It's time for another installment of my incoherent rants! Hooray!

Sometimes I read things that make me want to track the person down and slap them with a fish. When I see a veritable list of candidates for said fish slappings, I tend to get that vein popping thing going on my forehead, and it's all I can do to respond before I suffer an aneurysm and pass out. This was initially a general response I was sending to the rampant stupidity appearing in the comments of 'E3 07: Analysts Expect 360 Price Drop' ... instead of focusing on what the article is actually about, predictably, the page is saturated with typical fanboy propaganda for one system or another, why PS3 has "lost" or why the 360 doesn't wear pants, etc. etc. I had intended to just tell everyone that they're stupid and the call it a day, but I can't ever be that concise. So I ended up on a soap box. In lieu of posting this there and potentially being flooded by angry messages from 14 year old's on summer break between their 2nd and 3rd year in fifth grade, I decided to copy and paste this to update my blog since few things get me going like outright dum-bassedness, it seemed just the thing to bring me back to the top of your tracked lists.

I will never understand the rampant murmuring going back and forth between self-proclaimed "hardcore gamers" that babble on and on about which system is better, and for what reason. Everyone trying to have the last word in a futile, yet ongoing argument. So I'll just go ahead and throw my own ramblings into the mix.

My 360 died. It was out of warranty, and I didn't have the foresight to just hold on to it, a regret, given their new 3 year warranty which is retroactive for the entire generation. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. Regardless, I had already made the decision to re-purchase one when the new chips come out. It has nothing to do with some lofty premise of "loyalty" to Microsoft or being a biased 'fanboy' of the 360. Nor to any console and/or it's manufacturer for that matter. I could care less about the system. A gamers loyalty is fickle at best. We only want the games. If I want to play Gears of War, I'll turn on my 360. If I want to trek around in DQ8, then I'll play my PS2. I'll point and click with Warcraft for hours on my PC, and if I could FIND a Wii, then I'd definitely spend some time playing Zelda. When PS3 gets it's library built up, and has a few games that I want to play? Well then I'll buy one and play that. To argue over which console 'pwnz' the other is juvenile at best, and completely contradicts what a gamer really is.

By the way, a public service announcement : NEVER pronounce 'pwnz', 'pwnt' 'pwn' or any other variation of that word, nor any other from the already far too extensive "733t gamerz" lexicon out loud, unless you want to be mercilessly 'pwnt' yourself out of sheer principle by someone with skill far superior to your own simply for being that stupid. With a brick. The brick of linguistic justice. I'm looking at you, every 15 year old and younger ever. Stop it. You have been warned.

Now here comes Captain Obvious : Price cuts happen every generation. We all know this. They usually come from a combination of competition and the integration of smaller/cheaper and/or more efficient components as they're developed. Thats just business, and it's in the nature of the industry. Our technology is ever changing and evolving, and tweaks are made throughout each consoles lifespan, some even WAY beyond that. Top loading NES anyone? It happens. The drawback is that you can't just upgrade as you go along like a PC. Welcome to the world of console gaming. Play nice or we'll kill you.

The only fault I can find in the way things currently are is having all these different skus for one system. Core, Premium and Elite versions of Xbox, and the 60 and 80 gigabyte versions of the PS3 seem to have varying features as well. I may be wrong there now since they're dropping the low end model. Nonetheless,all these skus can cause a lot of consumer confusion to the uninformed, speaking mostly in reference to those that purchase the systems as gifts. I don't much know about the PS3 myself, as no games have yet enticed me to seek one out. I can only imagine what someones grandmother is thinking when she's confronted with "Well THIS one comes with HDMI, and you can upscale to 1080i, and has 120 gig hard drive, while THIS one only has 20, and no HDMI.. BUT, over here, THIS system has 80 gigabytes and has a Blu-Ray drive built in. Or you can get this version of that system which has 60 gigabytes. Oh by the way there is another version of that other console which doesn't come with hard drive, or HDMI, but you can purchase it all separately as you go.. except for HDMI. It does 720p though which is great if you don't have an HDTV. Oh by the way, you can also get an HD-DVD add-on too"All these initials and it starts sounding like you're talking about some terminal disease you catch from a public toilet. If granny knows exactly what little Timmy wants for his birthday, great, and if she knows what the heck HDMI and a gigabyte is, more power to her. Thats one hip g-ma.

I'm leaving Nintendo out of this little love sonnet because this ridiculous game of badminton is between you 'all or nothing' people in the 360 and PS3 camps. Grow up. If you like the 360 better, thats fine. Go play it, and quit hounding the ones that prefer the PS3. If you spend your hours gaming away by hammering on the x's and o's, fine. Shut up and go play. If you play Atari...well then you had better be a retro-enthusiast or a time traveler.

Oh, also be quiet and go play.