Much Ado About Everything

Well, well, well. One of the biggest months in history of gaming (well, in the last few years at least) – launch of two next generation consoles, PS3 and Wii. We all know it. As well as that buying a PS3 for retail price is next to impossible.

Of course, Microsoft is taking advantage of shortage (if you can call it shortage) – this morning I got up and there was a great deal on Future Shop website: buy Xbox360 for $450 ($50 off!) but get also Gears of War and Ridge Racer 6 with it for free!

And so I got it. Man, is this thing LOUD! It is borderline acceptable when not playing a game, but when in a game… there’s a reason most good games for this thing are FPS’s, with many lound bangs and explosions… it’s so that you can’t hear the bloody thing itself.

As I was setting it up I noticed it lacks a lot of polish (batteries get in the way – and what’s with using alkalines? no rechargeables?? DC-DC can work from 2.4V too, you know, Microsoft), a few counter-intuitive menu settings (“unrated videos are controlled separately” – yeah, except the setting is grayed out!), and an INCREDIBLY long user agreement for Live – I gave an honest attempt to read it all, and gave up after about 15 minutes – with probably 80% still left to read. You start the Gears of War, it claims it cannot save game because you’re not logged into a profile – what’s that, you MUST be online and have a live account to save a game in single-player (maybe not but that’s what is sais)?! Wow, did this thing ever get out of the door way too early… I wonder how PS3 compares – based on some info this week, not too good (compatibilty, no 1080i etc.).

Here’s hoping that Wii got it right. Hopefully they concentrated on USING the thing rather than cramming every feature under the sun in there (jack of all trades, master of none).