I have had tons of Star Wars ships for awhile, but nobody to play with really; they sit beautifully on the shelf, LIKE MY DREAMS. Is that too much? Is it the capitalization, or the twee sentiment? In any case, X-Wing is a neat game with robust genes - so robust, in fact, that its systemic brood is multitudinous. Star Trek: Attack Wing, for example, is the same bones, but virtuously and uniquely executed. Dungeons And Dragons: Attack Wing I haven't played, but incorporates ground combat; it might be unfair and superficial to include Plaid Hat's Tail Feathers in this list, more of a cousin by marriage maybe, but it's at least adjacent to the greater constellation. Oh! And Sails of Glory. I, uh… I like skirmishy wargames. Primarily because they're more likely to actually get played, wherever my deeper affections may lie.

In any case.

My suspicion, given the heap of sci-fi plastic he has piled on his Bespin playmat, is that this probably won't be the only strip we do on it. There's lots to say. Gabriel allowed me to have what I wanted most in this strip, even though the entire production is an attempt to shame him, by having Tycho slobber on a card. It was a moist indulgence that is deeply appreciated.

It is a fact universally acknowledged that all Microsoft rumors are true, so I haven't taken any time out to contact the people I know over there to verify it. There'll be a slim model this year, and a potent upgrade next year that is apparently designed to skullfuck the Playstation 4 Neo. I will tell you one thing that I know for certain: the ResolutionGate stuff drives Microsoft completely fucking crazy. Apparently they're tired of that. This also allows them to get into the VR game with the Oculus Rift as their platform. In, like, 2017. But yeah.

Microsoft has a lot less to lose than Sony pushing out new hardware. Where compatibility breaks used to be an incentive to upgrade, I don't think that's an aspirational thing for the consumer anymore - it's just wasted money. That's why they're going fucking hard on this Backward Compatibility stuff, and they're using terms like "Forward Compatibility," which I think might just be "compatibility." This is also what their thus far weirdly communicated and partially manifested "Universal Windows Platform" is about. You can drop one product that knows where it's being run, and it behaves accordingly on Xbox One, PC, this new Xbox, whatever.

Chris Kohler has it completely right when he says we'll buy consoles like phones, with everything that implies. A new iPhone 6 Plus, after taxes, is over a thousand dollars - but nobody does that. They pay incrementally, or they exchange old hardware. It's "hardware as a service." I thought for sure this was the last console generation, right, except now we're getting two and half times as many. The ecosystem changed underneath them, and to survive they must become strange beasts.

(CW)TB out.