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Analysts Foresee Another Banner Year For Videogame Industry

Posted by Zonk on Sun Mar 16, 2008 08:23 PM
from the banner-that-says-money-money-money dept.
Businesses Entertainment Games
Analysts observing the videogame industry forsee 2008 being another blockbuster year in sales. Sales during the month of February were considerably up, according to the NPD group. Early in the year is historically a very slow time in the game sales calendar, making the 34% jump for the month highly significant. Grand Theft Auto IV is likely to be an engine for sales throughout the year: "The game, which will be available on the Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, is expected to boost sales of both consoles. Pre-orders have been better than expected, according to its publisher, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan, expects the game to sell about 9 million units during the company's fiscal year, which ends in October. Roughly 6 million of this, he added, will be to Xbox 360 owners."
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  • From the article:
    Going strong since its launch in 2000, Sony's PlayStation 2 continued to outpace its successor. The PS2 sold 351,800 units compared with 280,800 for the PS3.

    Somehow, this indicates that the HDTV conversion isn't going according to plan.

    • Could be (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 7Prime (871679) on Sunday March 16 2008, @08:43PM (#22769422) Homepage Journal
      Could be... or it could mean the 360 is just hacking into Sony's former mindshare. I think it's probably a combination of both, actually. The continued success of the Wii is probably the #1 indication that HDTV adoption (or should I say, SDTV abandonment) isn't going as planned.

        • Re:Could be (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16 2008, @09:55PM (#22769834)
          Please.

          HDTV loses out on:
          1. Cost.
          2. Standard definition picture quality.
          3. Cost of content.
          4. Amount of content.
          5. Cost of accessories.
          6. The fact that I already own an SDTV.

          • Re:Could be (Score:4, Funny)

            by loganrapp (975327) <`loganrapp' `at' `gmail.com'> on Sunday March 16 2008, @10:53PM (#22770092)
            SDTV Loses Out On: 1) Sucking.
          • There's a reason people stick with old versions of Windows, VHS, DVD, etc.

            But stores stop stocking nice SDTVs. Broadcasts require either a new TV or one of those receivers, and some folks are dummies about that stuff.

            You're right though, I prefer my SDTVs to my HDTV when watching SD broadcasts over U-Verse. It just looks a lot better. Still, nice HD TVs are the way of the future. No getting around it. And they do have many benefits.

          • Re:Could be (Score:4, Interesting)

            by twistedsymphony (956982) on Tuesday March 18 2008, @08:18AM (#22782314) Homepage

            1. Cost.
            On a size for size comparison, meaning 32" SD vs 32" HD HDTVs really arn't any more expensive than good quality SDTVs were about 5-10 years ago, it's just that SDTV prices have dropped to help get them off the shelves and most people look at much larger screens when looking at HDTV.

            2. Standard definition picture quality.
            That all depends on if you know what you're doing/what you're buying. While I'll conceed that joe consumer doesn't really understand the technology if you buy an HDTV with a Faroudja DCDi processor, or a stand alone up converter, (Oppo also makes DVD players with this processor) then your SDTV content will never have looked better. Most people don't factor that in when looking for a TV though.

            3. Cost of content.
            That all depends on what kind of content you're viewing. All current generation games cost exactly the same whether you view them in SD or HD, and even the Wii can benifit from HDTV since it supports progressive scan and widescreen. Similarly most DVD content is also progressive scan and widescreen and with a good scaler like the aforementioned Faroudja in either your player or your TV will create a better picture than your SDTV tube is capable of. While the prices of Blu-Ray movies is a bit more than DVDs, you can usually find them for the same price if you shop around, it also doesn't usually cost any more to rent one over the other, at least not at any of the places I've seen.

            4. Amount of content.
            with the exception of the Wii all new video game content is HD, and as stated before with the right processor you'll get a better picture for SD broadcasts, DVDs, and other SD content. There are thousands of DVDs and last generation games that suppored EDTV (progressive scan/widescreen) that were not able to reach their full graphical potential on SD sets but CAN be fully realized on an HDTV. Becides most new movies and popular older movies are arriving on Blu-Ray and available through numerous download on-demand services, not to mention most of the popular TV stations (NBC, ABC, CBS, etc.) as well as most of the premium stations (HBO Stars, Cinemax, etc.) are broadcasting in HD now too, and it's only getting better as time goes on.

            5. Cost of accessories.
            like what exactly? the rental fee for a DVR from my cable provider is the same if it's SD or HD, as far as cables go the difference between RCA interconnects and HDMI is inconsequential as long as you're comparing similar quality products and not cheapo RCAs to rip-off Monster HDMIs. Go hit up monoprice [monoprice.com] if you don't believe me

            6. The fact that I already own an SDTV.
            You got me there, but I've yet to find any new technology that I was able to own without buying it.

            Ultimately, not everyone is you, and not everyone has the same needs as you. I'm sure there are quite a few people who don't need or want an HDTV or HD content, but I know I personally don't watch TV but instead play video games, and I have over 400 DVD movies in my collection all supporting progressive scan and widescreen. My display is a projector in a home theater room and when I made the jump from an ED projector to an HD projector the difference was night and day... the HD projector I bought didn't cost any more than the ED projector when I bought it 3 years before, all of my old content looked far and wide better (because I specifically bought a projector that uses a Faroudja DCDi) and the Xbox 360 and Wii games that I had been playing already looked much better. I don't have a Blu-Ray player, but I do rent HD movies through the Xbox Live marketplace... Of course I also place a high value on the fidelity of my picture and sound.

        • Re:Could be (Score:4, Insightful)

          by RockModeNick (617483) on Sunday March 16 2008, @09:58PM (#22769850)
          It's not a matter of if it's better(It is, I've examined them), it's a matter if its enough for most people to care. I personally don't really care much, I can see the difference, and the margin of difference in price is simply not worth the cost to replace the units. I think many, like me, will not buy an HDTV until their current set becomes useless.
        • Its better for me- its cheaper. I really don't care about the improved picture, so if I need to buy a new TV, I'd go with the one that costs the least for the size I want.

    • From the article:

      Going strong since its launch in 2000, Sony's PlayStation 2 continued to outpace its successor. The PS2 sold 351,800 units compared with 280,800 for the PS3.

      Somehow, this indicates that the HDTV conversion isn't going according to plan.

      Not necessarily a correct conclusion. Standard def tends to look great on an HD set, probably much better than standard def on a legacy standard def set.

      This is really more about the quality of PS2 games. Lately I have been playing mostly PS2 games on my PS3 in fact. Some of them are simply amazing. For example, Shadow of the Colossus has to be seen to be believed. I only hope that games of that quality start appearing on next-gen consoles, tricked out with next-gen poly counts and physics. Kind of i

          • Then there are some significant PS3 exclusives coming out for holiday season. Microsoft has no obvious counter at this point.

            I'm not a fan of either the 360 or the PS3, but I feel it's worth noting that the XBox has Gears of War 2 in the pipeline, and has exclusive downloadable episodes announced for GTA4. Those may or may not be enough to counter Sony's push, but they do exist and do provide an answering salvo to some degree.

            There's also the E3 to be concerned about. While Nintendo is outright saying that they're holding their cards close, the other competitors haven't said anything either way. I'm fairly certain that Sony has already played their cards and are in it for the long haul, but the possibility exists that Microsoft could produce a big announcement at the show. Again, I'm not sure of the likelihood of Microsoft coming up with something big enough to stop Sony in their tracks, but the possibility definitely exists there.

          • If the gap continues to widen, and with Blu-ray ruling the hi def world there is no reason to doubt it will

            Ah, you see there is the fallacy. Xbox 360 is not an HD-DVD player, it's a games player. Many PS3 owners fail to appreciate this distinction, but almost every single person who bought a 360 did so for the games, not for the movies.

            Counter exclusives; there's GTS IV's episodic content, Too Human, Gears 2, Ninja Gaiden 2, Halo Wars (& Halo: Chronicles?), Fable 2... but perhaps they're not "obvious" to you.

            And as for your list of "issues" (color resolution? You're kidding, right?), the only significant issue to the games market is the failure rate, which is no longer a problem for new sales. The rest only seem to matter to the occasional troll like yourself.

            • Oddly enough, I bought my 360 for the DVD drive as much as for the games. You see, I needed a DVD player, and a game console on its own has extremely low WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor), but if it plays DVDs the WAF manages to increase into merely "disapproving glare" territory.

              Waited until she was out of the country before I bought a PS3, though. :)

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Namarrgon (105036)

                Just FYI, I've been working as a programmer in the film/video graphics industry for the last 12 years, so I'm very familiar with the difference between 8bit/component and deeper colours. "Washed out black and saturated regions" are actually symptoms of poor colour mapping, usually NTSC (16-235) video being displayed on a non-NTSC (0-255) monitor, and have nothing to do with 8bit's low dynamic range (which can manifest as visible banding in certain colour ranges).

                While it's certainly true that HDMI 1.3 can

                  • You're not a gfx programmer yourself, are you? Otherwise you'd be linking to nVidia specifications [nvidia.com], not consumer reviews. The relevent OpenGL extension is GL_ARB_color_buffer_float [nvidia.com], which was indeed implemented for G70-class hardware as of R75 drivers (actually, GL_NV_float_buffer.txt [nvidia.com] was implemented even earlier).

                    Yes, you can use this for offscreen framebuffer objects and pbuffers, which is all you need when float texture blending for HDR rendering, but this is then tone-mapped to the 32bit displayable framebuffer for output. It's still not possible to get more than 8bit RGB actually out of the chip. Apart from SGI (who patented [google.com] float rasterisation), I've only heard of an old Matrox card claiming to do real 10bit integer RGBA output (under quite specific conditions, apparently). Even nVidia's current high-end Quadros [nvidia.com] can't do it (well, unless you count 10bit 4:2:2 YUV from the SDI connector on some models). I'd welcome any comments showing real evidence to the contrary (preferably from someone who hasn't been repeatedly modded down as a troll), but I've never seen it done.

                    I can see it easily with my own eyes
                    As I said earlier, the "washed out blacks" you say you're seeing is poor colour mapping, not lack of deep colour.

                    The PS3 can decode TrueHD into PCM

                    There it is right there. Yes, the PS3 player supports TrueHD, but it does notpass it over the HDMI link - it gets decoded to good ol' HDMI 1.0-standard multichannel PCM first. Read the rest of the article - a Sony rep has confirmed this. And AFAIK the PS3 still does not yet support DTS-HD; it only passes through the DTS component. Incidentally, I found it ironic that you're accusing me of trolling :-)

                    You don't have to convince me that the PS3 is good hardware. It certainly has the edge in CPU power, and the Blu-Ray player is a valuable addition (though it's also the primary reason Sony released late and expensive, throwing away their lead from the PS2). Its graphics are debatable [ign.com] though, and most unbiased people consider PS3 and Xbox 360 GPU power to be roughly equivalent. More on topic, the PS3's HDMI port is more capable than the 360's (which can't even pass multichannel PCM) - but the HDMI 1.3 output is pure marketing, nothing more. Most TV sets (even those that accept deep colour) still can't actually display it [avsforum.com], only use it for cleaner tweaking. Certainly no plasma or consumer LCD panel that I'm aware of is capable.

              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by drinkypoo (153816)

                Indeed, I do see. And who would not want to get a decent hi def player "for free"?

                If the system plays the games I want to play, then I will buy it.

                Okay, I won't buy a system from either Sony or Microsoft, at least not new. And I won't buy games new, either. I don't feel like providing either with licensing revenue. I have both PS2 and Xbox; the Xbox boots to XBMC and I will use it to watch a movie shortly. I intend to do the same with an Xbox 360 when the copy protection issues settle out a bit (probably long after it's a hot new system.) Sony can go piss up a rope, their system isn't

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by elrous0 (869638) *
            Yeah, but the even bigger question is "Are people buying it as a game machine or just as a blu-ray player?" I own both a 360 and PS3, and I use my PS3 almost exclusively for blu-ray movies. Good news for blu-ray, bad news for game developers doing PS3 exclusives.

            The PS3 has to do more than just sell hardware. It has to start selling games. And, right now, the 360 is absolutely crushing it on game sales (Guitar Hero 3, for example sold almost 8 times as many 360 copies as PS3 copies).

          • Re:Buried lead: PS2 outselling PS3, still. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Cornflake917 (515940) * on Monday March 17 2008, @10:47AM (#22773774) Homepage
            As a current XBox 360 owner....

            the heat issue
            Not issue for me. I can play all day and not have problems.

            the failure rate issue
            It's not a problem for potential buyers anymore, the new version's failure rate is significantly decreased. If the off chance it does fail, that's what warranties are for.

            the lower color resolution issue
            Same game comparisons show very similar picture quality between XBox 360 and PS3.

            the lower processing power issue
            Same game comparisons show very similar picture quality between XBox 360 and PS3. By the way, having less processing power (than what? a PS3?) is an issue? Give me a break. I hope you don't have Wii.

            the bungee defection issue
            Even if bungee didn't defect, we wouldn't be seeing another Halo for at least 3 years anyways. Not really a problem for this year.

            the older technology issue
            Stupid argument, not completely true, same game comparisons show very similar picture quality between XBox 360 and PS3.

            the lack of hd player issue
            First people say 360 sales are hurting because lack of HD adoption. Now they're sales are hurting because not enough HD support? Which is it?

            division attrition issue, the continuing losses issue
            MS was expecting to start with losses. They said they expect to turn a profit this year. So these aren't issues yet.

            the morale issue
            Wtf are you talking about?

            In summary, you are making up issues that the 360 doesn't have, and you are obviously a PS3 fanboy. I think the 360 is a great console, and I think the PS3 and Wii are great consoles as well. I don't see what the point of the obvious attempt at trash talking the 360 (or any console). I want all three companies to be in stiff competition so they can keep churning out some great games.

  • I hate to nitpick... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Viceroy Potatohead (954845) on Sunday March 16 2008, @08:39PM (#22769394) Homepage
    ..but: "forsee"? Shouldn't the title be "foresee"? Apologies for spelling Nazism, usually, I don't care about that sort of thing, but it's the title, for God's sake, put in a little effort...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by causality (777677)
      By expecting something more than piss-poor quality, you have harmed the Sacred Cow (tm). You wil now be modded into oblivion, despite the fact that you are absolutely right. I'm not sure if they will use "Offtopic" or "Flamebait". Maybe I should flip a coin, although I'm guessing the fact that you are commenting ABOUT THE ARTICLE won't stop them from using "Offtopic".

      Mediocrity has become the norm, and the many people who don't understand that excellence is its own reward, or that doing something at a
      • If something is worth doing then it is worth doing correctly. Sadly that fact is lost on most of the unwashed masses that populate the Internet.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Divebus (860563)

          If something is worth doing then it is worth doing correctly.
          Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. That's my motto and I'm sticking with it.

  • I'll buy that... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 7Prime (871679) on Sunday March 16 2008, @08:40PM (#22769404) Homepage Journal
    However, GTA4 won't do it alone. I'm not sure why the article hinges on GTA4s success. GTA is a huge franchise, I'm not going to argue that, but no GTA game has outsold the Halo or Smash Bros franchises (which produced the #1 and #2 best selling games of last generation). Halo 3 saw release last year to enormous success, and so far Smash has been exceeding sales expectations this year. Combine Smash Brawl with GTA4, Mario Kart Wii, MGS4, and the remote possibility of a 2008 Final Fantasy US release (unlikely, but possible), and you have a good solid framework for 2008 sales. 2007 saw many huge things though, so I'm not sure it's as cut and dry as the article suggests, but there's a good possibility. And I'm not even going to dig into the huge Nintendo DS sales that simply defy all conventional explanation.

    • Re:I'll buy that... (Score:4, Informative)

      by rsmith-mac (639075) on Sunday March 16 2008, @10:20PM (#22769924)

      I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but they don't jive with what VGChartz has [vgchartz.com]. The top series from the last generation:

      - Grand Theft Auto: 41.16m units (SA: 15.36, VC: 14.20, GTA3:11.60)

      - Gran Turismo: 23.75m units(GT3:14.87, GT4:8.88)

      - Halo: 14.88m units (H1: 6.43, H2: 8.45)

      - Super Smash Bros Melee: 7.08mil

      And the list goes on and on and on. GTA was huge, followed by Gran Turismo, and then finally you get Halo. A lot of this has to do with the PS2 being the top selling console of the generation, but when a GTA game was the biggest selling game of a whole generation and the series by far the biggest of the generation, it's pretty rational to expect a ton of sales based on the name alone.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pthor1231 (885423)
      They already have had a Final Fantasy release, it's just not called Final Fantasy, its Lost Odyssey. It's created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the same one who made the original Final Fantasy and every single one since, plus a boatload of other awesome games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hironobu_Sakaguchi). It even has Nobuo Uematsu doing the music as well. Frickin awesome is all I can say.
  • The only time the gaming industry doesn't have a "banner" year is usually right before the new platforms launch. Right now there are 3 "current-gen" platforms selling big, with big games coming out, that charge big bucks. Wii will keep being a mega-hit, Xbox360 will continue to dominate PS3 because of Xbox Live, and sony will keep its share with PSP/Blu-Ray(/PS3). PS2's hugest edge over orginal Xbox was game selection, with that gone Xbox is showing some of its strenghts.
    • Well, in recent years (or perhaps in your lifetime, if you're under 30). But a few of us geezers remember not only the lack of banner years in video gaming, but outright crashes of the market. I'm being pedantic, though, I suppose. I'll presume you implied "in recent years"...

      You're correct, though. It's likely we may see a downturn as near the end of this generation's lifetime, as gamers are less enthusiastic about investing in last-generation's games. However, we shouldn't have to worry about this fo
      • The thing that I find a lot of people don't seem to see with the console wars (which you do seem to see), is that Microsoft is in it for the long haul to crush Sony and have the pockets to do so. Even though Sony are a massive firm, with a huge revenue their profits are not all the much. Sony of course are not going anywhere anytime soon, and have the home Japanese market that is almost impenetrable to outside companies. Microsoft wants a firm grip on NA and EU and they currently have a pretty strong one.
        Wi

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Belial6 (794905)
              Wow. That is some serious revisionist history. The first and biggest problem with the recounts of "The video game crash" is the redefining of a video game. A game console IS a computer. The C64 was a gaming platform. The revisionists stories always refer to the C64 as being a pull away from video games. It wasn't. It was simply the gaming platform that helped bury the Atari 2600. Saying that price drops on a next gen gaming system that lead to huge sales was what turned a recession into a full-out c

            • Sony usurped nintendo because nintendo made a dire mistake (didn't understand technology), in this "competition" it was quite artificial. I should have qualified the comment "Market economics does not necessarily apply", with 'it is more complex then 'simple' economics'.

              No. Sony usurped Nintendo for exactly one reason: they remembered how the market and the business model works.

              To make a long story short, the Nintendo model had these main points:

              1. Games come on cartridges
              2. We, Nintendo, make the cartridg

  • Economic Conditions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NuclearError (1256172) on Sunday March 16 2008, @08:50PM (#22769468)
    It's interesting how high sales are despite a stalled economy. Maybe it's cheaper to sit at home and play video games instead of going out, given the price of gas.

    • Re:Economic Conditions (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 7Prime (871679) on Sunday March 16 2008, @08:57PM (#22769500) Homepage Journal
      interesting point. Watch as movie theater revenues plummit and game sales sky rocket. Average movie length: 2 hours. Average game length: 30-50 hours. Which is the more ecconomical entertainment medium? Games, by a long shot. Less trips to Blockbuster or the Cinemaplex means less money wasted on gas.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I always find the cost-per-unit-time argument somewhat curious. You can pick up a copy of Ulysses from a used book store for something around $2. It will keep you occupied for 40-50 hours. Yet more people will probably play GTA4 or see Indiana Jones this year than the total number of Americans who have ever read Ulysses in their lives. U. p. up. What kind of perfume does your wife use.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mobby_6kl (668092)
        > Watch as movie theater revenues plummit and game sales sky rocket.

        You mean, like this [slashdot.org]?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I used to spend like £80 on a night out about 3 times a week here in the UK a few years back. Then I went back to playing Ultima Online followed by Dark Age of Camelot and suddenly my entertainment costs dropped to like £9.95 a month or whatever it was for subs, life certainly got a whole lot cheaper that's for sure ;)

      £900+ a month down to £9.95 was quite the jump and I didn't even have to lose friends because I got them hooked too! ;)

      Expenditure has gone back up for me nowadays as I
  • generally speaking, I don't like banner years. This [mozilla.org] may be helpful...
  • It is very likely that economy is sliding into depression. No record sales in such environment, sorry. Wall Street has been convulsing in a crisis for 6 month now, and things are getting worse by the day. We just had one of the largest investment banks collapse on Friday [blogspot.com]. Events of such significance have not happened since the Great Depression, and don't for a second assume this will not pull the broader economy down.
    • Yet the Republican party (especially Bush himself) is running around claiming the economy is "Fundamentally Sound." Sorry, we've heard that song and dance before, Herbert Hoover spouted the same bullshit after Black Thursday, and for the next several years http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5063/ [gmu.edu].

      It is astonishing just how fast Laissez-Faire and deregulation causes unrestrained capitalism to self destruct. We'll have gone from reasonably well-regulated, stable Social democracy with an acceptably egalitar

    • Except that games are cheap. People need entertainment, even in recessions. If money is tight, expect high prices entertainment like trips to a movie theater to go down, and spending on games where you can get hundreds of hours of entertainment for your purchase to go up.
    • Entertainment always does well in a recession/depression. Perhaps a little historical revision is due. People stop putting gas in their cars, stop paying their mortgages/rents/credit cards, stop buying clothes, but yet they still manage to find a few dollars for "escapism". It used to be Hollywood films - the box offices did quite well in the "Great Depression", but now I think you could add computer games to that category.

      And yes, I'm a day trader, I follow the news, I know about the 25 basis point cut and

    • Re:mgs4 and brawl must also be an engine (Score:5, Informative)

      by junner518 (1235322) on Sunday March 16 2008, @08:40PM (#22769406) Journal
      I believe Brawl will be one of the best games of the year. Nintendo has consistently had blowout sales on its super smash bros. franchise, and Brawl is definitely the best yet. It's way better than melee(no wavedashing, etc.) and brings a gameplay more similar to the first one. The characters are well balanced, but lend themselves to certain styles of playing. The graphics, although not what an Xbox 360 or PS3 fan would consider good, are still impressive. It is definitely evident that nintendo took some time to make this one perfect, even if it meant months of delays. And as far as I can tell, its pretty much everything I hoped for and more.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wicka (985217)
      An engine, I believe, is a game that further drives sales. I don't think there is any way to drive Wii sales higher, considering they are selling them as fast as they can make them.

      I don't want to be viewed as a fanboy, it's just that unless Nintendo invests in another factory (which they won't), their sales really have nowhere to go but down.

    • I think that it is interesting that although we are more 'connected' electronically speaking, we are chosing to spend more time isolated - physically speaking - in front of consoles in our lounges and studies.

      You must be confusing consoles with PCs. It's the PCs that isolate, as their typical multiplayer scenario is one player per machine over a dormitory LAN or over the Internet. Lockout-chipped consoles, on the other hand, typically have dozens of major titles with shared-screen multiplayer. Some console titles, such as the Smash Bros. and Bomberman series, are great fun for four players.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AuMatar (183847)
      More like buying Wii's- Wii has a 44% marketshare, with a 5 million unit lead on 360 and 12 million on PS3

    • Re:Blood sports (Score:4, Informative)

      by RichardX (457979) on Monday March 17 2008, @12:55AM (#22770584) Homepage
      Oh please.
      I'm a grade-A long-haired sandal-wearing granola-eating pacifist hippy, and even I don't think you have a leg to stand on here.
      GTA is not presently, nor ever has been marketed at children. The video you linked to was made and uploaded by Joe Random and has nothing official whatsoever to do with GTA or Lego. I suspect that the uploader of that video is more likely to be sued than endorsed by the respective owners of the properties involved.

      What happened to hand eye coordination? As far as I can see it's alive and well and making record profits on the Wii.

      What happened to puzzle games? Not sure.. perhaps they've undergone something of a record resurgence of late, with web based 'casual games' for the PC, various offerings on Xbox Live, and the usual 'classic game' compilations for all major consoles, not to mention the DS and titles like Puzzle Quest..

      As for dribbling and passing.. I'm not much of one for sports games myself, but unless basketball and football have changed very dramatically since last I checked then I'm pretty sure those are still available in whatever the latest seasonal update to the big sports franchises is (is the FIFA series even still going?). In fact, I hear there's also some kind of crazy high tech virtual reality system where you can go to a store, buy a REAL ball, and pass or dribble it outside with your friends - and it doesn't even need a network connection!

      When did we turn our minds off to videogame butchery? You're a bit late getting on this bandwagon my friend. Apparently you totally missed Mortal Kombat, Bloodstorm, Robocop*, Hitman, Carmageddon, all of the previous GTA games, and a million other titles which temporarily escape my mind.

      There's a simple solution to this - if you don't like the games, don't play them. And if you're letting underage kids play games like GTA then you're downright irresponsible.

      I don't mean to sound all smug and glib about this, even though I know I probably do sound that way. Personally I have a similar issue with movies - I find the torture-porn genre which has become so popular of late (Saw, Hostel, Captivity, etc) to be utterly repulsive on just about every possible level. I can't understand for the life of me why anyone would want to watch movies like that, let alone make them.. but at the same time I wouldn't try and take away other people's right to watch that kind of thing if that's what they're into, so long as they're mentally capable of dealing with it in a mature way (i.e. they're an adult, for one thing)

      *Yes, the Robocop game (from the 8/16 bit days) caused a minor storm, in the UK at least. "The movie is 18-rated! How dare you let children play this!", the daily mail readers screamed...
      • You get used to it, though. Your brain does the translating. I don't even see the code. All I see is Goliath, carrier, zerg rush...

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