This Week in Gaming 1: Introduction

2007 is going to be one of the biggest years for video games since their creation. It's hard to deny this. Gaming is more popular than ever, raking in more money than ever, and arguably getting more complex and better than ever. Most importantly, this is the year when all three of the now current-generation consoles have been released. We've got the Xbox 360 -- released a year ahead of the other guys with two SKUs, a killer online service, and a hi-def focus. And then there's the Playstation 3 -- the behemoth sequel to last gen's hands-down winner with a bigger size, bigger online plan, and much bigger price. And rounding out the triumvirate is Nintendo's Wii -- pint-sized both physically and performance-wise, but full of potential innovation via a motion-sensing controller that's quite unlike anything we've ever gamed with before.

So now that the full bevy of challengers are all out in the public arena, it's obvious that 2007's going to be important. We may not know who the fully defined winner of this generation is by the end of the year, but we're definitely going to have a better idea of which direction the pendulum of public adoration is swinging.

So what is This Week in Gaming all about? This Week in Gaming is a year-long weekly series of bloggings about the state of gaming and the games industry as this landmark year progresses. Every Saturday night, I will write up a new post, each of which will attempt to accomplish two things:

1. Looking at the gaming news of the past week to analyze what happened and look at how it affects the over all console race

2. Discuss my personal week of gaming and how my own opinion is being shaped based on my experiences with the new technology and games

I've been planning this experimental blog for a long time, and I'm really looking forward to writing a weekly column on the medium I love most. Thanks to all of you who are joining me in this venture and will jump in as we progress -- your thoughts and opinions are ALWAYS welcome either as comments here or in e-mails to kefkataran@gmail.com. Next week we'll really kick this deal off, so hope to see you then.