Directors High End Videogame Consoles (1 Viewer)

[Jason Hennigan]

After coming up with the idea to explore the notion of high end videogame consoles for a series of articles I'm putting together for my blog, I thought that coming here and asking the question would be a good idea.

Please answer the poll and feel free to post comments and opinions.

My thinking is this: current videogames consoles are much more complex than consoles of yesteryear. Because of this, there's a higher failure rate among these consoles.

Would you support companies building high-end versions of their consoles (an example could be Sony's short-lived PSX) or allowing other companies (such as Onkyo or Denon) to put together a top of the line version?

Would you buy one?

 

[PatrickJB]

Do you have figures showing newer consoles crap out more often then the older ones? Some of my fondest NES memories were blowing into the deck to get it to read my cartridges. Same thing happened to almost everyone I knew who owned a NES.

I would buy a high-end system...and hopefully the 360 will be under the tree in 2 weeks.

Maybe you could somehow focus on how the manufactures rush to get an order out, thereby affecting quality. Not sure if there is any link for hard evidence, BUT this is often thrown around as a cause for faulty systems.

What is your idea of a high-end system?

Interesting post, by the way

 

[Carl Johnson]

I don't think that you can safely make that assumption. Technology tends to let us have more complexity and fewer failures at the same time. Thanks to the combination of the internet and 24 hour news a 0.5% failure rate would make the Xbox 360 a headline gathering event while 5% failure rate would have gone unnoticed for the Atari 2600.

 

[Brook K]

I've never had a problem with my X-box. I went through 3 of the old Nintendo machines. The Atari controllers were very fragile, often losing the grip, alternately being too stiff or too loose, buttons stop working, etc. whereas the new controllers don't show any wear and work as well as the day I got it.

I was out of video gaming for a long time and only got the X-box to play online with out of state friends. I haven't bought a game in 9-10 months. I would only buy a high-end system if my friends did.

 

[PatrickJB]

Good one Carl, that was another point I tried to get out but gave up on.

I forgot all about the NES controllers Brook. What could be better for those then mashing a tripeA battery across it's face while playing Track-N-Field?

Do you have a link for your blog Jason?

 

[Kevin M]

Boy....that brings back some memories of all of the little voodoo tricks people would come up with to make those damn buggy little NES cartridges work.

 

[RichardK]

Are you talking about a licensed console? Hmmm interesting. If so, I would most certainly pay top dollar for the 'Bose+Monster' version....:b Ha!

Seriously, that sounds like a decent idea, I suspect MS should have thought of this already. Save them from having to lose the $ up front.

 

[Jason Hennigan]

There are no official figures available to show either that newer consoles are more reliable or that they aren't.

What originally got me thinking about it was problems people are having with the Xbox 360.

While many people make the argument that the internet simply blows out of proportion the number of console problems people encounter, they also don't take into account that not everyone who's having trouble with their system is blogging about it or posting to a forum about it. Microsoft is saying there's about a 3% failure rate on the 360. Some may find that bad, some may think it's within an acceptable range.

Many people I've asked this question to take a defensive tone, saying that they haven't had any issues with their current gen systems, and that I'm wrong on this issue. I don't mean to start arguments, I was simply posing the question as a point of discussion.

I've finished the first part of my examination of the issue, and posted it to my blog. See the article here: http://mechachrome.blogspot.com/2005...e-feature.html

 

[Brook K]

I wasn't trying to be defensive. I'm not a "gamer" anymore if I ever was one and have no emotional attachment to my X-Box or any game system. Just stating some of my experiences.