Last month, Microsoft had an RPG conference in Japan.  The biggest news out of the event was the announcement that Star Ocean 4, previously thought to be a PS3 exclusive, is in fact, an Xbox 360 game and might not show up on the PS3 at all.  Xbox owners can also cheer that The Last Remnant, a multiplatform Square-Enix RPG, is going to be released earlier on the 360 than on the PS3.  Other highlights from the conference include additional media and information on Tales of Vesperia (a 360 exclusive by Namco in the series made famous in the US by Tales of Symphonia for the GameCube) and Infinite Undiscovery (a 360 exclusive by Square-Enix that looks similar to Rogue Galaxy).

I'm reminded of this quote from Vic Ireland, the president of the now-defunct RPG localizing company, Working Designs:

For the future, there are still great opportunities. I have been in touch with a number of other publishers and manufacturers and I will be working with some of the WD staff to do games for other publishers for the time being, but not as Working Designs. One thing that holds a ton of promise is Xbox 360 RPGs, and I've contacted Microsoft about getting what's underway in Japan out in the US and helping to get more done worldwide. We'll see what happens on that front, but please let them know that you want more rpgs here. There's some amazing stuff coming for the '360 in Japan, and I know I want it — I think you will, too.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who read those words from Vic Ireland back in 2005 and laughed in disbelief.  The Xbox 360 being a great RPG machine?  Aside from a couple Bioware games (Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire), the Xbox's library of RPGs was practically non-existent.  Why would the 360 be any different?  And yet, here we are in 2008 and those words of Vic sound more prophetic than crazy.

How did we get to the point where the PS3, aside from Final Fantasy XIII, is sparse in the RPG department, despite the PSOne & PS2's utter dominance in the genre? How did the Xbox 360 come to look so impressive compared to the original Xbox's pathetic showing?  There are a number of factors: Microsoft's courting of Japanese developers and their own investment in Mistwalker Studios (Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey); the Xbox 360's one-year head start; and the cheaper price tag are all factors. But I believe the biggest contributor is that Microsoft published good RPGs significantly earlier than its competition.  RPGs tend to be games with low replay value; thus, fans of the genre tend to buy more RPGs than fans of other genres with greater longevity might.  The early availability of RPGs on the Xbox 360 combined with RPG fans' tendency to buy many RPGs created a snowball effect: a good RPG comes for the system encourages more fans of RPGs to buy the system, which in turns encourages more companies to make RPGs for the system.  The system has momentum now — Western RPGs like Too Human and the Mass Effect trilogy, Japanese RPGs from companies like Square-Enix & Namco, Strategy/RPGs from Atlus — and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Will the PS3 or the Wii be able to catch up and overtake the 360 in the RPG field?  I don't think so.  Final Fantasy XIII, though a big title, looks like it'll be too little, too late.  And with Square-Enix showing more and more support for the 360 and less support for the PS3, there's always the chance that FFXIII could end up as a multiplatform title.  The Wii has a fair chance of developing a good RPG library simply because the system is selling insanely well and the dominant system inevitably gets strong game developer support, but I don't know.  Whether it's true or not, the Wii is getting a reputation as being the console of choice for casual gamers and so developers may prove hesitant to develop RPGs for the system.  The Wii might end up with a strong lineup of RPGs, but as of now, that's merely a hope; there's nothing particular noteworthy in the genre on the system at the moment.

In the meantime, I plan on enjoying the 360's RPG library while marveling at the strange and bizarre world we live in.

Ah, April Fool's — a good day to be a gamer. Back in the day, I would write news and reviews specifically for the occasion. I don't have the energy for that anymore, but the industry is still rife with such creative energy.

Amidst all the rickrolling and Internet cleaning, the most imaginative came to my email inbox directly from Microsoft, offering four innovative upgrades to the Xbox 360:

The wireless helmet is little different from last year's WiiHelm from ThinkGeek, but the rest are drool-worthy. An Xbox Live board game? Why not — it worked for World of Warcraft. A wood grain Xbox 360? It'd go great next to my Atari 2600! And the recon edition 360 may put Microsoft's console in the same league as the Nintendo Game Boy for most invulnerable gaming system. Want!

Any other good pranks out there I'm overlooking?

I have a confession to make: I love reading reviews. And not necessarily to better inform myself whether or not I should see/play/read a movie/game/book, but just to see different perspectives. Through reading hundreds, maybe even thousands, of reviews, I've come to a simple conclusion: professional game reviewers are in a poor position to offer advice on what people should play.

Your average professional game reviewer has a constant stream of games that they need to review. They don't purchase their games; they get them for free. Since they have so many games that they need to play, they tend to play games for the bare minimum necessary to write their review unless they really like the game in question.

Contrast that with your average gamer. When they start playing a game, they've already made an investment — anywhere from the $5 for a rental to $60 for a brand new Xbox 360 or PS3 game (and sometimes more with games that comes with accessories like Rock Band) and the time spent researching the game to see if they would like it. They want the game that they're playing to succeed, otherwise they've wasted their money and time, and so they're more likely to be sympathetic to minor flaws or a slow start. Once they've found a game that they really like, they'll spend hour after hour mastering it and learning all the little nuances to the gameplay.

However, the biggest and most unforgivable divide between the average gamer and professional reviewers is this: your average person only plays games that they think they'll like. When I was reviewing games regularly as a hobby, I noticed that I was giving just about everything I reviewed high scores. Why was this? It was because I was only reviewing games that I had purchased myself. By that stage in my life, I had a pretty good idea of what kind of game I would enjoy and only bought those.

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I hope everyone had a good Christmas.  For my part, I visited with family, ate good food, and played a lot of games.  Good times indeed.

My big present was a high quality 19" widescreen high-definition monitor plus speakers to use with my Xbox 360.  I previously had the system hooked up to a 14" SDTV (standard-definition television), so that's a significant improvement.  I found the monitor at Best Buy on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving, and the biggest day of the year for insane sales).  It was a display model that had been previously been selling for nearly $300, and I picked it up for a mere $100.  Throw in the Xbox 360 VGA cable & a set of cheap but serviceable speakers, and the end result is that I now have HDTV quality visuals for a mere $160 or so, as opposed to the several hundreds of dollars it would have cost for an actual HDTV.

A word on SDTV versus HDTV visuals: Your average SDTV displays at 480i (680 x 480 resolution interlaced scan), whereas your average small- to mid-sized HDTV displays at 720p (1280 x 720 resolution progressive scan).  Although 720 might not sound that much bigger than 480, when you throw in the fact that HDTVs display in widescreen format, you end up getting about 3 times as many pixels, which means substantially sharper images.  Throw in progressive scan instead of interlaced (progressive scan does much better with moving images than interlaced), and the argument in favor of HDTV is even stronger.

On a regular SDTV, Xbox 360 games looked nice but not amazing.  In fact, games like Super Mario Galaxy and Sonic & the Secret Rings, running on the underpowered Nintendo Wii, often looked as good as some lower-end Xbox 360 games, when comparing both systems running on an SDTV.  However, now that I've got my 360 hooked up to an HDTV quality monitor, there's no contest.  The boost in visual quality is similar to that seen in the jump from the PS1 to the PS2.  Tiny visual details that were previously obscured are now crystal clear and previously illegible text is now easy to read.  It's so great of a difference, I almost feel like I just got a brand new system.

The current console generation has brought many additions to the gaming experience — high definition visuals, motion sensing controls, downloadable expansion packs, widespread online gaming — but by far my favorite addition to the console arena this generation has been the addition of cheap downloadable games.  All of the major systems have their own version: Wii has the Virtual Console where for $5-$10, you can download great games from the NES, Genesis, SNES, N64, TurboGraphx-16, Neo Geo, and more. Early next year, the Wii will also have a channel from which original games can be downloaded.  The PS3 has the PlayStation Store, where there are a few good original games (I hear Super Stardust HD and Everyday Shooter are especially good) for around $10, and some original PS1 games for $6-$10.  The especially nice thing is that the PS1 game downloads work on the PSP: I can think of quite a fun old PS1 games that I'd love to have on a portable system at $10 or less a pop.  Finally, the Xbox 360 has the Xbox Live Arcade where original games and ports (often upgraded) generally come out at $5-$10 a piece and the recently added Xbox Originals — older Xbox games for $15 a piece.

I've noticed that these download services have had a drastic impact on the games I play and favor.  Back in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, I gravitated toward console RPGs almost out of necessity.  As a young child without a lot of disposable income, it just made more sense to spend $60 on a massive epic like Dragon Warrior II or Final Fantasy that would take me weeks to finish, rather than spend it on an action game that I might beat in a couple days.  However, now I'm faced with dozens of high quality games from a variety of genres that only cost $5-$10 to download.  Sure, I might not have gotten as many hours out of, say, Mutant Storm Reloaded (a fast paced shmup played in the Robotron fashion) as I would out of the latest and greatest RPG, but I've definitely gotten my $10 worth.

All of the console download services have good games on them, but the online store that gives me the most fun is Xbox Live Arcade.  Although the first year of the service was a little bumpy with frequently delayed releases and many weeks with nothing new, now it's really gotten going.  Good XBLA games come out faster than I can play them, and I really can't offer better praise than that.  The breadth of the service is really remarkable: you have old Arcade classics (often with update visuals) for $5, high quality ports from the PSP like Lumines, EXIT, Puzzle Quest, and Gripshift (one of today's releases, a weird yet awesome mix of racing, platforming, and puzzles), ports from other systems like the PS1 classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, various PC casual games, and of course, original games.  Just recently, Microsoft implemented a new XBLA Greatest Hits line where older XBLA games have their download prices reduced.  Now, besides Geometry Wars (great Robotron-esque game), Space Giraffe (Tempest on acid) and all the old arcade classics, $5 will buy you Zuma (a really fun puzzle game somewhat similar to Bust-A-Move) or Marble Blast Ultra (think Marble Madness in 3D).  And hey, everything on the service has a free demo version so that you can see if you like the game before you buy the full version.

I could talk about many of my favorite XBLA games (and I probably will over time), but first I'll talk about what is probably my favorite: Pac-Man: Championship Edition.  Watch for a full review soon!

When New England Cable News called Computerworld looking for someone to speak on the about-to-be-released Halo 3, I somehow became dubbed the resident "Halo Boy".

In Computerworld's lobby, I spoke with a reporter who was looking primarily for a financial perspective on the current console wars. I'm no analyst, but I tried my best.

Though I got my sales numbers right, I confused my Wii and Xbox 360 launch dates, so there's a slight discrepancy. I still knew my stuff better than the non-gamer reporter, though: the market was dominated by the PlayStation 2, not the PS3; the original Xbox, not the 360, launched in 2001; and profits drive one into the black, not out of it. (Hence the term "Black Friday").