Tug-o-war

From the moment the Xbox 360 was first announced, I have been involved in a constant inner struggle about whether or not to buy one.  It seems like every time I heard something good about the console that excited me, I then heard something bad that turned me off.  Now we are closing in on the 2 year anniversary of the system’s launch and I STILL can’t figure out if now is a good time to buy one.  Why?  Because it seems like Microsoft is bound and determined to continue their stumble-fuck, jack-legged moronitude indefinitely.  If these crack-smokers could get their collective act together for a couple of weeks straight I would probably succumb to the desire to own their flawed-but-fun hardware, but so far they have been taking one step forward and two or three back.

STOCK UP – Initial specs on the new 360 and improvements to the Xbox Live service, prior to launch, looked pretty good.  Really, it just appeared that the 360 would just give me more of the same, just with better graphics, but that was fine with me.  I’d had a lot of fun with my Xbox 180 and the Xbox Live service as-is, so if they had just made stuff look better, eliminated some of the networking issues, and provided a few new services (downloadable demos, arcade games, etc.) I would have been happy.

STOCK DOWN – Unfortunately, hardware can only get you so excited.  Once you get finished reading about giga-hertz this, and tera-flops that, you ask the natural question, “So what games are coming out for it?”  And the answer to that (for me at least) was “NOTHING”.  I didn’t see a single launch title that I wanted.  I didn’t see any titles in development that I wanted (except for Halo 3, which didn’t count because it was so far out).  It would be like someone offering me a great deal on a new Ferrari, but the catch is that I’m only allowed to drive it in my neighborhood for the first 2 years I own it.  What is the fucking point of owning cutting edge gaming hardware on launch day if you won’t have any cutting edge games to play on it for at least a year?

STOCK DOWN – I got to see what happened to all the poor folks that DID buy their 360’s right away.  First of all, most of them came back to Halo 2 within a few weeks.  COD2 and PDZ were pretty, but couldn’t compare to the Halo 2 experience.  Then they started having hardware problems.  Machines died, maps wouldn’t load in Halo (STILL don’t actually), lag was really bad on some games, headset issues, the list was interminable.  After a few weeks it seemed pretty clear that the hardware was only half-baked and had been rushed out for the holiday season.

STOCK DOWN – The price was way too high.  Look, I know they were (and still are) selling their console at a loss, but I’m not the one who begged them to do that.  I didn’t say to Microsoft, “Please, for the love of GOD, spend $500 making a console and then sell it to me for $400!”  I would have been perfectly happy for them to scale back on the innards (which would have resulted in greater stability anyway) and sell me a $300 system that cost them just $325 to make.  Of course, they tried that bat-shit insane “Core” system for $300, but even an infant with a grievous head injury could tell you that was a bad idea.  If anything, the “Core” system just emphasized you how badly you were getting screwed.  And let’s not even start with the peripheral prices.  $100 for a wireless adapter? $50 for controllers?  $100 for a 20 gig hard drive?  Are these prices supposed to be in Italian LIRA, or is white plastic so gahdamned rare that it can command the type of premium pricing usually reserved for airport magazines and movie theater popcorn.

Right.  So Microshaft blew ANY chance it had at selling me a system on, or close to, launch day.  No games, sketchy hardware, and a pricing structure cobbled together by a pack of wild-eyed practioners of marketing mental-midgetry, jizz-drunk on their own tard-batter.  Macrosux is lucky as hell that they launched the Pee-Shitty without any competition, because if they had been up against so much as a new version of “Tiger Electronic Pud-pulling” they would have had to close up their gaming shop and go back to what they do best: making sub-standard PC operating systems that launch with a wimper, but later become the world standard because most business managers can’t tell the difference between an OS and their own festering colon polyps.

What kept me from buying a 360 later on was the gloomy specter of impending hardware failure.  Because of 2old2play, I know a lot of people who did buy a 360 right away, and a confidence-shakingly-high percentage of them have had problems.  Everybody was saying (and still says), “Whatever you do, before you leave the store: BUY THE SERVICE PLAN!!”  That is not exactly a ringing endorsement for the system.  What they should have been saying was, “Dude, make sure you get <<AWESOME GAME TITLE>> right away.  It’s better than being the only guy with beads at a Mardi Gras parade, and all of the spectators are stone-drunk, Texas-born cheerleaders.”  When the most common news item about your gaming system is how often it breaks, you are going to have a HARD time prying cash out of my wallet.

But then, something finally happened that made me begin to consider thinking about possibly, maybe, hypothetically speaking, in theory, tentatively reopening a line of thought that could someday lead to the purchase of a 360.  Two words.  Mass Effect.

I spent hundreds of hours playing “Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic” on my Xbox before I got a Live account.  If I had the time (and did not fear that my wife would follow through on her threats of what she would do if I spent 12 straight hours playing it EVER AGAIN) I would fire that puppy back up even now.  It was/is, just that awesome.  So when Sunburned Goose told me about Mass Effect, and then showed me the trailer for it, the decision to buy a 360 went from an “IF” to a “WHEN” proposition in a heartbeat (...home-wrecking BASTARD!). Mass Effect is GOING TO SELL AT LEAST ONE XBOX, even if it is just the one I buy.

But (and this is a BIG “but”, like a highly-allergic Queen Latifa after sitting on a beehive kind of “but” ), there is no rush for me to have a 360 TODAY.  Halo 3 doesn’t come out for another month, and Mass Effect has been delayed so many times that it’s November release date is starting to look about as solid as Brittney Spears grasp of reality.  Plus, there are rumors of the new “Falcon” Xbox with the 65nm chips that are supposed to run cooler and quieter coming out in a few weeks, so why would I rush into this now?

Bioshock.  Gahdamned BIOSHOCK!  I had purposefully steered away from this game because of System Shock 2.  I liked SS2, but it was too good at what it intended to do which was basically freak you the hell out.  I played for about 2 hours before I pulled the CD out of my computer and then ritualistically burned it inside of a pentacle drawn in the dirt over a fresh grave, and sprinkled the ashes with pigs blood.  I have no way of knowing for sure if that helped protect me from the evil on that vile silicon disc, but I wasn’t willing to take any chances.  And so, I avoided reading any press releases or looking as screenshots of Bioshock, right up until about 2 days ago.

It is difficult (if not impossible) to ignore a game that receives nearly universal critical acclaim.  Especially if you are the kind of person who scours the internet for information about new games, like yours truly.  I probably know more about the games I HAVEN’T bought than some of the games I have.  And now I read about this fantastically immersive single-player campaign and I am suddenly struck with an incredible plan.  I could buy a 360 and play Bioshock while I wait out the last agonizing month before Halo 3 is released.  And I could continue to play it until Mass Effect finally drops.  Holy shit, somebody take away my credit cards before I do something stupid…

So once again, I find myself torn.  Microsoft has managed to create a reason for me to buy their system RIGHT NOW (Bioshock) and at the same time a reason to continue to hold out (better hardware coming "soon").  ARGH!  I feel like I’m trying purposefully to lose a game of chess to a retarded cousin.  I WANT him to win.  I’m doing my best to LET him win.  But the brain-addled motherfucker just keeps on EATING the chess pieces.