Screw you guys, I’m going home…

…or at least, I’m going home to my roots as a gamer. My first real gaming machine was a PC, and this whole “next-gen” console war is pushing me back that way, even though I have loved (and still do love) my original Xbox. Over the last year I’ve seen more and more people migrate from the original Xbox to the 360, and I wish them well, but I won’t be joining them anytime soon, if ever. I’ll explain...

It’s not about the money. Sure, the cost of the 360 (and the upcoming PS3) is high, but that isn’t the show-stopper for me. I've got the dough, I just don't find the 360 to be a compelling machine. There are plenty of great titles on the original Xbox that I still haven’t played and I'm going back to PC gaming for my "eye-candy" type games. As time goes forward (as opposed to backwards like it occasionally does near black holes) PC games are going to look better than 360 and PS3 games (some already do) and a decent graphics card still costs less than either of those consoles. But seriously, it isn’t about the money.

I understand that a lot of people will say PC gaming is more expensive than console gaming, but that is only true if you are just buying the PC to game on. I already have to have a decent computer for my job (I sometimes have to work at home) and to do things like video editing, digital photo organizing, burning CDs, etc. It doesn't cost me much to upgrade my video card every year or two (don't buy top-of-the-line, the games usually can't make good use of the hardware for a year anyway) and stay on top of the PC gaming world. Besides, PC games are generally cheaper (particularly if you are someone with “flexible” morals) and that helps to close any cost-gap between consoles and PCs.

It all boils down to this: I already have a nice computer that can play any game that is on the market today, and I will not buy a new gaming console unless it offers me something that I CANNOT GET on the PC or my current console. Right now, neither the 360, nor the upcoming PS3 offer me anything I don’t already have. Don’t believe me? Well lets just run down the list of features that the PS3 and 360 have been touting as the reasons we must buy their systems.

Great Graphics? Please, PC games have ALWAYS been better than consoles when it comes to pure eye-candy. A console might jump ahead for a couple of months when it is first launched, but as sure as the sun continues to rise, PC technology moves forward and soon that PS3 graphics “super-computer” will look dated. After this batch, we probably won’t see new consoles with more graphics power until 2009 or 2010. By then, what will be able to be rendered on the computer will be so far ahead of consoles that I predict the porn industry will no longer need human actors. That’s right. There will be stuff on your computer that will make the “Hot Coffee” mod look positively tame.

Hard Drives? Xbox broke new ground in consoles when they did this, and at the time their 8GB hard drive was a good size, since you couldn’t download 2GB game demos. But now they give you a 20GB drive, and that space runs out quickly with movie, TV and game downloads, not to mention the f#cking patches for every damn game, and software to emulate all the original Xbox titles that you want to play on your new box. Oh, and if you have to buy it separately, that pissant hard drive costs $100. WTF? Have you SEEN the prices of PC hard drives lately. Some of them are going for as little as 20 to 25 cents per GB. Sony is a little more on target with their 60GB size, but still, that is going to be eaten up FAST. I’ve already read reports of being able to increase the performance of some PS3 games by downloading info permanently from the Blu-Ray disc to the hard drive (like in multi-GB chunks). I’ve got a 250GB drive on my computer (which was CHEAP) and if it gets full I can just plug another drive in and keep chugging. Can you do that PS3? Huh, 360? Can you? Oh, what’s that you say? You will eventually offer bigger drives but we will have to buy them in your proprietary (read as: expensive) format and we will need some sort of dongle to copy the info from our old drive to the new one? You know what, just eat me.

High Definition Picture and Sound? PC gamers have been playing in “high-def” for years, and they didn’t have to spend $3000 on a TV to do it. 720p is just fancy talk for 1280x720 screen resolution. 1080p, that’s just 1920x1080. The monitor I’m looking at right now will do 1600x1200, which trumps 720p, and there are others out there that go much higher. (In 20 seconds of “googling” I found a Viewsonic that does 2048x1536 and retails for $500. 1080p on an expensive, room-filling TV can get bent.) PC gamers actually have access to higher resolution gaming than these consoles can ever aspire to. Plus you don’t get all that wonky “My TV is 720p, but the output is 1080i so it gets converted” bullshit. If you have a CRT monitor it adjusts to paint the actual resolution being sent to it. (If you are PC gaming on an LCD or other “fixed native resolution” display, please go slam your nuts in a door. Go ahead, I’ll wait.)

The High-Def thing is really just confusing the hell out of a lot of consumers. You didn’t used to have to be an audio-video technophile to set up your console. There was a plug for power and another plug to connect to the TV. That’s it. Now you have to ask yourself, how should I connect my console? VGA, component, S-video, how’s about that new HDMI thing? What inputs does my TV support? What resolutions does my TV support? And what about audio? Stereo used to be good enough, but now you need surround sound. Are you going to use optical connectors or coax? Do you want a 5.1 system or 7.1?

My point in all of this is that the advent of high-definition television and surround sound has added a layer of complexity and hidden expense to console gaming that was never there before. The only thing you used to need to enjoy your console to its fullest was what came in the box and any regular TV. Now, to get the most out of your console experience you have to spend every bit as much time setting it up as you would configuring a PC, and you will probably spend even MORE money. If you already have a high-def TV and surround sound this probably isn’t a big deal to you, but there are a lot of people out there who don’t have that setup and consequently aren’t just looking at buying a $400 game system. When you consider what they would have to spend to get a TV and a surround sound system (and the cables, my GOD the friggin’ cables are where they just sodomize you) the cost of the game console is damn near trivial. If you are buying a $3000 DLP television, a $500 sound system and a couple hundred dollars worth of cables, then you may as well buy ALL of the next-gen consoles, just for kicks.

Multiple Outputs? Sony fan-boys just about blew their wad when they found out that the PS3 could dual output 1080p. “ZOMFG!!!!!1111!!!!! SONY ROXXOR!!!!11111!!!1 MICROSUX!!!111!!!11”

So, on the off chance that you can afford two overpriced TVs, and you have an aircraft-hanger-sized living room to set them up in I guess that could matter…if you are retarded. Even PCs with low end graphics cards have 2 outputs on them now and support multiple monitors. AFFORDABLE monitors. Oh and there are actually PC games that support, and are even ENHANCED, by having multiple monitors (flight sims come immediately to mind, but wrap around FPS with 3 monitors is darn tasty too). I haven’t heard a damn thing about how you would actually USE multiple outputs on a PS3, other than to show off just how stupid you are.

“Wow Bob, you spent $8000 on a console setup that you could have had for $1500 on the PC if you weren’t such a hype-guzzling, f#ck-puppet for morally-bankrupt corporate marketing teams!”

“Thanks, Carl. Next week I’m going to do my own vasectomy using instructions I found on the internet.”

“That’s you Bob, always thinking!”

There is a much more straightforward way to earn the scorn of your peers. Buy a 7-pack of cheap T-shirts at Wal-mart and a permanent marker. Scribble “I’m a dumbass” on each of those shirts and wear one every day of the week. People will think you are stupid, and you only spent $10, tops. Feel free to send me the savings and then off yourself using a waffle iron. Trust me, the world will be a better place, if only because I have your money.

Downloadable Content? Way back in the day, Al Gore invented what I like to call the “interweb”. You could connect your PC to the “interweb” and get all kinds of stuff. Ok, well at first all you could get was porn, but now there is a lot more out there. Almost any popular PC game made has mods that come out for it that are made by sad, perverted, lonely men who live over their parent’s garage. The mods are free, because these douchebags want approval more than they want money. They hope you’ll be so impressed with their hard work that you decide to send them some rare Star Trek swag. Their lamentable lives are your gain though, and the upshot is that you get lots of free stuff that extends and enhances the games you already own. Like the naked mod for Oblivion. The 360 and the PS3 will NEVER get that. Ever. So enjoy your high-def graphics, console owners, but know this, I also have high-def graphics…of nipples.

Because there is so much free stuff available for PC downloads, the game companies can’t charge you up the ass like they are starting to do on the 360 (and they will on the PS3 too). You can’t get “Jim-Bob’s Homebrewed Uber Horse Armor” mod on the 360, so you have to pay for the crappy, official, “Looks like My Little Pony on Crack” one. But on the PC the game company will give that same “official” mod to you for free, to prove that they are still “supporting” their game.

And what is with Microsoft trying to sell tons of games on Xbox Live Arcade that I can play for free, in a Flash, Java or Shockwave version on my PC? It is the equivalent of a “Stupidity Tax”. I’ve seen it over and over. Some new P.O.S. game comes out for XBLA and it is all hot-sh!t for about two weeks. Then all you f#ckers realize that you are playing Uno and move on to real games. I gotta hand it to MS though, they figured out the video gaming equivalent of selling bottled water. All of you Evian-swilling goobers that paid real money for the XBLA poker game have set the clock of human progress back by about 200 years. Congratulations.

Let’s call console “Downloadable Content” what it really is: a smokescreen for covering up the fact that console developers can now sell unfinished software and fix it later just like PC gaming companies have been doing for years. Games that worked great right out of the box used to be the best part about console gaming. You just stuck in the disk/cartridge and it booted right up. Consoles touting “Downloadable Content” is the metaphoric equivalent of a bugle playing taps at the funeral for “Quality Control”. Sure, the music sounds beautiful, but it’s not exactly a happy day, is it?

Motion Controllers? I hope you don’t think this sh!t is new. I had a Logitech Wingman controller for my PC that had “six-axis” movement in the year 2000, and I’m pretty sure even THAT wasn’t the first one. That controller worked with everything and was pretty easy to set up for different games. It came with a demo of Rogue Squadron. And you know what? It sucked major ass. If you haven’t played with a motion sensing controller before, it isn’t anything like what you are imagining. Because, while you can move the controller to make your ship/car/person/thing move around in the game, you also have to NOT MOVE when you don’t want your ship/car/person/thing to move. Read that shit again, it’s important. Now think about a driving game. What do you do more often, go around corners, or burn down straight-aways? If you are using an “old” style controller with thumbsticks, you use the thumbsticks around the corners and you leave them alone on the straight. You don’t have to DO anything to keep going straight. Not so with this motion-sensing crap. If you sneeze, hiccup, burp, fart, or even just let your weary hands fall into your lap to rest, you will crash and burn like the Hindenberg. The flight games are even worse. If you don’t hold the controller level you wind up diving towards the ground or flying straight up while enemy missles quickly hone in on your position. Even just mashing buttons could jolt the controller to one side and cause unwanted flight/driving behavior. This could be adjusted somewhat by increasing the “dead zone” in the controller (meaning smaller movements were ignored), but that made you perform clownishly exaggerated movements to get the controller to do what you wanted.

So, Sony’s Six-Axis? Complete garbage. I’ve seen it before, I’ve used it before, and it was frustrating as all hell. Gimme the damn rumble back you marketing geniuses. To those of you who disagree with this, call me after you’ve gotten carpel tunnel from having to lock your wrists into a single position for six hours straight to keep from wrecking your sports car in Ridge Racer 58 or whatever number they are up to now. Unless you have a phone with voice recognition, someone else will have to dial the number for you.

The Wii-mote seems different, and I’m willing to give it a shot, but I’m telling you, the worst thing about motion sensing isn’t that it responds to what you WANT it to do, but that it responds to EVERYTHING you do.

Various Wireless Bulls#!t? Oooohhhh! Aaaaaaahhhhh! Wireless controllers. Wireless network adapters. Wireless headsets. Wireless keyboard. Wireless mouse. What is it with you people and your hatred of wires? Why are you willing to spend more for something that doesn’t work as well? Wires work. They work all the time. And you don’t need to add batteries to every goddamn peripheral you have if you just use the wires to power that f#cker. Wireless adds cost and weight at the expense of reliability. Why in the hell is that a GOOD thing?

When Microsoft added the breakaway connector to their original Xbox controllers, I thought that was as far as we needed to go. I understand the need for not jerking the console off the entertainment center when one of your kids gets clothes-lined with the controller cord, and the breakaway accomplishes that with a lot less fuss than all this wireless crap. I’m reminded of a line I heard in a movie recently: “The Americans spent millions of dollars to develop a pen that could write in zero gravity. The Russians just used a pencil.” Keep it simple and keep it cheap, smacktards. I thought that $30 for the controllers of the previous console generation was damned high, but $50 just makes me want to kick Mother Teresa’s corpse.

And what is with the proprietary wireless network adapter for $100, huh Microsoft? Biggest rip-off ever in console gaming. What are you guys doing with your 360s? Do you lug that beast all over the damn house? “I think I’ll play in the living room today. No wait, I’m hungry, lets go to the kitchen. No, I’ve got it, I’ll take it back to my room and play in bed.” If the console itself isn’t easily portable, then what in the hell is the point of the wireless connection? Is it for people who want to connect to the internet, but not reliably? I bought a 75 foot network cable for $15 and spent a few minutes running it from my upstairs router to my Xbox in my basement home theater. Problem solved. And I didn’t spend two hours trying to figure out why it didn’t work with my router, because you know what? It friggin’ WORKED THE FIRST TIME. And it works every time. Laptops need wireless connections. PDAs need wireless connections. My DS Lite has a wireless connection and that is wonderful. On a console that is just extra expense, and extra headache, for decreased performance. Somebody isn’t making any sense, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t me. And a keyboard and mouse? That brings me to the NEXT so called “next-gen” feature.

Peripheral Support? So you will be able to plug in keyboards and mice and cameras and light guns and external hard drives and all manner of other shit into your console to offer it more capability. You know what else offers you the ability to plug in all sorts of crazy peripherals? A f#cking, PC. And it doesn’t stop there. I can plug in a scanner, a printer, a barcode reader, and a motorized fake pu$$y with genuine “lip action” into my PC if I so choose and extend it’s capabilities in a thousand different ways. Why are consoles going so far out of their way to try to be PCs? And why are console gamers excited about that? Is being screwed by the prospect of being forced to buy a proprietary peripheral to play one particular game something that turns you on? (Donkey Kong Bongos anyone? How’s about some DDR or Guitar Hero?) To me one of the big points of a console is that it should be MORE accessible than the PC experience. All you should NEED to enjoy any game made for that console is the standard controller. That’s it. Games so complex that they require a keyboard and mouse should STAY ON THE PC! I want to sit on my couch and relax, not balance a keyboard on my lap in the dark while I try to find a flat space to work the mouse. As for bongo drums, dancemats, and fake guitars? Where the hell are you supposed to put all that clunky crap when you aren’t playing that game. Do I need a footlocker in my living room now? If you aren’t married yet, and you’re a guy bringing home a date, do you really want her to see your assortment of fake instruments strung out all over your apartment? That could lead to awkward questions…

“I’ve never seen a guitar like that before. Are you in a band?”

“Not exactly, baby. I PRETEND to play that instrument in time to a recording of someone who IS in a band by matching colored dots on my TV.”

You can just go ahead and break out the Vaseline and your favorite spunk-sock at that point, because the only people who have ever gotten laid by pretending to be in a band were some of the roadies for Aerosmith. If you are willing to spend the time, effort and money required to become proficient at playing a virtual instrument, why not just learn to play a real one? If you learn to play a real instrument, maybe you will wind up having some real sex? Just a thought.

New Disc Formats? Sony is batsh!t insane. If they want to put a Blu-Ray in their console, fine, but they can kiss my business goodbye. I am not paying to help them achieve format domination. Microsoft is a little better because they kept the HD-DVD separate (they had no choice really. HD-DVD was not available in November of last year) but I don’t want to have to teach my wife how to use the 360 to play movies. The stand-alone DVD player occasionally gives her fits as it is. I don’t want combined devices, it just always leads to trouble. You know those TVs with DVD players and VCRs built in? Complete nightmare. I want components that are separate so I can replace them individually when they fail, become obsolete or when my wife has spiked one in the middle of the living room for refusing to comply with her demands. And you cannot f#cking tell me that the Blu-Ray player in the PS3 is exactly the same as the standalone player. There has to be something in the standalone that makes it better in some way. How in the hell could it be $1000 otherwise? I know Sony is losing money on every PS3 they make, but it isn’t $400, and there is a lot of other stuff in a PS3 besides just a Blu-Ray drive. If they can make a PS3 with Blu-Ray and sell it for $600, you just can’t tell me that their $1000 Blu-Ray player is “the same”. If you believe that, then please go crack yourself in the skull with that useless Betamax or Laserdisc player that you still have. I know you bought one.

The point is that it is far too early for me to invest in a High-Def movie technology. DVDs still look great, and they have tons of features that I already don’t use. I don’t need EVEN MORE useless features. The shift between VHS and DVD was dramatic, but between DVD and HD-DVD (or Blu-Ray), umm, not-so-much. It was the same deal with cassette tapes and the switch to CDs. That was a big jump and it was a guaranteed winner. But, there have been some new music formats on the market for a few years now and just look at all the success they have enjoyed! You all have SACD (Super Audio CD) and DVD-Audio discs don’t you? Anybody? Anybody at all? Come on, they are like, totally rad and way better than CDs. They sound better and have more special features. Oh, you already have an ASSLOAD of CDs, they sound damn good, you don’t want to spend another $15 for each album that you already have and you could care less about watching the “writing session” for Britney Spears latest hit “I’m a Whore, For Reals”? Oh, and now you download MP3s and don’t even NEED a physical disc anymore? Damn. I thought for sure that you would be all over a new music disc format.

See, lots of people already get high-def movies without ANY DISC AT ALL. If you have a high-def TiVo you can just record these things from HBO, Showtime, whatever. There are movie on demand services that will let you download high-def movies and TV shows to be recorded and played back later. You don’t need some $1000 player at all, and you don’t have to pay for $25-$30 discs. You just need a big ole hard drive that can store the files and a decoder to play them back and send the signal out. No fancy blue laser necessary, thank you very much. People keep talking about whether HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will win the format war, and I keep thinking, neither. Discs as a concept are fading out, and I bid them good riddance. It’s like watching Michigan play Ohio State. They’re a bunch of gahdamn yankees and I hope they both lose. These new disc formats are an answer to a question that nobody asked. Keep them the hell away from my gaming system.

Here’s something that Sony could have done to avoid the Blu-Ray debacle. Just put a big-ass hard drive in their machine. I’m talking about at least 500GB. Then make their large games that really need a huge amount of space available via download. For the “brick-and-mortar” customers just print them on multiple regular DVDs that you load into your PS3 and rip down to the hard drive just once. Now you have all the space you need, and the shit will be faster because it doesn’t have to spin up a 54GB disk to find the right texture for the brick wall your character is pounding its head against. Even a huge hard drive would have been WAY cheaper than a Blu-Ray, and it wouldn’t have caused production shortfalls. Additionally, standard DVDs are cheaper to produce than the new Blu-Ray discs, so you could either (1) make more profit from each game or (2) undercut your competition’s prices.

Innovative Games? There haven’t been any made for the 360. Gears of War doesn’t count.

No it doesn’t.

Seriously. You have a gun, you shoot, the bad guys exhibit rudimentary AI, you take cover, there is co-op play, so FREAKING WHAT? Lets call GoW what it is, the first 360 game with enough eye-candy to keep early-adopters from feeling like they got ripped off. They could have slapped graphics like this on top of Halo 2 gameplay and put something like this out for the launch. Call it “Halo 2.5” or something. At the end of the day, it’s just a good looking shooter. I could name about 50 of those out for the PC right now. Inside of 2 months there will be shooters on the PC that look better than GoW, and before too long there will be Crysis, and then we’ll see who has “next-gen” graphics.

Will the PS3 have innovative games? Not that I’ve heard of. Looks like shooters, and racers and RPGs “oh my” to me, just like always. They look better, but once you have raced one monster truck in the dirt you’ve raced them all. Being able to see individual springs fly off when you wreck it really doesn’t add much to the game. Yeah, I played MotorStorm at a PS3 kiosk a few days ago. Looked great. Played the same as any other dirt racer EVER. Yeah, I’m just itching to shell out a total of $700 for that privilege. Oh wait, I have MarioKart DS. I can already play a fun, kick-ass racer anywhere I want. Sorry Sony, you had me there for a minute, but then my brain started to work.

The only console that is even blipping on my radar right now is the Wii, because there will be no substitute for that type of gameplay on the PC. They are trying to do something innovative with their games, and I can respect that. I’ll have to try them out and reserve my judgement for later. But does the Wii count as a “next-gen” console? Even their own marketers have steered away from that term. They don’t want to compete with Microsoft or Sony, they want to create an entirely new market and have it all to themselves. I don’t think they will sell a lot of copies of Madden, or CoD3, but there will be no replacement for Zelda, Red Steel or WarioWare available on the other systems or the PC. If it works, they are gonna be grinning like the cat that swallowed the canary. But for now, the Wii is a big “wait and see” as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think there is going to be a middle of the road on it. Either it will work and people will love it with millions of units sold and grandparents everywhere discovering the joys of video games, or it will flop and you will be able to buy it in 6 months for just $50 in a bundle that includes a Powerglove and a VirtualBoy.

Free (or at least cheap) Online Play? PC gamers have been playing online, for free, and have been doing so for many, many years. Yes, I know that WoW and other MMORPGs have monthly fees, but these are different types of games. If you think a full-featured MMO like WoW is coming to the 360 or PS3 that will not charge a monthly fee, then you don’t know anything about computers. You can’t have persistent worlds without dedicated servers. This means lots of hardware and infrastructure for the game makers to maintain, and they can not just give that service away. The one-time $15 profit that they make from selling you the game will not cover the costs of those servers. You WILL pay a monthly fee if these types of games ever come to consoles at all. The only games you will be able to play online for free (or in the 360’s case, at no additional charge) with consoles are the same types that you have been able to play for free on computers forever. Shooters, strategy games, sports games, etc.

Maybe some people like the worldwide rankings and statistic tracking that is available on the consoles, but for me they are just a badge of shame. And I could give a sh!t less if you are a legit 45 in Slayer.

Community Features like Chat and Friends lists? If there is just one thing that I’ve learned from Xbox Live is that it is not a “community”. What they have does not in any way make it easier for you to find and make friends and game with people who have common interests. I had to find 2old2play in order to find people to game with that didn’t make me want to find them and kick them in the sternum. And what is 2old2play? It is a website. That you access on a PC. Not from your crappy built-in browser on your console. So far I haven’t read or seen a single feature from this “next-gen” crop of consoles that is supposed to make it easier to find good people to game with. These new “realms” like Pro, and Casual, and CrazyAsshole don’t solve a damn thing, and feedback systems become worthless inside of a couple of weeks. I’ll just stick with finding people through 2old2play.

As for chatting it up, I’ve got several free instant messenger clients on my PC. I can make my “buddy” lists on there as big as I want. Hell, I can chat with multiple groups of people at the same time on the PC. Try that with your Xbox headset and tell me how it works out. If you must have in-game voice chat, there are programs like TeamSpeak and Ventrillo that work quite well, and a PC headset will only set you back about $15.

Final Thoughts

I am an admitted cheapskate, but really I’m just all about value. I don’t have a problem spending money on tech goodies, (I spent many times the cost of a game console on my home theater) but those goodies have to really offer me something that I find valuable, something new and unique. Right now the PS3 and 360 don’t look like cheap gaming computers to me, they look like crippled computers PERIOD. And at the price they are charging that isn’t a bargain. If someone offered you a computer that couldn’t be easily upgraded, and that didn’t have any capabilities besides watching movies and playing games, what would you be willing to pay? Sony thinks its $600.

In my youthful ignorance I bought a few computers that were great when I took them out of the box but were disappointing within a year because they were impossible to expand (Packard Bell, Acer, Dell, I’m looking at you bastards). That is how I see the 360 and PS3. They are not gaming consoles. They are hobbled, unstable, unreliable, rigid computers in slick-looking plastic cases. They are becoming every bit as much of a hassle to use as a PC, and the expense to get the “full experience” is comparable or even higher, so why not just get a PC that you can grow with instead? Rather than waiting 4 or 5 years between console rollouts, you can add some memory, a graphics card or a bigger drive to your computer every year or two and stay on top of current gaming technology.

I am not a console-hater, and I know there are some things that a console can do better than a PC can. I have my original Xbox, and I love it. The console experience is great. When I have friends over and we are fragging each other in Halo or wrecking each other in Burnout, we have a blast. I can’t imagine that we could laugh harder, swear more and have more fun on a 360 just because the graphics are better. If the “next-gen” consoles aren’t going to offer me a different experience from what I already have, then they aren’t worth buying at any price.

I’m not saying that this will work for everybody. These are just my opinions based on where I’m at. If you don’t like computers, or don’t have one that is suitable for gaming, then don’t think for a minute that I’m trying to persuade you to convert to the cult of the PC. I’m just saying that I already own a satisfying console that seems to have plenty of life left in it (the Xbox), and I have a good PC that will allow me to get my fill of the latest graphics. The so called “next-gen” consoles aren’t offering me anything that I didn’t already have at home 2 years ago, so why on earth should I buy them?