Jason’s babblings.

I look back on the last few years of my life, specifically with regards to video games, and I see a guy who spent a LOT of time playing them. I don’t consider it a waste by any stretch of the imagination - I had a shitload of fun and even met some of the coolest people I know through them. Since graduating from college and starting work at Dynamic Edge, though, I’ve grown apart from my beloved games. I’ve gone from a decidedly ‘hardcore’ gamer to somewhat of a more casual one. As much as I would have liked to fight it in my college years, it was inevitable.

In the past year we’ve seen two VERY different video game systems released. One focused on the top of the line specs: uber graphics chip, multi-core processor, Hi-Def movies, games, music, huge hard drive, etc - all of this with a giant price tag. The other system focused very much less on the specs - just enough to barely rival those of the previous generation graphics, with a price tag to match. The latter system chose to focus on a different area of gaming; something that could not be measured by specification sheets. With the Wii, Nintendo decided to focus more on innovation and breadth of gaming rather than depth.

When the PSP and DS were released, a similar situation arose. Sony went with a system that was, as far as specs were concerned, much more powerful than the DS, and included a lot of fluff to make it a ‘portable media solution’ - again, at an increased cost. The DS focused on innovation and changing the core of handheld gaming. The two-year-old DS has seen two releases (in true Nintendo handheld fashion) and has even gone through a recent Christmas drought, and the PSP is selling like month-old hotcakes. The cost of the system and cost of the media for the DS has made it the choice handheld among most gamers, and the exploitation of the ‘gimmicky’ touch screen by developers has produced some of the most entertaining games in the history of handheld gaming. The similarities between the handheld systems and the Wii/PS3 are uncanny and I’m betting on a repeat performance.

Back in my hardcore-gamer college days, I didn’t have to work 8-10 hours every day and I didn’t have a couple thousand dollars every month in bills. When the pre-release hype was being spread around, I was admittedly more exited about the PSP than the DS. Two years later, I play my DS for at least a few minutes every day while my PSP has been gathering dust for the last 6 months. Now that I only have a few hours a week to devote to games, purchasing a $600 PS3 just for those few hours is insanity. Madness, if you will. The Wii’s $250 price tag is much more reasonable, especially when I can live without the fluff, and the innovative controls should make for some seriously fun games when developers come up with some neat ways to use it.

Any game system that can get my dad (and mom, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc) to ask to play it, has got to be doing something right.