And so we meet again...

With some sadness I've neglected the care and feeding of this blog, but sometimes you need a break from these things (anyone who's written a blog for 2+ years will surely nod their head in agreement), plus, I've just been busy.

Many people have asked me to comment about the next-gen consoles, and frankly I have nothing enlightened to say.  I've yet to touch the controller of any of them.  I can't find a X360 to buy in stores, and we have yet to get a development machine sent from Microsoft even though Prey is being developed for their system.

My prediction for this new round of consoles is that the X360 and PS3 will wind up about equal in terms of sales, with Nintendo's Revolution coming in a distant third--perhaps this will be the last console from this company.  The X360 gains ground on the PS3 this cycle by virtue of two points:  [1] Xbox Live! rocks (from what I've heard -- again, no first-hand experience).  [2] The X360 has a big head start over the PS3.  Finally, I cannot comment on the Revolution's controller until I try one.

More:

o  E3 decides to focus on games!   It's about time.  If we're going to be taken seriously as a maturing industry, it only makes sense to drop the soft porn geek fantasies and make games the thing.  Two thoughts:  One, getting around E3 has been a nightmare if you ever needed to pass a booth with scantily clad booth dancing dolls drawing a feverish crowd of camera flashing boys.  Two, and I love this one the most... Games with no game will finally have no crowd.

o  On our site, every week until release, we'll have a developer diary on our coming game, Prey.  And just for fun, too, we started a weekly series that we're calling the Apogee Legacy Interviews, in which we are posting interviews with many of the key developers who were instrumental in our early success, going back to 1990.  We hope to have at least 30 interviews this year

o  I stopped playing WoW seven months ago, after hitting level 60.  I am a solo player, and I do not like the hassles of grouping and re-raiding the same areas over and over.  The game was only interesting to me when there was the promise of new areas to explore, new sights to behold.  I'll probably jump back in when the expansion pack comes out (Burning Crusade) that introduces new areas and pushes the level cap up to 70.

UPDATE:  Meant to post this yesterday:  I now have in my grubby hands a signed agreement that will result in us getting Xbox 360 dev boxes.  All is good.  And I had no idea that this little blog post would get so much news coverage, even in Europe (based on incoming links from news sites).  And while I'm here, a fun link for everyone, showing a recent consumer video/PC game market breakdown in the United Kingdom.