B:	Region C:
- North America	- Europe	- Russia
- Central America	- Middle East	- India
- South America	- Africa	- China
- Korea	- Australia	- Rest of World
- Japan	- New Zealand
- South East Asia

Now really, this banding makes no sense to me. Unlike the DVD regioning, where you could see some kind of banding, this new scheme sends one big fat message to Europeans and thats Sony hates you!

Ok, ok... let me explain myself a little! First look at that colour scheme; Green, Amber and Red. They could have used any colours for that map, so why a palette that suggests good, ok and bad regions? Well, look at the red countries... the STOP/DANGER countries of Russia, India and China. Producers of probably 90% of the pirated discs so they get a big fuck you. As does anyone thats not deemed as being part of the continent structure.

Next we have the WAIT/WARY continents, those in too much conflict to buy movies, too poor, or just an island full of convicts, bad losers with seriously bad sportsmanship... and then wait, Europe has been lumped in there too! These nations are your average Joe driver nations... those that would normally stop at a yellow light, but could speed through and import if they want to risk it.

Then finally the SAFE go, go, GO continents which includes Central and South America and South East Asia apparently. I mean what the fuck... how does a cinematic masterpiece from Sao Paulo get the same region as Hollywood, yet we get lumped with the Middle East? Holy fuck... even Cuba gets preference over the EU! I wouldn't be so pissed off if Japan was in region B (like region 2 DVDs that are EU and Japan) as thats all I really care about.

Anyway, it hates Europe because it has to add subtitles to its movies in 20+ different languages, then create an advertising campaign for each one of those countries. It hates us because it has to create box art for each one of those regions. It hates us because we dont resemble one big fat cash cow... were a field of little cows that all need feeding in our own unique way. Sony hates our uniqueness costing its precious company much needed dollars and wants us to die.

Region locking sucks balls. Period. It serves no purpose other than allowing us to be subjected to the advertising for that product when its released for our region and this is the reason its there. Why not scrap it and do global releases or use a region coding system that actually makes sense.


I mean an English release region for one. Call this region 1. No other languages, no other subtitles and audio tracks, just an English audience region disc that can be spat out of Hollywoods vagina straight after the cinema. Then start fucking around with your other language releases.


The best solution for both parties would be to follow Microsofts lead on the Xbox 360 and leave the decision up to the producers. I guess the Movie Industry doesnt have enough independent publishers to justify this approach, and those that would probably opted for HD-DVD anyway! :)

(Sorry, this hasn't been one of my best rants, I just wanted people to see that map!)

Live outside the EU and got a PSP? Get a bargain for one week only... f**king Sony...

Live outside the EU and got a PSP? Well this is your oportunity to own Loco Roco for the wonderful price of $14.90 (or £7.60 to UK readers). Get across to Play-Asia (see banners) now to grab a copy for this week only! Want to know why us EU folk can't get a copy for so cheap? Thank Sony...


If you don't know what happened to Lik-Sang then I'll tell you briefly and let you make up your mind about them. Lik-Sang were a small Hong Kong based exporter of video games and merchandise from around the world. That meant us poor folk in the UK, and all over Europe, who have been shat on ever since the first iterations of games consoles had the choice to buy US, Japanese or European releases of games when they came out.

This was important as many games in Japan and the US were released way before their UK counterparts and (up until recently where this no longer matters) were natively 60Hz. Remember Star Wing on the PAL SNES and half the screen being borders? That was because of the 50/60Hz issue and our TV systems being different pixel ratios

The other great thing about importing games is the price difference. In the old days of the SNES, importing games was an expensive experience (a copy of Street Fighter 2 Turbo cost me £70 to import from the US back in the day). Thanks to the internet, and global prices generally being cheaper outside the UK, games since about 1998 were and have been generally cheaper to buy directly from Asia. Sony Europe didn't like this...

They took it upon themselves to try and bring down this "Robin Hood" of the grey import market by suing them from so many angles that Lik-Sang eventually had to buckle. One of Sonys bullshit reasons was that the PSP power supply provided from Asia didn't meet "strict EU guidelines" yet the last time I checked my PSP power supply has the CE mark and all the other stuff required. Since when has a DC adaptor been safe for those Asians to use, but not us safety conscious Europeans?!

It seems strange that they only started to really pressurise online exporters around the time preorders in Japan and the US for the PS3 just started. I can only assume Sony didn't like the fact you could buy a region free games console (both the PSP and PS3) and/or the games for about half the UK retail price when they have so much invested in another intellectual property... like their movie industry ties. The failed UMD movie format was the only part of the PSP that carried any form of region locking, and more notably, the Blu-Ray discs are the only region locked part of the PS3. Having eTailers able to provide movies way before their EU release dates would be disastrous for their PR and advertising campaigns in those regions and thus lose sales when we get the upped price discs here.

I also think someone had a lot of sand in their vaginas over at Sony prior to the PS3 launch, with their escalating prices for the PS3, lack of produced units, problems with the Blue diodes and the constant complaints of overpricing of the PSP in Europe and just needed someone to smash their fist into. Lik-Sang was that bitch!!

So, Lik-Sang is gone because they refused to cave in to Sony and they lost. Other online exports, like Play-Asia, now do not ship to zones in the EU that Sony says they aren't allowed to. Nintendo and Microsoft are still more than happy for you to buy their machines and games from wherever in the World you like (after a genuine product sale is a sale for the bigger picture). But not Sony, oh no.. overall it just seems bad for the consumer, bad for the exporter, and surely.. bad for Sony..


Well, anyway... there we go... if you do live outside the EU, go grab a copy of Loco Roco today. Its cute, its fun and its unique - its just an all round great game!! If not, show your protest for Sony Bullshit and just boycott all their products... you can generally identify them as those that aren't good for you, are shit advertised and repackaged to look like they're something they're not and are only out to make money for some greedy corperate scumbag... much like fast food!

Sony Hate Month Continues - BluRay 2 : HDDVD 1, a Scoreline I find hard to believe...

Mikes comment reiterating this 2:1 ratio of BluRay sales hit home a little bit to be honest, as he is an In The Know guy who has also digested that stat as gospel truth. Given the theme of March being Sony Hate Month , so charged for landing its gimped console on our sandy shores ("who the fuck wants to see them"..haha, that movie quote works for 2 things in that statement!) I wanted to delve a little deeper.

The first worrying sign was that research material is proving a little difficult to come by. It seems it is hard to put stats down for unit sales so the consumer can't readily see where the format war is heading. Sony seemed very quick to announce themselves as the winner in January when the release of 2 popular movie exclusives saw a boost in sales (*shock).

Im not the only one struggling to find this data. Apparently, those with more than just a keen interest are using Amazon stats in a frantic effort to see whose winning, so the data is obviously a mixed bag. Of the more Sony suck theming stats, I found the following bites.

Sony officials also revealed that, according to an online survey of approximately 100,000 current PlayStation 3 owners conducted by the company, 90 percent have watched a Blu-ray movie on their console.

To me, thats a worrying statistic when the console is bundled with a "free" BluRay movie, TALLADEGA NIGHTS in the US. So 10% of those that bought a PS3 in the US/Japan don't give a shit about BluRay?! That or the movie was so horrible they couldn't watch it all the way through (which goes to show how much Sony care about you, by bundling a POS movie that no one would buy normally (note. The UK launch sees the film Click featuring Adam Sandler as a freebie!)). These are Sonys own statistics too! Even if they didn't like the bundled disc, I would say they tested it to "see the amazing differences", yet there are 10% of PS3 owners that don't feel BluRay offers enough of a difference to warrant buying a movie they actually want.

Plus, this statistic leads to

But even apart from that, 80 percent of those surveyed plan to purchase further Blu-ray movies, while 72 percent of respondents stated that they plan to rent a Blu-ray movie in the near future.

So let me get this straight... 10% thought BluRay was an unimportant feature on the PS3, then a further 10% watched the steaming pile of turd you provided them with and now have no intention of buying BlueRay movies..

Without getting technical (I like to keep my blog at surface level) I can see the merits of future gen (current gen is actually the correct term, it is 2007 ) but when 1/5th of those buying a console don't give a shit about one of its "key features" (see previous entry) you have definitely got something wrong.

Consumerwise, the first company to really embrace the triple format disc will win hands down, as consumers will be future-proof and be able to use it on current players they actually have at the moment. I would buy a HD DVD drive for my 360 tomorrow if DVD movies were dropped in favor of dual layer DVD and HD DVD discs... that would be awesome, and great value for money! I really don't see the Movie Conglomerates or the MPIAA loving the idea of providing people with discs they wont have to replace unfortunately! :(

Blu-ray discs are being declared the victor over rival HD-DVD by Blu-ray supporter Sony. 'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'"

The statistics are largely pumped up by the "free" BluRay disc in the PS3, and as they pump more PS3s into the US and Japan, the amount of BluRay movies shockingly goes up too. I'm not saying that this is the only reason BluRay is "winning" the format wars, I just think the statistics used to draw these conclusions are manipulated to begin with.

Stock levels at Amazon are a little confusing too :



They show a stock level of, on average, 15k of both formats. The HD DVD graph seems consistent with a good throughput of sale and demand, whilst to me, the BluRay stock looks like stagnant stock rotation to me. Maybe I'm slightly jaded this month, but it does!

I also find total number of sales quite interesting:

More interestingly, VideoScan's numbers indicate that during the seven days between Jan 7 and Jan 14, Blu-ray managed to close the gap of total discs sold since inception with HD DVD by over seven percentage points, suggesting that if the current trend continues, the two formats could be at disc sales parity within weeks.

So, even with 2 million copies of TALLADEGA NIGHTS out there, BluRay is still trailing the total number of sales? Most of the FACTS are still blurred as we approach April, so this "race" is still a Black Box scenario.

Maybe if we had some actual sales figures from both camps, we might be able to see which format people seem to be buying. To me it still seems like nobody really cares, and I'm sure if you compared sales to DVD sales both formats get the finger at the present time.

So long as HD DVD doesn't slowdown its output of films, and catches up with a few killer releases, we hopefully won't be drowning in a Sony proprietary format in the future, one that thanks to DRM (that we all know Sony love so much), will mean we are enslaved to buying exclusively what they tell us, subjected to the advertising they make money from, watch it how they tell us (no skipping those trailers), on a machine they made/licensed, and led into a future of even more formats because Sony is now so "brilliant".

Comical Ali Vs Phil Harrison - The Showdown

Is it just me or does every word that spews out of Phil Harrisons mouth just remind you of the now dead Iraqi minister "Comical" Ali? Its every fucking word that comes out of his mouth, it just reeks of bullshit...

After my last rant about Sony and their choices with the PS3, the 2007 Game Developers Conference took place in San Francisco and Phil Harrison was there to give a key note speech about PS3 Home (which admittedly does look pretty cool..if only for a few days until I get bored of it like Second Life) and again in his speech, surrounding interviews and general media that comes from his camp is just so reminiscent of the early days of Iraq II : This Time Its Personal (This Ones for you Daddy).


I've compiled a few of my favorite quotes by Phil, with what I think about them, and a comparable quote from the Comical genius himself.

Do you accept that Sony has had a bit of an image problem with PlayStation 3 in recent months? Phil Harrison: No, I don't accept it. I've been doing my best to make sure that the world sees PlayStation 3 for what it is. I can't deny that we've had some challenges, but I think those are all behind us.

What – an overpriced POS?! No you've actually bee overhyping the PS3 and relaying bullshit information about its Super Computer Capabilities. Really Sony, the challenges are NOT behind you yet - you have a million of this monolith coming to the UK and they really aren't all preordered!!

Comical Ali says - "We are in control. They are in a state of hysteria. Losers, they think that by killing civilians and trying to distort the feelings of the people they will win. I think they will not win, those bastards."

It's all about software now, it's not about hardware. It's all about services, it's all about the way that the industry is changing and the way that we hope to be taking a leadership position in that change.

Since when has Sony been pushing the issue of Software over Hardware? If he truly believed this, the BluRay wouldve been scrapped in favor of, oh.. I dont know, maybe an easy produce DVD drive that developers can actually use! Services too... hmm, I forgot with M$ having IPTV, Media Center etc etc that Sony had BETTER services to offer...

Comical Ali says - "We have shot down 2 Apache helicopters. Have the Americans said yet that they were shot down by their - what do they call it - friendly fire? No? Well... [dramatic pause, then smiles] ...not yet!"

We've been hearing lots of positive things from lots of people, and the response on the blogs and the websites and the forum seems to be almost universally fantastic - so I'm delighted.

So you've only been reading the positive Fanboy sites then, because what I know online the PS3 has been welcomed like a shitstorm!

"The situation is excellent, they are going to try to approach Baghdad...and I believe their grave will be there."

There's still criticism of the PS3's high price point. How long is it going to be before the price comes down? But it's not about price, it's about value, and it's about putting into the PS3, offering the value that is going to make consumers satisfied - and I think we've done that.

My sentiments exactly Phil... its not about price one bit.. I forgot that everyone has a spare £425+ in their pockets to buy a gimped PS3. Value is speculative and relative.. so for a CEO I guess this isn't a massive issue but £425 is a lot of money to me!

Comical Ali Says : "We're going to drag the drunken junkie nose of Bush through Iraq's desert, him and his follower dog Blair...There are 26 million Saddams in Iraq"

The backwards compatibility issue has been talked about a lot in Europe recently. You made comments some months ago saying that backwards compatibility was important, something that you wanted to give consumers and that they wanted... Why has that strategy changed? The strategy has not changed. We have made a technical change to the machine which moves us from being a hardware-embedded backwards compatibility solution to one which is a combination of hardware and software.

This is Comical Ali all over! “The strategy has not changed”!! That could actually be a direct quote! The strategy has changed, changed in the favor of Sony, not the consumer. I read a recent article testing 12 PAL PS2 games on the PS3, all games I would say are worthy of playing (Guitar Heroes 2, GTA amongst them) and only 1 of them worked?! Jeez... what a great stance!

Comical Ali says "They are not in Najaf. They are nowhere. They are on the moon. They are snakes in the desert..."

In America, where PS3 disc is already out, Blu-ray disc is surging ahead as the next-generation movie format of choice. It's absolutely trouncing any other formats, and I think we'll see the same in Europe and the UK.

What?! Next gen wise this is speculative at best as the reports on the Next Gen format of choice are largely false, but saying its trouncing any other format is utter lies. Using the words "any other format" makes it sound like hes encompassing DVD into it, yet DVD is still the media of choice by far... incorporate DVD figures and its easy to see that no one currently cares about HD discs

Comical Ali says "We're going to drag the drunken junkie nose of Bush through Iraq's desert, him and his follower dog Blair...There are 26 million Saddams in Iraq" : Falsifying facts, just like Phil!

So there we have it... one interview diluted into Comical Alis styling! This really could be part one of a million, as I took all those quote from ONE INTERVIEW!! There are a lot of better and more "Comical" ones but this will do for now! I said previously to not get me started on Phil Harrison but I just cant help myself... the guy is just a fucking douche!

UK PS3 at launch?!? I'd rather lick my own arsehole...

For those of you who don't know me all that well, you might say I know a little bit about video games... and not in the way that most people say "I know about X", I genuinely can be referred to as an expert in this genre. Why? Well, I live and breathe them, and have done all my life, and not many people can say that.

I dig a little deeper than that, and tell you that as part of my degree in Software Engineering I coded a Physics API that served as the basis for any video game from scratch, rendering such in OpenGL. I code a little for the PSP amongst other things, and have worked in the games industry (briefly appreciated, but thats another story). I grew up in front of a C64 and proceeded through every generation of video game console to date, devouring game after game to progress my own understanding and expertise so that one day I could develop the best game of all time. I know more about the history of video gaming than I care to recall and am an all round gamer geek.

I generally get that "chill" around the launch of a new console; its my crack.. I just love that new console smell. Gaming has revolutionised the way we think about home entertainment and I love that too, and he thought of a brand spanking new piece of kit under my TV fills me with anticipation for any developer to unleash its potential at any moment.

I've paid for my own consoles since the age of 13, starting with my own PSX, saving paperboy wages and mixing birthday and xmas money to eventually afford a new machine. I took time off college on Dreamcast launch day, telling my Physics tutor, much to her dismay, that a new console mattered more to me than her lectures. I'm now approaching 25 and I can generally afford a new piece of hardware out of my monthly disposable income at a push, but not on March 23rd 2007 I can't!

Sony have upped the ante with the PS3 to "considered purchase" with a pricepoint in the UK that is cringe worthy at best. Ripping out one of the more appealing features (by replacing the Emotion Engine with Software Emulation.. I mean wtf is that!) Sony force us to keep our PS2s out as not all games will definitely be supported in the European Launch, unlike the US and Japanese counterparts. Anyone who knows anything about emulation will tell you that 99% of the time emulated support is no match for hardware compatibility. Cheers for that Sony, its bad enough we've had to wait another 5 months for a PS3, then get ripped off with our pricepoint to begin with, but you're making our PS3 WORSE than the NTSC counterparts... thats a pretty bold statement of Fuck You in my book!

..and it seems that this is the Sony brand theme these days. They force standard after standard on us (I don't recall a Sony proprietary format that has genuinely succeeded in the mainstream, although I am open to suggestion) and they attempt to do it again with BluRay. My forecast is due to Sonys iron grip on the DRM for BluRay, HD DVD will be the choice of the average Joe, with BluRay just being used exclusively for PS3 games, until, like every other Sony proprietary format (Betamax, DAT, miniDisc, MemoryStick, UMD... need I go on!), it eventually gets laughed off as another Sony mistake. I know why they keep plugging away (to control a media market and make billions in licensing), but I just wish they wouldn't!

But Blu-Ray is a major factor in the pricing of the PS3, so how can I not be against this format from the get go. The infamous blue diode fiasco they seem to be having in manufacturing their drives was the suggested blame for the low production numbers from day one (and Europe got the major shaft with Sony deciding to allocate their stock to NTSC regions first), so it brunts most of my grudge for PS3 pricing.

Which brings me to my beloved past love, Lik-Sang, and the Iron Fist it used to smash them into oblivion. I can't, thanks to Sony, choose to purchase a Japanese PS3 and import it to the UK as that would break some (made up) international law. I can go to Japan, purchase a PS3 there and simply bring it home with me, but I will struggle to buy one from a reputable online retailer. I would much rather have a NTSC-J console, like my Xbox360 is, not just to save about half the price on Original titles (you know, so I don't have to resort to piracy/second hand buying for shitter games I would never pay and support at full price), but to have access to all the lovely games that never get released in the UK, or we get the shaft and have to wait whilst they are converted to PAL regions (which sucks balls might I add).

Generally Sony seems content giving its fan base the shaft, so in return I am giving the PS3 the shaft this generation around. I am not a fan boy of any specific console (I am a Console Fanboy if you must label me) and always plan to own any new hardware I can get my hands on, but this time Sony have pushed too far.

Pricepoint : Wrong - £450+ for a games machine is a big turn off, even with the BluRay Magic, and (now Emulated) Backward compatibility of PSX and PS2 games. Sony wouldn't even pay for the licencing of the rumble feature, with that cretin Phil Harrison (dont get me started on him) claiming rumble was "so last gen" then oh wait, due to popular demand they pay Immersion off and are now planning on putting it back in. I'm sure all the people who've stocked up on PS3 wireless controllers are rejoicing at the thought of having to buy a whole wave of new pads!

Technology : Wrong, wrong and more wrong! They've spend billions on R&D for the Cell processor then they put a measly 256mb RAM in, with a maximum texture size of 1.something mb (not 100% on this fact, I was pretty drunk in the conference I heard this at!) due to other limitations don't really cover themselves for future proofing. Whats the point in being able to load that 50Gb disk with textures, movies and game content if developers can't a) pull them off the disk quick enough (BluRay drives are sloooooow but will get faster Im sure) and b) dont have anywhere to quickly access them?! This, in laymans terms, is like building a theme park with all the best rides in, then only putting one entrance on the main gate with some slow old fuck letting people in, then only allowing a small group of people on the rides at once... it makes no sense!!

Customer Appreciation : Fuck off! Trying to force a movie format mixture on your customer base in a vain attempt to win a proprietary format war battle is not something I care to get into.

Exclusive Titles : All but none existent, with most developers pulling away from PS3 exclusivity, opting for a much wiser multi platform approach

Games Lineup : Most of the titles I want are coming to both 360 and PS3, and given the things I've seen with comparisons, the 360 version is generally better than the PS3, thanks to (better) graphical brute, oh... and have more RAM...something Microsoft didn't skimp on.

Future Proofing : Something Sony seem to like to drum home about their Cell Processor. From what I know in the coding world, unless youre a Mathematician with a meticulous approach to calculations in real time, and know the Cell inside out, squeezing every last drop of power out of the cell is almost impossible. I went to a (secret) PS3 tech discussion last year and the guest speaker suggested they had only seen about 20% peak rates with the PS3, largely due to other bottle necks. Developers currently don't need all that power, and will always struggle to use it due to other limitations, like only having 256MB of RAM to start with!

Development Potential : In fairness, for me personally, this is one of the only selling points for the PS3. I do quite fancy a dabble with PS3 Linux..


So of all those points, only the development side of things tempts me at the minute is having the ability to code on the box, and given I can do that on a number of other platforms.. Im going to give the PS3 a miss! I unsurprisingly already own both a Wii and an Xbox360 and really do love that Wii60 combo. So my message is Fuck You Sony, Fuck You in the eye!