Due to some recent events I have been forced to closely examine my preference for the Playstation brand over the Xbox brand.  Trusting vaguely in my impressions and gut feelings is fine in a casual day-to-day context, but once you "go public" with your opinions you are expected to explain yourself, and rightly so.

To date I have always avoided explaining myself, because I knew it would be a difficult task.  I know that my opinions are not based on a spreadsheet of numbers somewhere.  They are not founded in a game genre that is entirely missing from one platform or the other.  I knew that examining my opinions and impressions closely, understanding them, and then expressing them clearly would not be easy, but the time has come to try.

As I began to seriously consider the topic I  had to admit to myself I can not entirely separate my feelings about the Xbox from my feelings about Microsoft (you can't argue that they are not closely related).  This concession gave me the key; it was the breakthrough I needed to begin understanding my opinions.

This realization led me to pondering the culture in which games are created (corporate culture, gamming culture, media culture, national culture), the big business, big budget production process, and inevitably, a resulting limit in scope of inspiration.  A good analogy here would be the film industry.  As Hollywood becomes more and more of a streamlined moneymaking machine, the films resulting from the process drift further and further away from film as art, from film as boundary pushing or revolutionary.

So what does all this have to do with games?  Well, big business has a proven track record of gravitating towards the lowest common denominator, for sticking to proven formulas over and over again, for minimizing risk while maximizing profit.  And who could blame them for that, right?  It's good business.

Now I acknowledge that the big-production games of today need to be commercially viable to even exist, but I do not want my video games (or my movies) to come entirely from business.  I want at least some portion of the game to come from artistic sensibilities.  I want at least some portion of the game to come from artists rather than a money-making formula.

Ok, so how does this relate directly to Microsoft and the Xbox 360 or its predecessor?  Well this is where we soundly enter the realm of opinion.  It is my opinion that, based on what I have seen for the Xbox platform so far, that Microsoft is doing an excellent job of minimizing risk while maximizing profit.  So far I have seen very little content that strays all that far from proven formula (with the possible exception of some of the XBL content).

My feelings regarding content available for the Xbox platform can be nicely summed up by paraphrasing the lead designer of Bioshock.  He essentially said that it's like most game designers have read one book and seen one movie in their lives, which is "Lord of the Rings" and "Aliens" or variations thereof.  They both have great content, but you need some variety.  In other words, I love "Aliens" and "Lord of the Rings", but I don’t want to keep seeing them remade over and over again with slight variations.  As long as game makers for the Xbox consoles continue to draw from such a limited pool of inspiration, it will not matter if they are making an FPS, an RPG, a flight simulator, or a roll-playing FPS flight-sim.  Aesthetically the game will come out feeling stale.

As an aside, I am well aware of the irony of referencing Bioshock (which premiered on the 360) in this article.  But as a friend of mine said, it is the exception that proves the rule.

But wait!  What about Sony?  Aren't they a big profit maximizing corporation as well?  I would not even consider trying to argue that Sony is not also a "big evil company".  I would also not dream of trying to support the unsupportable position that the Playstation platform has not prominently featured some huge, big money game productions (just look at the numbers for the Final Fantasy franchise).

What Sony does have, however, is a proven track record.  They have a long history of delivering a wide range of diverse titles that constantly push the envelope on game inspiration, game play, etc.  They have done this for decades while being a huge corporate entity the entire time.

Microsoft has no such track record, not yet anyway.  Even for a heavily biased guy like me they could still win me over by building such a track record, but they failed to do so with the original Xbox and with the exception of some home-brew initiatives they have going (which I consider a different issue) I haven’t seen them heading in that direction yet.

My concerns about games in the hands of Microsoft can be summed up nicely by quoting Steve Jobs: "Microsoft isn't evil, they just have no taste".  They can make software that works.  They can even make powerful software.  But rarely is their software graceful, elegant, or a pleasure to use.  Their products are competent and commercially successful, but rarely are they inspired or creative.

As a friend of mine pointed out these criticisms only directly apply to the design of the Xbox consoles themselves and Microsoft's first party titles.  He went on to say that third party game studios could decide to release their creative and artistic games on the 360; there's nothing about the platform that precludes innovation.  To some extent, however, Microsoft does create the gamer culture for their systems by the way they do their marketing and by the tone of their first party flagship games.

Ok, so Microsoft sets the tone for their consoles, but is that enough to explain why it feels like there are Xbox-style games and Playstation-style games in the world?  At this point we come back to culture.

Based purely on sales numbers it is clear that the Xbox is an American system.  It is a poor last-place seller in Japan.  Europe is a much closer race, but parts of it (as in some European countries) have the Xbox soundly last.  Only here in America is the Xbox clearly ahead in sales.  Is this somehow significant?  If American gamer culture is different, is that because of American developers, or American gamers, or both?

My guess is that Americans in general have the same broad range of interests as Europeans and Japanese do, but that fewer of these demographics play games here in the US.  Gaming is simply less culturally accepted here.  It is still largely perceived as a pastime for young males.  So would it be surprising to discover that Microsoft's money making formulas are based on less varied demographics than what we might find in other parts of the world?

Sony's history of being all over the map with their games, of constantly pursing innovation, may simply be a natural result of trying to peg and please a much wider range of gamer demographics.

At the end of the day it is simply not a simple issue.  I am left with trepidation regarding a Microsoft gaming console of any generation.  As you can see these reservations are not based on lists of games, they are not based on a comparison of consol features.  I do not even need to consider exclusive titles or killer apps.  Rather my opinions come from a complex lattice of economic and cultural considerations and, of course, history.

Feel free to prove me wrong one day Microsoft.  In all honesty, I hope you do.  There was a time long, long ago when I was not even aware that a console called the "Playsation" even existed.  That consol long ago worked its way onto my radar and eventually convinced me to buy one based purely on compelling content that I did not see anywhere else.  I will make every effort to give Microsoft the same opportunity, but so far they have failed to impress me.

-Todd