Cody Taylor

The strangest rumour doing the rounds of late in the games industry has to have been the one about Grand Theft Auto V.

This is a feature about how not to make a game. In fact, it goes farther than this: it’s a feature about how developers often pander to the whims of the market at the expense of envelope-pushing. It’s nobody’s fault per se – money is money and businesses want to make as much as possible with the least effort and investment.

It’s incredible how much video games have developed. What started as a couple of dots and bars on a screen has evolved into stories with character development, fully-realized worlds and eye candy that even the most zealous traditionalists can appreciate. Here’s a look at five franchises; specifically, what they looked like back then and now.

Looking at the end-of-year NPD numbers from Friday, it’s clear that Sony failed to grab any real momentum away from Nintendo or Microsoft; the performance of the PlayStation 3 is simply dire. No one is arguing that the system isn’t wonderful, as we called the hardware the best product in 2008, and the games available for the system were some of the