Rampancy

Long proponents of the PC as the proper platform for gaming, Devon "Calvin" Welles and Frank "WyldKard" Torkel at game.ars are coming around to the idea that console games are where it's at, at least for now, and our own favorite game gets part of the credit:

The technological supremacy of PCs compared to consoles is no longer as great as it used to be, and though one might argue about resolution and framerate, there are few titles anymore that can be distinctly called inferior on a console. Mark it up to society's ignorance concerning the beauty of the keyboard/mouse combination for first-person shooters, or to their ignorance of streamlined, customized hardware. The fact remains that console gamers are more secure in their gaming decisions than ever before. And really, why shouldn't they be, given that a first person shooter with modern features (Halo) has become legendary (despite the fact that it requires a controller to play)?

The article also discusses the recently rumored Xbox 2 specs, and both think that removing the hard drive and not bothering with backwards compatibility are OK ideas:

[WyldKard] I'm with Calvin when it comes to backwards compatibility and profit, and I have been shouting this from the rooftops for some time now. Despite arguments to the contrary, I simply do not think lacking backwards compatibility will hurt Microsoft's console business. This will be the case even if Sony and Nintendo decide that supporting an older library is worthwhile. Given the resources required to implement backwards compatibility, I am not sure the difference in cost is justifiable, especially when a console needs to push a new library to make money on new sales.

Personally, I'm still not convinced. Tell the two of them that Half Life 2 will require a new PC that, oh, by the way, can't play any of their old games, and maybe you'd get a different answer.

1UP has put on their site an article by Dean Takahashi, author of Opening the Xbox and other recent articles about the successor to Microsoft's Xbox gaming console.

Frankie has written up a postmortem-cum-pictures on the Bungie Winter Pentathlon 2004, featuring competition between four teams, Grizzled Ancients, Old Skool, Middle Skool and Newbies in five events: Halo 2, Top Spin, Pictionary, Mario Kart and EyeToy.