The Gamer’s Quagmire: 29th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

I got this idea the other day that it would be a good idea to get out from under the rock I’ve been hiding and read a slew of articles to get idea of what the summer of 2006 means to gamers. Not that surprisingly the majority of articles floating around the web deal with, or simply derail back into, the great new Wii, the ineptness of Sony, and Microsoft waiting for Christmas to do anything. Sadly my summer has had me primarily invested, with time and money, in a new house and not with gaming. What little gaming has been done by me has been in World of Warcraft.

What scares me is that I’ve barely had the motivation to play any games at all. So now I wait for new games to come out to give me something to shoot for. The new Tiger Woods game is appealing but, due to my EA boycott, which as miraculously stayed in tact, requires locating a used copy before buying it. Neverwinter Nights 2 presents a great opportunity to play a great role playing game. It also is a perfect time to see if BioWare’s gaming production quality has been affected by their Microsoft owners.

If this sounds like a pathetic summer for gaming to you then you’re right in line with what I’m going through. There hasn’t been a whole lot to become excited about. The new 360 games, Saint’s Row for one, just don’t look intriguing enough to look at. I’ve been so bored that I almost bought a sequel on the 360 (Top Spin 2) to an original game whose disc I snapped in half after 3 days of sheer aggravation. What I’m inclined to think is that owning a house now has had a massive detrimental effect on my willingness to play anything, and once that passes the gaming ship will be righted once again. In the meantime I hope I don’t crash into an iceberg… such as by giving Madden 2007 a try.

Something that steered the ship off course in the first place was all the premature console holy war garbage being tossed around about the two consoles that have yet to ship. Just like going to a nightclub I get sick of the repetitiveness after an hour. Amazingly the loud repetitive beats from the bass in the clubs does not yield a big of a headache as does the repetitive “Wii is awesome” and “Sony sucks” comments. My overwhelming indifference to hip hop dancing allows me to not get as irritated in that domain. Who said apathy never paid off?

Ah, who cares.

Once my urge to start rummaging through gaming articles and buying a ton of new titles started coming back the holy war garbage was quickly encountered, however. It is not as though I wasn’t expecting it, but avoiding it for more than 20 minutes would have been a true pleasure. Still, interviews with big people from one of the console companies are always interesting reads because they have the best potential for highlighting the direction of a console without a lot of hype… if you can read between the self-serving propaganda. Thankfully my highly experienced BS-O-Meter is still working like it first did out of the box.

Neil Thompson of the Xbox 360 ilk had plenty of interesting things to say about what was going on with their console, although it wasn’t what he directly said. In a sense his latest interview left me with a familiar feeling- Microsoft employees will say anything in order to confuse people into thinking that only they have a clear direction with their products. His interview also instilled in me the confidence and necessity to put this in print- people need to learn what schizophrenia is. 90% of the time when people outside the medical community use this term they think it refers to something that is dealing with an identity crisis. This is more commonly known as multiple personality disorder. In truth schizophrenia deals with hearing voices.

The reason I feel the need to print this, aside from pointing out another idiotic statement Americans insist on using, is because what he was trying to say is that Sony is all over the map with PS3 functionality with no primary attack plan. We all know by now that Microsoft is fortifying a position with Live and Nintendo is going after accessibility (everyone goes after gameplay, despite what you read, but some are much more focused on it). Sony, believe it or not, does have an attack plan- technology. I have no plans to attempt to convince you that this is the right way to go, but Sony uses their technology innovations in their other business ventures. Marketing, however, is still a concern. Their inability to promote many of their media technologies has convinced me that Sony marketers couldn’t sell sunscreen to a naked Albino.

Thompson made another statement that served as the highlight of the interview- “If you want to offer the definite high def entertainment platform then you have to have HD-DVD.” This is coming from the same company that justified not shipping the 360 with an HD-DVD drive by stating it wasn’t necessary and it wasn’t their focus. Sony hasn’t shipped yet because of their HD drive they want in all of their PS3 configurations, so it stands to reason that Thompson doesn’t know what he’s talking about by stating Sony doesn’t have an attack plan. It is quite clear that Sony wants to deliver the most technically capable console, and in the long run they feel that is the foundation for building the most successful console.

Microsoft has now created a situation where the largest console is going to need even more space if you want to take advantage of HD-DVD technology with it. Anybody who still was holding out hope of Microsoft making a positive move in the Japanese market now needs to drop this hope or be incessantly mocked. I’m serious about this. Having a console with a peripheral is quite hideous and cumbersome. Of course if Microsoft releases a version of the console such that the HD-DVD drive is built into it then, well, the 360 will be even more of a monstrosity. Streamlined? Absolutely, but even monsters can be streamlined- just ask the Green Goblin. Hey, the 360 is green also… maybe this is more than coincidence.

After everything I’ve read I still have yet to change my mind about any of the consoles. Give me games or give me death. So please, I’m begging you, give me some games.

Post your comments in the Forum!