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http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1885/the_state_of_blizzards_union_.php?print=1

I agree, it was very different in tone...I don't know if I'd call it a 'vanilla' shooter, though...I can't think of another memorable shooter from that day and age which had any concept of character advancement, nevermind the funky "choose your career path" stuff at the beginning...Or, heck, inventory management, for that matter. Most shooters were still in the "HOLY CRAP, MONSTERS" category back then. :) If you really want to nerd it up, this is pretty interesting and speaks a bit to the relationship between Looking Glass and Irrational back at the time-- Jonathan Chey breaks it down.

Printer Friendly version of the article that is one page instead of 5.

officials from Take-Two have hinted at BioShock becoming a long-term franchise on a 'roughly 2 year interval,'

Gamastura is the web front of the CMP Game Group, which is in turn part of CMP Media at large. Amongst other things, this company organizes major industry events (such GDC), and publishes Game Developer Magazine. Gamasutra is mainly a web clearinghouse (and advertisement) for Game Developer Magazine content. Thusly, there are folks with editorial control over the content published on Gamasutra; this is not a blog, where a writer says whatever they want with nobody to edit their content for public consumption.

Ian Bogost is much more than a "blogger". Judging by the derisive fashion with which you wield the term, I'm guessing you take that to mean "person who writes about stuff because they are too untalented/lazy to actually be involved with any of the stuff they write about". No offense; that is the same way I bandy the word about. Check out his website, and take a look around. Yes, it links to a lot of articles he has written, and mentions in the mass media (including an appearance on The Colbert Report), but if you take a look at these, you'll find that in addition to doing real business with corporate advertisers hawking products, he is actually in involved in trying use games for conveying something beyond a fun experience or a product placement.

No, I don't work for him, and I'm not his #1 fanboy. I simply knew that the "publisher" and the author of the content you called a "blog" were so much more than that.

Gamastura is the web front of the CMP Game Group, which is in turn part of CMP Media at large. Amongst other things, this company organizes major industry events (such GDC), and publishes Game Developer Magazine. Gamasutra is mainly a web clearinghouse (and advertisement) for Game Developer Magazine content. Thusly, there are folks with editorial control over the content published on Gamasutra; this is not a blog, where a writer says whatever they want with nobody to edit their content for public consumption.

Ian Bogost is much more than a "blogger". Judging by the derisive fashion with which you wield the term, I'm guessing you take that to mean "person who writes about stuff because they are too untalented/lazy to actually be involved with any of the stuff they write about". No offense; that is the same way I bandy the word about. Check out his website, and take a look around. Yes, it links to a lot of articles he has written, and mentions in the mass media (including an appearance on The Colbert Report), but if you take a look at these, you'll find that in addition to doing real business with corporate advertisers hawking products, he is actually in involved in trying use games for conveying something beyond a fun experience or a product placement.

No, I don't work for him, and I'm not his #1 fanboy. I simply knew that the "publisher" and the author of the content you called a "blog" were so much more than that.

Since we're supposed to be all concerned for Sony (of recent rootkit fame) and defending them against criticism and wouldbe censorship by the Church of England how about we take a stand for another company we dislike as well? They need to be defended from criticism and censorship by Islam. Any takers?

Remember this from back in August? Capcom Removes Islamic Phrase From Wii Game

If you read the linked article you might also notice that Kakuto Chojin back in 2003 got Microsoft in some hot water.

Here's a couple of links making reference to that:

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/kakutochojin/news.html?sid=6105587
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/39309975/m/8700918055

Sticking up for companies we don't generally like when people try to censor them is a good thing, but lets remember to stick up for them in cases besides those where it is Christians trying to censor them.

The publisher also says that its 2K Games label has "fostered the studio's growth by substantially investing in its people," giving 2K Boston the means to double its studio size since its 2005 acquisition.

Read and be enlightened. 2K Boston both A) exists and B) is located in Boston. We might also add into evidence that you're A) an asshat, who should B) do some research before typing, or maybe just C) shut the fuck up.

Honestly, is it so fucking hard to type "irrational 2k boston" into Google?

...and right on time, from Carmack's keynote at qcon:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=14979

- Software patents. An audience member asked him about his thoughts. John Carmack does not like them. He calls the idea of software patent infringement a "sham." He tries not to think about -- or concern himself much with -- this controversial issue, because doing so just "depresses him."

My best seller list.

1. Pants.
2. Exploding Dentures.
3. Xbox 359.4s.
4. Incomplete Roller Coasters.
5. Xbox 360.6s.
6. PS4.

Obviously my list is gospel truth, and we can infer from it that Mr. T will win the 2008 Presidential elections.

More seriously, the amazon bestseller linking is getting rather tiresome. It's one retailer in relation to one continent whose focus isn't even video games. We've got the NPD to give us numbers to cite, if the PS3 is really trouncing the 360 it will be reflected there. Speaking of which...

April:
360 - 174,000
PS3 - 82,000

May:
360 - 155,000
PS3 - 82,000

June:
360 - 198,400
PS3 - 98,500

Alone, the PS3 is not outselling the 360 in North America. If you're lumping the PS2 and the PS3 together, then combined they are outselling the 360. However, that was not the implication your sentence gave.

My best seller list.

1. Pants.
2. Exploding Dentures.
3. Xbox 359.4s.
4. Incomplete Roller Coasters.
5. Xbox 360.6s.
6. PS4.

Obviously my list is gospel truth, and we can infer from it that Mr. T will win the 2008 Presidential elections.

More seriously, the amazon bestseller linking is getting rather tiresome. It's one retailer in relation to one continent whose focus isn't even video games. We've got the NPD to give us numbers to cite, if the PS3 is really trouncing the 360 it will be reflected there. Speaking of which...

April:
360 - 174,000
PS3 - 82,000

May:
360 - 155,000
PS3 - 82,000

June:
360 - 198,400
PS3 - 98,500

Alone, the PS3 is not outselling the 360 in North America. If you're lumping the PS2 and the PS3 together, then combined they are outselling the 360. However, that was not the implication your sentence gave.

My best seller list.

1. Pants.
2. Exploding Dentures.
3. Xbox 359.4s.
4. Incomplete Roller Coasters.
5. Xbox 360.6s.
6. PS4.

Obviously my list is gospel truth, and we can infer from it that Mr. T will win the 2008 Presidential elections.

More seriously, the amazon bestseller linking is getting rather tiresome. It's one retailer in relation to one continent whose focus isn't even video games. We've got the NPD to give us numbers to cite, if the PS3 is really trouncing the 360 it will be reflected there. Speaking of which...

April:
360 - 174,000
PS3 - 82,000

May:
360 - 155,000
PS3 - 82,000

June:
360 - 198,400
PS3 - 98,500

Alone, the PS3 is not outselling the 360 in North America. If you're lumping the PS2 and the PS3 together, then combined they are outselling the 360. However, that was not the implication your sentence gave.

Straight from the horse's mouth:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=14849

Silicon Knight's primary accusations against Epic Games are:

- Late delivery of Engine code. (Breach of contract.)
- Withholding engine code under the guise of it being game specific (aka Gears of War source code).
- Deliberately withholding code in order to comparatively showcase in-house games.
- Lack of promised documentation and technical consultation.

Also it appears that Epic might be claiming Silicon Knight's new in house game engine as Unreal 3 code. Or at least Silicon Knights is taking preemptive action to ensure that doesn't happen.

What Silicon Knights wants out the lawsuit:

- To be released from their contract with Epic Games.
- For a full refund.
and recognition that their in house engine is the sole property of Silicon Knights and not Epic Games.

Source:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=14759

I don't know how people count to 7 billion in your world, but apparently it's quite different to how people count to 7 billion in the real world.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=13698

This article is before the 1 billion put aside to resolve the RROD problem of course, but I'm not entirely convinced that $315million + $1billion equals $7billion still.

Still, this isn't the first time an anonymous coward has come forth and made near identical daft, unfounded claims with pretend knowledge of the super-secret Microsoft forum club insider information, so I'm guessing we should assume you're to be a regular troll now? I'm not terribly sure how you can possibly even begin to claim the 360 is the most hated product amongst Microsoft employees, even if said employees did hate some Microsoft product or another, let's face it, Microsoft has a whole lot more crappy, unsuccessful, uninteresting stuff to hate than the 360, the Zune for example?

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part III: The Platinum and Modern Ages (1994-2004)

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 1: The Early Years (1980-1983)

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 2: The Golden Age (1985-1993)

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 1: The Early Years (1980-1983)

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 2: The Golden Age (1985-1993)

One of the biggest things that was expected was for Microsoft to announce was that they were cutting the price of the 360. Gamesutra even had an article saying that the price cuts were supposed to be the "key takeaway" of E3 2007 (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?s tory=14631).

I guess they will wait until after Halo 3 and GTA4 are released and saturated in the market since a $50 price cut won't change many peoples decisions on whether or not to get the system.

Price cut for the Thanksgiving holiday anyone?

Don't worry, it will soon enough.

First of all the developers don't have a decision between doing 480p 4xAA and 720p. Microsoft mandates that all Xbox 360 titles play at at least 720p. And I'm not sure what news sources you're looking at where developers are constantly bashing the system. From what I read, developers usually prefer the Xbox 360, at least over the PS3, which is the only other high def console on the market.

Ok Gamasutra reporting the NPD numbers for May

May's NPD tally comes to 338,000 Wii, 155,000 Xbox, and 82,000 PS3.

I know it's the first game of the first Zork trilogy, but what version is that with that graphical background?
http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/14 99/95460435000.jpg
I've never seen it before. Any idea?

Okay, listen carefully. Affinity Media owns ZAM, and once owned IGE. Semi-recently they have sold IGE to a private investor, since others were complaining and the company was hurting AM's image.

But, you ask, why aren't they announcing anything? There's two reasons:

1) The sale transaction between IGE, Affinity Media and the private investor that bought IGE is, well.. PRIVATE! IGE does NOT want to be known as a 'notorious company', and have very likely bartered for privacy. So if anyone asks a suit from IGE, it is an all likelihood that they will deny saying a word about it ON PURPOSE. Also, IGE is now solely based in Hong Kong, and doesn't have really have an outlet in North America or the United Kingdoms.

2) Affinity Media is undergoing reconstruction. Go to their website, AFFINITYMEDIA.COM, for more information.

Also, I'd like to point out something - if you go to any website affiliated with the ZAM.com network, you will not find a single RMT-based ad, at all. I DARE you to try and find one.

John Maffei (senior vice president of Affinity Media, owners of ZAM.COM and WOWHEAD.COM) : Oh, just everyone has been so interested in the IGE thing, because IGE is a controversial business. Very controversial, and we'd always kept this incredible differences between the businesses.

If you go to any of our sites, you'll never see a gold-selling ad. The guys who founded our business, guys like Jeff Moyer and Bill Dyess, they've got absolutely nothing to do with that other side of the business.

So for us, it was a positive, in that we thought, for the people who cared, that's no longer an issue. Since it's a private company, a private transaction, we're not releasing actual news on terms. But we're no longer in that business.

Prove that the VICE PRESIDENT OF AFFINITY MEDIA is lying. (See my gamasutra.com snippet above.)

Seriously, do you all think that every company on the face of the earth is just one big corrupt entity? Lighten up, people. The marketplace is constantly, CONSTANTLY changing in order to adapt to the changing consumer. All of the websites on the ZAM.com network no longer have any RMT advertisements anymore. AT ALL. And this includes Wowhead.com.

I honestly don't see any reason - and I'm going to bold this now, again - for THE VICE PRESIDENT OF AFFINITY MEDIA to flat out lie to everyone, only to have people scrutinize his statement with a fine-tooth comb and then have someone explode it as controversy and bad business practices. That doesn't make money.

So, you know who has more cred than some junky blogger with a 'he said she said' news story? The vice president of a company. Shut your yaps and at least attempt to get your facts straight.

I'm getting redundant now.

So, like, yeah. I've studied this "Game Addiction" thing for a couple of years, and spent the last 8 months writing a book on it with a popular 'games therapist.' I think that publicizing these criteria is dangerous to the person with the problem, and also to society in general.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've all got opinions on this, but part of it *does* have to do with addiction. Some people might be suffering from elements of chemical, behavioral, or other addiction. School thyself:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060228/clark_0 1.shtml

But there are things which might look like addiction, until you look closer. Games are complicated, and so are people and our reasons for playing. Raids, purpols, fat men pretending to be hot 19 year old NE womenz. But there's more to it than just why we play. It's how we play. These games present us with experiences which are approaching the texture of real life. Interaction sets games apart from things like books, radio, even TV, meaning that what's happeing is like nothing we've seen before. Games can keep regular people playing in ways that look like addiction, yet aren't.

Lest I TLDR, I'm just going to link my reply.

http://neilsclark.com/archives/131

Actually I found this more interesting: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=14285

Here's a writeup on a tool someone wrote for this very purpose:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1430/monitor ing_your_pcs_memory_usage_.php?print=1

Last week on Gamasutra was a good article on memory leak detection, and how to role your own tool:

"Monitoring Your PC's Memory Usage For Game Development"

While the title says it's for game development, I found that the meat of the article applies to any windows developer.

The number 2 seller for PC games in North America? That starcraft isn't selling many new copies?

Hey, guess what, all narratives can be classified if you abstract it enough; there's the 36 Dramatic Situations, and a lot of games follow the Monomyth to some extent. Should all games go away? Maybe. To say that there's a lack of originality in storywriting for games is an unfortunate truth, but it by no means is limited to the Final Fantasy series. In fact, the situation you described applies to a whole host of console RPG's, churned out because a lot of people love it and (more importantly) will pay for it. The Final Fantasy series, however, has at least made strides towards improving (or at least varying) their gameplay mechanics--just look at Final Fantasy XII.

In my opinion, better storywriting is the future of games. Chris Crawford talks about this in a somewhat old Gamasutra interview. *Shameless plug alert* I'm also involved in a project that aims to tailor stories to the player.

It's okay Vanguard fans, another MMO has been announced recently that's sure to ease the utter failure and disappointment of Vanguard.

Ladies and gentleman pretending to be ladies, I give you The John Romero MMOG!

You think Brad McQuaid knows how to burn $30 million? Just wait till you see this guy in action. He'll make McQuaid look like Steve Jobs.

Come to think of it, now that McQuaid's on the market again perhaps he'll find his way into Romero's Team. Damn, can you imagine that? A joint Romero-McQuaid MMOG vision? They'll have the combined power to take down any billion dollar development operation, and cause dozens of other local businesses to file for chapter 11 just from proximity fallout alone!

So you've worked 10- to 12-hour days for the past two years, trying to make your latest game the best ever. You even added copy protection to try to stop the pirates, but within a few days of release there are already crack patches flying around the Internet. Now anyone can help themselves to your hard work, without so much as a "please" or "thank you."

This is what happened to Insomniac's 1999 Playstation release, Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage. Even though it had good copy protection, it was cracked in a little over a week. So when we moved on to Spyro: Year of the Dragon (YOTD), we decided that something more had to be done to try to reduce piracy. The effort was largely successful. Though a cracked version of YOTD has become available, it took over two months for the working patch to appear, after numerous false starts on the part of the pirates (the patch for the European version took another month on top of that). The release of patches that didn't work caused a great deal of confusion among casual pirates and plenty of wasted time and disks among the commercial ones.

Two months may not seem like a long time, but between 30 and 50 percent of most games' total sales occur in that time. Approximately 50 percent of the total sales of Spyro 2, up to December 2000, were in the first two months. Even games released in the middle of the year rather than the holiday season, such as Eidetic's Syphon Filter, make 30 percent of their total sales in the first two months. If YOTD follows the same trend, as it almost certainly will, those two to three months when pirated versions were unavailable must have reduced the overall level and impact of piracy. On top of this, since YOTD was released in Europe one month after the U.S., those two months protected early European sales from pirated copies of the U.S. version.

The picture of the fairy telling the player he has a cracked version and he may experience problems he would not see on a legal version is excellent. And she's not kidding either:

The copy protection stopped the game very early. When this was removed, the game appeared to work for some time. We assumed that the crackers generally don't play the games they crack very much, they just play until the point where the protection they know about kicks in. Then they release a crack, believing it to be complete.

To play on this, we designed the game to break in ways that weren't immediately obvious. Most of the protection is "off-camera," affecting levels other than the one currently being played. In YOTD the object of the game is to collect eggs and gems, which are then used to open later parts of the game. The protection removed eggs and gems, so that the player could not make progress. We tried to make the game unplayable for any length of time, while at the same time making it difficult to determine exactly where things had gone wrong. If errors accumulated slowly until the game broke, the cracker would not notice such behavior so easily.

Other, more obvious protection was done less frequently. Callbacks were corrupted, which made the game crash in odd ways. The European version changed languages randomly. Some of these actions break the game and others are just an annoyance to the player, but if the game is difficult or frustrating to play because of the failed crack, this can be more effective than breaking completely.

By making the game behave in as many odd ways as possible, we hoped to cause a lot of confusion. The pirates wouldn't know if the crack didn't work, whether they had just failed to apply the crack correctly, or if the disk had failed to burn correctly. The people who didn't play a lot of the game wouldn't notice that anything was wrong and claim that the crack worked. This

Is South korea going to kick our butts in World Of Warcraft? They already have fast internet connections. I won't stand a chance when WoW2 comes out. China is already overheating its servers. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/column_index.php? story=8655

THQ has been working on a Warhammer 40k MMO.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=12947

Nintendo is a game maker. They develop software and hardware, and contrary to Microsoft or Sony, all their main assesses are related to games. They are also a Japanese company, which apparently makes them conservative to a great extent. Nintendo raises its forecasts several times through the year because they started with very conservative figures. Two years after the introduction of the Nintendo DS, already a year since the introduction of the Nintendo DS Lite handheld, and they are still struggling to to produce them. During March 2007, they sold 508,000 DS and 259,000 Wiis in US, and 504,000 DS and 263,000 Wiis in Japan. That is, a million DSs and half a million Wiis in just two countries.

I tend to think it is a production issue. They gambled by designing and developing the Nintendo DS and the Wii. I hope they gamble again and pump production up.

Does anyone else remember CRASH magazine? Whatever happened to those guys?

A bit of pointless time wasting with Google has found a few of them - Oli Frey (and maybe some others), are now running Thalamus Publishing, which produces illustrated history books, Chris Anderson is the curator of the Technology Entertainment Design) Conference, Julian Rignall was reviewing for IGN as recently as last year, although Wikipedia claims he currently works for the Bank of America (no idea if he still has a mullet), and Gary Penn is now Creative Director at Denki.

[Thompson] should perhaps bear the costs of any lawsuits he was personally involved in, but you can't hold him responsible for the idiocy of elected officials.

Jack Thompson is a loon. However, he's a dangerous one; FOX News didn't catch on that he was a nutjob; his broadcast pushed his message to a lot of people who count on reporters to think for them. With someone as unstable as him, the fact that the Louisiana SC and a Florida judge rejected his crap doesn't mean everyone has the insight to do so. Chances are GOOD that today's shooter happened to have a violent video game SOMEWHERE in his domicile, which obviously could be stretched to suggest that he played it for 14 hours a day while listening to death rock and eating uncooked bunny rabbits, which in turn gives "think of the children" -style politicians fodder to make their constituencies think they are doing something. Someone needs to fast-track his removal from the justice system, even if formal charges are a no-go.

Game industry trade body Entertainment Software Association has announced that the U.S. District Court of Louisiana has ordered the state to pay the organization $91,000 in legal fees it incurred fighting the overturned HB 1381 anti-violent game law.

FYI, here's Part I (The Early Years 1980-1983) and Part II (The Golden Age 1985-1993).

Might save you a little digging as for some reason part I doesn't show up on his bio.

FYI, here's Part I (The Early Years 1980-1983) and Part II (The Golden Age 1985-1993).

Might save you a little digging as for some reason part I doesn't show up on his bio.

I don't like grinding. I don't play MMOs - which I stated, so what's your point?

Perhaps you've decided that current MMO design is the absolute nadir, and that it cannot be progressed any further. Other people have decided that it can be improved. One of the issues with this WoW autopilot is that it is needed at all. Games are supposed to be fun, MMOs that require the player to grind to get anywhere are not fun - they're an addiction. In fact they are pretty close to optimal in terms of the reward schedule, which is why they are popular.

Before you hit the reply button to slate me because I disagree with you, try reading this. It does require a free-registration hassle, or a Bug me not. If you are at all interested in MMO design then it is an interesting read, and the opinions in it are a good reflection of how online gaming will shift over the next five years. The most important point is that grinding is not an addition to gameplay - it's a barrier

I've read articles (maybe at Gamasutra?) citing surveys of playtesters on the perceived intelligence of AI opponents. I wish I could find the articles to cite them, but since I can't I'll just summarize them here:

Consistently, harder AIs were ranked as "smarter" no matter whether this was due to better algorithms or due to cheating. In fact, gamers tended to rank AIs highly that could do "neat tricks" -- say, tossing your grenades back at you, as in Return to Castle Wolfenstein -- which is something best acheived by writing special scripts for the purpose, not by advanced AI methods.

In general, it was concluded, you will be most successful in creating an AI which is perceived as "smart" if you do it the simple, dumb way: Count on the intelligence of your programmers, not of a machine.

[As someone interested in statistical learning theory (among other things), I found those results somewhat disappointing...]

If you are not a gamer then games are moot or if you already have a PS3, then you have Blu-Ray and games taken care of.

A complicated remotes and Windows media connectivity are moot if you are an iTMS customer on either windows or mac.

From a consumer standpoint, the Apple TV is the obvious choice for anyone who does not have their computer near by especially if they buy songs and/or videos from iTMS.

Last I heard, F@H was a feel-good novelty that is doubtful to ever produce any meaningful results.

Where did you hear that? I don't know any details, but it's easy to find a voice of dissent from your view:

""For the most part, it's not that we're looking for a needle in a haystack, but we're looking for broad properties that require good statistics," said Vijay Pande, associate professor of chemistry at Stanford University. As one of the scientists behind the project, Pande is proud to say that Folding@home has actually provided useful information to the scientific community. SETI@home, however, has yet to discover a single alien transmission."

""These successes are documented in peer review journals. Over 50 papers have resulted from Folding@home," said Pande. He and his students collaborated with developers from Sony Computer Entertainment of America to build a Folding@home client for the PlayStation 3, but that wasn't really Pande's idea."

(In-Depth: Sony, Stanford Experts Talk PS3 Folding@home)

"Now, for the first time, a distributed computing experiment has produced significant results that have been published in a scientific journal. Writing in the advanced online edition of Nature magazine, Stanford University scientists Christopher D. Snow and Vijay S. Pande describe how they with the help of 30,000 personal computers successfully simulated part of the complex folding process that a typical protein molecule undergoes to achieve its unique, three-dimensional shape. Their findings were confirmed in the laboratory of Houbi Nguyen and Martin Gruebele scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who co-authored the Nature study."

(Folding@home Scientists Report First Distributed Computing Success)

The Cell's pretty straightforward with the tools given. You use a pthread-like library to give them code to run, and all your global variables are valid I/O targets for DMA. See this for an introduction: http://gamasutra.com/features/20060721/chow_01.sht ml

Frankly, the programming's one of the reasons I bought a PS3. It just looks fun.

As for what to run on each one, some things come to mind: physics, collision, particle effects, AI, etc. Some of them can be split up across multiple SPEs. Run them on a work queue of objects, or assign each a calculable subset, (e.g. SPE1 gets all the objects with an even ID #, SPE2 gets all the odd ones).

Some people really hate getting multiple processors to work together on a problem. But, these people have a lot of problems coming their way, as more & more machines go that way. Hell the laptop I'm on right now is dual-core, and I doubt I'm alone in that fact.

Unsuprisingly, this Gamasutra feature about video games as art mentions Grim Fandango on the first page.

Yes, thank you, my point exactly. Here is the link you mention: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=11833

Also, the above story is three months old, so MSFT is likely to have their 65nm chip done. Odds are the physical hardware costs are less than the MSRP at this point. Not bad at all for a powerful console 1.5 years old.

If they keep their market share in this race, and are first to market with the next generation, Sony will be in a world of hurt.