Video Games
While I may be biased, Brendan has a good post on why the Xbox 360 has “officially” flopped. Check it out.
My personal thoughts: I’m not near the gamer Brendan is (and from rooming with him freshman year, I know first-hand from many a sleepless night of watching him beat Half-Life in “preparation” for the sequel. This was, of course, when Half-Life 2 was “just around the corner”, although the game was released 18 months later. I’m still convinced it’s vaporware.), but I’m interested in the next-gen consoles, especially from a hardware POV. I was *this* close to going out at 2 AM to pick up an XBox 360 they day they were released. Now, I’m glad I didn’t (though I still play the Call of Duty 2 demo on display at Target and Circuit City every chance I get.)
I’m hopeful one of these three systems doesn’t suck, becuase the possibility is very real that if they all do, we enter a second Gamers Dark Age. And nobody wants that. The gamers will be out in full force on the streets, pillaging Radio Shacks and the like. God help us.
Of course, there’s always the PC market, with topnotch efforts like Daikatana and Duke Nukem Forever. Seriously, though, I haven’t picked up and played a new PC game in a *very* long time. Partly, I don’t have a second PC system like most of the gamers at school, so if I want to play something, it’s on this aging D600 with a paltry 32MB graphics card. But besides Half-Life 2 (no, I still haven’t played it.) and a few other games, I’m just not interested in the market anymore. My parents balked at the more violent video games, so I played a lot of strategy and RTS games. And the Legend of Zelda. And Mario Bros.
In short, buy me a new PC. Then I’ll play games.
