[QUOTE="mjarantilla"]Microsoft just copied PC gaming. And, in doing so, helped to sink gaming standards across the board by encouraging the dilution of separate game design philosophies.xsubtownerx
Oh give me a break.. :lol:
Consoles were originally designed to replace arcade machines, which delivered short, shallow bursts of entertainment. As a result, modern console games still follow that exact same ideal. Stories may have advanced, but gameplay mechanics have grown no more complex. If anything, over the last five to ten years they've become even simpler. There's really nothing wrong with this, and some of the best games in the world were designed precisely with this in mind: Ninja Gaiden (not simple, but it is very straightforward), Mario 64 and SMG, Grand Theft Auto, etc.
PC games, however, were designed to captivate and hold onto players' attentions. Hence why, even among the earliest PC games, you'll find games intended to provoke complex problem solving (e.g. graphical adventure games, puzzle-adventures, text-based adventures, etc.), and why, as graphics became more advanced, games that promoted independent thought dominated PC gaming (e.g. open-ended RPGs like Fallout, strategy games, RPG-shooter hybrids like System Shock and Deus Ex, etc.).
Since the Xbox came around, however, Microsoft has actively tried to MERGE the two different philosophies in Xbox-based games. The result: half-breed games like Mass Effect, which console fans praise to heaven and back as a new pinnacle of RPG design, but which PC gamers recognize as a horridly shallow and disjointed mess. Or truncated afternoon shooters like COD4 and Halo 3 which have no ambition beyond throwing enemy after enemy into the player's targeting reticle instead of letting the player decide how to aim his reticle like in countless PC FPSes. Or RTSes like C&C3, or the upcoming EndWar and Halo Wars, which compromise speed (in the case of C&C3) or complexity (in the case of EndWar) or both (in the case of Halo Wars) for the sake of minimal playability.
Both long-term depth and short-term enjoyability are sacrificed for the sake of pleasing an extremely small but extremely vocal minority (i.e. self-proclaimed "hardcore console gamers"). Either way, there is no evolution in Microsoft's console. The 360 and the Xbox brandname in general is like a mule: a sterile mating of two parents that at first appear to be similar and compatible, but which in the long run will lack sustainable progress and will result in eventual stagnation. It's rather sad that the PlayStation brandname, with the PS3, is actively following down that same route.
views well outside those of the mainstream
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