I wrote this all on my iPod sorry it isn't the neatest. It took me about 15 minutes just to type the whole thing, I was trying to finish it faster.

fallout 3 is an awesome rpg that just happens to have a first person mode and shooting. i would call it an fps.

and as for the whole kids and hardcore arguement, pokemon is one of the hardest core games i've ever played. ivs, evs, natures, hell, even completing the pokedex will easily suck up a big chunk of your life. i've spent 460ish hours on ds pokemon games alone, and i'm not even into competitive battling yet, nor is my pokedex even close to completion.

honestly i think it gets a bad rap because it got too big too fast.

Meh, CoD's popularity is slowly dying, and I'm sure Halo's is as well. People will get tired of them over time, it's just a fad. And most of the "real gamers' I know have an open enough mind to play all kinds of games, even "kiddy" ones. The ones who give the speeches about "rofl so HARdCOre" are usually the ones who didn't even play games before CoD came out anyway. They're young, and they'll see the error of their ways eventually.

Did.... Did you just call the FPSer a fad?

Individual franchises within the FPSer genre rise and fall, but the genre itself has always, always been one of the most popular. And it will continue to be the most popular - if CoD and Halo drop away, then something else will rise up to take its place.

Indeed, I remember when there was a time where I loved FPS (007 all the way! First with Golden Eye, then my bro got Agent Under Fire for the GC) but yeah, I moved on although I still have a fair amount of skill considering how rare I play FPS games now.

Although FPS have been around for ages, it's the fact that Halo and CoD made the FPS gaming world blow up and suddenly it seemed that that's all everyone played and if you owned an XBox, you had to have Halo or CoD (which I don't ).

Well those dev kits for the WiiU that the 3rd parties have right now are 50% more powerful then the PS3, however they are under clocked as well. Sega has said that they will be getting more powerful and update dev kits.

That's what I'm hearing too. That devs don't have the final dev kits and are waiting on Nintendo to finally hand over the finals to get the games running the way it should be running on WiiU in terms of using it's power- or whatever.

It's been very quiet and it'll probably be like that until TGS or early next year when Nintendo potentionally show off the games they've been working on along with their developers. There's a reason why Nintendo handed other devs to work on games such as Pilotwings Resort, Zelda OoT and Luigi's Mansion 2. These games, the originals were being internally developed by Nintendo themselves (R&D, Tokyo, etc.)

I'm assuming Nintendo is working on a handful of games for WiiU and letting their 2nd party and even 3rd party partners to work on their games.

That's just my theory and observation. Retro Studios is also involved with Mario Kart 3DS, which is kinda strange to me because there has never been a Mario Kart game even co-developed by another developer.

@WaltzElf-
No, I called Halo and CoD a fad. The FPS genre has seen it's share of amazing titles, sorry if I came across as a Nintendo fanboy, or something, as that really couldn't be farther from the truth. I'd be more than glad to see more titles like Half-Life 2 or Bioshock coming out, seeing as how they're not utterly generic and lifeless.

Don't forget that the Wii U is still technicallly in it's prototype stage of development, and a prototype can be very different from the final version. I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii U is 75-100% more powerful than the PS3 at release.

(I'm an inventor so I have experience with these things myself)

Actually, Nintendo announced that the system will only be somewhat more powerful than the PS3 in order to keep the system affordable.

Gents, remember that to have something noticeabilty more powerfull than something else you need far more than just 100% better. I would say 500% is the minimum. Take this as an example, PS3 is between 10 and 15 times more powerfull than the Wii, but I bet most of you would say "perhaps it is100% more powerfull ...", well, not 100% but 1000% or more. Sony did multiply the power by 15 from PS2 to PS3. Nintendo did multiply the power by only 2 between NCQ and Wii.

@Mandoble: 500%? That means it would take more than five PS3s working together to match a Wii U. A console like that would have enormous production costs, and it probably wouldn't be able to run without overheating. Most of that extra power wouldn't even make a difference to the player, either. 50% sounds about right, especially since the PS4/720 aren't coming out soon.

Well I don't know about these statistics, but here's what I know: The developers from third-party said that Wii u surpasses PS3 in term of power. I don't know where I have read this, but you can search it on Google.

@Lordy The FPS genre is seriously better than ever at the moment:

• Crysis 2 - graphically stunning and the multiple abilities that are found in the game create for one of the most unique online experiences that I've seen. Perfect controls and balanced gameplay, and a good single player story.
• Killzone 3 - One of, if not the best, single player FPS game on the market. To say that this game is Epic in scale is an understatement. FPS motion control is finally perfected here and awesome online is packed with unique modes and cheap DLC.
• Resistance 2 - Awesome, long single player campaign that is hard as nails. A deep story and loads of awesome weapons - inspired by Ratchet and Clank games - make this a top tier shooter, and that isn't even counting in the online modes.
• FEAR 2 - Awesome story, gameplay and scary as hell. Very unique FPS shooter experience.
• Bulletstorm - I don't even know how to explain this game, but if feels like an action/adventure and FPS hybrid that is a absolute blast.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution - come on, it Deus Ex in HD and looking amazing.
• Left 4 Dead 2 - hordes of zombies and shotguns and brutal melee kills and fully online co-op. Unique Valve blend that is as great as Half-Life.
• Borderlands - FPS cell-shaded dungeon crawler with tons of loot. Awesome DLC and online co-op and Crawermax (you'd have to see to understand).
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - the ultimate Rainbow Six game that perfects everything in the series before it and your in Vegas.
• Inversion - Taking the FPS into the realm of inverted gameplay. Looking sharp but still not too much know yet.
• Singularity - FPS that allows you to shift time, and even decay enemies and the environment. Awesome graphics, gameplay and controls, and this is a very overlooked recently released game.

These are just a few of the great one that are out and upcoming, and that isn't even taking things into the 3rd person shooters. These games are going nowhere and are here to stay!

When is the next Rainbow Six coming out?? Watching my brother play, it looked really fun and much more appealing than CoD or any other recent FPS.

Left 4 Dead is obviously fun. Borderlands- love it and how it blends the FPS genre with RPG elements. Bulletstorm? Eh..

I'm curious to see if Valve will make TF3. TF2 is pretty much dead on consoles but I would like them to embrace WiiU and the other next gen consoles just as they have on PC. PS3 ihas some Steam incorporated- so bringing that to WiiU and the other next consoles would be stellar.

The only reason TF2 is dead on consoles is because of the cost and limits of constantly updating them compared to PCs.

@Rift, yes, 500% as minimum. PS3 is like 15 PS2, PS4 would be like what? Very same did happen between XboX and 360. A jump in power of only x1.5 will unlikely happen for these. As a matter of fact, new portable Sonly Vita might be equivalent to 7 Wiis or even more and it is cheaper than 3DS (and doesnt overheat). CPUs have advanced quite a lot in the past 7 years, production costs should not be a big issue for a x5 PS3. And believe me, a power of PS3x10 would make a lot of difference for the players, mostly because many PC games that simply cannot run in today's consoles would be running fine. Anyway, if Nintendo is again thinking about a console just able to run Mario's in HD, a PS3x1 is already way more than enough, problem is that not a single other game dev company cares at all about 2D platformers.

You're forgetting a few things. When you're comparing graphical power on a scale of that size, the human eye can barely tell the difference as it is. Do you really think something like that would have a significantly noticeable difference on the average living room TV set? There won't be consoles with that kind of power until the technology that enables it is available to the average person. The PS4 isn't coming anytime soon, either. If the Wii U really is more powerful than five PS3s, then most of it will be lost once the player is actually experiencing it.

@Rift, I've never referred to graphical power, but to computational power (which also includes graphical power). You might have a pretty nice family trees, and create a forest with these. Now your power migth allow you to create this forest with 10 of these nice looking trees or with 1000 trees plus rocks, rivers, lakes, ruins. But now you need to put something else there, what about some wolves? 5 wolves or might be 50 wolves? Ah, but each wolf might have the inteligence of a potato, or perhaps reacts like a real one. What abount adding some bears there, smart ones too. Why not some birds? Add some fog, rain, lightnings, wind effects moving the trees and sheets, dark and dense clouds moving. And all of that just to create an atmosphere in a particular area of your 50 square kilometers "land". What about an army crossing that forest? 500 men between pikemen, swordmen, archers, horses? What about a big battle in that forest? And if these warriors were really intelligent, not just silly scripted? Of course this cannot be done in today's PS3. But would you like to play that kind of games in the near future? Or just Marios? Because with a today's PCs you can.

@Mandoble: Yes, that's all going on behind the scenes, and yes, "more powerful" doesn't have to mean "better graphics". Today's technology isn't as powerful as real life, but it's still plenty powerful enough to create an immersive experience. The PS4 won't be out for a long time, and there's no need for the Wii U to be as ridiculously overpowered as you claim. Yes, eventually, but there's no way it would happen now. If you want to stick with your PC and play CoD for the rest of your life, that's fine, but just because a high-end PC is capable of more doesn't mean a console isn't capable at all.