A lot of time has passed since the last time i updated, by now i'm upto 17 360 games (and i got 4 games coming in for 10 euro a piece), i bought a Wii with Zelda, and i got a NDS with a bunch of games, so i definetly spend a good amount of money on my gaming addiction.
My 360 expierence has been pretty great so far, except for that part that my 360 is being shipped to Germany for repairs, my DVD wasn't working properly, and constantly gave errors that my discs were dirty or unreadable, or that it wasn't a 360 game, or even better, that i had to put my game in a Xbox 360... but besides that i'm loving the Xbox 360, there are lots of great titles, and even better titles coming up.
Microsoft is definetly giving it all to win the fight between de 360 and the PS3, and i know how much fanboys keep claiming that the PS3 will win, and the same for 360 fanboys, i have to say that i don't see the PS3 winning this. The PS3 is a great system, games look great, especially if you're on a 1080p screen, the Blu-Ray in it makes the PS3 worth it's money, and the design is really nice.
But while those are positive things, it doesn't mean they all are, games are expensive to make causing smaller developers and publishers turn away, the 600 euro/dollar price is well spent if you want to use the BR for movies, if not then it's just an extra 200 compared to the 360, developers also been having diffeculties developing games for it, causing bad frame rates in some games (or perhaps they just didn't bother to much adjusting the game for the PS3, because in quite a few cases the 360 sported better frame rates), and it's losing exclusives all over the place, most going multiplatform or going exclusive for Microsoft.
The PS3 is in a pretty bad circle right now, to develop games for the PS3 is expensive, because of the still pretty low quantity of games, gamers don't buy the PS3 that much (afterall what use is a console when it has only a few games you want), due to the pretty low amount of gamers developers don't want to produce expensive games (after all they make their money by selling them, and if there aren't many gamers, then there isn't much money to be made) and these factors causes Sony to be stuck in a circle, to make more money they need more gamers, and to get more gamers they need more games, and to get more games they need more gamers.
Their rival Microsoft doesn't have this problem at all, due to the much earlier release they got a headstart, while people pay 65 euro for a game for the PS3, the 360 has a great collection of games for 30 euro and less (games that are 9 months and older), considering the average gamer doesn't care who makes the system, most go for the 360, besides having cheaper games, it als has a much bigger collection due to the earlier release.
But that's not why Microsoft is doing so well, the reason why they are is because they are throwing with money to get exclusives, and they are getting them, and many of the great games for the 360 are either published by Microsoft, or developed by Microsoft Game Studios. Just recently they paid 20 million dollars for exclusive content for GTA 4, causing many games to doubt wether they should still pick that PS3.
Microsoft is definetly not perfect, not at all, but they do know business, even if the PS3 manages to get out of that circle, then the Xbox 360 will still have had a great run at the end, it has some fantastic games so far, and some great titles coming up this year, so it's impossible for the Xbox 360 to be a failure.
Anyway enough about the 360, let's talk about the Wii. The Wii was probably the biggest console, everybody was talking about it, and everyone wanted to give it a try. Owning one now i do have to say it's been a dissapointment so far, now i'm sure many of you will disagree or want to argue the points i'm giving, but i do feel they are valid, and while it doesn't define the console, it did dissapointment me.
First of all the graphics are horrible, when you play on the Wii, then you have the feeling you went back 6 years or so, and that's comparing it with other consoles, if you compare it with the PC then you would probably have to go back another 3 years. I got a nice 32 inch HDready TV and i bought the component cable (and put the Wii on 480p), but it just doesn't look good, sure i been spoiled with the 360, but the simple fact is that Nintendo decided to put old crap in their machine (as usual) to save on production costs, where Sony and Microsoft loses money at the beginning of their new machines, Nintendo makes money from the start. Now i don't think they should lose money, but if you pay for your games, then gaming is pretty expensive, so when Nintendo rips you off with old crap, then i don't think they are doing things right. The fact is that if they had chosen to make no profit on the console, and use the extra money to make a better system, then we would probably have a console that would run 720p with much nicer graphics. If you consider that Microsoft now makes the 360 without losing money and can still offer the Core version for 300 euro, then why can't Nintendo make a pretty powerful machine for 250? It's just wrong, what's also wrong is that you have to pay 30 euro for a lan adapter, i mean come on, to build that in would cost them hardly anything, but no, Nintendo rather sells you it for 30 euro.
Second, the Wiimote doesn't work aswell as they want you to believe, yes in Wii Play it works great, and other games that are specificly created for it it works great aswell, but in the other games it works pretty crap, they want you to believe that you control Links sword in Twilight Princess, but forget about it, all you can do is shake the controller, there is no fun in it, better said it's pretty annoying, if it would really give me control over the sword then sure, but now it feels like you got a regular gamepad of which the attack button doesn't work properly and you keep smashing it untill your arm hurts. The Wiimote also left the door open for really bad games, basicly the make a bad game, add some Wiimote touches, and they sell it for 50 euro to you, the worst thing is that people buy that crap, because they like working with the Wiimote, sure i can understand that, but that doesn't justify the game being so poor, some motion control shouldn't go at the cost of quality, and right now that's happening, the quality is missing in many of the games, but they do use the Wiimote, and that's a really bad development.
Third, Nintendo anounced it would offer it's online services free, well that's true, it's also true that you need to pay 30 euro to even be able to use the services, because that's Nintendo's specialty, coming up with extra costs that are never spoken about, i was pretty surprised when i didn't see a lan port on my Wii, and pretty pissed off when i saw the price of 30 euro for the adapter. But i still wanted to go online, so i did bought it, the Wii does have a few cool features, i especially like the weather channel, but overall their online network is really poor, friends work with a code (instead of the handy gamertag from Xbox Live), adding friends is not user friendly at all, as both need to input the code, and no messages can be sent before both added each other, to get to your friendlist is not userfriendly either, whereas Xbox Live allows you to get to your friendlist with a few clicks, in the Wii you have to search for that list, a simple friendlist icon in the main menu would have fixed that. The speed on the network is also extremely poor, on Xbox Live it pushes your connection to the max, making big downloads a simple thing to download, on the Wii it all takes a lot of time, even the small things. There are also no demo's, which is a real shame, Xbox Live has a huge list of demo's, and every arcade title has a trial version, on the Wii you got none of that, which makes it harder to decide wether a game is worth your money or not.
So yes, the online services are free, just like the one on the PS3, but so far neither is a match to Xbox Live, Xbox Live Silver (free) is a whole lot better then the ones from Nintendo, and beats the one on the PS3 at quite a few points aswell, and Xbox Live Gold (60 euro a year) is at every single point better, it's been worked out so well, and makes playing online such a great thing, that it really is worth the money.
In the end though the Wii is a fun console, and it will have good games in time, but Nintendo could have treated their gamers a whole lot better, and so can many of the developers for the machine, who abuses the Wii to sell poor games.
For now i will stick with my Xbox 360 (well as soon as it's back), it really offers a great expierence.
So for my games are:
List sorted by when i bought them
Gears of War
Test Drive Unlimited
Saints Row
NBA 2K6
Crackdown
Kameo Elements of Power
Call of Duty 2
Enchanted Arms
The Godfather
Perfect Dark Zero
Spider-Man 3
Chromehounds
Fifa 07
Burnout Revenge
Ninety-Nine Nights
The Lord of the Rings, the Battle for Middle-Earth
Oblivion
Gun
Tony Hawks American Wasteland
Quake 4
Amped 3
(the last 4 will be arriving next week)