By now, most of our readers have heard and seen Microsoft's official unveiling of the Xbox 360, their next-generation console. Following through on Xbox chief J Allard's depressingly trite future vision for videogames at GDC, the focus of the Xbox 360 is visual resolution and graphical clarity. Microsoft's Robbie Bach summarizes the device's potential as seen by its creators: Remember going from 2-D games to 3-D? We're going from today's 3-D worlds to high-definition worlds that really will look like a movie or television show ... That is going to lead to fundamental changes in expectations, and Xbox 360 is ...

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Finally! An educational game that rocks! Informative, well produced and very enjoyable to play with. Go United Nations! Food Force was just launched and it is definitively worth the 200 meg download (full versions available for free for Windows and Mac). The game consists of several different missions, with animated and video cutscenes in between. Unlike what happens in many videogames, the cutscenes are not there to show off graphics but rather to give valuable information. And what it is best, the designers were able to overcome the most common trap of educational games: they keep a good balance between ...

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I haven't had a chance to share my impressions of this year's Game Developers Conference, now a month past, mostly because I've been so busy. However, a couple recent articles cover issues that came up during the third Serious Games Summit at the GDC. The Nation just ran a piece on Playstations for Peace, including a mention of Gonzalo's Newsgaming.com and Water Cooler Games. And Personal Democracy ran a story on Political Sims that mentions the Summit, Persuasive Games, and a host of other things, including the new US Budget Game I've been working on with Dave Rejeski, Ben Sawyer, ...

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So, I admit it, I bought a PSP. I hadn't planned to, but there were tons at Target yesterday, and I figured it was either now or later so might as well make it now. I had and continue to have doubts about the device. Again and again Sony tries their hand at this notion of an integrated mobile device. Five years ago they made an investment in Palm and started rolling out Clié devices with the same promise of integrated music, productivity, movies, etc. They never seem to get it quite right. It's not an easy task to be ...

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I finally got a chance to play a Leapster today. As I mentioned before, I think the product is positioned in the marketplace like no other -- a handheld educational/game device for kids 4 - 8. Update (12/1/2004): After you read this review, read my updated comments one year later. It's bigger than I expected, easily 10 inches across. This is necessary to accomodate the large LCD display (perhaps 4 inches diagonal?), but it may be slightly unwieldy in the hands of a 4 year old. The case is grey plastic, with a control pad on the left, two gamepad-style ...

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