Well apparently cigarette smoke can really fuck up the Wii. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 360 is effected the same way.
http://www.switched.com/2008/03/13/cigarette-smoke-causes-wii-to-malfunction/
Secondhand smoke kills. 
This definitely goes for me. I’m a fan of the PlayStation brand overall and I’ll purchase a PS3 eventually since I prefer its exclusives to the 360’s, but price and lack of backwards compatibility are major sticking points. I have dozens of PS2 games in my backlog, and the idea of upgrading to a PS3 which would upscale those games, as well as throwing some PS3 titles in the mix, is attractive. But without backwards compatibility, I’ll just stick with my PS2 games for now and wait for the PS3’s price to come down.
Someone said it upthread and I’ll echo it-- if a person like me, who owns a PSX, PS2, and PSP, and adores them all, is lukewarm (at best) about the PS3, Sony is doing something terribly wrong.
They then spent the next hour and a half chanting “Death to Sony!”. 
(just kidding)
I am not a huge gamer, but I had a PS3 for a while. I liked the Blu-Ray compatibility as I had just bought a HDTV, but I never, ever used it and eventually I traded it for a GPS which I use every day. Why? Because I couldn’t play any of the dozens of PS2 games I have on it. No other reason, and it just seemed stupid to have 2 units attached to the TV.
I’m pretty sure there were driving games that could be played with wheels in the 16-bit era (Super Nintendo, early 1990s) or earlier. And there were shooting games that could be played with gun controllers even earlier. There was also an NES analogue to Wii Fit in the 1980s. Non-traditional controller schemes are nothing new, particularly in Nintendo systems–they’ve just managed to make it a selling point for the system this time, instead of treating it as a novelty for people who already want a gaming system.
It’s always 12? I’ve never heard that number. However, I do personally know people who are on their second or third system or gave up after, say, three.
I was a game tester during the launch window for PS3 and Wii. Nowadays the retail PS3 is a stable and usable system, but the prelaunch test kits were a complete mess. I imagine the retail launch units weren’t much better. There were times when we had to do two firmware updates a day, which forced us to wipe and restart the games we were working on. The wireless controller often desynched in the middle of gameplay, which tends to get your character killed. And the choice of Bluray was questionable to begin with. It’s fine for movies, but its slower read speed means that a lot of games end up installing large portions of data on the hard drive the first time you pop them in. If I have to install games I’ll get the PC version, thanks.
I kept an eye on eBay prices for the PS3 and Wii during the launch, curious if the prices would remain high for several months like they did for the 360 the previous year. The Wii did better than anyone could have expected of course, but demand for the PS3 dropped pretty sharply after only a couple of weeks. Whatever virtues the PS3 might have now, it suffered from a pretty shitty launch. And it’s still too expensive.
I was so flabbergasted at the idiocy of PS3 not being backwards compatible with PS2 games that I had to Google it. But according to every source I can find, about 98% of PS2 games worked fine on the PS3… and only later did they change it.
What gives? Why would they do something seemingly designed to destroy the platform?
According to them it was for cost savings. Originally they had the emotion engine on board so almost all games were compilable. Then they switched to a emulation model that had the hardware and software working in tandem that was not as robust, but still worked with most games. I guess that hardware was found to be expensive enough to remove for the current versions. I really don’t understand it. I have a PS3 and I love it. But, I made sure to get one that had backwards compatibility.
They also removed the flash card readers, two USB ports and Super Audio CD support. The thing is - it did not bring the price down that far for everything they removed. Really doesn’t make much sense to me.
They were probably more concerned with bringing down the cost of hardware FOR THEMSELVES. Imagine a business model in which the more of the product you sell, the LESS money you make.
It’s why console market is cut throat and risky. You rely on a percentage of software sales, and the possible EVENTUAL time that you can sell your hardware for a small profit.
It takes a hell of a lot of luck and business know how to end up like say Nintendo for the current gen, as opposed to say the dream cast in the last gen wars.
I admit to being a bit puzzled as to why I can buy a computer for $500 that Acer presumably makes money on, but Sony can’t find a way to mass produce a bajillion identical PS3s that are tehnically inferior to my $500 computer in every way, and make money off them, even at a slightly lower price.
really? I’ve found that playing Mario Kart with the controller held like a wheel (or even using the wheel that came with it) makes the game much harder, I can’t do powerslide-boosts and such at all. I always play with a gamecube controller.
I both agree and disagree with this. Yes there have been many wheel attachment peripherals (my friend bought a wheel for his 360 when he got Forza 2) and the first console light gun, I believe, launched with Duck Hunt on the NES. The idea with the Wii, however, was to force developers to create games around the idea that people would be using these sorts of controls instead of simply giving an option that (relatively) few people would be utilizing. They went for a route that required innovation (to what degree is debatable). Making it mainstream instead of a novelty, you could say (again, to what degree is debatable).
sorry for the double post (at work, thoughts, they be scattered)
One big thing I’d point out here is that Sega, unlike Nintendo, sabotaged their hardware sales by basically betraying their customer base. They released too much too fast, in essence. They launched the 32-bit attachment for the Genesis, whatever it was called, then immediately after launched Sega Cd, also for Genesis. Then they came out with the Saturn and almost immediately announced the DreamCast would be coming out soon. Basically they just betrayed their fanbase, who got tired of, in essence, being milked for cash. So when the DreamCast finally launced as a great system, the fans had been alienated with a horde of crap systems and were more willing to wait nearly a year for the ps2 rather than go buy a DreamCast for Christmas.
ISTR that they also pissed off a few huge retailers with the antics surrounding the Saturn release and paid for it with retaliatory retail practices when the Dreamcast came along. (The “C” was not capitalized, BTW.)
Possibly because the PC is made out of generic interchangeable components churned out by factories worldwide in quantities of bajillion*10^7.843 for sale into a cut-throat market, whereas a portion of the guts of a PS3 are non-standard. The X360 is basically a low-spec PC in a fancy case, hence the rapid drop in component costs.
That’s not really true of the 360, to be honest. The original Xbox was largely commodity PC hardware, but the 360 has a PowerPC CPU, a custom graphics chip, and god-knows-what northbridge and southbridge. It’s not as weird as some of the PS3’s innards, but still not off-the-shelf stuff.
Which is why the price was able to drop as quickly as it could. Nvidia owned the design of the Xbox 1 graphics chip, and they each console sold required a pretty hefty royalty fee to be paid to Nvidia.
Microsoft themselves own the design of the 360, so the price of the components was able to drop much quicker.
Next gen will be interesting - I feel like Sony made an investment that might be necessary going forward…consider:
optical format (let’s assume one will still be needed/desirable): will MS have to license Blu-Ray? It was announced recently by either Pioneer or Toshiba that they can now get 400gb onto a disk that can be read by current hardware. I think DVD-9 is already at its limits on current console hardware, and while it has not taken off, Blu-ray will be around for a while.
processor: I recall hearing that MS wanted to adopt a non-PC architecture for the XBOX 360 to differentiate the product from a PC. Not sure if the current Power PC architecture, adopted for next gen, will really be usuable in a small formfactor box -these are essentially the same chips that Apple abandoned due to thermal profile…will they be back to an x86 based platform?
Huh. Good to know that’s still puttering along after running my Macs for so long. 
Almost.
The Sega CD was the first Genesis add-on (in '92 or '93). The 32X was released in '94 and was purportedly an alternative for gamers who didn’t want to invest in a Saturn. In between these two consoles, Sega released the CDX (a combo of the Genesis and Sega CD) and promised to release the Mars (a combo Genesis/32X that never saw the light of day).
The Sega CD actually had decent support and a handful of worthwhile games, but the 32X was practically dead on arrival and didn’t benefit at all from the existence of 32X CD games, which required a Genesis, Sega CD, and 32X to play.
The 32X was also hurt by the fact that the Saturn (released in '95) did not play 32X games through its cartridge slot.
All of these bullshit console add-ons wound up hurting the Genesis during its final years, which is why the SNES was ultimately able to pull ahead. You can really see this when you compare game releases during the two console’s final years. The SNES in '95 and '96 was stilll getting games like the Donkey Kong Country series, Super Mario World 2, and was even getting ports of PSX and Saturn games like Street Fighter Alpha 2.
Significant Genesis releases, however, basically ended with Vectorman 2 and had been spotty since Sonic & Knuckles. All of the time and money wasted on the Genesis’ add-ons wound up killing the console itself earlier than it really needed to be.
Of course the Saturn launch was an absolute nightmare, but Sega actually didn’t announce the Dreamcast that soon after. It was a given that Sega would release another console, but the Saturn had a good three years of life before the Dreamcast hype really started up.
Hostile Dialect is correct that the bungled Saturn launch caused hard feelings between Sega and several retailers that lasted until the Dreamcast era.
Basically, Sony is nowhere near making as many stupid mistakes as Sega did.
I’ve been calling the PS3 the new Saturn since its launch, but it would be almost impossible for the PS4 to be the next Dreamcast.
I just purchased my second system (a 360 Arcade) this weekend after my third RRoD on my original machine. Microsoft fixed it for free once, determined the power supply was at fault for the second, and would not cover it (I bought a power supply from somewhere online), and for this one told me the repair cost would be $94, since the machine was out of warranty.
I picked up an Arcade system with the new Jasper chip for $199 less the $50 instant Best Buy gift card), and gained an HDMI port, so I am not TOO upset. And the new chips supposedly do fix the RRoD forever. I have about 30 360 games, so I was not about to jump platforms.
I am waiting with bated breath for GT5, but the point someone made far upthread about having to buy individual cars and tracks kept me from buying a PS3 at launch. If they keep that model, I will not be buying one ever.