Rampancy

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. This article originally appeared in print for Gaming Industry News and was subsequently Slashdotted. The focus of the article is whether or not the new Xbox will be compatible with the old; he asks representatives from both Nvidia and ATI and gets conflicting answers.

In the end analysis, Takahashi seems to believe that backwards compatibility greatly benefited the PlayStation 2, a sentiment I happen to share despite it being downplayed by some in the community.

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.

The Grizzled Ancients won the competitions for Halo 2, Mario Kart and EyeToy, earning the full five points for each to win the Pentathlon. Old Skool took second place, based on their top performances in Top Spin and Pictionary as well as taking three of five points each in Halo 2 and Mario Kart.

Congratulations to Charlie Gough, Lorraine 'Mehve' McLees and the rest of the Grizzled Ancients on their win, as well as kudos to Marty O'Donnell, Chris Butcher and the rest of the Old Skool team for their good showing.

Our favorite team, Middle Skool, distinguished themselves in neither success nor failure, despite the doubtless heroic efforts of Rampancy's founder and unofficial Halo team captain Tyson 'Ferrex' Green, pulling 3 points out of 5 for Pictionary and EyeToy (both favorites of hardcore videogaming stalwarts, of course) .

Condolences to Frankie, SketchFactor and the rest of the Newbies team, who finished last, garnering goose eggs in Halo 2, Pictionary and Mario Kart and redeeming themselves only with solo points in Top Spin and EyeToy.

Wolfy over at Sector 7 has put up a short article looking at various elements of the recently-released Halo 2 multiplayer screenshot. Go take a look.

As if to underscore some of the points in the recently rumored Xbox 2 specifications, Eurogamer has put up an article showing that the Xbox's lead over Nintendo's GameCube in Europe is still healthy, although both lag far behind top dog Sony and their PlayStation 2.

What is of concern is that when the figures for North America and Japan are taken into account, the Xbox is actually third in worldwide installed base, after Sony and Nintendo. Taking this in the context of the possibility that the next generation Xbox may not have backwards compatibility, and the idea emerges that perhaps Microsoft will dispense with its current installed base and target a different segment of the console market with a radically different machine than the first iteration. It might make sense of the completely different specifications seen-- namely, multiple PowerPC processors, ATI video gear, and no hard drive.

This might economically make sense, but it certainly doesn't seem to reward those early adopters who took a chance on Microsoft's first foray into console gaming, who may now be asked to make that choice again while faced with having to abandon their own game libraries-- including Halo and Halo 2-- in order to keep up with current hardware come 2005.