Apathy Sketchpad

Well, so much for E3. It rolls around every so often and generally speaking it isn’t the most exciting event of the year. But this year something very odd happened.

This time last week all anybody could talk about on the whole sodding internet was how stupid a name “Wii” is. Now all I’ve seen anyone talking about is how great the thing is (and how stupid its name is).

We now know that the Wii will have compatibility with your old Cube pads, a fully motion-sensitive controller, a new Smash Brothers game, and so on and so forth. Which raises a question: what on Earth do the PS3 and the X-Box 360 have to offer? As far as I know, nothing. The PS3 can play blu-ray DVDs, apparently, although I’ve never seen one of these blu-ray DVDs and personally I don’t see what’s wrong with the DVDs we have now.

I’ve heard precisely nothing about the X-Box 360, and all I know about the PS3 is that it’s going to cost an arm and a leg and have a very slightly motion sensitive controller. (I also know that Sony considered this idea years ago and decided against it, but of course once Nintendo do it they simply have to follow suit.) That’s two things, and both ones that the Wii does better.

I suspect the reason for all this is that the PS3 and the X-Box 360 don’t actually do anything that the PS2 and the X-Box don’t, especially considering the PS2 and the X-Box don’t really do anything the PSX didn’t do unless you have more than one of them. Frankly, I expect more than that if they’re going to be charging £600 for the thing. For that you could buy… well, we don’t know because the price wasn’t announced, but at least two Wiis.

I can only assume that Sony’s stand at E3 was hidden away in a corner and nobody found it, and Microsoft’s display X-Box had crashed before E3 started and nobody could fix it.

We have to get away from this idea of “next generation” consoles. We’ve seen what happens when you ask Sony and Microsoft to come up with a “next generation” console. They only go and take it literally, don’t they? Just like in biological generations, the “next generation” console looks exactly like its parent only slightly faster, and it takes millions of generations for any significant change to take place. Nintendo, on the other hand, make something actually new.

Well, I don’t think I want a “next generation” console. I’ll have something new, thanks.