when i saw the first xbox commercial and then its release in stores i just stoodback and said. 'well its over'
what was over you ask? the days of alternative gaming, or niche systems and titles.
with M$ in the game along with sorny and ninyendo there would truly never be anymore room to have a dark horse company develop a new system, much like our own beloved TG 16, but also other things that used to pop up, cd-i, 3do, vectrex, neogeo and etc. not all of them may have been great or very widespread but they were able to capure a sliver to keep going. now no more. since then only the n-gage has tried, and failed. but thats a hand held anyways. phantom and other vapor ware has nevr seen the light of day where as maybe with only 1 dominant company we may have seen these, but with in essence a 3 way tie (even if 'losing' the generation means selling a paltry 20 million) the chance to be the one to be the next hot thing is split even further. i doubt if we will ever see a new console outside the big 3
as for titles, M$ bled the red white and blue, i epected and was right about endless ports titles and shooters as well as the endless ports of movie and tv based games. not that football and halo are terrible, but they do lead to 100 copycats of which most of those are terrible, though they sell. it means les R and D for games that go off the beaten path. i am not talking about otaku wet dream repetitive cutsey RPG that isnt very good to start with (read: mother) but just any game that turns a genre on its ear like REZ or a game of great quality that wont sell alot of numbers, but will recoup its losses (working designs) its the same for M$ and sorny. for sorny the PS1 had such a diverse library, which i belive alowed them to be the new (then?) top dog. but compared to PS2 the variation in titles is half or less. probably to stay competitive in the american market against the XTREEEEEME XBOX DUDE!!
as for ninyendo, they are so up their butts with 'quality control' so few games came out as is (like n64) and while it had some great games, very few were truly original and many were delayed as is.
it also meant that consoles would finally be locked into some sort of release pattern. if you start from the nes, you have the nes in 85 , sms and 7800 in 86. but then you have the genesis and tg16 in 89, while the nes is still hot, snes in 91, 3d0 and jag in 93, saturn and ps in 95 n 64 in 96 dreamcast in 99 and ps2 in 2000. theres a large gap of years between the definate end of one generation and the start of the next, now we see xbox 360 in 05 and wii / ps3 in 06. all 4-5 years past the last release,and all very close to each other. never again will a company wait 2-3 years while comparable technology is already for sale by the competition (though the ps3 almost did!) so gone are the days of leapfrogging as well.
it also took away insteresting packaging too. now all games are in DVD cases with the systems name on top. like there was a caucus held on uniformity in game packaging.
these are things i saw the xbox doing, for good or for bad
as for japan thinking they own the world, while they were busy cranking out a billion famicoms, apple and microsoft were making sure every computer in used would have an OS made in the USA. and it seriously bugs the crap out of them that they missed the boat.
