As the few folks who have read my blog know, I am one of the older gamers out there in the wide world of Gamespot, and I have been gaming since the days of the Atari 2600 with my gaming collection nearly nearly 800 games spanning almost 30 years (some of which I was not alive) I consider myself a gaming Vet,

Over the last few weeks some of my friends who are getting ramped up for the next generation have often started the discussion of who won the last generation, and what my opinion is which got me thinking,

In terms of Sales,
Clearly the PS2 won, with over 80 million consoles sold and Xbox in second with roughly 24 million and GC with 20 million its very clear who has won that aspect,

But note should be taken that Xbox had a very successful first run in terms of sales, and as has been the case from generation to generation Gamecube has lost users.

In terms of the gaming experience itself, it really is a toss up

Has you asked me a few months ago, I would have said without any doubt:
Xbox, Gamecube and PS2 in that order.
But as of late PS2 has been offering me an all you can eat buffet of quality RPG's which I am having a hard time keeping up with, it seems when I finish one I have another two sitting on my coffee table on deck to get played next.

The reality is that even though I have my doubts I will give full credit an assume that Zelda will come out for Gamecube and it will be an AAA title, even with that said I am sad to admit that PS2 simply serged ahead in the final few months and in my opinion really hammered down the number two spot.

The real battle becomes one between the Xbox and the PS2,
with a 360 currently sitting on my gaming bench its safe to say that I will not rush to the store to buy a brand new Xbox game again, and I have to judge based on what I have. The reality is its not all bad.

Xbox by far recieved much more play then the PS2 over the course of the life of both consoles even though PS2 came out a year earlier, and for the most part many of the games for Xbox were simply amazing.

I think even with Final Fantasy XII in the pipeline for PS2, I still have to score the win at least for me to the Xbox.

But I will make one point in favor of the PS2, and thats to say this with the endless amount of RPG's I have to play, I will be playing my PS2 long after I love the Xbox console to a lower shelf.

-Z

I guess if I had to be summed up in terms of a system wars classification I would be a "Manticore" Have every system and have my personal preference shift depending on which console happens to be giving me the most joy at this moment in time.

More then anything I cannot believe the amount of blind loyalty some of these kids are showing basically an appliance.

Whenever I need a laugh, I tend to log into System Wars and see how some folks are downplaying the PS3, and how others are calling the 360 a "flop" and the simply side spliting reasons why, but I think today this whole fanboy mentality just crossed from borderline amusing to downright sad.

The Elder Scrolls 12 hour playathon generally I think is a neat idea so we can see the process that goes into playing a game and what they see when they are reviewing it.

That said, the kids who have been watching for 12 hours straight and doing their best to find ANY flaw they can really does sort of cross the line to just wow.

I mean even when I was younger I didn't have 12 hours to sit infront of my PC and watch someone else play a game.

With that in mind, I just do not understand why a child can show so much loyalty to an electronic?

I often wonder if these kids really realizes how sad they are becoming?

-Z

After 20 years of gaming
22 Consoles
6 Handhelds
Over 1000 games

I am out of space on the Gaming Wall for new games, I picked up a copy of Disgaea at EB as well as a copy of Phantom Brave and there was no room, normally I can shuffled some Turbografix games over or up, and take some space from the Jaguar CD section but it was packed not an inch to spare.

What to do....

-Z

I like to play a game I call "Over/Under" with the guys at my local EB, normally once every so often I will talk in and say "200.00" and we basically take a look at all the games that have had their prices slashed to see how many games I can get for under 200.00 without going over.

XIII, Beyond Good and Evil, and Deadrow were all very nice suprises spawned from this game.

But man, some of the crap I just picked up I can't even understand how it was even seen as a good idea BEFORE they went to the trouble of actually making the game....

Robocop and Judge Dredd for Xbox are just primary examples of me questioning if these developers even watched the movies before they made the games....

WOW.

-Z

Why was Christmas 2005 so Blah?
360 was fun and I will not take away from the fact that I have had fun with it but here I sit two months removed with nothing that I have not played to a point of bordom

PS2 and GC have done nothing but hand me delays and I find more and more that I am spending more time playing Wonderboy for my Sega Master System rather then anything that was milled in the last twenty years.

When does it start rolling?

-Z

My 360 will be in my hands within 12 hours, and as I always am with the weeks leading up to launch I am always concerned that there was such a rush on the console that the developers simply could not use it to its potental and we then get stuck with a LONG (PS2 and Xbox esk) drought before the good games start coming out,

But when the Call of Duty and the Kameo reviews first came out, I will admit that I express some relief, The rules of system wars of course dictate that a game that has not scored higher then 9.0 is a flop, but I find that in my collection tab on GS of my 500+ Games my average score is an 8.0, and for the most part I have enjoyed a good portion of the games in my collection, so my rule of thumb has always been chances are if GS gives it a 8.0 or higher I will enjoy it.

I know its not very system wars of me to say, but I would rather have a launch with five AA titles like 360 seems to be gunning toward then a launch with one AWESOME AAA game, and then a bunch of subpar titles.

Originally I had pre-ordered Condemmed and PD0, but with reviews being so positive for COD and PGR3 I have expanded so for the first time since DC launch I will get more then three titles at launch,

If this is an example of what the next gen will hold, I am very much looking forward to it, Xbox came out strong, and now PS3 has to do the same.

-Z

This new GS set-up is going to take some getting use to, but I guess at the end of the day I can live with it.

I cannot stress enough how poor summer was in terms of titles, as it always seems to be, Geist and old Dreamcast and NES titles seemed to be the flavor of those months.

360 is all but inches away and for the first time in years I feel so behind the time when it comes to video games, I have PDZ and Condemed Pre-ordered, but I have not really read previews or for that matter seen screenshots,

Well lets have a look at System Wars, I would bet not much has changed

-Z

Still not all that interested in the current bland mix of new releases on any console,

but check out my GTA SA review for Xbox

-Z

Travel, Work, and Sunshine have done their best to keep me away from Gamespot for the last two or so months.

I checked in every so often to see what everyone was crying about, and nothing has changed,

PS3 PWNS 360,

Yadda yadda yadda,

Reading over the tech specs which are finally somewhat official, I come to this conclusion:

Meh, its all the same.

This to me is like Genesis selling its "Blast Processing" as a reason why it was better then SNES,

I look at the same specs and I see this:

PS3 has a better processor in theory, none of us have seen the Cell in action, and it could very well be like IBM's old Cyrix processors which would sell as a 100 Mhz and be equal to a 75 Mhz Intel,

So it looks like if all things are true PS3 has more processing push,
and again I say Meh

When I upgraded my PC a upgrades back,
I did it in bits and bites, new case new motherboard, new processor,

Same Graphics card till I got what I wanted,

And it was fast but looked like hell,

Then when I was having issues with a graphics card years later I tested my new card in an older system and it looked pretty good but ran like blah.

And from the looks of the Spec, 360 has a better graphics card, but yet again slighly,

So next gen we will have Sony and MS coming at us with more of the same, similar this and similar that,

We can all look forward to a bunch of marketing buzz words, maybe PS3 will even feauture Blast Processing 256,

Because other then words and gimmicks they are the same system.

Blah

-Z

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/driving/forzamotorsport/reader_review.html?id=3738459

Enjoy
I would love some feedback

-Z