@JPL78  You have to remember that gaming has become real money now.  And to fund big projects they have to make games appeal to a broader audience.  As much as social and fitness gaming really annoys me, I feel that it is necessary so I still get games like Halo, Fable, Gears, etc.  And I am sure IGN does too.  I do have to say though that the Kinect games are not just Wii knock-offs.  I think they look to be deeper and better all across the board. 

I know Halo 3 wasn't much of an overall innovation over previous Halos...  But, I think Reach will be an excellent game.  It looks grittier then the previous Halos and has more emotion to it...  I'm hoping the intensity is there as well.

Also, I still hold out hope for more surprises.  I think this year MS leads TGS presentations so if they do I expect to hear about some more hard core games.  Also, I still don't think Rare is only working on a Kinect sports game.  I think they have been doing something more and bigger.

Okay, can someone remind me not to post on any other post but this and in general avoid stating my "pointless" opinions online?

@Neo, yeah I understand the importance of it for them as a company and the importance of growing the gaming market in general.  I just don't like seeing indications that the publishers are catering more to casuals than core gamers. But like you said 3rd party core games are strong this year.  I can take comfort in knowing I will be spending the fall playing Dead Rising 2 and Fallout New Vegas.

Reach probably will be pretty good, but I'm just not hyped.

I do think the Kinect games look better but at the same time is hard to ignore when you go from Wiisports to Kinectsports.  And I didn't see anything particularly deep, I saw quick twitched based experiences that were very one sided.  I mean, that's okay, I just describe most of the games in Gameroom. Things like that can be fun. I'm just not sure I need a 150 dollar device to play things like that.  So like I said if they showed some more substantial games like how Fallout 3 uses Kinect I would have been swayed much more.

@JPL78...  I just read the blogs from the PS3 conference and it looks like much the same happened there except they are shipping regular games with Move and 3D support.  Maybe a couple more exclusives, but Sony is notorious for showing stuff way early so we don't even know if half their stuff will come out in the next 6 months.  Glad to see a GT5 release date.

Personally, I don't like the idea of motion controls in hard core games.  I have a den where I do most of my gaming, and having motion controls there is unfeasible.  And when I game on my big screen TVs it is in front of our youngs kids making it difficult to play a gritty game like Gears 3.  It is more Rock Band and family friendly games like Kinect is offering.

Looks like gaming is inevitably changing.  Hopefully someone will come to their senses at some point and realize that hard core gamers buy the lion's share of games, and casuals only buy a few titles every year or two.

@Neo, yeah, I agree.  Let me say I don't like motion controls, Kinect excites me for the interaction possibilities.  I imagine using it in RPGs to be able to talk to NPCs directly instead of just pressing a button that represents a reply.  That is exciting to me.

I hope you are right, I hope people like us don't get lost to the wayside in a massive race to claim non-gamers.  If we ever get to the point where we can't have the games we like, that would be sad.

But you know really, gaming is already a massive industry, more so than movies and music.  These companies thinking we need more new gamers is almost akin to a billionare thinking he needs more money. On the one hand you could say, more cash is always a good thing.  On the other hand you could say its just being greedy. And regardless of that the gaming industry has constantly grown and kept growing, long before casual games and motion controls came into the situation.

And about greed, that's the other disturbing trend that is growing.  The massive greed from these companies in milking us dry. I was okay with it at first but now with things like publishers making you pay for extra content that is already on the disk, or all these codes and unlocks you only get if you buy the game new.  I understand the industry's absolute hate of used game sales but the truth is I never popped in a rented DVD and found out I couldn't watch the entire movie unless I went out and bought it.  People rent things, its a fact and people reserve the right to sell their property second hand when they are done with.  I don't know why we should be punished for following the same behaviors that human beings have followed for quite some time.

Just so you are aware the numbers will be posted about 10 hours from now.  I got busy tonight and wasn't able to get home to process them...

I am having some technical issues updating the thread right now...

I am working through them...  But, the update is continuing to be delayed a bit.

League is up to date for this week...

I still haven't had time to fix the number of posts required for page.  Hopefully this week.

Neo:  I upped my service to 5 mb/s (meaning about 3) and still notice some waits  I don't mean to give the impression there is nothing better downeast but even Int.15 would be $80 (Int.100 goes for $160) and the taxes go back up to 15% on the 1st.  I'm not the only one having issues but this really doesn't need to be done right away.  No rush and thanks for putting me above Ronster the Monster in the wkly. thingy even if it was because e comes before o. 

Initial impressions on Overlord for ME2 are that it's really well done and I may need to put the difficulty down.  Geth Prime seem to be coming out of the ductwork or something.  I'm out of practice apparently but it feels pretty intense.  The music helps.   It'll have to wait cause I finally got AC2.  

Just reached level 93 on Gears of shit multiplayer.  Only need 1.3 mill more exp and I can be done with this piece of trash multiplayer.  Hopefully epic hires somebody outside the company who aren't complete amateurs to make some proper netcode and in general learn how to make a multiplayer game on xbox live.  

As part of the league efforts and my insane purchasing of games I keep track of the games coming for 360...

Below are the current releases for the rest of this year from Gamestop.com in the USA.  There is a lot to look forward to...