Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

Today marks the official US launch date of Sony’s Playstation 3. With Nintendo’s Wii console soon to follow, this truly inaugurates “next generation” gaming. I think it’s now safe to stop referring to these as “next-gen” systems and start using the present tense to refer to this ensuing global war. By “ensuing global war”, I really mean the one between Sony and Microsoft, for they are clearly the superpowers here. Nintendo’s Wii, which is largely staying out of the fight and has an idiosyncratic take on the use of vowels, is obviously Switzerland.

At this point, I’d have to side with the Wii as my console of choice. It’s something genuinely new, it’s got Zelda, and it won’t cost me a Scrooge McDuckian fortune. I really struggled with that sentence, because it’s hard for me to express, without cursing, just how ducking much the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 would cost me. Between the console hardware, launch title, and the HD TV I’d need to buy to have “the full experience,” either an Xbox 360 or a PS3 would cost me well over one thousand dollars, and that’s not money I can justify spending right now.

While we’re here, I’m baffled by the relentless promotion of HD television in this battle. Obviously, HD TV is the legitimate next iteration of visual entertainment, and I’m all for advances in the field. Yet HD TV bears the hallmarks of an immature technology, with its multiple confusing resolutions (480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, other miscellaneous sizes), plethora of connectors, external signal tuners, and oh yes, wildly varying quality between manufacturers. The situation is a lot better than even two years ago, and I think I’m at the point where I could walk into Best Buy and pick out a good set, but the whole affair still feels very much like a work in progress.

Let’s talk about online gaming. Once strictly the purview of hackers typing in IP addresses from their sunless basements, deathmatch has since morphed into multiplayer and then into the Xbox Live Marketplace. The retail butterfly has at last emerged from its larval cocoon. The mainstreaming of online play is largely a good thing, but it gives game companies license to charge for content that without the internet would surely have been included in the box you bought in the store. Don’t believe me?

And that’s my position for now. The Wii is the most intriguing offering of the last six years, by a long shot. On the larger scale, there are too many unknowns and too much cash at stake for me to rush out this instant and buy a system. I tremble with both delight and terror at the possibilities of true online connectivity. My predicted purchases? A Wii, followed by a new television, followed by a PS3. Personally, I don’t want Microsoft anywhere near my living room.