Microsoft has gone and allowed many, many AAA games and this is going to ruin the entire industry.

Let’s do some name dropping: There’s Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, Fable 2, Mirrors Edge, Endwar, Red Alert 3, Left 4 Dead and finally the new Guitar Hero. By my count that’s eight top games being released this holiday period. Now considering that games have gone up to a massive seven hundred bucks per game, you’re looking at forking out R4200 for all those games (excluding the price of instruments for Guitar Hero, a mere R3200).

Now most people are thinking that all these top quality games are great. The consumer is spoilt for choice! Now the problem is that most people will buy maybe one or two of these games at the most. What this means is that someone is going to be the loser here.

Here lies the problem though, the gaming industry is in a fair amount of trouble at the moment. Massive companies such as Electronic Arts are laying off staff at an alarming rate and other companies are being delisted from various stock exchanges. Bearing this in mind Microsoft has single handedly destroyed the world!

Games cost millions and millions of dollars to create with very few actually turning a profit. By Microsoft allowing these games to be published now, they’ve doomed certain gaming studios. This is quite unfortunate as the above mentioned games are excellent and really should be given a look.

Either way, enjoy it while it lasts. I fear many gaming publishers are going out of business these holidays.

For those of you who have ever bought an Apple product in South Africa you’ll know that the pricing is exorbitant at best. The Core Group, Apple importers in South Africa are also the importers of Nintendo products. What this means is that the Wii console as well as the new Nintendo DS lite handheld console are also imported by Core.

The new DS is being released on the 15th of February at the highly disgustingly exorbitant price of 1850 rand. Fascinatingly the price in America for the exact same device is $129. This translates to a few bucks more than a thousand rand. This is the direct price after the rand got pummeled in exchange markets and dropped an entire rand to the dollar.

The numbers never lie and frankly this just shows you how Core is robbing the South African consumer. When they arrived in the country with the Wii at around two and a half grand I was shocked and appalled at how expensive it was priced. Frankly the reason crime is so high in South Africa is because it’s legalised here! Every time I buy a tech product I get robbed!

The whole reason the DS is the best selling console in the world is due to its cheap price and high level of fun. In addition to the high price of the console the games cost around four hundred rand which again is a travesty.

The Core Group are the most useless, incompetent, lazy and ineffective company in South Africa but yet seem to have a huge amount of money due to bringing in the most sought after products. It’s just typical that we get ripped off here.

Nintendo DS top tip: Go buy the games from Take2 which has better imported games at a cheaper rate.

I’m sure you’ve heard of World of Warcraft; some of you might even have lost a love one to the phenomenon. For those of you who have had your head in the sand for the past three or so years then this is a brief synopsis:

World of Warcraft (commonly known as WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). World of Warcraft takes place within the world of Azeroth, four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard’s previous release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Blizzard Entertainment announced World of Warcraft on September 2, 2001. The game was released on November 23, 2004, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise. It is currently the world’s largest MMORPG in terms of monthly subscribers.

As the description goes, it’s an online role playing game where you choose a character and complete quests while interacting with other gamers from around the world. The amount of players has always been quite staggering and as I mentioned earlier; many people have literally lost their family members to this game. The game has just managed to hit the magic 10 million players per month mark.

Apparently the breakdown of players is as such: Europe is responsible for over two million players, North America over two and a half million and Asia around five and a half million. The financial considerations are mind blowing in this case. If you average out the amount they make per month from subscribers (excluding the amount spent buying the initial game and expansion disks) at roughly $14; the monthly price depends on how many months contract you buy, then times it by 10 million you’re looking at one hundred and forty million dollars per month. That’s a lot of money by any stretch of the imagination especially considering they probably cover their development costs through the sale of the game disks. Servers and bandwidth must cost a maximum of 5 million dollars a month (a figure I feel is probably quite high). This means every month they make an absolute fortune.

The scary thing is that this year they release yet another expansion pack which will net them even more money and users. Good job Blizzard, you’ve created the greatest success in gaming ever

I know I’m a little late to jump on the bandwagon since this game was released last year but I’ve just finished playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and I must recommend it as the best game ever.

Never before has my heart pounded in every moment of a game. It is a truly phenomenal game with phenomenal set pieces. The single player is criminally short but pretty difficult which makes up for it. The multiplayer is pretty impressive as well with class-based deathmatch that beats any other multiplayer game out there.

The game is set in a fictional future featuring locations such as an unnamed Middle East country to Russia. You play as both a British Special Forces soldier and an American Marine. The game features locations from claustrophobic Middle East towns where you literally go from house to house clearing out enemies to little villages where you need to rescue captured allies.

With scenarios such as fleeing a sinking ship in the pouring rain to being the gunner of an AC-130 gunship the game never disappoints. I’ve been a big fan of the series for years and this edition does not fail to impress. The game is all about incredible set pieces, which are always incredibly realistic while being grand and over the top. Enemies are particularly ruthless but thankfully you have an arsenal of particularly realistic (all of which behave differently and I imagine realistically) and varied.

If like me you’re a bit bored and are a gamer then go do yourself a favour and buy a copy; you will be so impressed that you’ll come back and tell me what an incredibly good idea I gave you.

You know what the worst part of the game is: having to turn it off.