Not so long ago, I remember camping out for 13 hours, waiting to buy my beloved Playstation 2. I remember the anxiety I felt when I heard the rumors fly through the crowd about how many systems our local Best Buy had in stock. Was it 38? Where are we in line? NO CUTS!! Ah, good times. After grabbing my PS2, and a few games (DOA2, Tekken Tag) and heading out a SUV pulls up in front of me.
"Hey, I'll give you $600 for your PS2."
"No thanks" I said.
After all I waited 13 hours in the October chill of Michigan for this system, go screw yourself Mr. SUV. Thus, a love affair was born. SONY was doing things right back then. Microsoft was working on Windows Me, Nintendo was still making cartridge-based games. Yes, they were simpler times. My PS2 has endured much since that day. But it still works today. It has never bricked, never RRODed me, never made me regret buying it. Hell, I had no concerns about buying the system at all. I trusted SONY and they delivered.
Then SONY made the PSP.
As I walked out of the store with my shiny new PSP and Lumines, I felt excited about the prospect of a handheld system that wasn't named Nintedo-something-or-other. But then I was disappointed. The hardware was good, could have been better, but good enough. Why do I want to play movies? What is this UMD crap? Why am I getting nothing but ports of PS2 games? ARGH! So my PSP sits with 5 games in a corner of my videogame library. I'm lucky if I find two games worth playing on it the remainder of this year.
Which brings us to the PS3.
Like everyone else, I was excited at the announcement of the next-gen system. But then came the price point. Hmmm, $600 bucks? Maybe I should have sold my PS2 years ago. Okay, that sounds a bit steep, but I'm in. How about the games?
GAMES? ANYONE??
So the launch is pushed back, we see bits and pieces of MGS4, a mythical Killzone 2, LAIR, etc. Delays, delays, delays. My enthusiasm is waning. I want to play next-gen!! So, I purchase an XBOX 360. Gears of War, Rainbow Six: Vegas, GRAW2, and Dead Rising. Wow, this is what I waited for from SONY.
Naturally, all is not well in the land of Gates. So I hear I have a ticking time bomb that threatens to brick on me anytime I power it on. There is that pause when I turn on my 360, just a moment when I think, "Okay, this is it, RED RING, RED RING!" Nothing yet, but it curbs my excitement a bit. That said, I know that the 360 launch wasn't electric either. I wonder why SONY decided to jump in before seeing what Nintendo had to offer, why they didn't wait until they had a better launch window, why they didn't give developers more time to work with the PS3 before slapping a November 2006 launch date up? They had a dominant postion in the market, they could have stood to wait.
Don't get me wrong, I still love you SONY. I love my Playstation 2 and will continue to buy games for it. A friend of mine has a PS3, and no games for it at all. I want to like the PS3, give me some damn games. Give me a reason to buy your system. And no, I don't care about Blue Ray, or HD-DVD for that matter.
I want to play games, that's it.
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Despite the hardware problems, XBox still gets my vote this generation. I own a PS3, but the controller sucks and WHERE ARE MY GAMES!?!
...and you don't have Xbox Live either.
Games are coming, Sony is being really (albeit too) relaxed about the PS3. But if you look at nintendo's plan, they aren't a one trick pony. They have the DS and the wii. Sony is doing a similar thing. They have the PS2 and the PSP to keep the average consumer around while giving the early adopters something. If they were to wait until this holiday season, they still would have the same amount of games, because the Dev-kits would have gone out later than they did because they would be trying to cut the cost per unit before manufacturing it, which would mean no games being made. Sony is not going to manufacture a console for a year and a half before launching it.
Trust me, sony would have been way worse off if they waited.
I just bought a hdtv, and now im saving for a new gen system. Im pretty torn between the ps3 and the 360, the wii i only want for metroid and the mario galaxy, so far.
@DEF:MGS4
nuff said