How do you decide when and which consoles to purchase?

[ookaze]

It was really simple for me this gen, really. To put it short and simple : Nintendo got me back in gaming, and I buy a system as soon as there are 3 games I want to play on it. I'm a casual gamer, always have been. I always bought consoles because of games though. To put it longer : I'm mostly a RPG fan. But more J-RPG than western RPG (even though I used to play lots of true tabletop RPG). I've actually still not finished BG2 or NWN extensions that I bought several years ago, but finished several J-RPG on console in the same time span. And when I say I love J-RPG, I talk about those I consider the good ones, not all of them are good to me. It's important to me, as I keep all my games. The only crap J-RPG I got, is Legend of Dragoon from Sony. All the J-RPG on the XB360 are the same crap quality range as Legend of Dragoon to me, except for the Mistwalker ones perhaps, which I would put in the Grandia class to me (good, but not worth buying a console for). So, I stopped playing games in 2001, when the PS2 was out, as I disliked FF8 (fortunately I didn't buy it, and never finished it), and FF9 was barely good. I didn't have much time to play anymore anyway, and had other projects. But I managed to buy a GBA and Knights of Lodis in Japan in 2002. That was mainly in anticipation for FFTA which is a HUGE game, that I just restarted in 2007 to get everything right, like I love to do in RPG I love (and I expect it to take 200 hours at least to do that). Then, in 2004, I was hooked by the Zelda WW intro. I pondered the idea to buy a console again, then I went to investigate. I was just wowed by the quality that emanated from the Nintendo system and peripherals (and remembered my SNES still work, while my PS1, of which the DVD drive was changed once, is nearly dead, despite not touched for years). I looked at the games, and saw this could be good. Then, when the pack with all the Zelda before WW + Mario Kart DD launched, at a cheap price, I bought it with Zelda WW. Notice I already had 3 games I thought I liked from the start. I was never a Zelda fan, so I still have not finished any of these, but I plan to finish WW (very good game, but I still prefer my RPG) one day and to play the N64 ones too. Anyway, one of my brother-in-law had a GC too, and lent Mario Party 4 to my wife ... Mario Kart was already the first time she played a console and anjoyed it, but Mario Party was sth that took me by surprise : she wanted to play it more than me, and it was actually fun !! So the GC was a hit for me, but now, I wanted more, and went to look at RPG. There were only two : Fire Emblem and Tales of Symphonia. I took an hour pondering which one was good, and went for the tactical rather than an action RPG I usually don't like. Oh boy, what an incredible experience was this FE ! To think I started it with a bad feeling, with people saying it was so hard it was frustrating, and lots of things I wasn't used to. This was a smash hit for me. Months later, I was starved for good RPG (yes, despite the western RPG on my PC that are unfinished), and went for Tales of Symphonia. Oh boy ! Another smash hit. GC hooked me so much on Nintendo quality and games, that I finally bought a DS, mainly because of Advance Wars, which was a game from the same internal studio as the one that made FE on GC. I still bought the DS for three game : FFTA (better with DS screen), Advance Wars, and Brain Age. Again, my wife plays it more than me (I bought a DS Lite later, when the black one launched), playing Brain Academy (or sth like that), and she even BOUGHT a game (!!!!), which is NSMB ! I couldn't believe this ! Anyway, given all that, when the Wii was announced to launch in December, it was clear to me that it would be the first console I get on launch date. Because as the Nintendo games made me buy the DS, knowing that FE sequel and the latest Mario Party was going to the Wii in 2007 was enough to make me want to buy the console right away. The third game was Zelda at launch. Given the little time I have to play games, only buying these will last me until far into 2008, when they launch. And I have several games to finish until they launch in Europe (Tales of Symphonia needs at least 3 playthroughs to get everything, and it's so good I will make these 3 more playthrough, especially since the bonus system is quite good). I bought Sonic too on Wii, and it made me hope a little that perhaps I will delay modding my Wii, as it had the original japanese language on it. If FE comes with the japanese language (unlike FE on GC, or ToS which was butchered, and is so much better in japanese) then it will be perfect, and I will delay the modding to get the japanese exclusive games I like. I used to mod my consoles as I bought my RPG in japanese mostly. The only decently translated ones were the Squaresoft ones after FFVI (mainly FF Tactics and FFVII, I don't know for Xenogears).