Item 989. A golf cart featuring the image of Michael Jackson as Peter Pan. Estimated price $4,000-$6,000

Between April 22 and April 25, a large amount of Michael Jackson's belongings (and I believe the Neverland Ranch itself) will be auctioned off, no doubt to help prop up the King of Pop's dwindling finances as it has been rumored for some time than he is nearly bankrupt. As the auction draws near, prospective auction-goers can find information about the auction and the items offered on the official website of Julien's Auctions. The auction catalogue is divided into 8 different auction sessions, session 5 and 6 of which are denoted as Amusements, Arcade Games and Disneyana, and is of great interest to video gamers, particularly those into the arcade experience of the 1990s. Below I'll try to highlight a few particularly interesting video game related finds although I encourage everyone to browse the catalogue themselves as it is quite a nice trip back to a gaming era gone with the wind.


Item 692: Crazy Taxi III arcade. Estimated price: $1,000-$1,500


Item 698: Darkstalkers arcade. Estimated price: $800-$1,200


Item 700: Ms. Pacman / Galaga cocktail table game. Estimated price: $2,000-$3,000


Items 703 and 791: The Simpsons arcade. Estimated price: $1,200-$1,500
I really really want one of those. :)


Item 713: Super Street Fighter II arcade. Estimated price: $800-$1,200


Items 725, 726, and 727: N64, 3DO, and Ps1 console with store display rack. Estimated prices: $100-$150, $100-$150, and $200-$300 respectively
Man, I haven't seen these since my childhood times in Toys 'R Us.


Item 731: VirtualBoy system and store display rack. Estimated price: $100-$150.
Do want!


Item 754: X-Men arcade game. Estimated price: $1,500-$2,500.
Again, really do want!


Item 772: Donkey Kong. Estimated price: $800-$1,200


Item 773: Terminator 2: Judgement Day arcade game. Estimated price: $800-$1,200
Another fun arcade game. Do want!


Item 792: SNES console with store display rack. Estimated price: $200-$300
I would like to point out that this picture of the item, taken from the actual item, shows the title screen to Final Fantasy IV for the SuperNES. Obviously the King of Pop has some good taste in video games. :P


Item 793: Dance Dance Revolution. Estimated price: $1,000-$1,500


Items 794 and 795: Sega Genesis and Game Gear console with combined display rack and Sega Dreamcast console with store display rack. Estimated prices: $200-$300 and $200-$300 respectively.
Interesting. A combined Sega Genesis and Game Gear rack? I don't recall seeing these in stores.

So that's some of the more interesting video game items I found. There is much more of course for auction. I kind of expected something Moonwalker related but I suppose seeing as Michael Jackson is actually a part of those games, I doubt he would auction them off until his finances take another tumble.

So if anyone is interested and very rich, I suppose the main auction site has more information about this event. As far as I can see, the items I have posted here will be auctioned off on April 24 at 9 AM PST in the morning. Best of luck to any rich video game fans or collectors.

P.S. With regards to the Michael Jackson himself, I will only say that regardless of how one feels about him, I think we can all agree that it is sad to see one of the few truly talented music artists of the 20th century toss his career and life down the drain. I have personally never been able to believe the child molestation allegations against him. However, consider his bizarre behavior, warped personality quirks, and his massive overuse of plastic surgery, I could definitely see how people could see him as a child molester. Ultimately, I think these things destroyed his career far more than any allegations could.

Koichi Sugiyama of Dragon Quest fame

My first musical composition "assignment" began after I read randombulleye's initial post showing his initial work on Bonerquest. Near the end of the cblog post, he pointed out that he would like the game to have original music in the style of classic NES games such as The Legend of Zelda and Dragon Quest. I should point out at this point that while I feel that I am fairly knowledgable about certain intricacies of the genres I like (film music, video game music, musicals, anime music, etc) I lack any theory or composition study or experience other than what I picked up from about 8 years of violin-playing in primary school, the words and advice of Music Composition for Dummies, and the experience from my own crude dabblings over the years in composition and arrangement that include an arrangement and extension of Shadow's theme from Final Fantasy VI, themes for a fantasy movie I once swore I would have made by now, and a musical based on John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Having been in a creative sort of mood for some time, probably due to my mind desperately looking for some escape from being completely bored out of my skull in MBA classes, I was inspired by the Dragon Quest look of the game to put together something that was clearly inspired by Koichi Sugiyama's main theme to Dragon Quest. I sent it to randombullseye just to see what would happen. To my surprise, he liked it alot. In fact, that same piece of music (with a three measure extention) is what you now here in Bonerquest at the title screen. randombullseye then asked me if I wanted to do the rest of the music. I was unsure at first because I knew that I did not have formal musical composition experience or training or even the background for it, especially given that I know as a fact that there are plenty of other Dtoid members who are far more musically talented than I am. Putting together a "homage" to the Dragon Quest theme is relatively easy: putting together an entire soundtrack is an entirety different matter and I was not sure that I could put together something of satisfactory quality. Nonetheless, I always been that kind of person who talks about doing stuff but never does it unless I feel something pushing me forward (much like the Mega Man 9, Halo music, and Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross cblog post I swore I would write ages ago) and I had never accomplished anything musically that I considered "finished" and so I agreed, letting randombullseye know to not expect too much.

Now that the background and origin is out of the way, I just wanted to share some of the more interesting things I learned while working on the music to Bonerquest that changed the way I viewed video game music or reinforced or changed certain notions I had about video game music.


Koji Kondo of The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. fame performing at Play! in Chicago

Koji Kondo, Hip Tanaka, Koichi Sugiyama, and Nobuo Uematsu are not only four of the greatest composers in video game history, they are four of of the greatest composers in modern music.

As I was sketching out the basic themes and melodies that would form the basis of each track, I started digging into the musical styles of the earlier NES game that were the contemporaries of Dragon Quest, the game to which ]Bonerquest is perhaps most linked to. In listening to these earliest works of video game music, I suddenly became aware of how short and simple most of these early pieces were. Yet despite being short, so much of these short pieces work extremely well looped over and over again and do not feel repetitive when hearing it over and over again. In addition, despite the NES only having a limited amount of sound channels (4 I think), these early pieces feel fully arranged and fleshed out.

The amazing qualities of these early NES soundtracks weighted heavily upon me when I was trying to compose something of quality. I am convinced that whatever crap I wrote cannot be listened to more than once before it gets tired and boring and from that point of view, I am happy that the random battles ensure that listeners are never subjected to more than one loop at a time. Well, I guess the town and castle music goes on for awhile without interruption. Oh well.

This leads to my next observation.


Hip Tanaka of Metroid fame

It is quite interesting to think about how many different genres and styles of music find their way into video game music

I think the hardest piece for me to write was the overworld theme. Of course, it didn't help that this was the second piece of music I tried to write. When I think about the great video game scores, often the overworld piece is the one I remember the most. Even if the overworld music is not the most memorable, it is usually at the least the one piece that defines the whole musical style and identity of the game.

In my early discussions with randombullseye, we agreed that I should probably write the music in a way that treats the story and setting as a serious RPG. Of course, I was happy about this because I came to realize that I have no ability to write something funny or comedic sounding. At this point, I realized that the main theme I wrote earlier was really easy to come up with because it was essentially a ripoff of an existing piece and style. In contrast, I now had to come up with a style for the rest of the music.

I began to think about some of the overworld music out there, only to realize how radically different musical styles find themselves into video game music. The overworld themes to the various Square Enix RPGs run through a number of styles. The overworld theme to Wild Arms uses the style of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores. The main level 1-1 theme to Super Mario Bros. has a vaguely Latin flavor to it. Of course, within these scores, you still have a wild variety of genres. The water level of Super Mario Bros. for example, is essentially a waltz, as can be best heard from the various orchestrated versions of the theme avaliable out there. Perhaps the king of all video game music variety is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night which oscillates between baroque to New Age to light jazz.

In the end, I decided to just go for something a bit moody and dramatic, perhaps thinking about some of the mooder pieces from the Final Fantasy series.

Finally, this leads to my last point for this post.


Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy fame with an adorable dog.

Writing music is really really really hard

Ok, I knew that writing music was hard. But until I did it with the fear of missing a deadline, writing something that wasn't meeting randombulleye's expectations, or getting the music torn to shreds on Podtoid, I didn't quite realize how ridiculously difficult music writing was, especially since I have almost zero music theory or composition experience.

If anything, by the time I finished writing the last note on Bonerquest, I gained an enormous respect and reverence for musicians and music students for having to work in this difficulty realm called "creativity" and "arts." In addition, the more I look at video game scores with a critical eye, I become overwhelmed by the genius and skill which I know I can never come close to achieving in this lifetime. Shortly after I finished the music to Bonerquest, a friend and I started playing Secret of Mana on the Virtual Console. Within an hour of playing the game, I was blown away by the incredible work Hiroki Kikuta did on the music to this game. Of course, I played the game back and forth when it first came out and the soundtrack is frequently played on my playlist.

I just find it interesting how often we listen to music and do not really notice or think about the work that it takes to create something like that. I think that working on Bonerquest has taught me to appreciate and hear video game music in a new light. In addition, I am happy that after all these years, randombulleye gave me the opportunity and push to actually write music instead of just talking about writing music. I do not pretend to think that my work is comparable to anything professionally done. However, I hope that the Destructoid community enjoys what I have done in the context of Bonerquest.

P.S. If anyone for whatever reason I cannot imagine wants it, they can get the music I wrote here: http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~pjan/bonerquest/

So while looking on YouTube to see if I could find the original NES rendition of my favorite track in Dragon Quest IV (or Dragon Warrior IV if you prefer), which happens to be "Wagon Wheel's March," I came upon a Dragon Quest ballet which was done in Japan, avaliable on Region 2 DVD and currently on YouTube back from about 2002, which features music from the games and new arrangements by Koichi Sugiyama. I have not gotten a chance to watch the ballet in its entirety, and so I have no idea what the plot is. However, I do see a character that appears to be Torneko the merchant from IV.

I know that I am current heavily debating buying the DVD myself, being a massive fan of both ballet and opera as well as video game music.

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=SVWB-3072

I am sure that for some, this is old news, but for others like me, perhaps this is something interesting to see how far video games have gotten in Japan. First concerts, now ballets. Operas tomorrow?


This is part 1 of the ballet. Going to the YouTube site itself will reveal links to the other parts. A beautiful introduction leading to the familiar Dragon Quest title screen theme at timestamp 3:30.

P.S. To any other fans of the track I mentioned from Dragon Quest IV, it is used at timestamp 5:13 in part 6 of the ballet.

CNN has reported that Levi Stubbs, lead singer of the Motown group Four Tops, and known to the video game culture fanbase as the voice of Mother Brain in the Captain N TV series. Fans of musicals may also reocgnize him as the voice of the plant Audrey II (who essentially looks like a pirahna plant from Super Mario) in the movie version of the musical Little Shop of Horrors also starring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, and Steve Martin.



Despite the highly questionable quality of the Captain N TV show, especially looking back as an adult, I know that I enjoyed watching the show as a kid. The most memorable and still amusing characters from that show was arguably Mother Brain, despite how obviously wrong the show's take on the character was from the original source. I would even say that the intentional camp humor of Mother Brain is probably the only aspect of the show that still appeals to me on those rare moments when I decide to revisit an episode or two of the show.



I remember watching Little Shop of Horrors for the first time early this year and laughing hysterically when I heard the voice coming out of the giant plant's voice, completely unaware at first of who did it. I wonder the irony of this guy doing two voices, both of stationary characters, one character of which looks like a video game character and the other being an actual, admittedly highly misinterpreted video game character.

As such I am sad to have read this news today. Hopefully this sad news might stir up some nostalgic thoughts for the Destructoid community who might have enjoyed some of Levi Stubbs' work over the years.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/17/obit.stubbs.ap/index.html

With the release of Warhammer Online (WAR), yet another contender enters the MMO ring attempting to deliver a knockout to leading champion World of Warcraft (WoW). Although Warhammer Online developers have publicly attempted to dismiss the idea of beating WoW, it is without a doubt that beating WoW is somewhere in the minds of EA Mythic's people. In thinking about the MMO market, particularly in looking at the way in which WoW rose to dominance, the way in which WoW has defended itself against competitors, and what has happened in the lifecycle of other MMO games, I would argue that WAR will never beat or even come close to WoW. In this cblog entry, I will discuss why I feel this way and the implications, assuming I am correct, that these conclusions will have on Blizzard itself in the future.

Oh yeah, this post is really really really long. If you don't want to read much, I'll just say now that the take home message is that it is unlikely that any game will substantially improve on WoW in the near future. In addition, WoW's competitiors are underestimating the switching costs incurred (time investment in their WoW characters given up) should a user "switch" from WoW to their game.

Note: In this clog, I restrict my discussion to the American/European pay-subscription MMO market. While I acknowledge that the Korean/Japanese/Chinese MMO market is large, it does not seem to have a particularly large effect on the Western MMO market. More specifically, I am not talking about MMOs such as City of Heroes or Eve Online, but instead about the entire horde of WoW-clones with the specific goal of killing WoW.

The developers of WAR, as well as other wannabe-WoW-killers Age of Conan (AoC), Vanguard, The Lord of the Rings Online, ultimately seem to subscribe to the following business model:

If (My New MMO) > WoW, I will beat WoW and make $$$.

While I will show that this model is highly flawed, I would first like to bring into question whether or not it is even possible for a new MMO to be "better" than WoW. I would argue that it will not be possible to create a substantially better WoW-like game prior to some gigantic revolution in computer/Internet/programming technology and/or game design. Obviously, it will always be possible to make games with better graphics and sound. However, I feel that there is only so far one can go due to both the constraints of network performance as well as the fear of alienating players who do not have $3000+.machines. I know many people who are curious about WAR but simply do not have the computer to run it and therefore stick to WoW.

Another note: I should at this point establish that there is a difference between graphic design and graphics technical quality. Unfortunately, I think many people mistake the distinction between the two, lumping it all together as "graphics." I grew extremely tired of hearing fanboys yelling on the Internet about how the graphics of AoC were so much better than WoW. Yeah, from a technical point of view, AoC has WoW beaten. Whether or not AoC is better than WoW in terms of graphic design is a much harder question to answer.



AoC on top. WoW on bottom.

In terms of gameplay and design, it seems to me that the MMORPG has reached a plateau of sorts. In other words, the basic mechanics and design of the genre have matured similar to the way that 2-D platform design matured in the early Super NES days. We have had certainly many excellent 2-D platformers since the Super NES days. Nonetheless I cannot say that many of them particularly revolutionized the genre. I do not know of many successful platforms of late attempt to advertise itself on their game revolutionizing the genre. Yet this is exactly what is happening with the MMO industry, where every new game claims to redefine the genre and rarely ends up doing so.

Let me use a simple example, one that has been lobbied against WoW for years: the idea of free and meaningful PvP.



So the complaint goes like this. WoW has shallow PvP because it places heavy restriction on PvP. There are multiple ways in which the game can punish you for ganking. Unrestricted PvP is generally limited to PvP-only instance scenarios and zones such as Warsong Gulch (capture-the-flag) and Lake Wintergrasp. It is impossible for one side to effectively "conquer" the other side's city even if you cram every player into that city and take out all the NPCs.

AoC, and possibly to an even bigger extent WAR, has constantly been slamming WoW for its PvP and claiming that its own game provides a more meaningful PvP experience. Yet, when you analyze why PvP is the way that it is in WoW, as well as the way in which many of these games have "solved" the PvP problem, it is obvious that, if anything, no one has solved it, or at the least solved it any better than WoW.

MMOs restrict PvP because unrestricted PvP is ultimately detrimental to the overall player game experience. To use an analogy from U.S. history, it is the reason that we as Americans are restricted in our freedoms in order to protect the right of everyone to enjoy those freedoms. How would you like to start the game and realize that you can't do anything because the guys from the other faction has just invaded your land? How would you like to be constantly ganked by some player in better gear, higher level, or simply a more powerful class than yourself for hours on end? I thought not. Yeah, it feels good when you are on the delivering end of that punishment. But it sure doesn't feel good when you are on the receiving end of that punishment. And to those that claim that anyone will solve the issue of balancing characters and classes, I wish them the best of luck in doing what no one has ever managed to do successfully whether you are talking about classes in MMOs or characters in Street Fighter II. Hell, even a game as "simple" as Super Mario Bros. 2 is grossly imbalanced in that certain characters are far easier to play than others.

When AoC claimed to have better PvP, it would seem that what they meant was that people were much more free to kill each other than in WoW. Of course, it is no surprise that this was quickly curbed with the addition to heavy ganking punishments once horror stories of endless ganking and griefing started increasing drastically. When I look at what WAR claims to offer in terms of PvP, I question how much of that is just PR smoke. Most of WAR's PvP seems to be as controlled and limited in the way that WoW's is. As for the idea of taking over enemy cities, I question how "meaningful" this task will be due to the need to balance the ability to players who need to actually do something in that city other than kill one another. Ultimately, a back-and-forth of taking over cities in WAR seems to me as meaningless as back-and-forth capture-the-flag games in WoW. As with AoC, I would not be surprised if PvP in WAR will become more restricted once the game is live.


Real improvements? More like PR fluff.

Anytime I see an MMO claim that it will beat WoW because it is superior to WoW, I question that claim. When I think about the "problems" of MMOs such as WoW, which often become the selling points that AoC and WAR and every future MMORPG claim to "solve," it is obvious to me that none of these problems are actually solved because the underlying issue is far more complex and not likely to be solved in the near future. Yes, WoW is a much older game than WAR, but again, WoW is an evolving game and has spent the years of lead it has to improve itself constantly. With each expansion, WoW has answered and resolved a few of the issues that its predecessor version failed in. Therefore, age is not really an as big of an issue as many new games would like to portray it to be.

As I said above, how do you provide meaningful substantial PvP and at the same time balance the ability of all players to have fun? I have a feeling that the solution to this and other WoW and MMO problems will not come in the near future. Even Jonathan Blow, the champion of high-brow-games who seems to have made a career out of bashing all aspects of WoW in his rants...err I mean panels...offer no suggestions at all for improving the game or mechanics: he simply criticizes, which is far easier to do with any problem than actually fixing it.

So now we go back to the MMO business model formula, which I described as flawed. While this simple formula can be improved on in a variety of ways, let me focus on just one modification for now.

If (My New MMO) >> WoW + Cost of switching from WoW, I will beat WoW and make $$$.


Lowering of switching cost barriers caused cell phone provider switching to skyrocket.

There is a great analogy to explain this model: the cell phone industry. For a long time, it was a pain in the ass to switch cell phone providers because if you switched providers, you would have to get a new cell phone number. Thus people would not switch cell phone numbers unless they absolutely had to because they didn't want to engage in the time and costs of telling all their friends to change their numbers. On the other hand, once the law changed and forced companies to allow you to keep your number, the floodgates opened and everyone started switching based on other criteria such as quality.

In some way, this same description can be made of the MMO market, especially since, as I have just suggested, most of these MMOs are essentially the same game. What the MMO developers are forgetting however, is that there is a huge switching cost that keeps WoW gamers tethered to WoW: the fact that they have already invested a ton of work into their WoW character and that by switching to WoW, they would be throwing out possibly years of work and character investment. So why would anyone give up years of work in one game to do it all again in a game that is pretty much the same thing?

There are a two important implications from this hypothesis. The first is that competitors could perhaps increase their ability to draw away WoW players by offering incentives that "transfer" their work across games. For example, I am a level 70 mage in WoW (the highest level possible at present). I would be much more interested in transferring to WAR if they were to somehow transfer my work in WoW to WAR by allowing me to start my character at a much higher level and give me much better starting gear. Of course, it doesn't seem likely to happen so this is a moot point.


Sony tried to get its EQ players to jump onboard a new game. Too bad it wasn't the one they wanted them to go to.

The second and possibly most important implication of my suggestion is in its ability to explain how WoW come to dominate the market in the first place and to suggest how WoW will be beaten in the future. The market leader prior to WoW was Everquest (EQ). However, if you think about the time when WoW was coming out, Sony was already starting to hype up the upcoming sequel Everquest II (EQ2). Now, I'm not sure about you, but if I were an EQ player and I see that Sony is starting to shift their attention to the sequel, it would be obvious to me that the days of my game are numbered and I would start looking for the next big game. In other words, the switching costs of leaving EQ decrease when it becomes obvious to everyone that EQ is at its end. While Sony's intent is obviously to entice you to switch to EQ2, they also risked people switching to other games since nothing from EQ that you did carried over into EQ2, and that is exactly what happened. To reuse the cell phone example, if your cell phone company told you have they were implementing some new system that would require you to change your number and get a new cell phone, it doesn't really matter whether the new service they are offering you is really good. The fact is, if you have to go to such ends, you might shop around and look at other cell phone providers instead of sticking with the existing provider. In other words, for a new MMO to unseat the older game, the new game has to not only be much better than the old game, but the old game has to be in a position in which it is obvious that the end is near.

Consider what has happened with AoC. AoC came out at an ideal time: the lull that occured inbetween when the majority of WoW's "The Burning Crusade" expansion hit and the point at which Blizzard started really giving out substantial information about "Wrath of the Lich King" If there were any time when WoW seemed like it was losing momentum, that was the time. It is no wonder that tons of WoW players bought AoC in their desparate starvation for something new and exciting. Of course, by this time, Blizzard had started really throwing out tons of information about the new features in the expansion and the beta for the expansion really kicked off. Given this timing, I am not surprised that while AoC sold tons of copies, few took the subscription once the 30-day-trial ended. No doubt a large number simply returned to WoW once they saw that the investment and work they put into WoW had future potential.

I guess what I am saying is that if anything, the best time for a WoW-killer to come out will be that day when Blizzard decides to actually kill off WoW, possibly in favor of a WoW2. When Blizzard signals that WoW's days are near its end, all bets will be off as to whether or not the existing WoW fanbase will stick with Blizzard's new game or switch to whatever other new game is about to come out. Perhaps Blizzard will be smart and offer some sort of character transfer program where your WoW character can be brought over into WoW2. Of course, who knows whether Blizzard will do something like this when the time comes.

Of course, there are many MMOs that are successful today such as Eve Online. However, it is not trying to be a WoW-killer. In addition, games with different pricing models such as the free-to-play model are finding alot of success, especially in Asia. Perhaps the next WoW-killer might not even set out to be a WoW-killer.


Might Diablo III be an indirect WoW killer?

In conclusion, WoW is not likely to be killed off while it still has momentum and a perceived future because few people are going to junk years of time and investment to do it all over again in a game that is fundamentally the same. While I look forward to WAR and seeing how it will do in the MMO market, I doubt that it will have the effect that EA Mythic desires. In some ways, I think that WAR will have an even harder time since AoC has finally opened the eyes of many MMO players to the realization that all of these MMOs are fundamentally the same game. Ultimately, I don't think that any game will unseat WoW until WoW decides to call it quits. That is when the real competition to reshape the market occurs.

P.S. I want to acknowledge Rutgers Business School professor Sharan Jagpal and his MBA marketing class for jump-starting my thinking about the business strategy of the MMO market and ultimately inspiring this blog entry even though I did not do particularly well in his class.

So just like that little girl Lisa in the classic 1968 storybook Corduroy, I spent much time recently saving up money in order to buy a Ps3 to play Metal Gear Solid 4 and what will hopefully be a nice future Blu-Ray collection. I walk in today into the Sony Style store, having finally saved up the money to get it when suddenly, bam, I realize that the model has sold out despite their having been tons in stock a mere three days ago when I checked. I call around and it would seem that every Best Buy, Gamestop, Walmart, etc has been completely sold out as well. Of course, there is that new 80GB model which is everywhere now but unfortunately for me, some backward compatible is important, especially since from what I can see, my entire Ps2 library is pretty much compatible even with the software solution. So until I decide to venture onto the Internet to find some more, it would appear that unlike the girl from the storybook, I do not get my bear.

It is very easy for me to lash out at Sony for their annoying practice of removing features with each subsequent model, making each model worse and worse whereas one would think the opposite should be occuring. What bothers me more however, is the fact that I simply don't believe the fans have lashed out hard enough against Sony for the crap they pull. I just don't understand why Sony and Nintendo have managed to get the free rides that Microsoft doesn't.

The fact is (and I really want to drive this point into all the stupid peoples' skulls with a jackhammer), there is no such thing as a "good" company. Every company has one agenda: please your stockholders. This is not just true of perceived "evil" companies such as Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, the pharmaceutical companies, etc, but it is true of even the "good" companies such as Apple, Google, and Nintendo. Just about every company out there has done something that deserves a massive smackdown. Yet, certain companies end up getting the blunt of all the complaints while other companies either get away with their crap or get praised for it. Why does Microsoft get yelled at when they offer free Vista and Office 2007 in return for monitoring your software usage for three months when Google got little to no criticism for scanning your Gmail email content for marketing and advertising purposes? To move into video games, why does Microsoft get smacked for the red ring of death when all the problems Sony had with the Ps1 and Ps2 get ignored?


A sight I have thankfully been blessed to not personally see.

Yes, the red ring of death is a huge problem that Microsoft had. Perhaps it was just me though, but I simply didn't understand what the big deal was, considering that the Ps1 and the Ps2 have had massive technical problems before. All the Ps1s I knew had to be played upside down. All the Ps2s I saw had massive problems reading certain discs that were supposed to be playable (the few CD-based Ps2 games in particular and later on, even DVD-ROM-based games).

Sure, the red ring of death was a complete system failure whereas the Ps1 and Ps2 problems could to some extent be worked around. However, what I always gave Microsoft credit for was the fact that they have always been far more than courteous and polite in their attitude and process of replacing it for the many people whom I know who had that problem happen.


The story of just about every Ps1 I have seen. I have the same problem with my Ps2. For me, holding it at a 45 degree angle was the way to get it to read "Romance of the Three Kingdoms VIII" and "Rez".

In contrast, Sony had to be dragged by their hair screaming into court before they half-heartedly offered a settlement, still refusing to acknowledge any of the Ps2's disc problems, and offered free repairs for less than 4 months before they stopped the problem and directed anyone with problems to either pay them $80+ or to buy their new redesigned Ps2 model.

I guess I just don't understand this fanboy mentality that surrounds the net and gives free license to certain companies to screw over their customers or fanbase. Microsoft deserved tons of criticism over the XBox 360 red ring issues. At the very least I can respect them for coming clean and making great efforts to replace or repair units. Why did Sony get away with their Ps2 problems? Surely it wasn't because the red ring happened more often than the Ps2 problem. I at least know of seven people including myself who bought an early generation XBox 360 that has not red ringed yet. On the other hand, I don't know of a single Ps2 that did not have the disc read problems.

I look back now at all these sites covering the Ps3 post-E3 and I just don't understand why enough crap wasn't unloaded onto Sony for their constant dumbing down of features such as backward compatibility that was always touted as an important element of their system. In contrast, there has been far more crap about the backward compatibility of the XBox 360, despite that customers were always told from the beginning that only limited backward compability would be avaliable.

Anyhow, sorry about the massive rant. It just infuriates me to see companies categorized into good and evil and given all sorts of special treatment by fanboys who are too stupid to realize that both types of companies are out for their cash. To paraphrase a sentiment often expressed on Podtoid, particularly by Jim Sterling, I just don't understand why these fans feel they owe so much to a company that they are willing to go to such lengths to justify every stupid thing they do. It's not like these are pharmaceutical companies who might have made a product that saved your life.

Grrrr. Hopefully my next post won't be so anger-inspired.