Burnt Meatloaf

Who even notices the gimmicks anymore? The Sonic universe has more canons than any next-gen console has SKUs.

Most of their downloadable games don't have any kind of demo -- even horribly crippled ones. This alone makes me hate the store.

As for the PSN as a whole... um, I can't recall ever playing a PS3 game online at all.

Multiply those figures by a factor of 8, and you're just outlined Hollywood's problem, as well.

I find it unfortunate that this comment was downrated so much. Your development cost is tied largely to the scope of your project and the quality of the tools you use, not the hardware. Also, how much time you waste writing fancy pixel shaders instead of working on actual design (I'm looking at you, Space Giraffe).

If this wasn't true, PC games wouldn't range in quality and price as much as they do.

As a software developer, I wish people would stop blaming the platform for their inability to budget their time properly. Software development is hard, but some people make it harder for themselves than they really need to. If you're spending $30 million making a game to end up with something like Haze, then you're just stupid.

Two words: "train conductor".

Racing and fighting games ruined the industry? I seem to recall that back in the 80's, there were only platform and puzzle games in arcades, and those were the ones that made the industry work. Arcades were built on games that were dead simple to learn but took a while to master.

What do you recommend arcades do?

I admit I would have liked the Dreamcast version of Hydro Thunder to have been deeper than the arcade version, but if you didn't think the game was fun, then I have a hard time believing arcade games were ever your thing at all.

Well, maybe not a full-blown arcade, but there's still games at the local bowling alley and movie theater. If they were to replace their ancient Crusin' USA uprights with this, I might forget about the movie entirely.

God, I miss racing games that don't take themselves so seriously. If this were on the PS3 I'd run downstairs and buy it right now.

Cheesy voices are a good thing? Wha?

Voice acting is an art. Many professional vocalists have a great deal of experience in theater, even when lending their talents to talking garden slugs. If you want to know how to do over-the-top acting and still make it sound good, watch a re-run of Animaniacs.

As an audiophile, I find it quite annoying that game companies will spend millions on pretty graphics, and then get Bob in accounting to do a third of the character voices. Cheese is a style that almost never works... except possibly in painfully saccharine 80's hardcore, and only because you know all that stuff was produced in somebody's basement.

One nit: PS2s are still selling very very well. So, it's tough to say that PS2 owners are moving to the Wii.

Just because GameStop isn't taking trades on XBoxes anymore doesn't mean last-gen is dead.

At a certain point, increasing production increases your manufacturing cost, and thus reduces your profit per system. Nintendo doesn't want to make more systems than they are now, even if the numbers say they could sell them all.

1st year supply problems are understandable. After that, supply issues are just business as usual. Nintendo contracts other companies to make their systems. They don't own the factories.