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So, Sony releases their slim version of the PlayStation 3. True innovation if you ask me. Where other companies look to innovate and provide a better gaming experience to users, Sony just says, "Well, we'll make our system smaller and more attractive, and everyone will buy it." So they put it on a diet, but it wasn't working so what did they do? Lowered the price to $299. They basically turned the PlayStation 3 into a cheap crack whore. But look at what the competitions doing. Microsoft is going to revolutionize gaming with Natal, the motion sensing, AI peripheral... that will cost users upwards of 400$. Okay, so Microsoft is innovating, but not doing much for the consumer's wallets. Then there's Nintendo, who's been fucking us all along. They had the technology for 1:1 motion sensing at the very beginning, but instead of releasing it on launch day bundled inside the little Wii remote they decided, "Hey, we'll let them play with half-assed motion sensors for two years and then when the novelty of flailing their arms randomly wears off we can make an extra buck off 1:1 motion sensing and no one will notice our clever trick." Also, how can the slim, HD, blu-ray playing, 120 Gb hard-drive PS3 system with 100 times more processing power than the Wii be only 100$ more than the meagre Wii? Finally, after 3 years Nintendo has agreed to a 50$ price cut that brings the Wii from 250$ to 200$... they could have done much better not to bundle Wiisports with it in the first place and sell it at 200$ then cut it to 150$ now, but maybe the economics isn't on my side here. What's one of the selling points for the Wii? Its supposed to be cheap. Its supposed to be accessible to everyones price-range, but you'll probably find that it quickly becomes more expensive than any system with its many peripherals. Between the console, an extra wii remote an extra nunchuk, classic controllers, virtual console/wiiware games, SD cards, 2 wii motion pluses, balance boards, a few games, maybe a few accessories a la Wii Zapper we're looking at upwards of... 600-700$. That's only if you don't want to go for the full 4 controller set. And whats this new feature in Nintendo games that allows players to skip parts of the game if they're too hard? Or to have the game play it for them? I thought game guides were bad, but now the actual game will play for me. That's just obscene, its an interactive media for a reason, you aren't supposed to watch it like a movie. Casual gamers are hands down ruining gaming. So Sony sucks, Nintendo is screwing us over, and Microsoft is... tolerable but still staying costly. What choice are we to make? Well, to be honest, the choice I should have made was not to get a gaming system at all, because I rarely play videogames these days. They just aren't living up to their hype and publicity anymore. The gaming industry has taken a long slippery slope since the hayday of Nintendo 64 and PS1. There was a point where the Big Three stopped being passionate about what they did and just started grabbing for money at every turn, that is the point where I stopped being passionate about gaming. I feel like, as much as the gaming crowd is "expanding" to new audiences, it is ultimately dieing because of the policies of these corrupt organizations. The new gamer is a gamer that gets bored after a week and moves on to new things, but these are the perfect impulsive people with disposable income for the gaming industry to market to. These people don't care about quality, they care about a cheap thrill for two minutes and once the companies have sold their system what do they care if it gets thrown in the garbage? Nintendo sure doesn't care about attach rates, considering the average attach rate is 0 for Wii (with WiiSports bundled). Hopefully someone will start developing for people who actually enjoy videogames, hopefully, this boom of casual gamers will prove unprofitable for the companies, and I can start to enjoy gaming again.

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