As I've mentioned in another post, since the SNES days I have only ever owned Nintendo consoles and I feel that this is one of the reasons why I have been more out of touch with true 'hardcore' gaming experiences and the on-line as I've ever been.

A couple of months ago I suddenly made the decision to trade my Nintendo Wii in for an xbox 360. Had I got a shitload of cash- enough to just go out and buy a '360 outright with a game and some Microsoft points I would have done, but I didn't and the '360 edged it in my opinion.

As a dedicated Nintendo follower, the Gamecube and now the Wii had made me feel disillusioned with gaming. I wouldn't call myself a 24 hour a day gamer, hardcore style- but I like a good game, and with hindsight the Wii wasn't providing this. Back in the SNES era, practically every game that was released on the Nintendo platform was the pinacle of it's kind. With the Wii, most third party games you get tend to be 'downsized' and 'downgraded' crapy ports with colons in the title; House of the Dead 20: The cut down edition.

I am not a 'graphics whore' that sees a games visuals as a sole reason to buy (though i know plenty of 'em) so the Gamecube-esque power of the Wii is not the major issue- but I was pissed off with downsized content, lack of major titles (i.e SF4, RE5) and the major third party titles Wii owners did get included awful waggle controls and unneccesary extra 'family' content (FIFA 08 and 09 a prime example with the 'Footii Partii.)

I am not here to bitch about the Wii- I think that it is a fantastic social console and one of the best around for taking to a mates house for drinks and multi-player gaming. I LOVED Strikers Charged. It does party games very well, and as a retro fan I LOVED the Virtual Console & also the Homebrew stuff that you could get hold of. Then I realised that you could get most of those games on R4 for the Ds- so that went out of the window.

I never thought I'd see myself moving away from Nintendo this way, but I honestly feel that they've now got more in common with upper middle class families, yuppies and old folks than they have with us loyal gamers. With hindsight I didn't feel part of Nintendo any more. They weren't talking my language- and friends who in the past mocked me for being a gamer were now going out and buying Wii's and DS's even though they knew very little about gaming in general. I know that being a gamer isn't an exclusive club or anything, but it is a shame when that club starts to kick out it's oldest and most loyal members.

So here I am with an xbox 360, missing the Wii a bit (Strikers on-line in particular) but re-discovering gaming again. I know that when I buy a game, that it will probably be one of the best versions of that game you can get and when I go on-line I know that most of the time the game isn't going to crash on me constantly (as FIFA 09 did to me on the Wii literally every other game.) I feel that I have missed out- that I have lost that gamers touch and I am learning from scratch. I suppose I've been out in the wilderness since the Gamecube came out, and now I'm back by the fire again with friends.

Who's up for some real gaming?