for me it will always be the late 80's, you had Don Bluth in his prime doing An American Tail. Trying to improve his movies with traits from very early Disney movies where the artists displayed extreme amounts of quality. To this day based upon the novels, my favorite kids movie is The Secret of Nimh, it's probably the most intelligent kids movie ever created to this date.

Even though statistics say crime is down, most people know that inner city violence, especially among youths is still a serious problem. What I don't get is that city officials and peace officers from my area at least really don't seem to get it.

I live in a suburb far north of Dallas TX, it's a peaceful area but I commute to work to Garland and north Dallas which is more urban. I work for a large consumer corporation like Nabisco, Pepsico, Hershey's, etc. I'm just using that as an example.

I've had to drive through Dallas due to a route change and on more than one occasion I've seen young teens basically just beating the shit out of each other on the side of the street. This particular area that I drive through which is a street between apartment complexes and school bus stops is an area that I've warned Dallas Police and the local news that is a hot spot for violence that needs to be dealt with.

All I asked for was the DPD to post a squad car to deter violence at the area so that after youths dispersed from the bus they would eventually go their separate ways home. Thus deferring a mob type violent incident.

Shit, the first time I saw it. There was what looked like a young mexican male laying on his back getting beaten with other kids yelling on cheering...

I know this is completely off topic from video games but I was watching a bit of the Tostitos bowl earlier today with Stanford vs OSU and there was something that happened during the game that really upset me. I really wish I had recorded this video to show you guys.

In the first quarter during a time out the commentators spoke of a little girl with cancer that inspired a player to wear a bracelet that said "thinking of you" for every game he played. Well as they are talking about her they cut to a camera shot of the little girl who is a 4th grader I believe, and the little girl has her head buried in what looks like a friends back and she clearly does not want to be seen on camera. They continue to keep the camera panned on her and she still clearly does not want to be seen on camera. Mind you they said this girl has gone through a shit ton of chemo. Then one of the commentators made an asshole comment that she's shy when they finally cut to the game.

My beef is they had no concept of personal space or privacy for this little girl and her wishes. To me it was borderline exploitable of using this little girl who's gone through hell for a "feel good story" for the game. For fucks sake just let her watch the game in peace like everyone else cause that's what it looked like she wanted. Plus they kept her on shot for quite a while to keep looking to the camera and they just wouldn't take a hint.

Whoever the production director of that game was is a complete asshole.

I understand that sports games are a public place and anyone can be shown on camera it's just the way this situation was handled that pisses me off.

/rant off

So it's pretty obvious going into our 6th year of this current gens console cycle that diminishing returns are obvious, not only in the graphics department but in the game play that we as gamers experience. This can come down to player caps in multiplayer to bad textures in single player and all the other technical wizardry that developers use to make us focus on the action during the scene and forget the minor details. I was an avid PC gamer only during the early 2000's because there were so many great games you could not experience on consoles, Jedi Knight, Aliens VS Predator 2, etc. These are games that are not even considered the niche of PC gaming, these are action games that could translate very well into the mainstream audience.

My belief is that the console audience is starting to grow stale, and while many will point to MW3's sales that this is not true I disagree. I think the point is that PC gaming should capitalize on consoles stagnant actions. But my idea was instead of going Alienware's route where even a desktop costs $1,000 plus. Is it that out of the ordinary to start a PC assembly company or manufacturing company that can cater to gamers or video artists on a budget? I realize the profit margins on PC components are very low but there are people are willing to pay $60 bucks for a console title like Dead Island that looks way better on PC, but they can buy it for $20 on a Steam sale.

What I'm pointing out is, if someone is willing to spend $60 bucks for a product on an inferior machine, there's always the opportunity to get them to buy something else and have them spend less.

Is it really not that feasible that a company can get a contract with Nvidia or ATI or any of their outsourced contract manufacturers to create a brand developed PC platform for gamers on a budget that would include multiple pricing platforms and upgrade options.

(edit) it's not like we don't have graphics options in PC gaming already

I know people will say this is crazy but with the console companies doing nothing at the moment how is it not crazy? I don't think this would be successful in a year but give it three maybe with a proprietary distribution platform integrated with Steam and I think it would dominate everything on the market. In essence prices would be better on Steam but you can still can buy full price retail box titles in stores and integrate them with Steam.

I'm not talking about making a console, but a varied budget, gaming PC. People say that mainstream consumers buy consoles so they don't have to upgrade but they don't want to spend the ludicrous prices of Alienware. So is it really impossible to find a middle ground?

Here is how I would technically would do it, I would set a contract with a motherboard company like asus for example and you could pick if you want an i7 processor with the motherboardr or i5, you could choose if how many RAM slots it has and what graphics card. People will say "Oh well just by a Dell" or whatever but they don't give you the options with their systems unless they are $2000 plus most of the time.