About a dozen times a day I get an email asking me which console someone should buy. A complete stranger expects me to be able to tell them right off the cuff where to put their $200. I feel a lot of responsibility to our readers, so I often write long letters asking what games they like, who the console is for, etc. (I do get a lot of letters from moms and dads asking which console system to purchase for their children.) Every year at the Electronic Entertainment Expo we get to see the lay of the land, and I was hoping that a clear answer to the quandry of which console to invest in would manifest itself. It's both good and bad that there is still no clear winner in the console wars.

One of the ubiquitous topics of E3 this year was online gaming. Specifically, online gaming for consoles was in the air and not since Sega announced SegaNet has there been more interest in the topic. Of course, SegaNet taught us quite a few things “ most importantly that it is possible and enjoyable to play console titles online. It also taught us that a lot can be done with a 56.6 Kb connection and that it is essential to allow groups of local players to take on groups of remote players. SegaNet gave us so much, and many of us Dreamcast fanboys felt more than a twinge of sadness at the death of the system, which didn't wither into old age, but was rather sacrificed for the greater good of the parent company. I can picture the Dreamcast kneeling before a row of Sega execs, knife poised at his chest, "I am sorry I have failed to bring Sega out of the pit it had dug well before I was conceived. Forgiveness, please?"

Although they sounded intriguing, it wasn't the martinis and massages that lured me into the WildTangent room at E3. As a member of the media, the invites for drinks were as free flowing as T-shirts and temporary tattoos for the normal E3 attendee. Yet, as I was winding my way through the mayhem that is E3, I was surprised to see a rather large woman in a purple shirt handing out gamedisks. With quasi-anorexic booth babes the norm in this venue, I was surprised to note that all of the WildTangent women (as that's who they were) were larger-than-life and exceptionally friendly. I wondered, "Who would be so bold as to flaut tradition and hire large, fully clothed women to entice players to check out a booth?" The answer turned out to be a company that has used just such divergent thinking in all areas of their marketing: WildTangent.

It's not unusual for new trends to emerge at each annual Electronics Entertainment Exposition. Video games represent a relatively young but now thriving and dynamic industry that has been steadily gaining market share in the entertainment sector. In 2001, video game sales increased 43% to some $9.4 billion, approaching the music business and surpassing box office revenues. Growing numbers of people are tuning out, preferring to turn on their PlayStation 2s, Nintendo GameCubes, Microsoft Xboxes, and PCs.

Mind-numbing, anti-social, violence-inducing, sexually explicit: the list of evils attributed to video games gets ever longer. Apparently, the fact that games are achieving more "realness," according to Lois Salisbury, president of Children Now, based in Oakland, California, makes them more potent than ever in their ability to warp the minds of young 'uns.

Mind-numbing, anti-social, violence-inducing, sexually explicit: the list of evils attributed to video games gets ever longer. Apparently, the fact that games are achieving more "realness," according to Lois Salisbury, president of Children Now, based in Oakland, California, makes them more potent than ever in their ability to warp the minds of young 'uns.

Valve has partnered with gaming ISP, Speakeasy.net, to poll the PC gaming public. Just what is out there? What kinds of computers do you folks have? How fast is your connection? How much RAM, baby? The results are a bit surprising if you've heard the lowest common denominator rhetoric of web design courses and instructional manuals. But gaming is an ever-evolving industry, both for producer and player, and those who do not keep up do not, can not, keep playing.

Three years ago, Rick Fehrenbacher and Al Wildey bought GamesFirst! Although founded in 1995, GF! had been left to languish after the previous editor, a friend of Rick and Al's named Zap Reicken, decided he could no longer maintain the site. At the time of the Rick and Al's takeover, dubbed GamesFirst! 2.0, the site averaged 300 visitors per day. I came on board as the site's first console game reviewer. As Rick described so eloquently in his editorial last year, the consoles section and GF! grew together. A few games trickled in from Activision and a handfull of other games publishers for console systems, and those kept me busy for the remainder of the year.

A war is breaking out, a struggle for your time, your loyalty, and, most importantly, your money. The next-generation console battle is raging and the battles about to get hotter.
It should be common knowledge by now that Microsoft has tossed its hat into the console ring, but how much do you know about the ominously named Xbox? New details have finally been released, so here's the lowdown on Bill Gates' new toy.

Sony announced several new partnerships and technology deals at E3, making a major play to enter the online gaming market before Microsoft can get its online bits in order. Both companies have professed the importance of online gaming to the success of console systems, and Sony has specifically illuminated desires to create an online distribution network for all kinds of gaming, movies, music, and other broadband entertainment applications.