T w e n t y S i d e d

Stipulated: The title of this post is hopelessly lame and grounds for a beating. My hope is that the effort required to track me down and administer said beating will discourage you from doing so.

Fledge has a post talking about why he plans on getting a Wii. Yeah. Everthing he said.

To which I add: The price of the Xbox and PS3 put them way, way out of my reach. The prices hover somewhere between comedy and robbery. I know they are packed with magical hardware that can make the best darn pixels you’ve ever seen, and I’ve heard one of them contains a Blu-Ray matrix reportedly stolen right from the holodeck of the Enterprise, but at the root of it the thing is still a toy, and I can’t think about spending that much for a toy.

He mentions the educational benefits of the system. I would add that the thing is also good for motivating kids to learn to read. We have a Gamecube now, and I’m very pleased with it. My girls (now six and eight) very much wanted to read what was being said to them in games like Animal Crossing. Many, many times I heard, “Can I get / play this game daddy?” to which I would reply, “Once you can read it.” My six year old will sit there for quite a while trying parse what the characters are saying to her in Mario Sunshine. She wants to read it, and she works a it of her own free will, and thinks of that as playtime.

Having a large library of family-friendly games helps as well. I’d rather she learn to read stuff like, “Press B to be my friend” as opposed to “Press triangle to perform a disembowel move.” Not that I have anything against games which engage in a little disemboweling. I have many such games like that which I enjoy very much. But if I’m going to get one of these toys I like to make sure it has games for everyone to play.

So, I can pay $600 for a toy for myself, or I can spend $250 for a toy for the whole family. There is just no contest here.

I worry that the PS3 and XBox will find themselves fighting over the narrow hardcore gamer market. Add to this the shortages of their systems at launch, and it looks like the Wii is ready to kick butt. I could be wrong, but either way it will be fascinating to see how these systems do over the Christmas season.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.