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Former Carmel basketball star Danielle Havel would love to end her high school career on a winning note — again.

Havel, who led the Greyhounds to a Class 4A state championship in March, hopes to pick up two more victories as a member of the Indianapolis Star Indiana All-Star team.
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Indiana faces the Kentucky All-Stars in a home-and-home series beginning with today’s matchup at 6 p.m. at Conseco Fieldhouse. The second game will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at Louisville Gardens in Kentucky.

“Knowing that we were the only 4A team to finish our (high school) season with a victory was awesome,” said Havel, a 6-foot forward. “Now, my goal is to end the All-Star season with a win, too.”

Another former Greyhound also would like to end his high school career with a pair of victories. Carmel’s Daniel Moore, a 5-10 guard, was selected to the boys team.

The boys play Kentucky at 8 p.m. tonight at Conseco Fieldhouse, and the series finale is 4 p.m. Sunday at Louisville Gardens.

Moore knows the importance of sweeping Kentucky in the annual event between neighboring states.

“It’s such a historic game, and there’s so much tradition to it,” he said. “Even if you’re not a basketball fan, you don’t want to open the newspaper and see that Kentucky beat Indiana. . . . No matter what, you want your state to do well.”

Win or lose, Moore said being an All-Star is something he’ll never forget. Along with two games against Kentucky, the Indiana boys played two exhibition contests against the Junior All-Stars.

Moore and his teammates had plenty of opportunities to bond during practices, meals and leisure time.

“I know a lot of these guys, but it’s still cool to be around them before we go our separate ways for college,” said Moore, who hopes to play basketball as a walk-on at Indiana University. “It’s been a really fun experience.”

Havel, a DePaul basketball recruit, said the long week of All-Star activities gave her a glimpse of what college athletics could be like.

“All we’ve done is eat, sleep and play basketball,” she said. “It should be good preparation for next year.”

Moore expects mixed emotions after the games against Kentucky. “It’s our last chance to play in high school, so it’s going to be exciting and sad,” he said.

Carmel guard Chrissy Steffen, who will be a senior in the fall, played on the Junior All-Star team this week. She had eight points in her team’s surprising 86-80 victory in Monday’s exhibition game at Washington High School.

Gamblers bored with this year’s NBA playoffs can always turn to the WNBA point-spread bets.

That’s a risky move this season because every game seems like a tossup in the 14-team women’s pro basketball league, which is playing a compact schedule because of its Olympic break (July 28-Aug. 21).

For example, the Phoenix Mercury — the defending WNBA champion — lost its first four games of the season, which included a 99-94 home opening loss to the Sparks. But when Phoenix faced the Sparks last week at Staples Center, the Mercury won, 85-79, despite being eight-point underdogs.

Then there are teams such as the Atlanta Dream and Houston Comets, with the worst overall records in the WNBA.

The Dream, a first-year franchise, is 0-8 but 3-5 against the point spread. One of Atlanta’s defeats came against highly regarded Minnesota, which failed to cover a 7.5-point spread in an 85-81 victory over the Dream.

Houston is another team difficult to read for gamblers. The Comets are 1-7 but 4-4 against the point spread because they covered the line in road losses against Indiana, Seattle and Washington.

This type of unpredictability explains why eight WNBA teams have .500 or worse records against the point spread this season even though the league has nine teams with .500 or better records overall.

Two of the league’s best teams face off tonight when the Connecticut Sun plays the Sparks at Staples Center.

Connecticut has the league’s best record at 8-1 but will take on an underdog role against the 5-2 Sparks, who are led by two of the sport’s most recognized players in Lisa Leslie and Candace Parker.

Connecticut, which has won five consecutive games, has a 5-4 record against the point spread.

The Sparks, 1-1 at home this season, are 4-3 against the point spread.

Horse racing

Ever since Big Brown’s Triple Crown bid fell short with his loss in the Belmont Stakes, the build-up for a potential showdown against 2007 horse of the year Curlin in the Breeders’ Cup Classic has pretty much disappeared.

But not at Bodoglife.com, which has a proposition bet listed as: Will Big Brown and Curlin race against each other in 2008? Yes (+275) or No (-400).

And if the horses do meet at the Breeders’ Cup, which will run Oct. 25 at Santa Anita, there’s already a wager ready: Best finishing position? Big Brown (+150) or Curlin (-200).

Tennis

Here are couple of interesting future wagers available at Bodoglife.com: Will Roger Federer win this year’s Wimbledon? Yes (even) or No (-140); Will Federer win the 2008 U.S. Open? Yes (+130) or No (-170); Will Maria Sharapova win this year’s Wimbledon? Yes (+200) or No (-275); Will Venus or Serena Williams win the 2008 U.S. Open? Yes (+165) or No (-225).

The Texas High School Baseball Coaches Association All-Star games are taking place today and Saturday at Dell Diamond in Round Rock. The Class A-2A-3A all-star game is at noon today, and the 4A-5A all-star game is at noon on Saturday.

Langham Creek’s Armando Sedeno and Waltrip’s Jim Teel will serve as the coaches for the 4A-5A South All-Stars. Ten area players made the 4A-5A roster: Cy-Fair pitcher Tommy Collier, Clear Creek pitcher/outfielder Jarred Cosart, Langham Creek outfielder Austin Freitas, Brenham pitcher/outfielder Kyle Mangan, Baytown Sterling pitcher/outfielder Brett Marshall, Lamar shortstop Anthony Rendon, Bellaire catcher Jeremy Schaffer, Montgomery pitcher/outfielder Bobby Stone, Westside pitcher Taylor Wall, and Kempner pitcher/infielder Kyle Winkler.

Combine, games slated

The Houston Area Baseball Coaches Association will be hosting its annual combine and all-star games June 16-18. The combine, which is open to all unsigned seniors, will take place at 8:30 a.m. Monday at Houston Baptist University. The four all-star games will be played at 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday at Rice University’s Reckling Park.

7-on-7 tournaments set

A&M Consolidated and Dulles will serve as hosts to 7-on-7 football state qualifying tournaments on Saturday. The two finalists in each state qualifying tournament will earn a berth in the FSN Southwest 7-on-7 state championship tournament, which will be held July 11-12 at Texas A&M.

Area teams that have already qualified for the state tournament include Beaumont West Brook, Chavez, Cinco Ranch, Cypress Falls, Elkins, Katy, Klein, Klein Oak, Langham Creek, Memorial, Pearland, Seven Lakes, Spring, The Woodlands and Tomball.

Redding headlines camp

North Shore product Cory Redding will host the Cory Redding and Friends football camp on Saturday, June 28, from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. at Galena Park ISD Stadium, 15025 Wallisville.

The camp will include Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor and Heisman Trophy winners Andre Ware and Eddie George.

Redding is a 1999 North Shore graduate and is currently a starting defensive lineman for the NFL’s Detroit Lions

Two video gamers have filed a lawsuit against Electronic Arts, alleging that the Redwood City company’s exclusive licensing agreements with the National Football League, the Arena Football League and the National Collegiate Athletic Association have created a monopoly for football video games.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Oakland, seeks an injunction to end the licensing agreements as well as restitution for gamers, saying they have been forced to pay higher prices due to the lack of competition.

“EA, in response to rival games like NFL 2K5, could have played fair, but they decided to cheat, and they did it by entering these agreements with the NFL, the NFL Players Union, the AFL and the NCAA that foreclosed this market,” said Washington attorney Stuart Paynter on behalf of his clients, Geoffrey Pecover of Washington and Jeffrey Lawrence of San Diego. They are seeking class-action status for the suit.

EA spokeswoman Mariam Sughayer said the company can’t comment on matters of pending litigation. The company has sold 6.5 million copies of Madden NFL 08 on various platforms.

Paynter alleges that EA, which had been the dominant maker of football games since 1989 with its Madden Football franchise, faced its stiffest challenge in 2004 with the appearance of NFL 2K5, developed jointly by Take-Two Interactive and Sega Corp. EA was forced to slash the price of its Madden NFL title from $49.95 to $29.95 to keep pace with NFL 2K5, which sold for nearly $30 less than the Madden game.

Within months, EA signed exclusive licensing deals with the NFL, the AFL and the NCAA that prohibited other video game companies from using the teams, logos or players from those respective organizations. The move effectively killed off Take-Two’s football franchise, the suit alleges, allowing EA to again raise its prices to $49.95.

Paynter said the timing of the suit is not tied to Electronic Arts’ $2 billion unsolicited bid for Take-Two. The suit is not targeting the NFL, AFL or NCAA, he said, because it was EA that exhibited a pattern of conduct.

Meanwhile, Take-Two is facing a court date of its own after it balked at a subpoena from the Federal Trade Commission, which is reviewing the potential merger. Take-Two is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia on June 24 to determine whether it must comply with the FTC’s subpoena and civil investigative demand for information about the deal.

Take-Two said in an SEC filing that it had cooperated with the FTC and had made available numerous documents and key company executives. But the New York company is seeking to limit the scope of the FTC’s inquiry, which it said is overly broad. To comply with it, the company said, will require an inordinate amount of expense and labor.

EA, which had set a Monday deadline for Take-Two investors to tender their shares to EA, has put its bid on hold pending the outcome of the FTC review.

The banners hanging in the lobby of San Francisco’s Moscone West conference hall for this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference tell you all you need to know about the event’s agenda. One banner reads “OS X Leopard” and the other says “OS X iPhone.” With both platforms—the Mac and the iPhone—so closely tied to each other, could the burgeoning game market on the phone side of things lead to an upswing of Mac games?

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Developing for the iPhone requires both a Mac and a working knowledge of Cocoa, the Application Programming Interface (API) that Apple uses for Mac OS X, and a Macintosh to develop on. So intuitively, it seems to make sense that developers creating iPhone games might eventually make Mac games too.

“That might be what happens,” said Glenda Adams, director of development for Aspyr Media, the veteran Mac game publisher behind such hits as The Sims 2 and Guitar Hero 3. “It’s possible that iPhone games might lead to a new crop of little games for the Mac.”

Unai Landa Bonilla is new to the iPhone and the Mac. Handheld technology director of Spanish game developer and publisher Digital Legends, his first iPhone game, Kroll, was featured during the WWDC keynote. Kroll is a side- scrolling action game that uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to manage jumps. He says it’s more complicated than that, especially for developers who are starting out on the iPhone.

“The problem I see is the size of the content,” Bonilla explained. Most developers creating a game for the iPhone will be generating a limited amount of content—smaller graphics and fewer gameplay levels than many Mac gamers may be expecting.

And unlike iPhone games, which will be sold through the App Store, Apple doesn’t offer a ready mechanism for distributing smaller games online. So developers have to worry about Mac copy protection and a distribution mechanism for getting those games into gamers’ hands.

One possible solution may be GameTree Online, a new game distribution site created by Mac game developer TransGaming Technologies, creators of the Cider technology that EA uses to bring its games to the Mac. Already the company has published three casual game releases itself; the service emerged from a public beta period early this week. But casual games are only the start of GameTree, according to TransGaming CTO Gavriel State.

“GameTree can be home to all sorts of Mac games,” State said. “We have gauged a lot of interest from PC game publishers who want to publish their back-catalog of games for the Mac.”

Retail shelf placement of games is a very expensive proposition, requiring the publisher to have a distribution partner and to pay for the shelf space in retail locations. Online distribution affords them the ability to continue to publish those games without having to pay for shelf space, which makes them viable long after their shelf-date has expired.

“Steam proved to a lot of these publishers that it could be done,” said State. But Steam—a distribution and copy-protection scheme developed by Half-Life maker Valve Software—only works on the PC at present, so publishers interested in creating products for the Mac need to look at other solutions.

Adams agrees that online distribution looks like the way to go. Her company is readying the summertime release of Game Agent, a Web site that users will be able to purchase and download games from, including games in Aspyr’s back catalog, which dates back a decade.

Even for iPhone game publishers, however, it’s not a free ride. Consumers who will be buying iPhone games are as discriminating as gamers on consoles or computers, according to Digital Legends CEO Xavier Carillo Costa.

“For a high-quality game for a device like the iPhone, you need a team. It’s not two guys working for two months anymore. You need to do high-polygon models, using high technology. To be successful in this business you’ll need to use a console approach to developing a mobile game,” Costa said.

Perhaps the more important question is whether Mac users would even buy games that were originally developed for the iPhone. Apple’s increased Mac market share hasn’t translated into a dramatic uptick in Mac game sales. Anecdotally, it seems that Mac users have found a balance between working on their Macs and playing on game consoles, or in some cases for “hardcore” gamers who prefer the Mac in their day to day work, on PCs built especially just for games.

If game developers take a chance on the Mac and it doesn’t turn out as successful as their iPhone efforts, they’re unlikely to repeat that experience again. Which could just make the iPhone Apple’s premier game hardware platform going forward—OS X notwithstanding.

The 1971 and 1979 World Series aside, the Orioles and Pirates have met in just one series in interleague play, with Pittsburgh taking two of three games at PNC Park in 2005. This year’s Pirates have been up and down under first-year manager John Russell, but they have been playing good baseball recently. They’ve split four-game series with the St. Louis Cardinals and Arizona Diamondbacks, two of the best teams in the National League, and took two of three games from the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals. In the Nationals series, which ended with Pittsburgh’s 7-5 victory yesterday, catcher Ryan Doumit went 9-for-11 with four home runs and seven RBIs. Former Orioles infielder Chris Gomez was 2-for-3 and is hitting .313 in 43 games. Pirates outfielder Nate McLouth, 26, is among the NL leaders in runs, doubles, total bases and extra-base hits. The Pirates, who entered yesterday with a 4.75 ERA, the worst in the NL, are 12-19 on the road this season.

Over and over, Jake Deitchler repeated the moves his coach called to him, honing his form until his spent, sweating body dropped to the wrestling mat. With his workout complete, coach Brandon Paulson moved on to the next student.

Elijah Paulson, 3, wanted to demonstrate what he had learned from watching those Greco-Roman athletes in the Gophers’ wrestling room. After doing push-ups with Olympic hopeful Jake Clark, he bounded onto the mat in his tiny singlet and put some moves on his dad, while coach Dan Chandler watched a Minnesota tradition trickle down to another generation.

Brandon Paulson and Chandler, both Greco-Roman Olympians, are among 22 Minnesotans to compete in the Olympics in that classic style of wrestling. Deitchler, Clark and nine other men with Minnesota ties will try to follow them in this weekend’s Olympic wrestling trials in Las Vegas. Going back to 1956, when Alan Rice became the state’s first Greco-Roman Olympian, the sport’s champions have kept it alive and vibrant in the steamy wrestling rooms of Minnesota. The U.S. Greco-Roman Olympic team has included at least one Minnesotan every year since 1968. Three are among the highest seeds in these trials: Deitchler (145 1/2 pounds), Andy Bisek (163) and R.C. Johnson (211 1/2).

“I remember watching Dan Chandler in the Olympic trials when I was growing up,” said Paulson, the 1996 Olympic silver medalist at 114 1/2 pounds. “My high school [Anoka] had four Olympic wrestlers: Dan, me, and Jim and Dave Hazewinkel. And I saw guys in our wrestling room all the time, preparing for international tournaments.

“I fell in love with it, and I had a great system around me. [Deitchler] fell in love with it because he looked up to me. And Elijah sees Jake wrestle and is learning things from him. Maybe in 10 years, Jake will be coaching him.”

Local growth of Greco

Waterworld. Hudson Hawk. Showgirls. The movie world is replete with examples of projects that swallowed up vast amounts of cash only to sink beneath the waves, vanish into Bruce Willis’ past, or disappear into our darkest nightmares. So too is the world of videogames, and although there’s no game failure that can quite match the sheer scale of the movie world’s excesses, there’s still no shortage of games so unsuccessful that they brought down companies, destroyed careers, and shattered dreams. Here are seven of our favorites.
Sims Online

Estimated budget: $25m

Although megapublisher Electronic Arts usually has a knack for delivering sales smashes, every time it’s dipped its toe into the waters of massively multiplayer games since Ultima Online it’s ended up badly burned. Its last effort, an online version of The Sims, should have been a smash hit, but, well, let’s just say it underperformed a tad. Turns out the best way to make history’s most successful videogame franchise into a massively multiplayer game is not in fact to remove most of the features players enjoy and then heap on a monthly fee. The Sims Online underperformed from day one, and although EA re-invented the game as “EA-Land” in February, it’s currently marking time until the Grim Reaper comes to turn off the servers on August 1.
Daikatana

Estimated budget: Unknown. Epic.

Once upon a time, John Romero could do no wrong. Flushed with his success at Id Software, where he was instrumental in designing classics like Doom and Quake, he left to form his own studio, Ion Storm, and develop a new first-person shooter. What followed was an intricate and marvelous tale of pride, massive dot-com spending excess, colossal hype, atrociously bad ads, and, once the game was finally released, terrible reviews. Romero’s studio collapsed soon after, and with it went most of Romero’s once-proud reputation. He reportedly claimed Daikatana actually sold enough copies to recoup its vast costs, but regardless of whether that’s true it’ll always be remembered as the game that brought down Ion Storm.
The Last Express

Estimated budget: $6m

Some games flop because they’re over-hyped. Some games flop because they’re terrible. Some flop because they just spent too much money. Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner’s The Last Express made none of these mistakes, instead falling victim to a perfect storm of catastrophes, all beyond its control. It’s still remembered as one of the finest adventure games ever made, but it was released in 1997, right as the gaming public was losing interest in the genre in favor of those new-fangled 3D shooters. The publisher’s marketing department up and quit, leaving it with no ads, and a subsequent buyout meant the game vanished from stores soon after its release. Unsurprisingly, it sank without trace - but fortunately, courtesy of GameTap, it’s now being distributed again. If you don’t play any other games on this list - and, frankly, we wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t - play this one.
Ultima 9

Estimated budget: Unknown. Nine-year development cycles are not cheap.

Is there any PC role-playing game series that’s as well-loved as the Ultima games? Created by the eccentric designer Richard “Lord British” Garriott, they dominated the genre for a full fifteen years, and remain close to the heart of many RPG aficionados. Garriott’s good fortune came to a grinding halt with the 1999 release of Ultima IX: it was nine years in the making, required numerous redesigns and rewrites, and when it finally hit the streets it was a buggy, inconsistent mess with sky-high hardware requirements that excluded many fans. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the coming of 3D action-adventures caused the designers to ditch the series’ traditional deep, party-based combat and replace it with a system that owed more to Tomb Raider than Dungeons & Dragons. Assorted patches improved the game somewhat, but it wasn’t enough to redeem it, and among many Ultima devotees its name is still not spoken. Garriott’s latest project, an MMO named Tabula Rasa, is still up and running - but our hunch is that you’ll see it appearing in next year’s version of this article.

Not every parent whose child wants a Nintendo Wii this holiday season will be able to get their hands on one. Instead of Tickle Me Elmo, this year parents will stalk the aisles of retailers and surf the Web in hot pursuit of the tiny, white “waggle box.” The $250 kid-friendly console has already been on the market for a year, and more than 13 million are already in the hands of gamers.

“Nintendo (other-otc: NTDOY - news - people ) is making as many Wiis as it can,” says IGN GamerMetrics analyst Nick Williams. “There’s a limited supply, a continuously high demand.” Though Microsoft’s (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Xbox 360 sold more units than the Wii in September due to the launch of “Halo 3,” analysts predict the Wii will be back on top in October, selling as many as 450,000 units.

The Wii has made headlines for entertaining the elderly at retirement homes and putting motion-based controllers in the hands of many non-gamer moms. But the system has also delighted very young children because of its easy-to-grasp style of play and lack of button manipulations. Many parents, understandably cautious about putting 6-, 4- or even 2-year-olds in front of a videogame console, seem to have warily endorsed the Wii because of its anti-couch potato imperative and shallow learning curve.
In Pictures: Great Games For The Wii

And although older gamers might find it limiting, the Wii’s online functions are currently limited to a Web browser and sharing avatars. Instead of pairing players with random gamers around the world in chat rooms like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Nintendo’s system encourages multiplayer action in the living room.

“We hear all the time from parents that they take a look at the Microsoft Xbox 360 controller or the Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) PlayStation 3 controller and they get instantly intimidated,” says John Davison, co-founder of What They Like, a start-up that in mid November launched a Web site called Whattheyplay.com devoted to helping parents learn about videogame content.

While Microsoft’s Xbox 360 team aims to make its machine as family-friendly as possible–on Nov. 8 the company announced a new feature called the “Family Timer” that allows parents to set automatic game-over times before bedtime–Xbox 360 thus far hasn’t positioned itself as the child-friendly game platform.

With so many veteran Wii owners and wanna-be Wiisters hinting at which games they’d like to unwrap in December, parents must now take on the daunting task of vetting their kids’ wish lists for age-appropriate and appealing titles.

Fortunately, the nature of game development for the Wii platform has evolved some bedtime enforcement techniques of its own. Some of the most in-demand and kid-befitting games are played in bite-size two-minute chunks.

With titles like Nintendo’s own “Wii Sports” (which comes with every Wii), Sega’s (other-otc: SEGNF - news - people ) “Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games” and Take-Two Interactive’s “Carnival Games,” kids choose from among several mini-games that don’t elicit refrains of, “Mooooom, I need to get to a place where I can save my game before I quit!” With mini-games, mothers can graciously grant the kids one more round of Wii baseball or one last ring toss–and still pack them off to bed on time. These games last literally only a few seconds, or a couple of minutes, at most.

Beyond the quick mini-games, titles like Capcom’s “Zack and Wiki,” LucasArts’ “Lego Star Wars” and Activison’s (nasdaq: ATVI - news - people ) “Guitar Hero III” are perfect for playing together with friends, and especially with older relatives. These three games allow adults to take on the role of guide without spoiling puzzle-solving and discovery for kids, and their tongue-in-cheek jokes should keep parents entertained.

Not sure your kid is mature enough to battle it out with Guns ‘n Roses’ Slash and a rock-and-roll devil in “Guitar Hero III?” Some aren’t ready for the content, but don’t worry about their ability to get the hang of the game. “Little kids are very good at “Guitar Hero” because they have no nostalgic point of reference about how ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ should sound,” says Davison. “I’ve seen 5-year-olds play a perfect game.”

Which Wii games should parents avoid? Well, there are obvious no-nos, like Take-Two Interactive’s “Manhunt 2,” a horror game about a murderer that Target (nyse: TGT - news - people ) won’t even stock on its shelves. “Metroid Prime 3″ and “Resident Evil 4″ also glorify shooting things up. Other innocuous titles, like the ever-popular “Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess,” and “Super Paper Mario,” are simply too difficult for most new gamers.

Some of the most anticipated new Wii games just won’t be out in time for this year’s holidays. “Wii Fit,” “Super Smash Bros. Brawl,” and “Mario Kart” are all expected in early 2008. That will, of course, give kids something to covet for upcoming birthdays.

The best way to find out which games are most appropriate and most enjoyable for your child is, of course, to play along. But many parents don’t. A survey conducted in October by AOL Games and the Associated Press found that 43% of parents say they never play games with their kids. About 30% said they’ve joined in, but never for more than an hour.

Meanwhile, another survey by the NPD Group found that between the ages of 6 and 8, kids form videogame-playing habits that will determine how “serious” they’ll be about gaming as big kids. “This appears to be a critical age at which to capture the future gamers of the world,” says NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

Parents of young children can either withhold game machines, play along with a watchful eye, or look the other way. Either way, the Wii will be impossible to ignore

a newly revised 40GB PlayStation 3 console will now be on sale - but don’t trade in your PS2 just yet!

A cheaper PS3 before Christmas was always on the cards given the state of the game console market.

Sony’s new 40GB model will be on sale later this week in NZ stores for $800.

That’s a price that puts it in league with the Xbox360 Elite (selling at GPstore for the same) while the Xbox 360 complete set is there for $649.95. The Wii is still the cheapest at around $500.

And it comes at the critical time for the consoles with Christmas looming and everyone bringing out the creme of their new titles.

So what’s missing from the new model? PlayStation 2 backward-compatibility will be gone and there will be just two USB ports, and you won’t find media slots for Compact Flash, Memory Stick, or SD Cards.

Maybe none of that matters to the thousands of PlayStation fans who want to get their hands on the new console and the new exclusive games like Heavenly Sword and Ratchet and Clank.

But it’s a shame that the mountain of games most gamers own and still love from their PS2 collection won’t be playable on the console.

In the past, Sony has made this a point of difference saying it’s a core value and necessary for the future.

Now the argument is that there are heaps of great new PS3 titles coming and anyway consumers tell Sony they don’t want backward-compatibility.

That statement sounds somewhat dubious. I love putting in my God Of War and Everquest/Final Fantasy games and upscaling the image to hi-def and saving myself swapping dozens of memory cards (I have about 14 PS2) by storing them to the PS3 virtual memory cards on the internal hard drive.. hard to believe that ability has been removed for a mere $400.

Even at the reduced money - $800 - the only way some PS2 gamers will graduate to the next-gen will be to trade in their PS2 to a gaming shop to get a discount off the price - with the return of some PS2 titles.

PS3 online does offer some cool retro/arcade PlayStation games to download like Wipeout but until there is a huge range of titles to choose from and you can afford them (prices are dropping), it’s hard for those gamers to think they’ll never play games like their GTA favourites again.

Anyway good luck to Sony. They have sold 15,000 current PS3s in NZ so far and promise 65 PS3 titles in the stores by Christmas.

One of those just out is Atari’s Colin McRae: DIRT (already on Xbox and PC) which has taken on new symbolism since the recent death of the rally legend.

It’s a brilliant reworking of the popular series with the chance to do heaps of new high speed muddy offroad racing whether its a high-powered Celica, SUV or a Super Buggy.