this is what I think

See, my problem is not mario and friends, I love mario. but I want more of their franchises too.

sony is a zeitgeist-y, thoroughly middlebrow company that likes to pretend it's edgy, the console and consumer electronics (though increasingly less so) equivalent of apple in every way (and indeed, steve jobs, that hack, tried to get sony to run mac os on their defunct vaio line back in the day). like apple, they are frequently all hype, and if not they're latecomers to stuff other people have been doing forever (killzone, meet halo; ps all-stars, meet ssb; littlebigplanet karting, meet mario kart... and it goes on...).

microsoft makes a lot of great software and sometimes some great hardware (the laptop replacement surface 3 is terrific, for example) but the xbox has always been clunky, bulky and a dudebro (and little kid) magnet. contrary to what people say about kiddie nintendo, i'm pretty sure xbox live has the youngest population of any of the three online services.

nintendo makes some questionable marketing and hardware decisions, but of the three i think it's by far the one that most consistently delivers on innovative gameplay ideas. but c'mon, give me a damn web-based storefront for the eshop. allow me to buy stuff on phones and tablets to play on your systems. make it easier for me to buy your shit.

Atari by a long shot. Their business practices damn near erased the entire gaming industry from the face of the Earth. Constantly releasing broken clone after broken clone of the same 3 or 4 genres until customers just couldn't take it anymore. Frankly, I'm a little worried the same basic thing will happen with the PS4 and Xbone if they don't start getting some more unique games soon.

fair enough!

this sounds too familiar!

Me too.

While every company is in it to make money, I feel that Microsoft is particularly arrogant and potentially damaging to the industry. I feel they have only their own best interests in mind, and have no respect whatsoever for their customers, as evidenced by what they've tried to do this generation. People at Nintendo obviously take actual joy in making games, and Sony does a lot for the gamers that doesn't necessarily make complete business sense, as well as having an attitude of actually empowering gamers and developers; Microsoft on the other hand feels entirely cold and unfeeling to me, making every move purely based on how much they think they can exploit us. It is for these (and many other) reasons that I, DerpSandwich, "hate" Microsoft.

think about it. every game lately is some combination of gta 3 sandbox (gta iv, v, watch dogs, the crew)/call of duty 4 multiplayer-with-no-story (titanfall, ghosts, black ops i+ii, advanced warfare)/ac 2 map-clearing (ac unity, shadow of mordor)/es5 skyrim open-world rpg (witcher 3, dragon age inquisition)... it's disturbing.

better yet, each new iteration of the same old nothing comes with ever more win buttons, requiring essentially vegetative input from the "player" and no skill whatsoever. i mean, those assassin's creed acrobats who do all sorts of stuff after a single button press...

MS changed the gaming industry for good... or for bad. thanks to them we have all these dlcs and cod is the best selling franchise. not good for me, but good for those who enjoy that part of gaming.