Today I sold my Xbox 360. I NEVER. NEVER. EVER. Evereverever. Eeeeever. Thought that would happen. How did we get to this point, you ask? Read on.
-I paid $300 dollars for my console. That's standard these days. With the current generation, consumers are getting what they pay for as far as a console goes. I have very few gripes with the console itself. I knew what I was buying. It delivered.
-Xbox Live runs a few different ways. Some people choose $8 charged monthly. I, on the other hand, paid $50 up front. It pretty much cut the price in half for Live. As far as features go, Xbox Live rarely let me down. Netflix, updates, party chat, and Last.fm were regularly used at my house. My Internet always kept me connected, which is another plus. Having router/modem/speed issues would be the death of entertainment in my house. Gripes - ESPN was not included on my Xbox due to my region of the U.S. How gay is that? Super ultra gay. People who play video games in Montana still enjoy sports. Seriously.
The console and Live were about half of my total investment. I can deal with those parts of the Microsoft plan. Now, we have games/publishers/developers. Let me tell you what I think about those D-bags.
- Games. Ef. Where do I start? Games. I'll start with a list: Winners and losers. Then I'll tell you why they win/lose.
Winners. Or money that I felt was well spent.
1. Final Fantasy XIII - Why this game won - Square Enix delivered, plain and simple. Have you played it? You should. This game had a clear direction (Focus, eh??) that kept me hooked and wanting more. Plus, cut scenes in FFXIII were out of this world. Square Enix filled this beast full of cinematic beauty, a story that actually made sense (which is hard for Final Fantasy games to achieve all over the board,) and a gripping story. I hope that this game gets back in my PS3, which I'll talk about later.
2. Borderlands. - Why this game won - Borderlands. Border. Freakin. Ass. Lands. Magnificence. In every sense of the word. Borderlands is a hack and slash, but with guns/levels/skill trees. I will forever and ever sing the praises of this game. I've played through your wondrous land of Pandora, and will gladly jump back in when you release your sequel in the fiscal year of 2013. Borderlands, I love you. With DLC included, this game cost $100 if you bought everything as it was released. I had no problem that. The content that I received was immense and always felt worth it. General Knoxx will always be a legendary gaming chapter in my life.
3. Magic: The Gathering on XBLA - Why this game won - First off, I really enjoy card games. Growing up, Star Wars CCG was a mainstay in my household. The cards are still in my room, ready to duel again at a moment's notice. Magic is my current love, as far as cards go. Collecting cards is a killer hobby. Wizards of the Coast blew me away with their ability to translate the game over to consoles. I purchased this on both PS3 and 360, because I loved it that much.
4. HD rereleases - Why this wins - Through the wonders of the internet, we can now get improved versions of games from the past with decent price tags. Resident Evil, Crysis, Metal Gear Solid and Halo: Anniversary are/have all been rereleased to mostly positive praise. For some, the mechanics didn't translate well into the current gaming styles. I haven't had any problems yet. I'll gladly step into Resident Evil 4 day in and day out and never complain. Since the games are mostly just a graphics overhaul, there are very few issues reported with the gameplay itself. That's a concept I can stand by.
Sadly, I'm going to enter the section of games that lost. Games that failed. And concepts that suck serious, serious D. Once again, sadly, this is why my console had to go. I will include my qualms with developers at the end.
1.Dead Island - Why this game lost - Dead Island had a ton of unique features going for it. The developers took great parts out of stellar games to make an amalgam of awesome. Or so I thought. From launch, this game was very near to unplayable. There was no save feature. The game relied on an extremely unreliable auto-save system that often made gamers repeat chapters of the game that were extremely difficult. There were freezing issues, as well. Enter a certain door. Freeze. Jump to the wrong place. Freeze. Try to pick up two items at once. Freeze. Still, we saw past that. Through means I don't understand, I made it to the end of the game. And how was I rewarded? SAVE DATA CORRUPTED. UNABLE TO LOAD GAME. That is all. I sold it immediately after.
2. Battlefield 3 - Why this game lost - Battlefield 3 will still be fun. Millions and millions and millions (Happy, EA?) will enjoy this for years to come. Why couldn't I? Seriously. What the hell's wrong with me? I was so excited to play it. You remember that. I told you 10,000 times how excited I was. DICE is amazing. EA is huge. Between them, they wouldn't let me down. That's what my naive, young, innocent brain thought last week. Then once again, launch day came. Ef you, launch day. You suck ass. DICE didn't anticipate server use, which caused the servers to crash, resulting in NO multiplayer. How could they not anticipate server use? Come on, guys. You full well knew you had 3+ million preorders, which resulted in you earning 180 million on launch day. And you still couldn't build servers. I never played a single match of multiplayer. 1 year of anticipation down the toilet. Thanks, bros.
3. Online passes - Why this concept loses - Developers are now complaining at how much money they don't receive from games being sold second hand. Look at how much EA made on launch day, posted above, and ask yourself, 'Is that enough money for 1 day?' Obviously, it isn't. Mortal Kombat, Gears of War, The Sims 3, and Battlefield 3 are among games that now charge players additional fees to play if the game isn't purchased new. Supposedly, this is supposed to be used to keep servers up and running. Well, in Battlefield's case, the servers never worked in the first place, so why would I pay more to get what a game should do at launch? I won't do it. I say no. You can keep your broken games. I'll keep my money.
4. Post release patches - Now, this doesn't lose entirely. Many times, patches/updates can be used to re-balance a game, add weapons, raise a level cap, etc. There are a large amount of companies who use these for the greater good. They use patches to update their dedicated clientele, many times free of charge. Other companies, though, rush to get a buggy game released, knowing that they can put a patch out (hopefully) right after release to get a game going. Well, it doesn't always work out. Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Island, and Battlefield all had HUGE problems at launch that were not fixed immediately upon the game being released. I would love if Microsoft put a rule out to govern post release patches. Think about it, if a company was blocked from releasing an update for 3 months from release date, companies would make sure that they had a final finished product before they could sell a game to a customer.
5. The ever increasing price/frequency of DLC - Why this loses - Paying $60 is a lot of money up front for games. A movie is $10 dollars. An album is about the same. I can't always say that I would $30 for most games that are released. In my world, it does actually make sense to buy into a game for $30 and pay ~$10 for each additional DLC that is released. i'm not saying that the micro transaction revenue stream should be cut and copied from Facebook. We aren't all millionaires. Look at the all line up this year. There are 10+ games that will leave a large footprint on the gaming industry. If games stay at the price tag they're at, you can easily pay $800+ if you plan on playing each of those games start to finish. Incredibly, there are people who will do that. Good for them. If I could, I'd be in the same boat with you, but it's an impossibility. The season passes aren't making this any easier, even if you do save a few bucks in the end. Purchasing the passes for Forza and Gears, after buying the games, would put me at $180 for two games. Plus, we just got news today that the first Gears DLC is delayed...
Summary - I am not allowing myself to buy a $60 game that does not function as it's supposed to. I will no longer dump money into Microsoft only to recieve garbage. I do not care about release dates anymore. I will gladly take a delay than play a broken game. Publishers do not understand this, and will do anything to get a game out for financial gain, without regards to the quality of their product.
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Because of that, I no longer support Microsoft. They can continue to play catch up with every game released. Think about owning a pre-Internet console. They had to have games perfect by launch. You bought a whole game in a box. There were no redos. If you made a game that didn't work, your company shut down. Period.
For the foreseeable future, I will be playing PS3. By no means is it a perfect console, as there are none, but it keeps my frustration at a lower level, allowing me to enjoy what I'm playing. So, for now -
Microsoft, go ef yourself.
