This week’s comic is in celebration of one of my favourite game series: Forza. What is most amazing to me about Forza 3 is just how accessible they’ve made it. Everyone I’ve sat down to play the game who isn’t a fan of simulation racers has had a great time thanks to options like auto-braking and on-demand rewind. Make no mistake, it’s developers like Turn 10 who will attract non-core gamers to our beloved pastime and they’re doing with without useless waggle and gimmicky party games. Yes, that was a shot at the Wii.

When the Wii was first introduced we all assumed that it would bring the casual market into gaming, widening our audience and giving us more people to play with. If I had a nickle for every time I’ve heard, “They’ll buy a Wii and then upgrade to a 360 or PS3″ then I’d be a millionaire by now. The reality of the situation is that this just isn’t happening in any quantifiable degree.  The Wii hasn’t created new “gamers”, they’ve created a new breed of… something else.

Turn 10 Studios, on the other hand, has taken a game which was originally aimed squarely at the hardest of hardcore gamers and opened it up to everyone.  Instead of making casual party games accessible, they’ve made accessible hardcore games. Do you see the difference? It’s an important one and I hope every other developer out there is paying attention.

Another thing we should probably talk about is the, err, “controversy” surrounding this comic.  On Monday I tweeted, “LADIES! MS thinks the latest 360P may be “female unfriendly”. I need to know what you think! http://bit.ly/22pT15“

All the women who replied agreed, some more vocally than others, that it was not sexist in any way. In fact, I think I would argue that it is more “pro-woman” than anything else.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise since the comic is co-written by a woman. I know that Maranda doesn’t pop onto the blog as often as everyone else would like, but that’s just kind of the way it is.  She’s going to be taking a much bigger role soon though, and then maybe these posts will be a little more coherent. I’ve been told I tend to ramble.

Oh, and speaking of I seem to have gotten myself off topic. CONTROVERSY!

There were some people who replied with some not nice things about Microsoft and I just wanted to say that my friends there just want to be careful. The last thing they need is a post on Kotaku reading, “BREAKING: Microsoft hates women and puppies”.  The comic is distributed to every Live enabled Xbox in Canada, that’s a lot of people to potentially offend. We shouldn’t blame them for wanting to protect themselves. I certainly don’t.

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