Defending Your Wii

At the beginning of this year, I had discussed my disappointment with Sony's ill-conceived strategies for their Playstation 3 console. That post took the viewpoint of an "informed game consumer scorned for the sexy movie-buff crowd who may want to take a break from their Blu-Ray copy of The Simpsons Movie to play a few hours of some cut-scene heavy, generic, gritty shooter."

Outside the secluded world of my cozy little corner of the internet are the message board posts of those that defend the Playstation 3 with the determination of a Rorschach inkbot test subject finding naked women in the otherwise ambiguous mess. That's not to say there aren't some valid arguments in support of Sony's aspiring little machine. Unfortunately, more than half of the pro-Sony comments use some form of anti-Wii rhetoric to "prove" that the Playstation 3 will eventually triumph and father all the world's children.

The Nintendo bashing is not without precedence. The original Playstation came into existence after Nintendo sandbagged Sony, the company originally tapped to co-create a CD-Rom add-on for the Super NES, in favor of Phillips. For the next two generations of gaming consoles, Sony's machine was a runaway success, leaving Nintendo, a former giant of the industry, choking on the Playstation and Playstation 2's exhaust. It was a fate not undeserved. Nintendo made some dumb decisions that ranges in comparability from buying an extended warranty for AA batteries to using a plugged-in toaster as a shower buddy.

Let's fast forward to the current console wars. Sony is severely lagging behind the Wii in worldwide sales. Nintendo took a hard look at the gaming industry as it was in 2006 and designed their new console around the concept of simpler game play for a wider audience, at the expense of high-resolution graphics. Sony, meanwhile, still has its fans comprising mostly of hardcore gamers for whom anything less than high-quality graphics and realism is a mere crib toy. And while certainly not the majority, many of the PS3's most vocal supporters scoff resentfully at the Wii's unexpected success.

Trust me, it gets very, very ugly. You can't express an opinion of one company's business practices (e.g. taking their customers for granted as I explained in my earlier post) without someone accusing you of being a "fanboy". For those who don't know, a "fanboy" is someone that knows only the positives of his or her (usually "his") chosen console and only the negatives of the competition. Simply put: his system is awesome; yours sucks!

"So what can I do to shield myself from the hate? I just wanted to play and enjoy my games", you may be asking. Here are three simple steps:

1. AVOID THE INTERNET. It's just a rotting cesspool of stinky opinions with little substance (this site is not an exception).
   
   
2. AVOID ARGUING ON THE INTERNET. You'd have a better chance of convincing your cat to clean his own litterbox than you would swaying the opinions of the more heated debaters.
   
   
3. AVOID ARGUING ON THE INTERNET WHEN YOU'RE WRONG. How do you know you're wrong? Well the mere fact that you have an opinion means someone may disagree with it which makes it wrong. The only "right" opinion is not an opinion at all but instead, a "fact". But facts have no place on the internet, so even correct facts are still wrong. See step #1.

Now who wants to play "Mario Kart Wii"? Show of hands?