Wages as a proportion of GDP are much lower than they used to be. House sizes are irrelevant, and only really in America, yet the trend for mass unemployement and low wages is common across the developed world.

I don't think it's ever been easier to hook a computer up to a TV via HDMI. The main problem is no-one wants a big noisy clunking desktop computer with all its peripherals in their living room, and PC games rarely have multiplayer.

I'd imagine that most PC gamers who are interested in indie games on Kickstarter or Greenlight already have a controller for their PC. The Xbox/Dualshock layout is pretty standard now on PC so it's easy for games to support them via xinput.

The Japanese market ain't that important anymore. Btw that all other systems combined includes the Wii U, which is selling worse than damn-near everything.

You could have said the exact same thing about the PC vs consoles for the past 30 years, and yet, consoles keep on kicking.

Maybe 15 years. In the olden days, your PS2 had a DVD drive when your PC had just got a CD drive, and your PS1 had a CD drive when having one on your PC meant you were a millionaire.

Your SNES was running Star Fox and Mario Kart when your PC could just about play Civ 1 with 16 colours and the sounds were bleeps from a speaker in your computer case.

How exactly are Nintendo always on top? The Wii U is selling less than the Gamecube, and that was a total bust. When you think about it, three out of Nintendo's last four home consoles were flops. Four out of five if you count the Virtual Boy. Even the SNES managed to lose millions of sales in a growing market.

They're basically kept alive by the handheld division, and the 3DS is selling worse than the DS as mobile games start to nibble into their market.

Where exactly do you see Nintendo in five years? The Wii U sells so badly investors force them out of the home console market, the handhelds lose more and more market share, their core franchises become less and less relevant as fewer people have the platforms to play them.

Their only option will be to become solely a software developer, and release their games cross-platform. Then they'll be one of those third-party developers they've been shitting on since the 80s.

Actually, unlike Microsoft and Sony, all Nintendo has to do is sell the system and they've already made a profit, even on launch day.

So why did they start losing money during the Wii generation, when they even made a profit with the Gamecube?

A Nintendo executive admitted that they need to sell multiple games per system to break even on the Wii U.

Also, the Wii U is selling worse than the Gamecube. Which sold worse than the N64. Which sold worse than the SNES. Which sold worse than the NES. Nintendo's home console sales have been in terminal decline since the 80s.

The Wii was just a fad, the singing billy bass of consoles. Its playerbase won't buy a Wii U, they won't even buy a PS4 or an Xbone. They'll buy a tablet and play angry birds or whatever.

Nintendo's home console has no market. The hardcore gamers are on Xbone/PS/PC, the casuals are on tablets and phones, they've basically got Zelda and Mario fans.

Don't the giant blockbusters mainly fund the other big-budget films that were supposed to be blockbusters, like John Carter of Mars?

There's only so much room in the market for a generic AAA shooter. Release ten of them in a year and don't be surprised if only one or two of them sell anything. Most people who buy those sorts of games barely buy any games at all (some activision guy recently said as such), so going after the COD market is dooming yourself to failure.

The most difficult thing about that is getting used to the awkward keyboard controls. Also the game moves the goalposts in the middle of the game by telling you the object is to complete the game with fewest deaths after several levels, when you've previously been playing recklessly.

If MBAs really aren't taught "bad management skills," what is it that corrupts them and causes the disastrous short term thinking epidemic in companies these days?

It's not that the MBA training is negative, it's just not enough to be useful on day 1. So the process goes like this:

The guy who hires him is looking to fill a role, and he knows it's not going to happen without a learning curve, so he can never find an exact match to the job.

So you can hire someone who wants twice what you want to pay and doesn't have the exact skillset you need, or you can hire someone out of college who wants 60% of what you're willing to pay and, after some on-the-job training will have the skillset you need. So you take the cheaper one.

And it turns out he's an idiot. But by the time you find that out he's been working there for a year, and he's not so bad that you need him fired right now, and bringing someone else up to speed is going to take a year, so you make do. And 10 years later you realize you're still just "making do", so you put out an ad and replace him.

Rinse / repeat.

I can't believe someone is literally denying the system-selling ability of Halo being an Xbox exclusive. You may as well deny that the sky is blue.

Since when do you have to boot consoles off a CD? Last I looked the OS was on the hard disk and the system can multi-task.

So if you're using both pads to move the mouse, what exactly do you do for WASD? There are only six buttons accessible whilst using the pad, and you'll need them for shit like jump, crouch, reload, shoot, alt-fire, weapon switch etc.

Clicking the pad will ruin your accuracy.

Mario 64 was a terrible 3D platformer. The camera was an utter joke.

The only 3D platforming that is remolely competent is in the FPS genre, because you have a first-person perspective, eliminating camera concerns, as well as good air control.