Firstlook.com
In the latest issue of industry publication GameWeek, I was intrigued by an ad that claimed we are about to witness the "death of the screenshot."  Given that the entire online editorial community thrives off new in-game images, I wondered exactly what firstlook.com meant when they claimed we would never look at a screenshot again.  After visiting the site, I now know what they are trying to say: The screenshot will be replaced by a small low-resolution RealVideo file.  I think not.

Firstlook.com does have a number of game trailers uploaded onto its servers (including ones for Shiny's Sacrifice and Blizzard's Diablo II) but there's no way anyone would forgo looking at screenshots in favor of a poor-quality video file.  After all, there's a huge difference in quality between a 1600x1200 3D accelerated screenshot and a slickly produced video trailer that is the size of a postage stamp on most computer monitors.

Without question, the screenshot is still here to stay.  While video trailers are always a great way to augment screenshots, I don't know anyone who is about to give up viewing an in-game image for a video trailer.  Nice try firstlook.com, but screenshots are always the rule until Internet video can be at a resolution that mirrors a full-size screenshot.