Remember me?

...and then it begins again.

I've recently had a lot of time, and in between considering my navel, planning the nanowrimo and pining for Halo 2, have been working away on a few article ideas. More about some of those later as they emerge. But first things first: I've been working on something a little odd that is taking shape at the moment. It is extraordinarily early days yet, not to mention a wee bit fitful, and I've had more than one comment come back to me to tell me that it's pretty pretentious. I'll let you be the judge.

It's called Sendestra.
I may slightly explain it in a little while if it just seems too obscure/boring for people to get into. At the moment, though, I'm content to leave it bare-boned and open for examination because through I'm trying something. But I won't say what that something is just yet.

Lastly, a question:

We all know that there are new consoles on the horizon. Quite aside from the two handheld machines squaring up for battle (both of which I have grave doubts about), we have the hardware manufacturers getting their gloves on for another round. Punditry has it that Nintendo will shrink even further, and Microsoft and Sony will be the ones to duke it out. Games will get more expensive to develop, developers will probably cease to exist completely save maybe six or seven worldwide, and a new generation shall be upon us.

My question is simply whether the whole industry is going to collapse around our ears when this happens?

I'm beginning to suspect that this is a very real possibility. With halved product lines, loss-leading hardware, software that requires several million unit sales to see back its investment costs, and not to mention the costs of research and so on, aren't we reaching that point where the linear curve meets the geometric one (as Greg Costikyan puts it)? Has the new consumer interest in new hardware really been established with any credibility?

And, assuming that this is the case and that the industry does, in its arrogance, run off the short pier, what will the post-2005/6 industry look like?