More or less regularly my friend at Take2—who got me into all that—asks me what I am thinking about the consoles vs. personal computer issue. As someone interested in game modding and reworking, the strongest form of the appropriation of technology, I naturally always am biased towards the personal computer, because it is by far more surrounded by “interpretative flexibility” … you can do more stuff with a personal computer than with a gaming console, that means ;-) Last thursday the relaunched ↑Adrenaline Vault published an ↑interview with John Romero, and he seconds “my” conviction: “Next-gen console is big but its future isn’t too bright with the emergence of cheap PC multi-core processors and the big change the PC industry will go through during the next 5 years to accommodate the new multi-core-centric hardware designs. My prediction is that the game console in the vein of the PS3 and XBOX 360 is going to either undergo a massive rethink or go away altogether.” Romero elaborates his argument in ↑console lovers lash back!. In the Avault-interview The Surgeon goes on: “The Wii has the perfect design for a console that doesn’t pretend to be a PC and is geared more toward casual gamers than hardcore gamers.”—exactly ↵what I said … am I a pundit now? :-) The interview contains some more interesting insights, for example on MMORPGS: “Good things happening today are the emergence of truly amazing MMORPG’s that can take over your entire life like no other game in history could—it’s an awesomely compelling category to be in and is one that’s immune to software piracy which has plagued the industry since its start.” That should have been pretty obvious, but I never thought about it that way … I am no pundit :-( Furthermore he goes a bit beyond his ↵announcement of ↵Severity, which “will have full support for all pro gaming needs from TV camera control, spectator controls, contestant queuing, among many other things we haven’t thought of yet because no one has created a game like this before.”