I will need to chain myself to my books when I’m not at work, so there’s nothing really to look forward to until after my exam. My only forms of entertainment will be the odd TV show (HIMYM and TBBT premiered last night!), and I will live vicariously through my newsfeeds. Tokyo Game Show 2009 begins on Thursday, so here’s hoping for some interesting gaming news. I was scoping out their site and came across this floorplan. If you look on the bottom right where the international pavilions are, you can see that the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade will be represented there. If they mentioned I might get to go to TGS, who knows, I may just have accepted their job offer :P The gaming world is abuzz with yesterday’s big release of Halo 3: ODST (apparently there was even some kind of event going down at the Fermenting Cellar), but there are quite a few good DS games I need to play:

• Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. I loved Curious Village, and this one’s turning out to be pretty good too. Except I don’t really care for the mini-games (the camera/tea/cat stuff is so annoying). I think I’m close to the middle of the game, but I refuse to pick it up again before CFA exam cause it’s super addictive :(
• Scribblenauts. I’ve read so many great reviews, and the gameplay intrigues me so I’ll have to check it out.
• Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. It comes out on the 29th. I shouldn’t even have to justify why this is on my list.

Aaaaaand I just wanted to highlight a few finance-related articles that caught my interest:

• Finance prof says markets are too reliant on mathematical models, need more “common sense”. I agree! Less math makes the world a better place.
• An RBC trader was fired, supposedly over dating a Ponzi-scheming dude, and is now suing. Also, turns out her male colleagues are really lame with sexual advances (“sensy”?? Please kill yourself).
• Goldman may now want out of their bank charter to lessen regulatory influence. Namely, caps on their nice fat paychecks.

• MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV was announced. What the hell, Square. Can we at least see FFXIII first, some time this century?
• Microsoft introduced Project Natal, a motion detecting add-on for Xbox 360, for a completely controller-free experience. As if we didn’t look retarded enough playing Wii.
• Bayonetta looks like a super bad-ass game. Check out the E3 trailer. Yes, her hair is also her “clothing” and it can grow/retract at will and turn into various weapons. And yes, her heels double as pistols.
• PSP Go announced, at an inexplicably inflated price (US$249), but the white one is damn sexy.

In other news, there’s an article in the Financial Times about the waning love affair between the Japanese and their LV swag. The part that surprised me was the analyst prediction:

Yano Research forecast that the market would shrink further this year, falling below Y1,000bn to nearly half the peak of Y1,897bn in 1996 and then shrinking to levels last seen 20 years ago before it entered its era of strong growth.

Personally I don’t think it would shrink that dramatically. I thought the whole luxury goods bubble would leave some debris lying around. Although the boom may be blowing over, but I just can’t believe that at some point in the future there would be zero remnants of it. I mean, not everyone can go back to “Zara dresses and Gap jeans”.

My beef is, I really don’t understand where Nintendo is going with this. I mean, did Nintendo’s marketing department conclude that people actually want these features? Are they trying to replace something (ie. iPhone)? Target new market? How is this an improvement? If I want to take shittacular-quality pictures on the go, I have a cellphone. If I want to listen to music, I have my mp3 player. Hey, what if I want to listen to music while I’m playing a DS game?! Are we going to start seeing DS games that require you to take photos of stuff? In that case, what about old DS owners? Are they going to try to suck more money from us by offering a camera peripheral for Phats and Lites? What about people who have the Guitar Hero guitar grip, or the paddle controller?

Also, Nintendo’s little media summit left some questions unanswered, such as: When the hell is it coming to CANADA?!!?! I was going to get my brother a DS for Christmas, and the rumors of a DS makeover excited me, but North America won’t be seeing the DSi until “well into 2009“, because DS Lite sales here are still going strong. So what the heck am I supposed to do?!

I also don’t think the nearly 40% markup in price is well-justified. The whole package sounds very gimmicky. Then again, I thought the Wii was gimmicky and two years after launch, you’d still be hard-pressed to find them in stock.

Although the DSi leaves me confuzzled, I’m still stoked for the up-and-coming game lineup. 3D Picross + Gyakuten Kenji + Kingdom Hearts 358/2 + Ragnarok Online = drool bucket needed. Yes, you may conclude that all I’ve been doing at work is refreshing my Google Reader.