N'Gai Croal from Newsweek done gone and did it again, he baited another Microsoft guy into a bet ... a gamble they'll probably lose. The new wager is between Croal and Xbox attack dog Andrew "Ozymandias" Vrignaud. The battle lines are that Ozy says there'll be a 40GB $399 version of the PS3 once the "clearance sale" is over. Croal says that once the 60GBs are gone in the next couple months, the 80GB version will drop down to the $499 mark. Sadly, Croal's dreads are not up for grabs this time, it is merely a very expensive steak dinner -- lame! We want the hair of Croal to hang from someone's mantel one day.

Previously Croal won a bet against former Xbox poster boy J Allard regarding sales of the PSP. Allard eventually owned up to his side and had the picture you see at right taken. One day we'll get Croal in a wager he's sure to lose -- more importantly, we'll get his pretty dreads too.

[Thanks Copa]

Newsweek's N'gai Croal hasn't been afraid to defend his tastes on his LevelUp blog. The site's Vs. Mode debates feature some of the best back-and-forth gameplay analysis to be found anywhere. So when Croal and MTV News game writer Stephen Totilo got to play the first few levels of Manhunt 2 at Rockstar's office, you know the resulting conversation is going to be good.

Totilo's portion includes some graphic descriptions of the asylum escape in level one, which includes scenes of public urination, in-cell hangings and stealth kills via syringe and axe-based decapitation. The protagonist isn't completely cold to his role, though -- Totilo describes how he "watched Daniel vomit because of his quick-passing guilt."

Most of the discussion so far, though, deals with the game through the lens of comparative media studies, comparing it to controversial movies like Natural Born Killers and Taxi Driver. Croal and Totilo both harp on the idea of organizations like the BBFC and IFCO and companies like Nintendo and Sony imposing content decisions on consumers. As Croal aptly puts it, "Unless they have good reason to believe that this game is an imminent threat to the public order, or that it will in and of itself incite adults to violence, [the BBFC and IFCO's] decision seems to me to be based on taste, and I will never believe in substituting anyone else's tastes for my own." Amen!

Last week in an interview with eWeek, Microsoft's president of Entertainment and Devices division Robbie Bach made the claim that the Nintendo Wii "[doesn't] have the graphics horsepower that even Xbox 1 had."

Is the Nintendo Wii, with or without duct tape, less powerful than the original Xbox? Newsweek's N'Gai Croal decided to investigate by talking to "two of our most reliable technical experts at third party publishers" speaking under the condition anonymity (given Croal's credibility, we trust him).

The article therein is a very technical discussion on fixed function shaders, pixels and vertexes, and ultimately concludes that the GameCube 1.5 moniker isn't far off from the truth, though said one source, "keep in mind that the Wii's GPU is not as fast or feature rich as the Xbox 360 or PS3, but that doesn't mean you can't get very close results." And of course, given the hardware sales we've seen since the console's launch, how much does supreme technical prowess really matter to Nintendo?

Who's at fault for Nintendo's lack of third-party support: Nintendo, the developers, or the fans themselves? Kevin Cassidy, founder of website GoNintendo, places the blame on the Nintendo community for showing reluctance or unwarranted disdain toward third-party Wii games.

The rant, part of Newsweek writer N'Gai Croal's P2P series, makes a point out of Dewy's Adventure, a game he feels internet users have called in "kiddie" based on its looks alone, subsequently refusing to give it a chance. This is a problem Nintendo had when revealing Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker to be a cel-shaded romp with a pre-adolescent Link. Of course, that game sold well on merit of its Nintendo roots. Dewy's Adventure isn't even out yet, so opinions have room to alter wildly between now and its release later this year.

Is the "kiddie" problem inherently Nintendo's, though? Regard Microsoft's Viva Pinata, a game that has been praised widely but suffers from low (though steady) sales. Is the kiddie image of the title affecting other consoles, too? Cassidy opines that Nintendo fans are clamoring for "mature" titles that include violence and gore, but we feel this is a more universal trend that is affecting all consoles.