The next generation?

What is it with the video game triumvirate? I’m beginning to think I respect the 360 as the most balanced next-gen console in terms of price/performance/gameplay, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to buy one—it has absolutely no games I want to play.

(Okay, okay—I might make an exception for Kasumi. She’s still not a very good reason to buy the console, though.)

Nintendo? Apparently waving a stick in the air is going to revolutionize wiily shake up the way I play games. Never mind that a stick will never really feel like a sword, or a racquet, or a fishing pole. (I read somewhere that the Wii is partially designed to appeal to non-gamers; perhaps the bizarre controller will do that.) Nintendo has a good chance to take the lead in this next round of video game consoles, simply for the fact that it might not charge an exorbitant price for its console.

For all my snarky comments, I’m actually willing to give the Wii a chance. Nintendo, by not competing in the A/V arms race, is betting the farm on making fun games—so, if they want my money, there better be some fun games to play on the console. (Mario and Zelda and Metroid will only go so far—and, frankly, that’s not far enough, these days.)

Total tangent: the Wii controller better be more ergonomic than the DS is. My hands experience sympathy cramping just thinking about the hour I spent trying to play Mario Kart DS.

Sony? Rips off the Wii’s motion sensing abilities and the 360’s online store—and charges a hell of a premium for doing so. 500–600 dollars for a video game machine? Hot damn! The only thing tying me to Sony are the games: I’d like to play Final Fantasy XIII (and perhaps its Versus variant), and I’d kill sombody… in front of their own mama… to get a ten speed play Metal Gear Solid 4.

Speaking of which, the MGS4 trailer that Sony featured looked sweet. The fact that just about everyone from the earlier games returns gives the thing a the gang’s all here sense that was last featured in… uh… Lethal Weapon 4.

But, yeah. Barring MGS4 and various incarnations of Final Fantasy, I move that we stay on the current generation until prices fall and various innovations either prove themselves or die out. It’s certainly more cost-effective, if not as exciting.

Actually, scratch that. I move that developers resume developing for the SNES, when games were actually good.

 

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