("Hello viewers!")

Did you have a nice Christmas? Lots of expensive new games?

Or weren't they that new at all?

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If there's one thing the videogames business has never been any good at, it's learning lessons.

No matter how many times people tell them they like original ideas as well as an endless diet of racing and football games, no matter how many times people refuse to fall for tired, overstretched second sequels (how many "3" games can you think of that have been a big success?), game publishers just keep churning out the same old drivel and boring everyone silly. Let's take a closer look at the phenomenon.

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First of all, a question. Is anyone else sick of Electronic Arts releasing the same six games over and over again every single year yet?

This year, they've taken the mickey even more than usual with no fewer than THREE versions of FIFA Soccer in 12 months, but even in a normal year, they persistently try to sell us slightly-tweaked rewrites like NASCAR Racing that were complete rubbish in the first place. For flip's sake, EA, is it too much to ask for a DIFFERENT game every now and again?

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Mind you, even EA could take some lessons in sheer brassnecked cashing-in from Eidos.

A gap of just five months between the first World League Soccer and the Michael-Owen-bandwagon-jumping sequel must surely be some kind of record.

Again, it wouldn't be so bad if the game was noticeably different, but in WLS 99, all the programming effort seems to have been expended on making the net move nicely when you score a goal. The actual game's still hopeless.

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And then, of course, there's the thorny subject of Tomb Raider 3. For Pete's sake, what's the matter with everyone?

Despite having had two years to learn about control from games like Mario, Banjo-Kazooie and even Gex 2, Lara Croft still steers like a cow, but with a turning circle the size of an oil tanker's. Half the game's challenge lies in getting the silly trout to stop running face-first into walls. (ah, so THAT'S what her big chest's for - it's an airbag!) Review scores? High 90s all round. Do they think we're stupid?

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(That last one was a rhetorical question, by the way. Reviewers don't CARE what you think.)

And then there's tennis. Every year, half-a-dozen publishers come up with new tennis games, invariably terrible. (This year, see Actua Tennis. Or rather, don't.) Tennis hasn't been good on a console since the Game Boy version a decade ago. Also, why do you think there hasn't been a noteworthy tennis coin-op since Pong? Because it's a crap idea for a videogame, that's why. Software publishers - GIVE UP ON IT.

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But anyway. All of this is a pretty tired old debate, of course. The reason EA keep slightly rewriting FIFA is that people keep buying it, even when it's in awful incarnations like FIFA 64.