OPINION: Wiistation 360

I will state here and now that current grouping of consoles is uninspiring and so far basically depressing. This seems to me a little like the console dark ages, a dim period before some great reformation. What really blows my mind however is how I was completely wrong about how it was going to shake out. Here are the problems as I see them in the gaggle of game googahs of this, the seventh generation.

Price- Whoa crap! What the hell happened here? I'm not looking for a game playing battleship thanks, can you please remember this? Wait, no you can't, and now we have $600 Playstations. Ok. I wasn't buying one then and I'm not buying one now at $399, mainly because of the fact that Sony decided to neuter their own console's backward compatibility to preserve the still very brisk market for their own PS2 hardware. Yet the only reason why people were still buying the damn PS2 is because the PS3 was $600 for chrissake! Do you see the craziness here? Should we all run out and buy the PS3 now because of Sony's about face? I say no. Back compat is doable and really only suddenly impossible because of Sony's own misjudgments.

Speaking of misjudgements why not talk about making your A class video game console a tank in your video disc format war and making gamers foot the bill? Perhaps we shouldn't because isn't really pertinent to games. Wait, not pertinent to games? There is a lesson in there somewhere... At any rate I'm waiting for a $299 PS3 with real backward compatibility in hardware before I decide to lay down my money on one of these.

Now lets just get this out of the way. PS2 was frigging king. It wrecked the market because it was a great console, probably the best ever made. Even now top shelf non-kid-type-license titles are coming out for it, especially in Japan. Speaking of Japan, people there are still buying more PS2s than PS3s. Crazy right? Sony forgot about a concept called planned obsolescence when they made the PS2 so great, so much so that in fact it was just too great. Whereas Microsoft got it perfect with a console (XBox 1) that was crap before it was ever obsolete, clearing the way for the 360 with little backtalk from it's previous generation. With infinite resources you knew the next Xbox would take some part of the market anyway. You can't go wrong when you don't have to get it right, way to go guys.

Games- Somewhere in the dawning of the current generation, forces along the battle lines of the console war got the idea that in our American market, what gamers wanted were PC games. Not innovative console titles, but whatever you can get on the PC minus strategy or simulation games. For example; your first person shooters, racing games, sports games, third person action adventure stuff and a few 3D platformers thrown in because, well they are consoles after all. This was always the aim in the Xbox part of the world, so no change there. Sony somehow looked at this and saw this suddenly as the "way to do business in America". Or they could have been following Penny Arcade really closely and were just trying to mollify them, who knows? Either track would have gotten us to this point.

It is possible that things are just changing? That as an aging gamer I am yearning for 2d animation and games that don't require me to stare constantly at a tiny minimap? Perhaps, but things are changing for the worse one way or another. It isn't just my perception. All of this plus the move away from single player games is what is causing this new wasteland to propigate itself. Ask yourself, does every game need to have multi player now? Really? Is this sudden requirement driving publishers to PC based content? The whole Xbox live, "pay for the internet, again, you dummy" model is the real culprit there probably. With that driving development (along with enormous bags of money with the initials MS stamped on them) achievements, voice chat and the other dongles of multi play suddenly became way more important than they really should have been. I am willing to live with the idea that Microsoft was just ahead of the curve and that this is what the new gamers of today are really looking for, I'm just not convinced that it was something that had to happen.

The Wii- This was the one I wanted. THIS was the new console that was going to take it to MS and make them hurt in that special place. The wiimote would the undoing of the rest of the industry and make them understand that game play was king and that shoving Rainbows and Call of Dutys up the tailpipe of the console public wasn't going to win the day. But then... the games sucked. Worse than that some vile miasma drove off the great Japanese developers from the fledgling Wii. If you don't count the Capcom remakes there is practically NO representation from them anywhere. Are they still smarting after the N64 cart debacle, or is there just a serious enmity there now that no amount of controller waggling can repair?

Nintendo even had the whole price thing set up. They made good hardware at a decent price with innovation and design at the forefront. As hardware, actually the Wii is the hands down winner. It's still hard to find and bringing in astronomical numbers that are making their competitors jealous. Does that mean I want to buy the system for it's killer app which just so undeniably happens to be Wii Sports: Bowling? Ummm, no. I learned with the Gamecube that the first party Nintendo stuff, a least in the modern era, doesn't really do it for me. It can be fun at times and always interesting in terms of design, but it lacks something that it used to have. I want to play Galaxy, for sure, but I am going to wait until I'm at a pals house to try it. I'm not made of money ya know.

So lets tidy up this mess and get to the heart of the issue. What do I really think about the current generation in 2008?

Playstation 3- Too expensive and the wrong games to boot. With so much FPS schlock and nothing innovative, I'm waiting for next year. Don't take my word for it just ask gamers in the East how much they love it.

Xbox 360- Vile. I blame everything on Microsoft. The only consolation here is that the Japanese hate this thing more than the PS3.

Wii- Best console, worst games. The silicon version of a Shakespearean tragedy. If blessed with a long life, perhaps the fates will smile on the little white box and give it some titles worth purchasing.

I'll be hiding out with my backlog of PS2 titles until christmas 09 probably. With that and my C64 emulator I should be fine.