I am the proud owner of a Playstation 2, XBox, Gamecube, Dreamcast and Game Boy Advance. I do not own a Playstation 3, XBox, Playstation Portable, DS, or (god forbid) a Wii, and I like it that way.
Maybe it's my advanced age; as people get older, they tend to resent change. I've been excited for each new iteration of gaming systems since the heyday of the Atari 2600. But this is the very first time an entire generation of consoles and handhelds have left me pretty much cold.
I love gaming as much as I ever have, goodness knows I have a huge collection of games that will prove that. And as I keep up with what is going in the current gaming environment, I have seen many games (several many years in development) that look really good. But no game that would provoke me to buy a next generation system. I have several reasons for this.
If I were to get a PS3 or XBox 360, I would (if I wanted to get the most out of the incredible graphics, which often seem a micro step up what the PS2 or XBox) have to get an expensive high-definition television. So if I pay 300 for a new system, I would have to pay at least 300 more for hi-def. I wouldn't HAVE to, but I suppose it would be highly recommended, as I would lose the inpact of the very slightly better graphics.
Games for those systems are also averaging 60 dollars, and I'm not sure why. Is it because every damn game has to have a multiplayer online option, or extra time is needed to put in achievements and trophys? Is that what the extra 10-20 is for? Of course, I don't give a shit about these things; in my day I just games didn't need all these extra bells and whistles, even as recent as the last generation. Maybe the kids today get hard-ons for online multiplayer or achievements, although they could simply bullet points on the back of the game box.
Games seem to have become much more complicated in the last 3 to 4 years, and so have the new systems. I had always enjoyed console gaming much more then computer gaming because you didn't have to be a computer expert just to get a game running. I always liked the fact that you could just pop in the game disk and bam! you were ready to game. Now you need patches and updates and DLC in order to enjoy many video games. Maybe they just get rid of the "video" and just call all games "computer" games now.
Let's not forget the XBox 360s 'red ring of death', which Microsoft swears has been almost fixed, but I have heard quite the opposite. XBox Live has been touted as the greatest thing ever to happen to gaming, but if wanted 16-year-old boys yelling and swearing at me, I would have taken a job as a high school teacher. The PS3 is now half the price of it's ridiculous original asking price of $600, a step in the right direction, but in my opinion, there are only a dozen or so games that I would waste money on, unless you are really into first person army games (I'm not), in which case you have about 200 games to chose from. Who says originally is dead.
As for the Wii and DS, there are thousands of games to chose from, if you are a child or soccer mom. And the amount of shovelware Nintendo has allowed to be put out for these systems could fill a suburban in-ground pool owned by a family with two and a half kids and a dog. Waggle a wii-mote or sqiggle a stylus, it's the in thing to do!
What do I know? I'm just a grumpy guy who doesn't like change, and perhaps the gaming industry has to change radically in order to keep with the young un's whose attention span has become shorter and shorter. Maybe games and systems need to evolve and add more and more extras or teens (and soccer moms) will go back to tweeting. Or is tweeting already so last week?
