I detest scheduled revelry, and I think my inability to remember these manufactured hullabaloos recommends me as a person. This perspective is not universally shared.
I feel like I should go into greater detail on the Playstation 3 thing. Not specifically related to the last comic, and certainly not connected with Jack Tretton, who I think might actually have Tourette's. I called it an intervention for a specific reason, but since they had so freshly insulted my intelligence I chose instead to put that space toward another purpose. Let me settle here in this high-backed chair and speak at length.
If you would like to see what Playstation 3 owners will be doing in a couple weeks, I would direct you toward the Gametrailers video archive for Motorstorm. The video you want to see is entitled "Multiplayer Online Race Gameplay." What I played at CES was apparently some paleolithic scrawl of ancient code, because those people appear to be playing a completely different game. Of course, PS3 gamers are on track to receive new product releases at parity with their 360 counterparts, as opposed to ports delivered months after the fact. The 1.6 system update will include background downloading, critical for a machine whose identity as an internet appliance is so ingrained. I mean, things are looking up for the system. It's not like there's a Goddamn torrent of titles from their competitors that they need to respond to.
The problem is that they don't know how to communicate the very real optimism that a PS3 owner could quite legitimately feel. Pretty much all they have down is the dismissive hostility we see every time one of their heads breaks the algae of their fetid little pond. That ain't gonna do it, not when every one of their barbs - barbs directed not at competitors, but at the public itself! - are broadcast instantaneously to the people with the greatest interest in their medium.
The PSP that is so routinely maligned by the gaming community has really come into its own, with a growing library of increasingly savvy original titles and welcome "remasters" of existing product, but instead of emphasizing the product's hard-won virtues they paid a company to lie poorly and pen excruciating songs. This is what I'm saying when they need an intervention. They're completely severed from their customers.
(CW)TB out.
