So the Microsoft press conference left me scratching my head. Between what appears to me to be the indoctrination of children at a young age to love virtual animals as much as real ones, and the uncanny almost copy-cat like presentation of the Kinect as Wii for your 360, I am at a loss for words. Why wasn't this thing aimed at the people who have supprted MS's consoles for the last 10 years? Are we really interested in paying $100-150 for Kinect and $50-60 for what amount to Wii games in look and feel? I for one, am not.  
 
I may seem delusional here, but this is what I took away from the Kinectimals presentation(the one with the too-cute-for-words child actor and the tiger): Children that are at the age that they are aiming this at, have not developed enough emotionally to differentiate a virtual pet from a real one. They will give the same amount of affection to something that isn't real, and I think this is exactly what microsoft wants. They want these children dependent on their systems. Scares me to no end really.

With E3 around the corner, everyone is wondering what all the big(and little) companies are going to announce. Seeing as we have had little to no info since the last E3 about Natal, why did they announce it last year at all? Shouldn't you only announce something that is going to come out prior to the next annual installment of E3? Otherwise, it's really all just filler.  
 
 Same goes for the PS3 Move. We got some nice info at the GDC this year so it gets a pass, but why wasn't it announced at GDC and NOT at E3 '09? Again, shouldn't that stuff only be pertinent to the next fiscal year?  
 
I believe I am beginning to see how differently the game industry is run as opposed to big entertainment expos of yesteryear. It all amounts to hype. I am leery of this years installment of the exposition for the simple fact that none of the stuff mentioned could come within the 2010-2011 fiscal calendar. It could all be about hyping up the next great thing from 2012 or beyond. If that is the case, do I really need to know about the pre-pre-alpha version of said product now? Nope. I want to know about what is coming to me soon(ish), not what is still so far away on the horizon that it may not even include features that people talk about it having now. Especially with all of the garbage in the blogosphere hypothesizing ad nauseum. I'll take a pass if that is what is going to happen yet again.

Went and saw it today. It was really slow starting and they really didn't flesh out a lot of the new characters. Very little dialogue and next to no backstory for any of them. It got good near the middle of the film. I was disappointed overall. It was entertaining, but it seemed like a cookie cutter attempt really. Too bad.

8 Out of the 10 games on the most played list today on GB are sequels. No wonder publishers keep revisiting material and franchises.

I was checking out the "consoles" section while i was working on some quests today and noticed that there was no entry for the ApExtreme console. That amazed me because it won a few awards at the CES of 2004 and seemed like a cool concept. I wonder why it hasn't made it into the console section. Who knows.