Rampancy

The Tokyo Game Show, going on right now, is where Microsoft is beginning its efforts to try and prove to Japanese audiences that the Xbox is a console worth buying. Major Nelson has put the keynote address including Microsoft's Robbie Bach into his blogcast this week (as usual, in MP3 and WMA formats).

Sidney Shuman's article Five Ways to Save Video Games at Games.net holds up Halo and Halo 2 as examples of some of the worst trends in gaming; namely, unoriginal plotlines, epic ambitions, spectacle over substance, and cinema envy. Oh, and then there's "treating women like whores" which is apparently the only industry sin the Halo franchise isn't guilty of... yet.

Microsoft's "simultaneous" worldwide release has morphed into a more logistically manageable sequence of three staggered launches: November 22 in North America, December 2 in Europe, and December 10 in Japan. The New York Times has the story. (Use the username/password rampancy/rampant if you don't have an account--Ed.)