I started Gaming with the NES and we had almost every Console at home. I always liked Nintendo much better than Sega. Maybe because Sega was mainly porting Arcade games to Home Consoles whereas Nintendo created Games especially for the home consoles. So these games where better suited for home console play whereas those Arcade games where ofter very difficult so that people are putting in more coins.
When I first saw the Playstation I was a loyal Nintendo fan and Zelda and Mario alone were the reasons I wanted a N64. Well after I have played FF7 at a friend I was totally blown away by the depth of the story. Against FF, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid the Nintendo Games were simply lacking.
The Playstation 1 was the best console I had seen at this time in my life and I had much more fun with it than with the NES or SNES (although Zelda 3, Super Mario World, Terranigma and Actraiser hold a special place in my heart, FF 4 and 6 were not released in Europe). The Playstation brought gaming for a mature Audience whereas Nintendo wanted to make Games that Mature people and Children can play.
That is the main problem that I have with my Wii. It was the first Console that I bought that felt not superior to the past console generation. Motion Gaming felt like a step back, Wii Sports is just a shallow mini Game Collection. Nintendo is good at creating gameplay, but they are really bad at storytelling or just don't bother at all. There is also only minimal 3rd party support regarding good storybased games.
Ok, I just wanted to point out that I "began" as Nintendo Fan and the Sony Playstation could convince me with mature (and mature doesn't just mean brutal and violent games) storybased games. It had great support from Square, Konami and Capcom and over the years it had a great variety of games.
The PS2 was a huge leap forward and up to now it is my favourite Console, because my favourite games evolved even further, storytelling went up to an even higher level and games like Final Fantasy X or Kingdom Hearts are still amongst the best games I have ever played. But besides the JRPGs, Platformer and Action/Adventures there were Games like Monkey Island 4, Buzz, Katamari etc. The Playstation never had "that one Franchise" that got most of the attention and would make it pretty onesided. It has strong games in very different genres and the Playstation brand always brought up a nice variety in gaming.
The PS3-Generation was a kind of a step back in my opinion. The japanese games were strong as usual but very little games were coming. I realized how little fun I had with most US Games. Online Gaming was growing strong and with the coming of online trophies and after getting Resistance 2, GTA4 and Street Fighter 4 Platinum I had enough of the online experience. Repetition, bad behavior, cheater, glitcher, loads of insults, quitter etc. dominated and most of the time spent online was just a waste. So I decided to never buy a game with online focus again.
The second problem with US games is the focus on nonlinearity. After Playing Games like Oblivion, Infamous or Borderlands or wonder how games with absolutely awful Storytelling, shallow Characters and almost no character development can gain such high ratings. Most of the time you are wandering through large maps doing boring, repetetive and most of the time senseless sidequests that add nothing to the overall story and after you have beaten the game you just keep thinking what the whole game was about.
The Playstation offer a good mix of japanese gaming, european gaming and us gaming. A variety of storytelling, genremix and character interpretation.
