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In what has been widely regarded as a controversial move, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein decided this month to buy every man, woman, and child in his province a new XBox 360. Deciding almost unanimously against spending the additional funds on such petty things as schools and health care, the Alberta government instead decided in favour of ensuring that the next generation of children to grow up in Alberta won't be total noobs.
 Klein gives his now famous,
"Buy a damned XBox" speech.
While some are bitter about giving the upper class an advantage in the pwnage department, overall the plan has been widely praised, especially by parents in the province, who are already beginning to feel the pressure being applied by the 12-17 demographic. "The rest of Canada was saying the same thing then: 'Give me, give me, give me,' " the premier said last week.
Alberta game developer Bioware, whose recent game "Jade Empire" was released as an XBox exclusive, was reported to have been thrilled by the news, as it meant every person in the province would have no excuse whatsoever to buy their recent masterpiece. An inside source at Bioware, who wished to remain unnamed, was quoted as saying, "I think this is a great move on Klein's part, not many people I know were going to bother with the 360. Most were either waiting for the PS3 or the Revolution... But now that it isn't going to cost them anything, why the hell not?"
For now, most Albertans are happily waiting for their cheques and hoping that enough of the consoles get shipped in time for the holidays.
(Note: Pretty much this whole article is BS, yes, Klein is sending everyone in Alberta $400, and yes, it should be here right around the same time the XBox 360 launches... But no, that doesn't mean that Bill Gates and Klein are old drinking buddies. At least, I think it doesn't mean that...)
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I sat back and examined the current state of consoles and realized that the big three are at war. That wasn't a big realization, the battle for your dollar has been raging since a little guy named Sonic stepped up to take down the old dictator.
The realization that I made was that each of the players in the arms race can be likened to specific types of warfare. Right now, Sony is America. It has the biggest guns, the best resources, and even when some of the things it does offends the whole world, nobody can seem to stop it. (Hot Coffee, anyone?) Now, Microsoft is like China, it's bringing the big guns, and even though they try to keep a tight reign on their populace, they still end up with rampant piracy.
And Nintendo? Well, they're a little harder to classify. I don't think I would liken them to any specific nation, really. They are more like a conglomerate of every nation that has ever stood up to the US. They know that they can't bring that big 3.2 Ghz bomb into the warzone, so instead they have decided to start coming up with more creative ways to kill your game buying dollar. The Revolution controller is definitely the Guerilla warfare of the console world.
Now, of course, you can't bring new weapons into existence without there being both those who think that the new method isn't worth doing, and those who seek to emulate it. Microsoft seems to have adopted the first, while Sony has decided upon the latter. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the Sony Revolution!
 (click image to see patent)
After seeing that I need to break out of the war analogy and just start the mockery... Okay, now I understand that it's tough finding a good illustrator for your patent submissions... And I understand that you need to keep the illustration simple so that people can easily see the function of the device... But does the guy using it have to look so pissed off? He looks like he's thinking, "Why the fuck am I waving this wand around when I could be playing God of War?" Maybe that was Sony's plan all along, maybe this is just propaganda. They don't actually want to create a Revolution style controller... They just want you to think that you'd look like an ass while you were using it.
Well, sorry America... I'm not subscribing to that propaganda, I think the Revolution could be fun, and I'm certainly going to give it a try, and I'm going to look WAY happier than that guy when I do it. In fact, I think I'll flee to Canada for this war. Wait a minute, I'm already IN Canada! Yay!
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