Ten years from now poll down, videocard poll up

As you may have noticed, the previous poll did run a bit long. Normally we'll bring up a new poll each month, but what was obvious to you was also obvious to us: the amount of votes for the Ten years from now poll was simply too good to be believable. Actually, we had the feeling that the results weren't completely realistic for a longer period of time already, during earlier polls. The most probable explanation is that anonymous voting caused such an amount of 'noise' that the poll results became all quite equal. Anonymous voting means that you don't need to be logged in to cast your vote. Now, there are plenty MSX fans online who don't periodically sign in or don't have an MRC account anyway. As long as all the voters are MSX fans, there wouldn't be much of a problem. Now, imagine all the hundreds of Metal Gear related MP3 downloaders each month who may cast a random vote for no particular reason, and you can easily see that the amount of 'foreign voters' may even outgrow real MSX votes.

For some odd reason, the previous poll suddenly ignited a Cambrian Explosion of well over 3000 votes. Considering the amount of active MRC users and considering the results which -to us- are far from realistic, we'll refrain from adding conclusions to it. If you want to know the outcome of the poll, for what it's worth, simply click the previous poll and you'll know.

Needless to say, as we believe that anonymous voting was the cause of this, we've taken measures to prevent this in the future. As of now, it is only possible to cast your vote in a poll when you are logged-in, which also implies that you should have an MRC user account. Sorry for the possible inconvenience, but we think polls can provide interesting information for all of us and thus we want to make sure that polls remain authentic!

That being said, let's hop to a new subject: the new poll! Since a while there are ongoing discussions on our forum about our MSX videochips, videochips on other retro systems and ideas about new videochips. The development of such a basic component is quite a debate: retro MSX fans will argue that there is no point in turning a retro system into something closely resembling a PC, especially while we already have a Graphics9000 -quite a capable cartridge in its own right- which somehow seems neglected by developers. Others could argue that the MSX architecture has always been open to any kind of new hardware. It's a debate about MSX identity, similar to debates about whether the 1chipMSX is an MSX or not. It's a debate about content, userbase and vicious circles. In short: it's an interesting debate! We feel the time is right to bring on a poll and see whether we can collect opinions on a more massive scale. Is a new MSX videochip the holy grail? Choose.. wisely!

Relevant link: Videocard poll