THe 360 made it's debute to a lot of groaning and complaining, not to mention underwhelming numbers of units that weren't sent out.
Within it's first week, people started coming out of the woodwork with a list of issues, and the media went nuts.
" My system scratches discs."
" My system melted discs."
" The machine is too loud."
" THe games glitch up."
" My baby needed to be fed to the system so that it would run properly."
Umm, yes. Since the day I got mine, on launch day, nothing has happened to it. No burning, scratching, or baby devouring. I know it is hard to believe that the situation of the 360 was blown out of proportion, but it really has. At my store, we have doled out 134 machines, two have come back.
Does everyone remember the PS2 issues when it came out? Most don't. The PS2's track record is amazingly horrible, but we forget that. Why? The system didn't cost a hell of a lot of money compared to the 360.
But I'm not really here to talk about the 360. Most of the subject has been covered, to death, by people that are more talented and get paid to point out the flaws in such things. My job here is to talk about the PS3 and the Revolution.
Interesting PS3 facts:
1. Now that the 360 is out and about, Sony has decided that the two tier princing scheme that MS came up with isn't a bad idea. So, in the one hand, Sony was ready to scoff until they saw that the practice worked for the better.
2. No HDD support. No Network support. Once again, Sony stays at the head of the pack by not bowing to a trend that works better. Instead of buying memory cards and giving more options for your buck, Sony decided to buck the trend and stick to what worked for the PS1 and 2. Also, they will continue to support online gaming at the expense of the developers. With the PS2, there is no integrated network like, say, Xbox Live. Instead, if a developer wants online, they have to foot the bill to build their own network for those comsumers.
3. Blu-Ray: sure, there is a lot of space on those discs, but for what? As the 360 has shown so far, you cna still put huge games on regular dvds. Also, with rumors coming out of Japan that the blu-ray gives limited backwards compatibility, which Sony admitted back in the beginning of 2005, does that mean that my older games will not be able to play on the new PS3? Xbox got around it by giving the consumers a HDD.....but we won't cover that again.
Technically, the machine looks like a wonder. SPEC wise. The PS3 has so far not been shown very much. Sony has stayed quite quiet, and with the Japanese launch in less than three months, it will be interesting to see what comes out from the East.
Switching gears, we have the Nintendo Revolution.
Developers had decided that being first out of the gate, even second, no longer matters. With the Nintendo DS being the most profitable enterprise in the Nintendo family, they are content to sit back and see what happens. Ever since Nintendo lost it's crown around the time that the PS1 came out, it hasn't cared where it placed in the scheme of things, because it seems to always work out for Nintendo. The most flax it had gotten so far is the lateness of the next Zelda and the interesting Revolution controller.
Also, if the rumor of being able to buy and play the whole library of Nintendo games from each platform on the revolution is true, I don't think Nintendo should have to worry.
I think that the only thing we can agree on is to wait and see. But, I think that all the problems that plague these " Next Generation" systems and the future will teach us one thing: Don't buy until it is all sorted out.