Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Doing a 360...

Actually, there are so many ways you can look at that... but I don't think the ports are big enough to... anyway...

So, the X-Box 360 came out today and it's all over the news... and that kind of amazes me.

This is the first generation of video game systems to launch where there really wasn't any need for it. I mean, if you look at the Atari 2600, well, that was the Granddaddy, right? (Speaking of Granddaddy - LOVE IT!) Intellivision, Colecovision, and the others from the early 80's fall into that generation. Ground breaking? Sure... but sucky. Then, you get the NES and Sega Master System, which could actually look like an arcade game... if a really old arcade game. Then, you get the next generation, with the Super Nintendo and the Genesis, which could challenge arcades as equals. So, each progression had a reason. Then, you had the PlayStation... which could provide 3D graphics. After that, came the Dreamcast/PS2/X-box generation, which could give us 3D at a reasonable frame rate.

Okay, so each one was a reasonable, if maybe not logical, progression.

What's this new generation do that the previous couldn't? ... Well, nothing really. Sure, it looks pretty and it's flashy - and the PS3 will be the same - but it's basically more of the same. (I'm leaving the Nintendo "Revolution" out of this because I'm hopeful that their new controller will provide something truly different.)

Consider this the 1/2 generation. It's Video Games 5.5. It's not the next generation but somewhere in between. What's the next generation? Well, all this time the big wigs at Microsoft and Sony have said it would happen when we achieved photo-realism. I don't see that coming for another 5-7 years at least. Considering that most generations (for video games, at least) last about five years, we have to wait for another generation.

Mind you, I'm not diss'ing the 360 or the PS3. As I said, they're pretty. I may even get one eventually - but I'm certainly not racing out there to get one.

I have my X-Box.

I have World of Warcraft.

I also have Civilization 4, which I still can't get to work on my PC as I wait and wait and wait for a patch... but that's a different story...

(Scary Note: When I ran spellcheck, "Nintendo" came up as a real word! Scaaaaarrry!)

1 comment:

Jenn from WA said...

I'd wait on getting the 360 if I were you. Microsoft is all a buzz because of some defects to the system. It was the top news story last week here in MicrosoftLand.