Saturday, January 3, 2009

Will the PS2 ever die?

It seems not. According to this report on kotaku, more people are playing PS2 than any other system, including the Wii, and by a ginormous margin. WTF? People, it's not 2005 anymore, come on and step up to the latest and greatest.

What does this mean? Are next-gen consoles just lame and sucky, like my great great grandmother's teats? Or are people just not seeing what the big hoohaw is about the Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3?

None of the above. Perhaps once console makers could rely on the market's steady growth to introduce new and more powerful systems that would outsell their predecessors, but the PS2 kinda futzed that up for everyone by selling enough systems to populate a decent-sized country. Obviously the next-gen consoles had no hope to match the PS2's sales, and I'm sure they weren't aiming for it, but Sony must feel a bit sad that the original Xbox is played more than the PS3 is.

Will another system ever sell as well as the PS2? Not until they all break down I suppose.

I predict, however, that the next-next-gen systems, perhaps the PS4 and Xbox^3, will do much better. The PS3 and 360 were stop-gaps, leaps ahead in performance but not really offering anything new in terms of gameplay. The PS3 did offer more innovation, but its high cost stifled it. Personally I think it's a great investment if you're not only looking for a gaming machine, but Sony is only starting to market it as such now. Next time around, boys...

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