It's been a long time since I was published in a newspaper. But I spoke today with a guy from The Canon City Daily Record, and I'm going to meet with him soon about having a weekly column on videogames pubished in the local paper. The thought of being published made me think: what kind of content would I write if I had to gear it towards a wider audience? That led to the following.
When I was seven years old, my father bought us an Atari 2600. Space Invaders and Combat were amazing to us at the time. When I was in high school, Nintendo released their original Nintendo Entertainment System, and Super Mario Brothers made Space Invaders look primitive. In college, I bought a Sony Playstation, which was leaps and bounds beyond anything the NES had to offer. And the following "generation" of video game consoles included the Xbox, Playstation 2, and Nintendo's Gamecube.
Now, it's 2006, and the next generation of video game consoles is upon us.
This started at the beginning of the year with Microsoft's XBox 360. Apparently, they couldn't bring themselves to call it the XBox 2, since Sony's new Playstation 3 would sound more advanced. So they found a title that allowed them to work in a "3".
The Xbox 360 runs on three 3.2ghz processors, and its system specs easily equal even high-end gaming PCs as they exist in 2006. Its current catalog includes such popular titles as Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. The initial pricing put the console at a hefty $399, which Microsoft tried to mitigate by announcing a stripped-down version of the XBox 360 for $299. This stripped down "core" version was soon disregarded by most gamers, since it had no wireless controllers, no hard drive, and no ability to connect to high-definition displays.
XBox Live is one of the XBox's most successful features, allowing users to play games online, download new game content, and earn "Achievements" by accomplishing certain goals specific to each game. These achievements are then visible to other players online, and players can compete for achievement points.
Backwards compatibility has been an issue with the XBox 360. Gamers want to be able to play original XBox games on their new XBox 360, but not all XBox titles currently work on the new console. Through periodic updates, downloaded directly into the console, Microsoft has slowly been expanding the list of game titles that will work on the XBox 360, but that list is as of yet far from complete.
Before the XBox 360, the Playstation 2 had been widely acknowledged as the best console out there, which is why Sony has a lot at stake with the Playstation 3, which they're planning to release on November 17th. Sony has made a number of unpopular decisions about their new console, not the least of which is the price. $599. That's right, six hundred dollars. The bulk of the cost is due to the Playstation 3's integration of new Blu-Ray technology. The Blu-Ray Disc is one of the two formats of high-definition DVD, the other being called simply "HD-DVD". But similar to the VHS/BetaMax format wars of the early eighties, no one knows which format will win out. Sony hopes to use the Playstation 3 as a way to get people to adopt the Blu-Ray format, since it will be able to play Blu-Ray movies the same way that the Playstation 2 plays DVDs. Standard Blu-Ray players are likely to cost close to a thousand dollars. But will people really be willing to pay $599 for a game console and $60-$100 for games?
The Playstation 3 will run on the new Cell processor, which is expected to give it performance similar or even superior to the XBox 360. And once Xbox 360 announced two versions of its console, Sony followed suit, announcing a stripped-down "Basic" version of the PS3 which will cost $100 less. Of course, this basic version will have a 20GB rather than 60GB of drive space, no flash card slot, no wi-fi, and no HDMI port to hook it to high-definition displays. With no HDMI port, owners of the basic console won't be able to watch Blu-Ray movies in high definition, and thus they'll be paying a lot extra for a feature they can't even use.
In response to Nintendo's new console, Sony has added motion and tilt-sensing technology to the PS3 controller, which will otherwise look identical to a wireless PS2 controller, although it will have no vibration function. The PS3 will also have an online component, and at the least we can expect multiplayer online functionality similar to that of the XBox 360, although there will be no monthly fee. Lastly, Sony has announced that the PS3 will be backwards compatible with all Playstation and PS2 games. To fans of such classics as Castlevania Symphony of the Night and the Resident Evil series, this is a huge plus.
The third and final entrant into this next-generation video game console race is Nintendo. There was a big stir in April when Nintendo changed the name of its new console from the "Revolution" to the "Wii". Perhaps Wii is a more internationally-friendly title. In any case, plenty of people hated the name.
But regardless of the name, Nintendo's concept for the Wii is radically different, and very interesting. Rather that playing with a gamepad or joystick, the default Wii controller is essentially a remote control, very similar to the one you probably use for your television. The clincher? It senses motion. That means that tennis games, swordfighting games, and even surgery games will involve you moving the remote as if it were a tennis raquet, sword, or scalpel. Gamers have affectionately dubbed the control the "Wii-mote".
There are other Wii controllers. A wired analog stick add-on to the Wii-mote plugs into its base, and the resultant two-handed controller looks much like nunchuks. There is also a "classic" controller which resembles the Gamecube controls, and a "zapper" which is essentially a light gun with a thumbstick at the back.
The other huge difference between the Wii and its competitors is in pricing and technology. Rather than try to compete with the sheer graphics power of the PS3 and XBox 360, Nintendo has decided to focus more on gameplay. Thus, the graphics capabilities of the Wii will be only slightly better than Nintendo's Gamecube, and will not support high-definition. Wii content will be distributed on regular DVDs. The upside of this is that the price will be no more than $250. A final price and release date have not yet been announced, but expectations are that the Wii will be released before Thanksgiving, perhaps as early as October.
One of the best features of Wii is its "Virtual Console". This will allow you to download and play games from the NES, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, or TurboGrafx-16 systems. Of course, they will be paid downloads, but with a selection of games like that, the Wii is going to have a sizable edge. Xbox 360 is releasing one game per week right now for purchase and download, but how will they measure up when compared to every game from the Nintendo catalog back to 1991, plus some Sega games?
I've been a huge Playstation 2 fan for a while now, but I plan on buying a Wii, even if I do think the name sounds stupid.