'No decent videogame would ask you to believe in a hysterical Frenchman half your size as a respectable final boss. '

I refer you to the diminutive hysterical Spaniard Ramon Salazar of Resident Evil 4 fame..though Capcom at least saw fit to mutate him into something more fearsome for the boss fight. He also bizarrely shared his name with the antagonist of series 3 of 24.

Interesting piece Steven; that the two media are so often compared is unfortunate but they do have a lot to learn from each other.

Sony's wand will give the precision to write text on screen.....
The reluctance to press start isn't a bad thing on a handheld title where pick up and play is key.

Not Orwellian ;) just personal opinion. I don't doubt that they've failed to hold onto market dominance this gen. I qualified my opinion by saying that I recognised the strengths of the competition. Their network is worse, the services they provide here in europe are considerably lacking, multi-platform titles suffer from performance issues, first-party titles suffer delays (or worse, like resistance 2, are rushed and half finished) and yet the units sold, at a considerably higher price point, for 3 years at a consistant pace in a market thoroughly different from the last gen. And I'm surprised by that, as I said.

I can sort of understand what he means. I'm constantly amazed by how well the PS3 has been doing. When you consider how strong the competition has been this generation, and the higher price point, it's been selling roughly on par with the 360 worldwide (since launch the 360 has only increased its lead by about 2 million units). This has probably given them the confidence to hang on for as long as it took to get the redesign up and running. It would have seemed wise to have dropped the price this time last year but their sales have been acceptable and they've been hitting the targets that people dismissed as impossible.

I came accross this during the week (it went around twitter, I can't remember who recommended it to me now) and its a brilliant little idea though i hit a dead end and went to bed round about stage 15. Much like Little Big Planet it (as you say) lets you take a step back and observe the basics of level design.