I know this particular bit of news won't make the GameSpot frontpage, but what the heck, it's important to me.

In the upcoming console wars, I am officially rooting for the Xbox 360.

During the current generation the Xbox has been my machine of choice, followed by the Gamecube (for the Nintendo exclusives mostly and the joy of using the Wavebird), with the PS2 a distant third.

For the whole of the current generation I've had a thing against the PS2. First, the PS2 killed the Dreamcast. People are always talking about how they want innovation, how they're tired of games all being clones of each other. What a crock! The Dreamcast gave people this, and by large, people decided that what they really wanted was to play the latest reskinning of Final Fantasy (it's the same game every time folks!).
Secondly, the PS2's lineup was filled with the same stuff that the PS1's lineup was filled with, which I didn't feel much need to play back then either.
Finally, lets face it, the machine was a turd. The Emotion Engine? When was the last time you ran out to buy a new Sony video card for your PC? Never? That's because Sony isn't a contender in the high-end GPU business. I don't like the dual shock controller. The dual shock is a hack. If the analog sticks are going to be the primary inputs, put them in the primary positions. The sticks on the PS2 are where they are because the original PS1 controllers had none and when the N64 forced them to add them Sony just stuck 'em where they had some free space. That was then, why are they still there?

Now that the PS3 is coming out, I read the specs and I see the screenshots and I realize that I'm still no more excited about playing Metal Gear Solid now than I was 2 console generations ago. And while there's nothing specific on the Xbox 360 at the moment, I just have a feeling that, like this generation, what will be there will have far fewer convoluted storylines and more gameplay.

Anyways that's my rant, I've picked my side.

I bought Jade Empire the other day. I stopped playing it after about half an hour, I was dying in nearly every fight. I was dying because I didn't even realize that I was losing the fight. I guess if I had been looking at my life bar I would've realized how close to death I was or how little health I had remaining after the previous battle.
I didn't think I was losing the fight because, frankly, it didn't look like I was losing the fight. The bad guys were getting in a jab every now and then, but I was blasting them 20 feet through the air with a single punch. I was kicking their asses (right up to the point where I fell over dead).
Then it hit me, I've outgrown the life bar, I'm beyond it. Even looking at the stupid thing is beneath me.
If you stub your toe does your life bar reduce? How many stubbed toes, exactly, will kill you? It's ridiculous isn't it? And yet, that mechanic graces nearly every game that gets made. Why? I fear the answer is laziness.

At any game development company there always are always a few people in competition with each other to be the biggest game geek. I, sadly, am one of these people. I just bought a Sega Nomad this past week (it came with Gunstar Heroes and Shadowrun, very nice). Which brings the total number of consoles I currently own up to 19. The Gamespot profile is great at listing how many games you own, but it doesn't let you list your consoles (not with any specifics at least), so here is my list.

In the order acquired (consoles I no longer have are in red):
-Famicom
-NES
-SNES
-N64
 -Playstation
-Game Boy Color
-Neo Geo Pocket Color (silver)
-Dreamcast
-Saturn
-Neo Geo Pocket Color (black)
-Game Boy Advance
-Shinco DVD-868 (Chinese region free DVD player of dubious legality that also plays PAL Sega Mega Drive ROMs)
-GameCube
-Xbox
-Genesis
-Playstation 2
-Modded Game Boy Advance (afterburner front light)
-Game Boy Advance SP (Torchic orange)
-Game Boy Advance SP (green to match my laptop)
-Saturn Devkit
-GP32
-Xbox (Halo green)
-N-Gage QD
-Genesis CDX
-Turbo Grafx Turbo Express
-Sega Nomad

I also own many geeky gaming accesories including, but not limited to:
-2 pairs of Virtual-On twin sticks (1 Saturn, 1 Dreamcast)
-Steel Battalion
-2 GBA cart burners
-2 Dreamcast keyboards (for 2-player Typing of the Dead)
-2 Dreamcast mice (couldn't tell you why)

Try as I might I will never have more geek cred than a former co-worker of mine. He proudly displayed a Virtual Boy at his desk and bought an N-Gage QD the same day I did for the sole purpose of using it as a bluetooth modem for his Tapwave Zodiac. My hat's off to him, that's geeky!

Ever since Greg Kasavin's posting about how he'd love for Apple to get into the games business I keep irrationally going to the Apple website desperately hoping to find an iPod game system for sale. Of course there never is one there, only regular iPods and overpriced PCs (there're no games to play, why would I pay for the X800 video card in a machine that can't do much more than surf the web? Yeah yeah, flame on).

The idea that's gotten stuck in my craw is of a handheld game system with no cartridge port, only a Wi-Fi connection, a USB port, and 1GB of internal flash memory (at least). I don't want it to be a PSP though, I want it to be a GBA. If it's a GBA the games will be small enough to download from the internet off of an iTunes like site for games. They'll also be easy enough to develop that there'll be a lot of them for sale, and for cheap.

I want the system to be open for everyone to develop for, like the PC is. While anyone can find the information to program for the GBA online, the only way to get the dev kit and debugger is to pay Nintendo $7000. That's not too steep of a fee for a company (under 2 months salary for an average GBA programmer), but for most individuals and small garage dev teams it's cost prohibitive. Why be greedy, you're going to be making money off of the games these people will make?

Nintendo wouldn't make a game system like this of course. They came up with the way of doing things that's working so well (for Sony) now. Hence, I keep irrationally visiting the Apple website.

I've been thinking a lot lately about elegant control schemes, ways to simplify inputs to just the bare essentials. When I'm doing this thinking the Nintendo DS is the system that my mind keeps wandering back to.

Now, I don't own a DS, and I don't intend to buy one (I probably will at some point, I own a GP32 afterall), but I want to play DS games. Not the games that are out mind you, those all look like garbage. I want to play the games that could be made for it. I admit to being skeptical of the DS's functionality when I first saw it, and I know that around the office nobody really had a clue what to do with it (by the looks of the games that are out, that seems like it was true even at Nintendo). But now I believe that real, complete, non-tech demo games could be made for this system and I want to play them. I want to play games that eschew the D-pad and buttons and go all in with the touch screen in fun and ingenious ways. I want to play something new, something different.

Different. That's where the trouble starts.

Any game made for the DS, I mean specifically made to use it's special features, is necessarily a DS exclusive. This isn't true of any other console. Every console has buttons, every console has a D-pad, most have analog sticks, no other console has a touchscreen. If you develop a game to be really cool to play on the DS it's going to be a lot of work to make it not suck anywhere else, so you can't port it. That's called putting all your eggs in one basket, and that's something risk averse game publishing companies do not do. Especially not with the PSP hanging around.

We won't know until May what Nintendo intends to do with the Revolution (and maybe not then either) but they keep promising, well, a revolution. If some of the rumors are true and the Revolution has a completely different control scheme Nintendo could find themselves in a tough situation. They could have consumers getting upset playing inferior multi-console ports meant for an Xbox or a PS3 controller, but publishers unwilling to make games that are effectively Revolution exclusives. That's exactly what's happening in miniature on the DS already. Few of the DS games make good on the system's promise and many consumers are dissatisfied.

Does this mean that inventive new controller schemes are doomed to failure. I don't know. I hope not, but I'm too negative a person to believe not.