This is not a dig at any console, company or person for their personal preferences, but I find it fascinating to see how Mircosoft has penetrated the gaming and has generated for want of a better term 'rabid fanboys' that other consoles have long since had.
It was not so long ago that XBOX was announced and you would have had to search long and hard to find many that supported them. I would love to see a snapshot in time of forums such as this to compare the attitudes towards MS and their gaming plans then and now. Now all over the net there are passionate supporters screaming the virtures of first born of the next gen.
It will be interesting to see where this competition ends, but with the ever increasing value of the video game market, you can be guaranteed that either Sony or MS will be a willing 'loser', as Nintendo seem to have been prepared to do in the console market.
Personally I think it is great to have 2/3 giants slugging it out, because as consmers competition generally means good things and whilst I have never owned a XBOX and owe both Sony and Nintendo a lot for providing many years of gaming fun and just for being there as I was growing up, I reckon MS's foray in the market has been interesting to say the least.
The one thing i'll never understand though, is why people would choose to support one console exclusively and will defend it blindly. I talking about adults here as well, people who have free choice (and assumingly suitable $$) to choose. Children I understand but adults?? Good games are good games, no matter what the console. Limiting the availability of good games to yourself and then acting like thats not cutting off your nose to spite your face, by blindly defending said console, is rather humourous in a ironic sort of way, I feel. That said I guess a quick cross section of the people who a frequenting the various message boards across the net and are passioniate enough to post their opinions of the future profitability of billion dollar companies like they are fact, to strangers no less, probably would answer a lot of questons. The term well-adjusted is not the first in that burst's into my head.
Anyways I just felt like writing so take from it what you will.
J.
PS if there is the odd letter missing, apologies, my keyboard sucks and proof reading never was my strongest suit.
How far the Pendulum has swung
I get the feeling some people enjoy arguing about videogames more than playing them. They'll spend 20 hours playing Final Fantasy X and 40 hours arguing about why it sucks, or play a game for 20 minutes and then spend an equal amount of time writing their initial impressions. Every medium has 'em, it's just relatively new to gaming as adults haven't been a significant part of the market for very long, and everyone expects that kind of discussion from kids.
You'll find that there are some disagreements about console preferences, even around here. I also think that for the most part, we're a lot more civilized about such things here than you'd find somewhere like Gamefaqs or Joystiq, where any such conversation quickly degrades to trolling and name calling.
One thing that I've seen is that in a lot of cases, people who are the most vocal detractors of any of the gaming platforms could usually care less about the platform, and instead tend to dislike the company that produces it. I suspect a fair portion of the flaming about the 360 comes from people who just don't like Microsoft. The same goes for the PS2/PS3 and people who don't like Sony. That happens when there really isn't much difference in the merits of the consoles (really, all things considered the three consoles of this generation weren't a whole lot different in capabilities. ) The Xbox had slightly better graphics and Live, the PS2 had the most games, and the Cube had the strongest first party offerings, but a game ported to all three of the consoles was basically the same on each.
I think we're going to see a fair bit of divergence in the approach taken in this generation by each company. Microsoft is really trying to emphasize the online experience on the 360, with Live Arcade and the Marketplace for microtransactions being a major part of their strategy. They're also offering Live Arcade as a platform for developers without the big budget needed for a typical commercial release to be able to get their products into the living room. I think the XNA architecture used for 360 development is another major part of this, since it allows games being developed for Windows to be ported to the 360 with relative ease. It's interesting to note that you will be able to plug in a wired X360 controller and use it on a Windows system with no trouble (Both of mine are wireless, so I haven't tried this yet.) I really think Microsoft is trying to get the 360 past the traditional game console and make more of a convergence device out of it.
Nintendo's approach for the Revolution, on the other hand, seems to be to simplify things. Instead of trying to outmuscle the competition they're going for "good enough" hardware that they'll be able to use to make a compact, less expensive console, and although it may not keep up with the 360 and PS3 on everything, they're not trying to. They seem to be positioning the Revolution as a second console for people who already own a 360 or PS3. They're trying to break out of the traditional gamer demographic and try to appeal to audiences that probably could care less about a Halo, Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid type game (Nintendogs is a good illurtration of this strategy.) They're also trying to change the whole experience of gaming by rethinking the way we control things (and they've done an excellent job of this so far with the DS.) Add to this their extensive back catalog and there's a lot of potential. I also think that with the DS they've done a good job of reasserting their dominance of the handheld space, as the DS continues to outsell the PSP by a significant margin.
As for Sony... I really don't know. If you listen to Kutaragi you'd think that the PS3 is going to be worth giving up sliced bread for, but I don;t think we really have anywhere near enough info to really even know what the PS3 is going to be. My guess is that they're trying to put out the most powerful of the three consoles, with a secondary goal of establishing Blu-Ray as the next major DVD standard. They seem to be trying to get as many of the big budget epics on their plate as they can, with little regard for the smaller budget and indie stuff the others are trying to get on theirs. There doesn't seem to be any sort of coherent online strategy for the PS3 (and it sounds increasingly like they're just going to stick with the ad hoc approach they're using currently.) My suspicion is that the mockup shown at E3 this year is going to have little resemblance to the actual console that gets released. For a console that's supposed to be released in Japan sometime next Spring, there's surprisngly little good information on what it's going to actually be capable of, just a few scattered tech demos. Quite frankly, you really can't even trust Ken Kutaragi as a reliable source on any of this, given his track record...
All in all, I think the next generation should be interesting, but it's far too soon to tell who's going to come out on top. I will say I've been reasonably impressed with my 360 so far, but I'll be interested to see what the others can come up with...
One thing that I've seen is that in a lot of cases, people who are the most vocal detractors of any of the gaming platforms could usually care less about the platform, and instead tend to dislike the company that produces it. I suspect a fair portion of the flaming about the 360 comes from people who just don't like Microsoft. The same goes for the PS2/PS3 and people who don't like Sony. That happens when there really isn't much difference in the merits of the consoles (really, all things considered the three consoles of this generation weren't a whole lot different in capabilities. ) The Xbox had slightly better graphics and Live, the PS2 had the most games, and the Cube had the strongest first party offerings, but a game ported to all three of the consoles was basically the same on each.
I think we're going to see a fair bit of divergence in the approach taken in this generation by each company. Microsoft is really trying to emphasize the online experience on the 360, with Live Arcade and the Marketplace for microtransactions being a major part of their strategy. They're also offering Live Arcade as a platform for developers without the big budget needed for a typical commercial release to be able to get their products into the living room. I think the XNA architecture used for 360 development is another major part of this, since it allows games being developed for Windows to be ported to the 360 with relative ease. It's interesting to note that you will be able to plug in a wired X360 controller and use it on a Windows system with no trouble (Both of mine are wireless, so I haven't tried this yet.) I really think Microsoft is trying to get the 360 past the traditional game console and make more of a convergence device out of it.
Nintendo's approach for the Revolution, on the other hand, seems to be to simplify things. Instead of trying to outmuscle the competition they're going for "good enough" hardware that they'll be able to use to make a compact, less expensive console, and although it may not keep up with the 360 and PS3 on everything, they're not trying to. They seem to be positioning the Revolution as a second console for people who already own a 360 or PS3. They're trying to break out of the traditional gamer demographic and try to appeal to audiences that probably could care less about a Halo, Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid type game (Nintendogs is a good illurtration of this strategy.) They're also trying to change the whole experience of gaming by rethinking the way we control things (and they've done an excellent job of this so far with the DS.) Add to this their extensive back catalog and there's a lot of potential. I also think that with the DS they've done a good job of reasserting their dominance of the handheld space, as the DS continues to outsell the PSP by a significant margin.
As for Sony... I really don't know. If you listen to Kutaragi you'd think that the PS3 is going to be worth giving up sliced bread for, but I don;t think we really have anywhere near enough info to really even know what the PS3 is going to be. My guess is that they're trying to put out the most powerful of the three consoles, with a secondary goal of establishing Blu-Ray as the next major DVD standard. They seem to be trying to get as many of the big budget epics on their plate as they can, with little regard for the smaller budget and indie stuff the others are trying to get on theirs. There doesn't seem to be any sort of coherent online strategy for the PS3 (and it sounds increasingly like they're just going to stick with the ad hoc approach they're using currently.) My suspicion is that the mockup shown at E3 this year is going to have little resemblance to the actual console that gets released. For a console that's supposed to be released in Japan sometime next Spring, there's surprisngly little good information on what it's going to actually be capable of, just a few scattered tech demos. Quite frankly, you really can't even trust Ken Kutaragi as a reliable source on any of this, given his track record...
All in all, I think the next generation should be interesting, but it's far too soon to tell who's going to come out on top. I will say I've been reasonably impressed with my 360 so far, but I'll be interested to see what the others can come up with...