Entroper said: Lifetime hardware sales (millions):          America PAL NES 34.00 8.56 PSX 40.78 40.12 That's probably why.

Wow, that's heavy. And I just saw that the SNES didn't sell any better over here in the EU.

Must be my age... I completely missed the whole Playstation era.

Well, I'm 30. So I guess I have you beat. *sigh*

If you were that "into gaming history", you would have known that Bungie was originally a Macinotosh developer and that they were hyping Halo as a Mac platform based off their Marathon game.You would also have realized that Halo at the time was breaking boundaries of distance, open space, and general open gameplay. It was also a computer game at the time.

Then Microsoft bought them and turned Halo into an Xbox game right before the original game was to be released.

But I guess somehow Bungie just made a "general shooter funded by Microsoft" and called it a day despite the fact that they had been working on the game for two years before MS even bought out the company.

And BTW, your comment about war games and US citizens only reeks of ignorance. How about actually making an argument? I'll play, bitch. If you make generalizations about an entire country of 300 million people, I'll be more than happy to argue, you ignorant bastard.

I don't think you're a fanboy, if that's your taste, no problem. I'll be waiting for some more games before I'll get a Wii, too. But I don't think Nintendo will ever stop making their big, epic games, and that's what I'm in for. I'm one of those infamous gamers that buys about 5 games every generation :)

You really cannot say that there's no good games on the DS, though. My girlfriend bought a DSL last year, and there was a lot of good stuff so far. And I'd say I hardly know 5% of all DS games.

But here's one thought that always crosses my mind when read a "fanboy" discussion: It all comes down to your taste in games. If you are enjoying the PSP lineup and I'm not, it's completely pointless to argue about that; other way round for the DS. I think the "fanboy" term is being overused. To me, a typical fanboy situation is (for example) people claiming that a multiplatform game looks waaay better on the PS3 / X360 when in fact you need a magnifying glass to notice any differences. Or Sony / Microsoft fans bashing each other when in fact the lineups are very similar. A shooter fan e.g. will be happy with an XBox as well as on a Playstation, why not admit it? 

On the other hand, where's the point in telling me (hypothetically, I know you didn't) I should accept that the X360 is the ultimate gaming console, when in fact I wanna play Mario + Zelda games? Refusing to do so does not make me a fanboy, I'm a fan.

Sony is hated because they took the most anticipated console of all time and turned it the most hated.

"Oh here's the successor to the PS2, bet you want it huh? Oh sorry, you only work one job, guess you can't afford it I'll just have to put it up on this shelf where you can't reach it."

That and not everyone is exactly ready to jump to a new disc format so forcing the consumer to support Blu-Ray if they choose to buy a PS3 at a premium is somewhat irritating to your potential Sony consumer. Especially when there wasn't a Blu-Ray market to justify such a coupling at that point in time or a legitimate saturation of HD-TVs while on the subject.

"PS3 utilizes Blu-Ray better than any other disc format, its games wouldn't work on anything but Blu-Ray"

Isn't that because those games were made specifically to exploit the disc format they had no other choice but to, Blu-Ray, and in compensating for the disc format's short commings with unique solutions achieve nothing more than a cycle of working around Blu-Ray for the sake of supporting Blu-Ray not the gaming experience?

"But Blu-Ray is the future! HD-DVD sucks!"

Who said anyone has to choose one by default of the other's success or failure, HD-DVD is in the same boat of futility. Is Blu-Ray the future? Maybe, call me in another five years and we'll talk then, ok.

Now Sony is losing third party exclusives and boasting a line up of upcomming exclusives that rival the typical 360 game in mediocrity.

"Look, there's this new game comming out for the PS3, I have no idea what its genre, gameplay or replay value is like, but it looks pretty and I see swords and explosions and could easily convince any 13 year old that its a good game at first glance, has to be a killer app."

You see, to those not desperately trying to find a reason to justify the PS3 or justify one aspect of the PS3 they really like, there is really little inherent appeal or draw to this console.

Ok, let's calm down a little. I wasn't gonna start a fight. Sorry if that sounded like a generalization, I hate those, too. I'm just a little bitter, because I've tried to discuss the issue of violent entertainment before; and there was NO tolerance for my point of view. To me, violence is not just another form of entertainment. And my impression was (from recent discussions over at Gonintendo and elsewhere) that especially some of the U.S. gamers were extremely pissed when I said I'd vote in favor of a ban for certain games, for example.

One guy went: "A ban is useless, I'm 15 and my mom will buy any game for me anyway, she says as long as there's not too much verbal abuse and no nudity she doesn't care if it's ultra violent." I'm not making that up. And there were several others saying similar stuff.

Other thing that irritated me: Did you see the "Army strong" ads on IGN? I thought they were absolutely awful, but that's one thing. What really bothered me is that they show them to kids on a gaming website. 

Now, I don't wanna generalize, and I do know that among 300 millions of citizens, there's a HUGE variety in views and beliefs. But war / army / weapons DO seem to be viewed more positively in the U.S. than they are over here. 

That's true. The American culture is somewhat embedded with violence. It's part of our nature. It's how we became a nation and it never left. But you can't take the ignorant comments of a 15 year old and extrapolate them over an entire nation. How many stupid things did you say when you were 15? I bet a lot. It's part of being an angst-ridden adolescent.

But just as I don't spout off how every European is a weak-willed pussy who can't wipe his own ass without consent from the government, you can't go spouting off that every American is an anger-filled monster who wants to spill blood on the streets.

Things are a bit more complicated than that and I hate generalizations. We may share different viewpoints on things but there's no need to start insulting each others cultures.

Now come on, I didn't do that. Really, all I was talking about was people on message boards, discussing violent video games. 

I'm the last person to be biased against people from other countries. I'm German, lived in Italy, my girlfriend is Chinese, my sister is getting married to her Spanish boyfriend, my 2 best friends are from Korea and France/Syria, and as a musician, I work with Americans a lot. Oh, and my grandparents originate from Czechia, Romania and Poland.

I think this is a typical case of transatlantic misunderstanding, I was not going to insult your culture.

Hold on a second. "Ico" is one of the greatest videogames ever made. So is "Shadow of the Colossus". They are complex, wondrous game-worlds, which reinvented the jump-and-run puzzle game in the context of a mythic world which felt like a Tolkien fantasy world come to life. SOTC in particular needs to be played all the way through to the end -- it's a tragic, heart-breaking tale. "God of War" and "God of War 2" are both smashing epics, which reinvent Greek mythology in a new way (they're also subtle satires of the sword-and-sandal Hollywood genre).  You have to give Sony some credit: most giant corporations churn out bland, unimaginative crap. But Sony's game division has genuine in-house creativity.

I found an IGN review, and Ico definitely seems to be a good game. Just like Okami, I'd really like to play that. And I admit that I never finished SOTC. I played 4 Bosses, as far as I remember, and I was of course impressed with the visuals and the character animation. But it is also very linear - as linear as it gets, actually. Nonetheless, a refreshingly different game.

God of War sounds too martial for my taste. And recently I read about this stupid promotion party Sony held for GoW2, where everybody got dressed as ancient Greeks: They slaughtered an actual goat and asked journalists to stick their hands inside the opened animals belly or something like that. I got really upset about that.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=451414&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

Fair enough. Now let's move on and start making fun of Sony again.