Halo 3, Etc.

Rumor is that Halo 3 will launch roughly a year from now. What's that you say? The PS3 is launching this holiday season and you thought Microsoft was going to bring out Halo 3 to deflate the launch of Sony's machine? An interesting theory I heard over on the message boards of Evil Avatar is that because the launch is almost certain to have supply shortages, especially since it's a worldwide launch like the 360 was, there's no way to stop the machines from selling out. There are enough hardcore early adopters that are going to buy the machine regardless of the competition that the first batch of machines is certain to sell out. Where MS may be thinking Halo 3 can make the difference is a few months after launch where, again like the 360, the early adopter demand has been satiated and machines are available to the people with money to spend on a console but no strong opinions about which one to get. With Halo 3 launching right when maybe a couple post launch games have come out it may just convince the consumer on the fence to buy into the 360.

Moving on, the demo for Galactic Civilizations 2 is out. I haven't tried it yet, but the first one is one of my all time favorite empire building space sims. Worth a try...