A Week In Comments

And now, time for a new beat…

MY CONSOLE IS

THE VERY BEST

LIKE NO CONSOLE EVER WAS

TO DEFEND IT

IS MY REAL TEST

TO TROLL OTHERS IS MY CAUSE

I WILL TROLL THREADS, ACROSS THE BOARD

BITCHING FAR AND WIDE

TEACH OTHER KIDS TO UNDERSTAND

THAT IM RIGHT AND THEY’RE QUEERS

It’s really amazing when you are trying to have a thoughtful, rational and logic-based discussion on games and consoles, how in most company it is perfectly acceptable to openly discuss the weak points of the Xbox 360 (like the RROD, for example). But man, do not ever bring up the weak points of the PS3. The moment you do, suddenly your rational, dignified conversation devolves into flame war in a matter of seconds.

Fact of the matter is, if news articles and interviews did not show up on occasion to remind everyone of the mistakes and missteps Sony has made with the PS3, the Sony faithful would have the PS3 go down in history as one of the most perfectly executed game consoles ever.

Case and point: most of the same problems that plague the PS3 (from a development and publishing perspective) also plagued the PS2 – plenty of devs complained about a lot of the same stuff they are still complaining about with the PS3, back in the day with the PS2; like Hideo Kojima openly complaining how much he hated going to work, because the PS2 was the worse system in history to develop for. A lot of people forget, that much of the success of the PS2 had little to do with what Sony got right, and more to do with Sony having no real competition that could bring the challenge to them, last-gen. One of the major reasons the PS3 is plagued with so many issues, is that Sony made a lot of the same mistakes with the PS2 . . . and got away with them. Had SEGA management had half a brain between the lot of them, or if they had the deep pockets of a company like Microsoft, or had Nintendo invented the Wii-Mote last gen, Sony would have lost a considerable

amount of marketshare to either company based on the mistakes they made with PS2 – they would have had to fight for first place, instead of just having it handed to them. But amazingly, popular history, a term that until recently did not even apply to videogames, glasses over all of Sony’s mistakes with the PS2, and has written it in as one of the most flawlessly executed game consoles of all times.

So yeah, I think the occasional reminder to keep the record straight is always in order – after all, it is not like history is ever going to allow Microsoft to live down the RROD; or Nintendo to live down the poor software showing on the Wii. These occasional, little reminders keeps us all honest – especially when unlike previous generations, this gen the evidence is only a hotlink or Google search away