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It’s been four years since the Xbox 360 launched and three for the Wii and PlayStation 3…and there’s rarely a peep about new console from any of these companies, despite what analyst Michael Pachter has to say about Wii HD. This may mean that each of these companies are banking on their systems for many years. And why not? Each system has carved out a big pie of the gaming market for theirselves and everyone should be happy. And for each of the systems, there is a lot of great software and hardware features to make it a great purchase for these holidays. What the hell does this have to do with a console launch?
Because many owners, like me, bought into that hype and camped out for either one of these systems. Camping out for products is nothing new, but with this console generation, there have been numerous updates, changes, and redesigns that might have made camping out seem a little premature. So, I want to look at system’s success and failures and decide if camping out for it was a bad decision. Note: This is barely going to take into account price cuts-they always happen and always lead to better sales, unless you’re a Gamecube.
Xbox 360-Out of the gates first, it helped bring some former PC only features to the consoles and helped cement online gaming and connections as a must for consoles, with the PS3 and Wii severly lacking in what the Xbox Live package can do. The games belong in the realm of the hardcore with Gears of War and Halo being two top franchises. When it comes to most multiplatform releases, the Xbox 360 usually outsells the PS3. Many can make a case for the 360 helping North America become the number one market, marking a shift that has left Japan scrambling to retain a smidgen of the foothold they used to have. Also, the achievements feature has extended the life of many games and have kept players playing even longer. However, it wasn’t smooth journey as Microsoft’s rush to stores might have resulted in the design flaw known as the Red Ring of Death. There were also numerous SKUs on the market, which either forced people to buy more parts if they were missing or overpay for certain features they could do without. The catering to the hardcore only audience have left them with a glut of first person shooters, american RPGs, sports, probably giving the market to Wii. The HD-DVD add-on might have been an unnecessary addition, evidence by the abandoning of the format and the advent of Netflix on consoles. They didn’t have a true backwards compatibility feature, relying on emulation to only play certain games. So-Wait or Camp? I’m gonna get in a lot of trouble but there was rarely anything outside of Call of Duty 2 that said buy now. Now, that there are only two SKUs on the market that aren’t more expensive than the competitors, the Xbox 360 was definitely a Wait console. The software finally came in, there are better audiences for multiplayer games, and the Xbox Live Arcade has showed off some great indie hits like Braid and Castle Crashers.
PS3-The black monolith of a machine is seeing some of the best press and sales in years. Spurred by the price cut, it overtook the 360 in current months, with a hardware redesign, some of the best software it’s seen in month, Blu-Ray becoming a viable home entertainment option. Yet, it was an uphill battle for Sony, as they had to deal with negative press from day one with their overpriced system, hardware failures that Sony didn’t cover financially, perceived corporate arrogance, a hardware schematic that made development for most teams a headache. Yet it drew a high amount of people waiting to camp out, including me, to score one at launch, though most of them sold it on eBay, not including me. So-Wait or Camp? This was definitely a wait period as the number of options in software, better ad campaign and hardware exclusives are better now than they were three years. For Pete’s sake, rumble was taken out of the controllers and Six-Axis is a rarely touted feature. While I had fun camping out for the system, it seems like a no-brainer to pick it up these days. And if you have to get one game this year, then many PS3 owners would probably pick Uncharted 2 as said game.
Wii-The big money printing machine from Kyoto gambled on non-gamers to buy and they have. The remote controller paid off as it became an attractive device to many people, leading it to meteoric sales. For over a year and probably even longer, it was a hard to fine device, even in 2008, when it had probably its worst holiday lineup. Many of the games on the system have broken the 10 million mark, a rarity for video games. And it has one of the best retro gaming services ever with the Virtual Console and showed off some great content through their WiiWare Service However, their online multiplayer system is a joke. (Before anyone disputes, tell me an easy way to play Smash Bros Brawl, without trading 48 numbers.) The games aren’t ‘ hardcore’ enough and get easily dismissed by 360 and PS3 owners on the strength of visuals alone, a view that carries over into some reviews. Despite the software being of better quality and having a bigger third-party presence than GC and N64, it’s routinely ignored or not up to the standards of more hardcore gamers on the 360 and PS3. So-Wait or Camp? I camped out for it-check the attached video-and it still gets heavy use. Camping was worth it. The hardware has never caused for a massive recall or restructuring, unless you’re using mods and homebrew stuff. Twilight Princess carried it for months until software kept trickling in and Super Mario Galaxy came and with Wii Play, Wii Fit, and Mario Kart Wii owning the software charts for months, if you’re not getting a Wii now becuase you didn’t want at day one, you didn’t want at all.
Now, before anyone calls me a fanboy or a Nintendo honk (though the shirt in the video renders any point moot), please know that this wasn’t about me saying Nintendo rulez. This was about seeing if the same systems that we play now are the same systems that executives hyped before launch. There are many people, who may or may not be a big gamer like me, who do feel burnt when price cuts come in and they invest serious money into a system only for that system to become cheaper down the line. But this wasn’t just about measuring the cost of wait versus the joy of being the first person to have something. This was also taking into account the quality of the software available in all sectors (retail, online, backwards compatible).
