No I'm not eager for Halo 3. In fact, I sold my 360 last week to get a new iMac (on which I'm playing games via Bootcamp). Who cares about yet another FPS based on "Aliens"? I don't get the appeal of Halo.

Nintendo can shove the Wii up their ass. I still can't find them in stores, and that- to me- says that Nintendo is purposely shorting supplies to make it seem "in demand." Well, fuck them and their false hype. I was interested in a Wii one year ago, and now that I've had to wait so long, I'm no longer interested.

Consoles have all fucked up this time around. 360 isn't cranking out enough variety. PS3 is too costly and has barely any decent games. Wii is impossible to find and technologically retarded, relying on a gimmick to stay relevant. I wish Sega would come back and show them how it's done.

I liked my 360, but the issues with software were not pleasing me. I want variety, and I want to pay the same for a game on the 360 as I do on the PC. There's no reason why a new game should be $40 on Windows, and $60 on the XBox 360. Why would I pay an extra $10-$20 for the same experience?

Oh, yeah, and the whole Japan fad (manga and anime style) have killed console gaming. I'm sick of that whole thing. I hated it to begin with, and now that it's trendy as fuck, everybody wants their RPGs, FPSs, and everything else to be Japanese-style. Fuck that. I want western games. I'm having a lot more fun with NWN2 than Blue Dragon would ever have been to me. Oblivion? It's $30 for Windows, and I'll pick it up again later- As a bonus I'll get mods, patches, and better visual effects than I did on 360.

I thought PC gaming was dead, but the consoles aren't doing anything to keep my attention. The push-back of GTA IV to make room for Halo 3 was the last straw for me (and don't tell me it wasn't because of that. It was. Nobody will admit it, but it's pretty fucking obvious.)

My problem is that the manga/anime aesthetic has taken over console games. They're either like some bad anime, or they're like a Tom Clancy novel. There's no in-between.

And your customer was half-right. The ultimate profiter in the purchase of an XBox would be a company in America (Microsoft), while we all know Sony is ultimately loyal to Japanese commerce. Yes, there are foreign components in an XBox, but there are also American and Canadian parts in half of what Sony makes, so the guts really don't matter. The bottom line is that Sony isn't an American-founded corporation, and your xenophobic customer wasn't keen to support a company from a foreign country. He had it right, basically speaking.

My issue isn't the origin. My issue is the lack of imagination when designers turn to manga or anime for inspiration. There has never been a more homogeneous art form on the face of the earth. Hell, even Jackson Pollock could inspire a more unique game than anything Masamune Shirow could.

I sell manga and anime as part of my career, and I fucking hate the stuff. It's my prerogative... Especially after seeing most of the retards who buy stacks of it. I've read some, watched some, and ultimately abandoned it because I like my art to have touches of the artist in it. Japanese art is all about doing exactly what the last twenty guys did, almost exactly the same style, with the same meaning, influences, and sense of homogeneous Japanese culture. Screw that. Games should be unique and try to expand on their style and gameplay, not formulaic and stagnant like anime and manga have become.

Wow, this reply went to hell pretty quick.