Tea Leaves

Live in Your World, Pay in Ours

I saw a Playstation 3 kiosk at the local Target tonight. It looks like for $600 you can buy a box that renders a desert and a motorcycle with a remarkably high level of detail that is also remarkably free from the standard flickery jaggy "looks-like-ass" filter that the Playstation 2 adds to all of its pictures. As far as I could tell, the object of the game was to drive the motorcycle over a cliff repeatedly and watch the character fall through the air while making a very loud noise. Yet another reason to never buy a console before 1 year after launch day.

I followed this rule for all of my current-gen consoles, and it has served me well. You get mature hardware and more importantly, a mature game library with a good mix of new and old, expensive and cheap.

I followed this rule with the hand-helds. The DS and GBA being pretty big wins and the PSP being a bit more iffy.

I did not follow this rule with the Xbox 360. The box has sat in my living room waiting for another game to play after Obvlivion, and has only found spotty support. Even now, a full year after launch, I barely got up the gumption to buy a new shooter that has been hyped to the moon, but still doesn't seem that promising.

At least when this one sucks I'll be able to sell it on Ebay for $50 like the last new 360 game I bought. That works out to less than the Gamefly rental fee for the month. Thank god for having a friend who ebays stuff for you.