So, among the many news releases on 1up.com over the past week was the following story on CNN:
In a nutshell, it’s branding the Playstation 3 a flop because, after two years, it hasn’t been able to overtake the three-year-old Xbox 360 and hasn’t been able touch the Nintendo Wii.
I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I like the Playstation 3. It’s a great system to play, its quiet, I’ve yet to encounter buggy disc-reads (which are present with the Wii and 360) and the graphics are beautiful. But, on the flipside, I’ve had the system for nearly half a year and have four games. And if you gave me $60 and told me, “Hey, go buy a new PS3 game”, I’d be hard pressed to come up with a fifth. That’s a serious problem for any system. Granted, Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII are on the way next year, but note that only the latter is a PS3 exclusive now.
I’d like Sony to succeed. I’d like to build up an incredible PS3 library that can justify the ultimate purchase of the console. But they seem to be imploding before my eyes, having grown arrogant over the success of the PSX and the PS2, enough to think that they were untouchable. In many respects, they’re a lot like Nintendo after the NES and SNES. But where Nintendo had an excellent library of first-party games to get them through the N64 and GameCube years, Sony’s well is drying up. MGS4 was a smash, but that can’t sustain a lifespan. Final Fantasy is going multi-platform. So are most of the games that might have given them a bump– the honest truth is that when I’m faced with the prospect of buying the 360 version of a game or the PS3 version, I opt for the 360. The only time I went with the PS3 was with Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit, and that was purely a controller thing (I’m used to the Budoukai Tenkaichi series on the PS2).
Something needs to change or we’re looking at the Dreamcast all over again.
Meanwhile, things just keep looking better and better for Nintendo. I mean, seriously, a full section of the store? Anybody who’s followed the industry over the past ten years could not have predicted the success Nintendo has been enjoying. Once upon a time, their brand was synonymous with the term “video game”, but the N64 and GameCube knocked them into a distant second and third. And yet, now they’re the undisputed king that Microsoft and Sony are trying to catch up to. And how did they do it? Not with the slickest graphics, the most versatile machine, the all-in-one media center, but by creating games everyone can enjoy.
I’ll be honest, I’d like to see a few more traditional games from them, but when the system already has a Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Smash Bros., and Paper Mario under its belt, it’s doing pretty well. I, for one, am excited at the prospect of Dragon Quest X (I’ve grown to love that series in recent years). The Wii won’t be going anywhere soon.
So, Sony’s all-but-done, Nintendo’s king of the hill, and Microsoft is enjoying a comfortable second, despite their loud and finicky machine. It’s an odd time. The real question will be, what happens with the next generation? I can’t even venture a guess (except to say that anything we see from Sony and Microsoft will incorporate motion sensitivity, far beyond SixAxis).