This discussion took place at 11 a.m. Friday, Feb. 24, 2006, and is now closed.

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Moderator: Andrew J. writes: "When is Halo 3 coming out? When are some of the other big titles for XBOX 360 coming out? Gears of War, Crackdown, etc..."

SL: No date has been set yet for Halo. Microsoft has said that it will be released close to the PS3 release date, which may have been pushed back to as late as next year. The last word from Microsoft was some time in the spring.

Gears of War, a third person shooter from Epic here in the Triangle is slated for a 2006 date, beyond that we haven't heard.

Moderator: Do you recommend the XBox 360 or should people hold out for the PS3?

SL: I've spent a lot of time with the Xbox 360 and I have to say I haven't been super impressed. The demo models all look great on the high-definition monitors, but in the living room hooked up to a normal T.V. the improvement over the Xbox is only marginal.

The cooling system isn't the best, so it's also really really loud. The first time I played one outside the store I thought there was a problem with the house's heater.

As for the PS3, Sony has always designed a great product, I'd wait and see.

Moderator: Several states, including North Carolina, have drafted legislation that would restrict the sale of violent video games to minors. What sparked this? What's the status of this legislation?

SL: A lot of this legislation has to do with the "Hot Coffee" scandal that errupted over Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas last year. A piece of computer code inside the game had a mini game were the player simulated sex with another character. It wasn't meant to be released and wasn't accessible through normal game play.

Anyway, Hillary Clinton spoke out against it and in tandem several other states have tried to write new legislation. North Carolina has a bill in comittee that would make it a crime to sell a video game rated mature to an under age child. Utah passed a bill this week that equate violent games to porn, by an overwhelming margin.

Moderator: So if this bill were passed in North Carolina, what would that mean? That minors could only purchase these games with parental permission? Or would they be outrighted banned?

SL: They would not be outright banned, but the restrictions would put criminal penalties on vendors that sell an ESRB mature game to minors. In the same vein as selling cigarettes or alcohol to minors. The penalty would be a class one misdemeanor.

You can find a complete copy of the bill that passed the NC Senate in April here.

Moderator: What's the likelihood this bill will gain traction in North Carolina? Who's behind it and who opposes it?

SL: Locally, there's opposition from the Raleigh chapter of the International Game Developers Association. The bill's main backer is Julia Boseman, a Senate Democrat from Wilmington. For the most part, a lot of this legislation looks to be genreated from the lawmakers themselves. If there is a huge public outcry, it hasn't been publicized well. It may gain a lot of traction; it's an easy bill to win bipartisan support.

Moderator: As the Internet expanded, the popularity of massive multiplayer online role-playing games grew with it. Where do you think this trend is heading? Do you think we'll eventually see the end of the solo-player game?

SL: I don't think solo games will ever go away. Think about Tetris and Solitaire: they exist for the short time, 15 to 20 minutes per game.

For the online player, games now in the action adventure/first-person shooter have expansive multi-player options. As for the MMORPG trend, I think that a game like World of Warcraft will continue to draw fans, while some of the smaller games will fade out.

It's a lot of decision picking which ones to play, because the time requirement is huge and the success of the game depends on whether or not all that time will be wasted.

In short, I think the market can sustain maybe three or four big ones like WOW for the next five years or so. Anymore than that I doubt it.

Moderator: What release are you most looking forward to this year?

SL: Hands down, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. My heart broke when Nintendo pushed back the release date.

And I want to see Bully from Rock Star. It's gotten a huge amount of press and it hasn't been released yet. It's a game where you're a middle school kid and that's about all we know. Several groups have come out denouncing the game as a Columbine simulator -- I just want to see what the fuss is about. Say what you want about Rock Star, they produce some fantastic games.

Moderator: Final question: Best game of 2005?

SL: It was a lackluster year for games, but there's two I really dug: Civilization IV and Battlefield 2.

Moderator: Thanks, Sam. We're out of time today. Check out Sam's video game column every Friday in What's Up.

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