Keep in mind that alot of this is pure opinion, so I don't want anyone jumping down my throat. But anyway, here's my reasoning for thinking that none of the systems lived up to their hype.
360-It's harder to pin down why 360 is a flop, but it has more to do with next gen gaming in general and 360 being first out of the gate. I remember reading about the "next gen" systems in magazines and how gaming would be changed forever. But then when the 360 actually dropped, games felt pretty much the same just with more sheen and detail. Sure, 360 has delivered on the online front, but single player experiences aren't really better than they used to be. Games like Halo 3 embody this. Halo 3 had more sheen, more detail, but was ultimately very sameish. There are only a few games which seem to stand out as experiences that go above and beyond what was seen in previous gens in any meaningful way. With current gen gaming, I feel the only huge leap was a graphical one. Everything else has remained pretty much static. The 360, IMO, is a system that plays it safe. It does everything well (besides reliability) and it does its best to make a complete gaming experience, but it comes across as somewhat generic. That's not to say it's bad, because in most areas it has delivered. I'm just saying that for single player experiences, it hasn't altered the landscape in any meaningful way. On top of that, pretty severe hardware issues did a little bit to mar the first next gen experience (though I think cows try to make the RROD issue matter more than it does.) FLOP STATUS: MILD
PS3-I think it should be pretty obvious why I consider PS3 a flop. Between Sony saying "the next gen only starts when we say so" and Sony fans assuring 360 fans that PS3 would blow 360 out of the water in every way and would make 360 look like Xbox 1.5, PS3 had expectations that were virtually impossible to meet. These expectations haunted the PS3 when it became apparent that PS3's beginnings would be extremely rocky and that the PS3 was virtually the same as the 360 as far as graphical capabilities are concerned or atleast similar enough to make the bold claims made by Sony and its fans look silly. PS3's lackluster multiplat performance also raised some eyebrows (for the record, PS3 has definitely improved on the muliplat front). Even to this day, when PS3 has some very formidable titles of the shelf and a couple games that are among the best, it fails to distinguish itself from the 360 enough for any of the hype to be justified. When I look at a 360 game and a PS3 game, I can only see a graphical difference if I nitpick over tiny details. Then, when one takes into account that Blu-Ray has come nowhere close to justifying its hype, it easy to see that PS3 was a case of just too much hype. I'm not saying PS3 is bad, I'm just saying that when something is hyped to the moon, it's bound to flop. And when a company struggles like Sony has this gen, one can hardly say the PS3 has had a great performance. I think that up until recently, being a hardcore cow has been somewhat traumatic. FLOP STATUS: SEVERE
Wii-Why the Wii is a flop is also pretty obvious. The Wii was touted as a revolution and as something that would change the way we think about games. The Wii hasn't come close to achieving this at all. While there Wii games that use the motion sensing to good effect, this hasn't made the games feel different enough to classify the Wii as a revolution. The trouble with the Wii is that is one step forwards and two steps backwards. While the motion controls do have the potential to make games feel much different, the Wii's weak hardware and the throw back quality of most of its games undermines this in quite an extreme way. The fact that the Wii's quality control is just not very good only makes the so-called revolution seem all that much more distant. Also, when a big portion of the Wii's best games are ports, it makes the platform seem mired in the past. Sure, Mario Galaxy seems revolutionary in its on right, but the Wii can't hang its hat on one game and try to tout itself as a revolution. There seems to be a pretty huge sentiment that the Wii has a quality control issue, the motion controls have not justified their hype and that the Wii seems distinctly last genish (That's not to say that 360/PS3 seem all that much different, but the Wii definitely comes across as the most last genish). Perhaps Nintendo will release some games in the future that will make everyone "get it" but right now the Wii is not even a great gaming system much less a revolution. FLOP STATUS: STRONG (I didn't label it as severe, because it has sold so well)
Thoughts?
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