Shogi prospect

[mschribr]

The world computer shogi championship will be played soon. In the past championships the winner played a human. We saw the computer improve at each year's exhibition game.

Here is short history of the Man vs Computer exhibition games at the annual world computer shogi championship.
In 2003 the program IS Shogi running on a Pentium 4 beat 5 Dan Pro Katsumata with 2 Piece Handicap in a 25 minute game.
In 2004 the program YSS running on a dual Opteron 248 beat 5 Dan Pro Katsumata with Rook Handicap in a 25 minute game.
In 2005 the program Gekisashi running on a dual Opteron beat 5 Dan Pro Katsumata with Bishop Handicap in a 25 minute game.
In 2006 the Asahi Amateur Meijin Kato Yukio easily beat the program Bonanza running on a CoreDuo T2600 in a 15 minute game.
In 2007 the Asahi Amateur Meijin Kato Yukio beat the YSS running on a 2 processor 8 core Xeon X5355 in a 15 minute game with difficulty.
In 2008 the program Gekisashi running on a 2 processor 8 core Xeon X5482 beat Amateur Meijin Shimizugami Toru in a 15 minute game.

In 2009 the Computer Shogi Association decided to stop these exhibition games. The reason given is the computer is too strong for short games. Long games are difficult to setup and there is not enough interest.

I think these man vs computer games have been the only way to measure the progress of shogi programs.

My question is what do people want more? A Man vs Computer Tournament or Computer vs Computer Tournament?
Mark