So let's be a little serious for a bit...I've always been a follower of the games industry and although, I am not once the hardcore gamer I once used to be, I still keep an keen eye on what is going on.
First off, I was always a big Nintendo fan, perhaps I do hold a slight bias towards them, but I always thought with good reason, in the past I was a lot more dedicated and fixed on arguing my point, these days though, I look at the average gamer as more narrow minded than I was at that time.
I currently have all three consoles within my house hold and I only chose not to support Sony, explanation? I still kind of hold them responsible for the death of Sega, while at the time when Sega were going head to head with Nintendo I still stood in favour of the Big 'N' I respected and liked Sega products and didn't mind supporting them. Another thing that put me off Sony completely was the whole 'stealing the design' of the original Playstation, that alone is an essay.
But Sony & Nintendo once worked together hand in hand and the PSX was the left over result after the divorce during pregnancy. Outside of that, I've only been put off Sony more by their total lack of creativity and originality withingaming. I could go on, but that'll be all on my stance within the games industry.
The Super Nintendo Add-On, with the Optical Drive developed by Sony.
Original Concept art of the Playstation, note the controller.
The point I wanted to make was on what has become of Gamers, the problem with the games industry to me, were developers always trying to appeal to commercial crowd with elaborate formula's to sell games [Sex, Violence, adult themes etc] & the total lack of innovation and creativity that was absent within the industry.
It was pretty bad right after the Sega era when Sony took things to the next level of casual gaming, which was pretty much the Sony Playstation becoming an fashion accessory, Sony had perfected Sega's formula.
The Sega Dreamcast. The final console produced by Sega.
Today, though, the Xbox 360 stands above the PS3, Microsoft now has Sony fans feeling the same way about the industry as I did during Sony's inception, an rather entertaining irony. Thing is though, I respect Mircosoft more than Sony, they came into the industry & just done a good job of dominating, why so mad? Because they can afford it? They learned from all other their flaws after the run of the original Xbox & have beaten Sony at their own game, without stealing console designs.
Sony still are using their second controller format [Dual Shock upgraded with motion sensors now called Sixaxis], Mircosoft two consoles deep are on their third design, lets not forget this is Sony's third console excluding hand held, remakes and incarnations with never made it to the west or light of day.
At the moment, Mircosoft and Sony are ripping off each others Minor innovations, I feel the games developers themselves are still caught up in what I see as a now primitive competition of "who can imitate the other the most" while upping each other via cliché's and better graphics without the improvement of collision detection or general animation outside of typical motion capture [An enormous percentage of the games out today, look exactly the same].
Gears or War (Top Left), Resistance (Top Right) & Halo (Below). As Yahtzee Says "On the Brownish Grey/Green Spectrum"
So, what about Nintendo? After their struggles against Sony starting during the era of the N64, Nintendo were billed by gamers and fan's as "Going out of business in the next year" for around nine years, almost an decade, the success of the Pokemon series of games and merchandise saved the company quite a bit, but in late 2006 the Wii came out, it blew the competition out of the water although it's graphical and processing power are nothing in comparison to either the Xbox 360 or the PS3 it was what it done which made it such a success, the motion sensing abilities appealed to the masses, it wasn't just a mass of gamers trying to get the console, but more a mass of people dying to play Wii Sports.
So the biggest irony to fall into place after this was the fact gamers thought it was too gimmicky or took too much energy to use or...[and this is the big chunk] it was too commercial.
Nintendo managed to take causal gaming to a level most never imagined possible, brought in new innovations which will only be continued to be developed on all new consoles, Nintendo or not, Re-designed the controller & once again dominated the industry like they once had in the past only to have the very same gamers who demanded originality and innovation, complain about things they really should know better about by now.
The Wii hasn't just brought the truth side of the gamers either it's the developers mostly and always, the potential of such an console makes openings for massive amounts of creativity, but the industry have been so lazy and unoriginal, we probably won't get to see this potential until the next two generations of games consoles.
