With Microsoft's Project Prenatal EyeToy or whatever launching with a brand new console, I must weigh in on my hopes of the new upcoming console generation. We all know that Sony won't be in a quick hurry to release anything as they are still waiting for their PS2 to finally die. I hope it's soon.

When Blizzard let slip that they were collaborating with Microsoft on the next generation of consoles because Blizzard felt the games they put out are not compatible with the controls of what today's consoles are capable of, I was excited. Are they trying to figure out a way to mash up a console and a PC's controls as to create a masterful system that will conquer all? A mix of a PC and an Xbox? I am game! But then they announced Project Natal. What the hell? I really hope that as the launch of this new system approaches, they figure out a way to let couch potatoes use this camera controller. The first thing I want to do when I come home from a long day at work is to get into my boxers, sit my cheeks into a comfy chair, relax, sip on gin n juice, lay back, and play a sweet game. The last thing I want to do is start waving my arms around like an idiot. Hence why my Wii has five feet of dust on all sides. If I wanted exercise, I would just play real basketball, not pretend on TV.

I glanced over my small PC game collection that has survived over the years. On this little shelf I noticed that both my Max Payne and Max Payne 2 were missing. I lent them to this kid a year ago and the kid no longer lives here. Dammit. I saw WarCraft, WarCraft II, and WarCraft III. StarCraft. Diablo and Diablo II. You see where my fascination with Blizzard comes in now? I was eleven when I first got my hands on the original WarCraft: Orcs & Humans on four floppy disks. Good times. I saw Half-Life and reminisced about playing Day of Defeat, Counter-Strike, Public Enemy, and various other HL Mods I cannot recall, but one definitely included a sheep rocket launcher. I think? Good times. I found Master of Magic, a game I hold near and dear and still cannot fathom to this day why another game like this has not been developed (though a game scheduled for release in 2010 called Elemental: War of Magic does look promising). Syndicate Wars was also laying on my shelf. Such a sweet game. Jagged Alliance and Jagged Alliance 2.

But, most of these games would never transpose their controls in a decent way on a control pad such as the one the current systems are sporting. A recent DS port of the original PC game Jagged Alliance turned out to be downright awful (though, I sincerely believe if this was developed for the PSP it would have been much better - the power of the DS is laughable).

Obviously most of these games greatly benefited from having a mouse and keyboard but since the release of Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution, I don't buy it. Except for FPS games, of course. The accuracy and speed of a mouse will always prevail over a controller joystick, but that's another argument. Sid Meier excellently brought a game that should've only worked on the PC to the consoles. He definitely spearheaded the most underrated revolution in the game industry last year. I know 4X games are a niche, but so are JRPGs, and there is no reason that developers shouldn't jump on this opportunity to create some stunning console games - remakes of Lord of the Realms, Jagged Alliance series, Master of Magic (rooting for this one!!) - or bring in new IPs in this category. When you break it down, 4X games are just giant tactics games (which have been successful on consoles as primitive as the GBA).

There is a PS3 controller - the SplitFish FragFX - that looks innovative, though as the linked blog suggests, it will probably never gain widespread support. It does look kind of awkward and is most likely tailored to FPS games entirely, though if such a controller were more of the norm, developers such as Blizzard could most likely create games such as WarCraft (the RTS, not MMO) and Diablo on the consoles that could be controlled in very much the same way as the PC games are. If they bundled the game with the controller? Yahtzee!

I'm lifting my morning cup of Starbucks in hopes that the new console generation will embrace these... for lack of a better word... PC-tailored games and finally bridge the gap between these two conflicting groups of gamers.

PC games reigned superior for a long time - the high resolution allowed high-def graphics before high-def was a word, the mouse and keyboard controls allowed pretty much any game to use any scheme imaginable, and with the ability to actually program your own control scheme, this was true. Consoles have always felt very limited and it wasn't until recently (as the PC games market died severely) that I sucked it up and bought into consoles.

Let's see more of these games popping up instead of our arms as we pretend to play tennis in our basement. Suck it, Milo.