I don't enjoy watching the console makers hit hard times, or take any pleasure when they err. I was saddened by the GameCube's relatively poor third-party support and lack of games (something I hope Nintendo can rectify this generation). I feel bad for Microsoft and its continued failure to gain a significant foothold in the Japanese market (because I think the Xbox 360 is a great system). And as much as the media (including this site) has flung criticism at Sony over its frequent missteps in designing, producing, launching, and promoting the PlayStation 3, I'd rather see Sony as an object of admiration than one of derision.

Granted, some notable figures at the company have made themselves easy targets at times over the last year, but there's no joy for me in pointing out their mistakes. I'd much prefer they get out of this rut of sporadic, middling releases and questionable public relations and turn the PS3 into the heavyweight it ought to be. Healthy, fruitful competition is good for the whole industry, right?

What I do enjoy is seeing a company like Sony pull itself out of the kind of slump it's been in for quite a while now. And that's exactly what it seems to be doing after its recent banner week at the Game Developers Conference. Admittedly, Home has a lot left to prove--but there's a lot of potential there, and they had to do something in the online space. The newly announced PlayStation Edge initiative doesn't directly affect end users, but it should trickle down to them in the form of more and better third-party games. And in the most uplifting hearts-and-minds move I've seen any company make in a while, the 1.6 firmware update will let PS3 owners help cure some nasty diseases with a Cell-specific version of the Folding@Home client. That's pretty awesome.

But from the hardcore gamer's perspective (read: yours and mine), what Sony really needed was something truly new, something you just can't get from Microsoft or Nintendo (who are themselves peddling a lot of unique features these days). For that, there's LittleBigPlanet, easily the most visually and conceptually impressive thing I've seen on the PS3 since the Sony hype machine started cranking back at E3 2005. Yeah, okay, I can't get over the whimsical look, the amazing lighting and motion blur effects, and the extensive physics modeling. I think it's one of the prettiest games of the HD era so far--go watch the new HD trailer and try to disagree. So there's a big plus on the aesthetic front already.

But the most exciting thing about LittleBigPlanet (if you'll allow me to throw around some tired and annoying jargon) is that, marketing spin or not, they got all Web 2.0 with it--and in a potentially amazing way. The so-obvious-it's-no-longer-a secret of the modern Internet business model is that you can just let your users create all the content for you. The LBP sample level shown at GDC was neat and all, but it didn't get really promising for me until the gameplay demo ended and the level editor demo began. (Go dial up the Sony keynote video and seek toward the end to see what I'm talking about.) With the in-game physics and what looks like a very flexible object-modelling system, there could be very little constraint on the creativity, the crazy Rube Goldberg-esque levels that will emerge as users (and maybe even some pro game designers) explore the possibilities here. You know that saying about a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters? I bet way more than a thousand people are going to mess with this game, and through an absolute glut of content and what looks like an intelligent user-rating system, the cream of the unique levels is going to rise to the top really fast. I can't wait to see what people come up with.

Sony's been making decent strides in the last couple of weeks to shore up its public image and turn the PS3 into a console worth owning. Good for them, I say, and keep it up. Now if they can just get the damn price down, I'm sure we can all be friends.