The PC is Dead. Long Live the Console!13
Matt posted in The Industry on April 20th, 2007

It’s interesting that several people are spelling the death of the console because consoles are becoming more and more like PCs. Recently, John Romero said, “My prediction is that the game console in the vein of the PS3 and Xbox 360 is going to either undergo a massive rethink or go away altogether. The hardcore gamers are going to either be playing on their PCs or a new PC-like platform that sits in the living room but still serves the whole house over Wi-Fi, even the video signal.”

John Romero’s lost some credibility since nothing he’s worked on since Id has turned out well, but Blizzard’s VP, Itzik Ben Bassat, said the following: “The PC is becoming an entertainment hub – you use it to watch videos and TV, play games, listen to music… With wireless, you can send your content from your PC to anywhere in the house, to your TV, something I already do. You can play PC on your TV because it’s an LCD screen. Consoles are becoming sophisticated PCs which sit in the living room. We’ll have to see how all this develops. Maybe in five years you won’t need a console because you’ll have one PC which delivers content all over your house.”

Finally, Paul Steed said in a recent interview that “The future of gaming is really mobile games and PC games. There’s more computers in the world, there’s more cell phones in the world than there are consoles and that’ll never change.”

They are right that consoles and PCs are starting to fill the same void. If you look at Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, there is very little difference between them and computers. They basically replace your PC for entertainment purposes. You can surf the web, watch movies, download TV shows, and play games on your big flat screen HDTV. Now, these developers are suggesting that the console will go away and the content will all come from the PC rather than the console basically transplanting the PC into the living room.

This is where I think they are wrong. These developers all come from a PC background, so they may have trouble imagining that the PC could be replaced. Firstly, I’m going to talk about why the desktop PC is becoming less and less important in homes. Then I will talk about why the console makes more sense in you living room than a PC (either located physically in that room or connected wirelessly). This should explain why I think the desktop PC at home will die and the console will emerge triumphant.

So, why is the desktop PC going to die? You’ll notice, I qualified that statement. The desktop PC at home will die. The desktop PC is always going to have a place at work, but at some point there, it may be replaced by thin clients. That’s another article for another time. In order to see why it’s going to die, we have to recognize what people use their desktop PCs for. Firstly, there is the communication aspect of it. This includes e-mail, messaging, surfing the web, etc. Then, there’s the entertainment aspect of it. This includes playing games, watching movies, TV, and browsing the internet. I’d say for at least 80% of PC users, that’s it. An astute reader will notice that consoles already do all the entertainment aspects of a home PC, and a cell phone does all the communication aspects of it. Presently, they might not do them as well, but that may change.

The real question is how are these devices going to replace the PC? I don’t think cell phones will replace the PC for all communication purposes immediately, but I think that over time, it will become the device of choice for communication. The main things it is lacking is a good text entry system (although the bluetooth projected keyboard is pretty awesome), and a big enough screen. The screens resolutions will increase over time, and perhaps they will come with a mini-HDMI port, connect to a TV/monitor wirelessly or have an internal projection system in the future. Communication is something important that people want to be able to do anywhere. Having all your e-mails with you wherever you go and being able to access and reply to them is a huge win. Often, someone e-mails me the time I’m supposed to meet them or location, and I completely forget, but I don’t have access to my home PC. E-mail is something that you really want to take with you wherever you go. Having all your contacts for e-mail, messenging and phoning all in one place is very convenient also.

The portable aspect of the phone is a big advantage of the mobile phone over the PC for communication purposes. But, the real question is why do I think the console will win over a PC in the living room? As all the quoted PC developers purport, the PC can live in the living room hooked up to the TV rather than a console. I think it’s reasonable to assume that the one that will win is the one that delivers a much better experience to the user. That is clearly the console. I’ll explain why.

Firstly, and most importantly is the price advantage. Console hardware is subsidized by the hardware manufacturers, which really make them more attractive to the budget minded consumer. The other main advantage is the plug and play aspect of them. You plug it into your TV, and boom! You can run everything you could possibly want. There is no installing software (besides the automatic updates), there’s no driver incompatibilities, games not running because of your system specs, and the applications are generally more stable because they only have to support very few hardware configurations. You don’t have to worry about virus protection on your console. There’s no defragmenting your hard disk.

Here’s a good example. When the very first Rainbow Six came out, I was excited about the game, so I downloaded the demo for PC. I installed the game, updated DirectX, got the latest drivers and all that, and was all set to go. I spent quite a while setting up all my attack routes, strategies, and weapon. Finally, as it was loading the actual level, and I anxiously awaiting the loading bar to finish, so I could enjoy my well laid plans, the game crashed. I was so fed up with it, I uninstalled the demo and never played again. Now, I program for a living. I’m not your average Joe consumer who doesn’t know what a driver is. If I don’t want to struggle to get a game to run on a PC, troubleshoot all the potential problems, then this platform is not ideal for the average Joe consumer. Console sales are increasing and gaining market share over PC games. Why would this trend miraculously reverse just because consoles share a lot of the same functionality? They share a lot of functionality, yes, but the consoles do it better and cheaper.

http://ps3.gamespy.com/playstation-3/unreal-tournament-2007/771700p1.html
What can PCs do better than consoles? The real advantage to PCs are the input devices – mice and keyboards. Besides tradition, there’s no reason they HAVE to be PC exclusive, and more and more console games will use them. Xbox 360 as well as Playstation 3 work with USB keyboards out of the box for all their text entry. Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus as I mentioned previously works with the keyboard and mouse for Playstation 2. Unreal Tournament 2007 for Playstation 3 will work with a  keyboard and mouse. I haven’t heard if the 360 version will support them or not, but they’d be silly not to. It would make sense for Shadowrun the first cross platform competitive game to include keyboard and mouse support on the 360 version, but I don’t think it does. Hopefully, they’ll patch it later to rectify this oversight.

Something that lends credence to my theory is that Apple, Microsoft and Sony are trying to get into these two new platforms for computing. Three huge companies, the two main competitors in the home PC platform and one of the biggest consumer electronic companies, and they are trying to get into these two spaces. I imagine this is because they see the writing on the wall and that these two areas is where the money will be in the future – not the desktop PC. Microsoft saw it before Apple since the Xbox and the PocketPC platform predate the iTV and the iPhone from Apple considerably. Sony may have had the vision of the entertainment PC first with the Playstation 2. The Xbox was apparently developed in reaction to the idea of this new Sony computing platform being in everyone’s home – without running Microsoft’s operating system on it. The PSP is trying to move into that area as well, but from the entertainment side of things. I think the communication mobile PC/phone device will be used for portable entertainment, but I would argue that’ll be the icing on the cake rather than the prime usage just because as Steed said, there are more phones in the world than gaming consoles. Certainly, the Playstation brand commands a larger market share than Sony Ericsson, so that makes sense for them.

I could reiterate my point in my typical fashion, but I think I’ve actually made my point without my usual verbosity. If you don’t believe me, numbers don’t lie. Here’s some graphs from the ESA:

  

More Wii-actions and Some P-Wii-dictions4
Matt posted in Games, Playstation 3, The Industry, Wii, Xbox 360 on April 6th, 2007

Although the Wii has been getting a crap ton of positive feedback, many people seem disillusioned with the system. Chris Hecker had a head-turning rant at Game Developer Conference about how “the Wii is a piece of shit.” His main complaints being that the console isn’t powerful in terms of CPU to do much interesting and that Nintendo doesn’t take games seriously as an art form.

Now, Chris has seemed to do a 180 on the issue and retracted his statements, which to many websites appeared that he was pressured by EA to mollify Nintendo and their fanatics. Whether that is true or not, he doesn’t seem to have much fondness for the system.

Also, the God of War 2 director, Cory Balrog, whose blog was linked on Kotaku, was not impressed with the Wii. His comments are as follows:

“Here are some pics of the sweet wii…though I must be honest it was not everything I had hoped it would be. It was fun…but the wow factor wore off fairly quick. The one game I wanted to play, Trauma Center, was definitely a bit of a let down. The wiimote was woefully inaccurate and sapped the fun of the game. The Wii sports golf and bowling was cool…the boxing is freaking terrible though. In the end I hope to see some cool games come out of it, though it has me worried that the whole “what new thing can you do with the controller” fad will wear off after awhile and I will have left is a much slimmer wireless gamecube. Though the gamecuvbe gave me some great gaming moments so I am not all that bummed. I am still happier playing Zelda on my Gamecube…maybe I am just a luddite like that. Who knows?”

Now, since Cory has posted a response to all the negative feedback he’s been getting. He basically clarified that he wasn’t writing off the Wii – just that he was disappointed with his initial play.

Joystiq recently posted a link about a Microsofter saying that no Wii game’s controls kicks ass. Although that might not seem so surprising, it was surprising to me to read that the Joystiq editor agreed. I thought that I was in the minority. More interestingly, Joystiq mentions Wii remote issues in cooking mama and extends them to the general case. These remote issues are largely what I’m going to talk about in this very long blog post. They also discuss one of the other problems I have with the Wii here: “It still looks like Nintendo won’t back up these amazing sales figures with some real, original Wii titles for quite some time. We’ll just have to enjoy this constant string of Gamecube ports and mini-game based Wii titles apparently.”

Now, I’m not going to say the Wii is a piece of shit. The hardware is not very impressive both from a CPU standpoint as Chris Hecker mentions as well as from a graphics perspective. I have an HDTV and standard definition just doesn’t look good anymore. But, graphics don’t make a game. I was just discussing with a co-worker how much I loved Nights: Into Dreams for the Sega Saturn and how much I love the Sega Saturn in general. Just because the graphics are bad doesn’t mean that the gameplay can’t be fantastic. Much to the chagrin of PSP developers like myself, the Nintendo DS is far outselling the PSP because it has a bunch of really appealing games even though the hardware pales in comparison. I strongly dislike the touchscreen, but I still am tempted to get a DS for games like New Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi’s Island 2. I don’t have very many games for the PSP and the only one I’m really passionate about is Loco Roco (although I do enjoy playing my own game, Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters, but I’m biased). The PSP is a tremendously power piece of hardware. Comparing to the PS2, games two years in the lifecycle of the PS2 don’t look nearly as good as Final Fantasy XII or God of War 2. Likewise, PSP graphics will be much more amazing in three or four years. DS graphics can get better, but since there’s a lot less hardware to work with, the jump won’t be as significant. But again, graphics aren’t consumer’s largest concern.

I’ve been playing Wii for quite a bit since launch trying to get into it, and so far, I’ve been unsuccessful. I’ve played a lot of Wii tennis because my girlfriend (a non-gamer) was really excited by it. I didn’t have a second controller, so we took turns playing – my girlfriend out of her love of tennis and me to defend my game playing honor. I couldn’t have her get a higher score, could I? We both ended up with scores in the 500s. Not terrific, but not terrible (Half way from newbie to pro). We both fancied ourselves as pretty decent Wii athletes. She was really pleased because she thought it felt like real tennis. I have played about three tennis games in my life, so needless to say, I’m a terrible tennis player outside the Wii. Even still, I am frustrated by the lack of feedback that is provided (as I blogged before). I don’t know what part of my swing is taken into account, how to get better because trial and error with no feedback is frustrating. There is no training mode in game to show me how to improve. Perhaps I need to hire a Wii Tennis instructor to educate me on improving my technique. Maybe that’s Nintendo’s plan. They want to start selling video game lessons, since good sport lessons are expensive. Perhaps Reggie can come to my house and coach me. If he’s busy kicking ass, and/or taking names, maybe those “Wii want to play” guys can show me how it’s done. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have a training manual or an instruction manual that describes what input is taken into account and how to do a successful swing.

On top of that, the lower difficulties also seem to make the actual game play easier, not just the AI. When we took turns playing, we could return the ball most of the time (at difficulty 500). When we played each other, we swung and missed most of the shots. This to me is indicative of the swing timing changing based on your skill level. Although it is nice that they are trying to make it easier for people with less practice, it’s frustrating that doesn’t carry over to multiplayer. The problem with that is I can’t practice without my girlfriend to get extra skill in multiplayer unless I work up to whatever difficulty level multiplayer plays at. Probably the best solution would be to play the game at the skill level of the weaker player. That way the weaker player could stand a chance, but the stronger player would still have an advantage. Another option would be to take the average of both players and use that as the skill level. I could be way wrong about this skill level thing, but regardless of the cause, it didn’t “feel” right to either of us, and it’s up to the game developer to make that so.

Also, I strongly dislike the Wii’s screen positioning system (the thing it uses the IR sensor for). I want to be able to calibrate it like a light gun. I want where I’m pointing to be where it registers. That is what  is intuitive to me. For Sega Dreamcast, I actually taped a laser pointer on top of my light gun, then calibrated the impact point to where the laser pointer hit. I thought that was really cool. The light gun handled it perfectly, and I could aim exactly at the screen. The Wii is the opposite. I get a targeting reticle all the time, but it doesn’t match where I’m pointing the remote in screen space. Maybe I need to experimentally determine a better position for my IR sensor, but I’m really sick of “please point your cursor at the screen” messages. Isn’t Wii supposed to be easy and intuitive? The Wii does have a sensitivity option buried in the poorly designed settings menus, and I was able to decrease it’s sensitivity so there was less jitter, but I wasn’t able to calibrate it the way I’d like. I don’t find that easy to play with, and most if not all of the Wii sports doesn’t use it like that. So, maybe Nintendo’s most “accessible” and easy to play game omitted those controls for a reason.

The first time I played the air hockey game in Wii Play, I beat my friend who had more experience playing the game than I. Sure, I could attribute it to my great skill, but I think it was really that the he kept overshooting the sensor’s boundaries and missed all of the shots. Now, potentially, calibration is an “advanced” feature and maybe the casual gamers won’t understand, but if the first time you play with your Wii, you calibrate it, or maybe a per game calibration, it seems that it would help make the Wii easier to use.

Actually, the sensor boundaries did come in handy for WarioWare’s balancing games. I have horribly shaky hands (maybe that has something to do with why Wii doesn’t work as well for me), so the balancing game was be my bane, but when my cursor was not pointing at the screen, it just saved the last position which could be flat, and I kicked it’s ass.

As a game developer, I’m not impressed with the Wii for the same reason Chris Hecker states. There’s not much CPU to work with. I really like nice graphics, but the most important thing to me is to make a fun game. With extra CPU, I can do a lot of fun things. Perhaps this is because I’m a programmer, and what I want to do is constantly constrained by the limits of the hardware. If I want to have an object with good collision, I may not have the CPU resources to do so. Now, one might argue that fun games don’t hinge on good collision, but I think it helps a lot in many situations. For example, the camera is something that requires very complex collision. If you have more CPU time, you can come up with a  really good camera algorithm that is smooth and never blocked. Doing physics based gameplay or fluids is also very CPU intensive. Now, I’m not saying every game has to be physics based and you can’t have a fun game that has no physics at all, but being able to do some really neat physics tricks definitely can create a lot of fun gameplay. Good pathfinding can be processor intensive. All too often due to CPU constraints, the pathfinding in games ends up with situations that it cannot handle. That restricts design, which is frustrating as a game developer. Doing really advanced AI algorithms is also tricky. Sure, we can have little state machines for every enemy, and that goes pretty far, but what if you want to have an AI co-op player? We had one in the Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer, and it wasn’t very smart. Even the teammates in Gears of War aren’t very smart. Now, oftentimes, that is limited to schedule pressure and not CPU time, but if you want to do something that is processor intensive, like have your AI do a whole bunch of collision checks to discover things about its environment, you will rapidly exceed your budget and have to resort to cheating.

Now, here’s my p-wii-dictions. I think the Wii has a lot of steam right now, but before the end of the year, its sales will level out to around the Xbox 360 and PS3s sales. Why do I think that? Firstly, I think the line up for the immediate future is pretty weak. Minigames, minigames, and more minigames. Nothing is coming out that really delivers on the promise of new, deep gameplay experiences. On top of that, the new controller, while potentially liberating, has many frustrations that I as well as other gamers (at least the joystiq’ers) are enduring. It’s possible that over time, developers will get better at sensing motion, but it seems that some problems are inherent in the design (like not being able to judge the sensitivity bounds of the IR sensor). The heavy hitters for this year, Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3, are penciled in for the end of the year, but I’d say there’s a 50% chance that one of those titles gets pushed into next year. I don’t have any evidence to support that, but Nintendo’s big first party titles are known for frequently getting delayed. (Take Twilight Princess as an example) I think in 2008 and 2009 more people will own HDTVs and be craving content to display on them. Wii won’t deliver, and they’ll grow tired of the gimmicks and minigames and turn to Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Now, keep in mind that these predictions are for the United States only. I think Japan is nuts for the Wii and will stay that way, and I’ve heard that Europe doesn’t have much HDTV penetration (although strangely, PS3 has sold quite well).

One may wonder how with so much hype how can it fizzle out? That is an easy one. Tickle Me Elmo. Two Christmases different models of Tickle Me Elmos have been the “hot” toy and everyone HAD to have one. They were very difficult to find (similar to the Wii) and very hyped (also similar to the Wii). But, once the hype wore down, no one cared. I don’t hear very many people talking about how great their Tickle Me Elmo is. As long as supply is less than the demand, people will feel pressured to buy it if they can find it. Hell, I’ve bought some stuff I don’t really like because it was “limited edition”, and I’ve worried I couldn’t find it later. I didn’t care much for Steel Battalion, but when I found out the first run completely sold out and they were issuing a second, I figured I had to pick it up, just in case I ever wanted to play it. Now, I have played it, and I found it pretty frustrating especially when it deleted my saved game. I plan on playing it more now that I have a modded Xbox with the ability to back up my saved game. A worse purchase was the Omnimusha Katana controller, which is absolutely terrible, but it was a limited run and although I couldn’t find a description of what it does, I figured I’d better drop the $70 in case it was really awesome. It turned out to be much worse than I could have possibly imagined. It was a dual shock controller on the handle of a sword, and if you swung the sword, sometimes it would register as the circle button being pressed. Even with Xbox 360, when the Elite model was supposedly limited edition, myself and a friend decided we had to buy it right away! When we discovered it was a whole new SKU, we figured there’s no rush to upgrade to the HDMI capable model, so we are both thinking about holding off. Perhaps they’ll be a price drop or a larger hard disk bundled with HDMI later. So, my point is that the demand for a product is higher when it’s the “hot” thing and hard to find. It seems that the COO of GameStop seems to think that Nintendo is holding back units.  As joystiq reports, “Compared to the PS3′s fluid supply and the fact that the Wii is comprised of cheap, proven and occasionally duct-taped parts, this is not a story that many have found easy to buy. In fact, it’s about as easy to buy as a Wii, which to this day, still seems to be a retail phantom (much like the DS Lite). Managed scarcity is a good technique for keeping your product desirable, but it comes at the expense of leaving people with empty hands, tightly clenched in frustration.”
Now, I agree completely with Joystiq’s assessment. There is no reason that Wiis should be this difficult to find. They’ve been manufacturing GameCubes for over 5 years and duct tape is cheap. In all seriousness, the hardware of everything but the remote should be trivial to manufacture since it’s just a version of 5 year old technology. Honesstly, I’m amazed how fast Sony solved the Playstation 3 manufacturing problems since the cell is brand new technology and an enormous chip. There is no excuse Nintendo can possibly make for producing so few Wiis. Just like the Tickle Me Elmo craze, the manufactured scarcity makes it a “must buy”. For now. But just like Tickle Me Elmos, when that pressure is lifted, there’ll be a lot of disillusioned consumers and bored gamers, I think. The platform will start showing it’s age when consumers buy HDTVs, which prices are dropping quite rapidly. On top of this, the FCC is regulating that by February 17th, 2009, all broadcast television is in HD. Now, I’m not sure if the FCC can regulate cable and satellite television, but if all content providers are already mastering their shows in HD, then I imagine HD cable’s penetration will increase. The two things that are preventing people from upgrading are cost, which is always dropping and already beginning to be reasonable. (For example, Amazon.com has a pretty affordable 27″ LCD for $419.99.)

Now, I’m not the only one who thinks that the Wii is overhyped. Brian Hastings, (who is falsely listed as Insomniac’s CEO), thinks it’s just a fad. Now many people are quick to dismiss his opinion because Insomniac’s PS2 and PS3 outings have been published by Sony. Although I think it’s in his best interest for PS3 to succeed, I think that he would have some say as far as what games Insomniac develops. Many people forget that they are an independent studio. They can make games for whomever they like. It just so happens that they’ve aligned themselves with Sony, and that’s been a very good alliance in the past. If Brian Hastings genuinely thought the Wii was the future of gaming, then wouldn’t it make sense for him to align himself with Nintendo?

The author, Chris Kohler, argues that the Wii is for real. Even though he makes some convincing points, I still don’t agree. Firstly, he loses credibility points for getting the title of Brian Hastings incorrect when it was even presented correctly on the Neogaf post he linked to. Firstly, he compares the battle to the DS. I think that’s a very bad comparison. The DS’s main competitor at least initially was not the PSP but the GBA. Nintendo has been the ONLY one to maintain a profitable handheld game console. All the rivals have failed spectacularly except Sony, which is putting up a darn good fight. Secondly, Nintendo in the home console wars is coming off a loser. Playstation and to a much lesser extend have gobbled up a lot of mindshare, which is similar to the PSP fighting the DS. Nintendo has the portable game mindshare, and in the portable space, Sony is the under dog.

His second main point, I also think is a bad one. It hinges on “research” showing that consumers with HDTVs aren’t ordering High Def channels and are using DVD players with composite cables because “it looks fine”. Well, firstly, I’m skeptical of this “research” since it isn’t cited. There are many studies that are conducted in a very poor manner in order to provide convincing numbers to someone who would benefit a certain result from a study. Secondly, (even if that is true) I think this is a completely separate issue. As far as High Def channels, in my area it costs an extra $10 a month to get any High Def channel, and there aren’t many of them at all. Plus, many programs (such as the news) don’t really benefit from High Def. So, I think that’s the real reason they don’t upgrade their cable. I think people who DO have an HDTV are interested in HD content. If they weren’t, why would they buy an HDTV? Using composite cables is a symptom of that the HD revolution confusing the average consumer. A good example of this is try asking your parents or girlfriend if they should use S-video or composite to hook up their DVD player. They probably won’t know which is better. If you check behind their TV, they’ll probably be using composite because that’s what the player came with or what they have lying around. With HD formats, it has only introduced more wires, and to the non-geeks, it’s not clear which is better. For example, my parents bought an HDTV. They also bought a Blu-ray player. (I’m not clear why they bought Blu-ray over HD DVD, and upon asking, they claimed I told them to, which I didn’t because presently, I’m a bit more partial to HD DVD, but that’s a story for another article. Since I have both, I’m not really taking sides, so I may be partial to Blu-ray more later.) Anyway, The salesperson at Best Buy claimed they need a $100 HDMI cable to display the 1080p signal. They purchased it. Now, if they knew what HDMI was, they would know it’s ludicrous to spend $100 on a HDMI cable. Since it is a digital interface, as long as the cable can conduct a signal, the cost doesn’t matter because it’s binary. Either the signal is there or it isn’t. That’s the big advantage to digital over analog. Noise cannot be introduced. I have a $6 HDMI cable that works perfectly. Now, what was even more interesting was that their Blu-ray player INCLUDED an HDMI cable, so they ended up returning the insanely overpriced cable. Now, if you think my parents are dumb, you’d be wrong. My dad has a PhD in electrical engineering. It just so happens that he isn’t particularly interested in home theater equipment and is unfamiliar with HDMI, and they probably didn’t do much comparison shopping for HDMI cables either. Perhaps this was a bit long-winded. Although, I imagine if you are reading this, you are accustomed to my writing style, which is wordy to say the least. My point is just that people who buy HDTVs buy them for a reason. They are interested in HD content. I’m guessing they’ll be able to tell the difference. Maybe it’s not worth buying a next gen DVD player. Probably not. Progressive scan DVD players are better, but I imagine it’s not enough of a difference for the average viewer to notice. So, if HDTV owners want HD content, I think they’ll turn to video games. And Wii doesn’t deliver.

Similar to discrediting Brian Hasting’s opinion, one might speculate that since High Impact’s first game was published by Sony, I might be rooting for Sony. On reading my blog, it may seem that I prefer Xbox 360. If you looked into my bio, you might realize that I worked for Microsoft on the Xbox Software Services team as an intern. Maybe my loyalty stems from there? Maybe those two biases combine to a hatred of Nintendo? That’s funny to me because I never owned a Playstation 1, and was often accused of being a Nintendo fanboy in high school because of my love for SNES and Nintendo 64. So, you can suspect I’m biased towards whomever you like. It would seem by Occham’s Razor that the answer to this would be that I’m just being honest. I fancy myself as an honest person – perhaps to the point that it’s a weakness. I was let down by GameCube and as I am describing here,  I’m not fond of the Wii yet.

I’m not giving up on my Wii. I’ll continue to pick up games here and there and play them from time to time, but most of my gaming time in the immediate future will be dedictated to PS2 and Xbox 360 because there are a number of titles that I’m excited about playing. I will however pick up Super Paper Mario soon, although that’s essentially a GameCube game and probably rarely uses the Wii controls, which I suppose I can’t complain, except everyone who has a GameCube and not a Wii is pretty much out of luck. I’m also mortified of Nights for Wii. If you are unfamiliar with Nights, let me say that it’s not a horror game. It’s an amazing game for Saturn unlike anything else I’ve ever played that is getting a Wii sequel. Now the reason this has struck terror into my heart is that as much as I love Sega (and I most certainly do), their output recently seems to be eroding all my favorite Sega franchises. Sonic, their most beloved, has been destroyed. Who even thought that was possible? The EyeToy Nights minigame was completely unplayable. I’m also very nervous about the new Golden Axe Riders, in development by Secret Level. If they destroy those two franchises, all they have to do is ruin Panzer Dragoon and Samba de Amigo, and my very soul will be crushed.