There are certain things that annoy me about the current console generation, annoyances that could easily be fixed in the next. Here’s my top five in no particular order.
1. Faulty hardware
It’s widely recognized that the Xbox 360 has probably the highest failure rate of all time at this point. Why? Some believe that it was down to their hard-headedness to be the first to market, beating both Nintendo and Sony, but whatever their motivation was, it was inexcusable. Another 6 months of R&D would have maybe alleviated these problems a little bit. However it’s not just Microsoft, Nintendo’s Wii will fail to read dual-layer discs if so much as a speck of dust gets on the lens and I’ve had a few friends with failing Blu-Ray drives in their PS3s. Next generation, a little more development before going to market? Please?
2. Chasing of the casual market
Microsoft is especially guilty of this, but they shouldn’t bother, as Nintendo has it down to a science. Nintendo have become extremely good at targeting the non-gamer with their own range of casual games, and bundling Wii Sports (now recognized as the highest-selling game of all time) with the Wii, at least in Europe and the US, was a stroke of genius. Right out of the box you had a console that the whole family could use even with only one Wiimote. Microsoft, on the other hand, launched their console a year before the Wii and two years after the Wii’s launch, they decided they wanted Nintendo’s market. This culminated in the release of the new dashboard dubbed the NXE. All it appeared to do was alienate users, especially amongst my friends.
3. Region locks
Sony has to be commended for not forcing publishers into putting region locks on their products, although it’s certainly not easy to import their goods thanks to their lawsuit against Lik-Sang a couple years back. And although it’s not widely known, there are certain titles on Xbox 360 which are also region-free, such as Naruto: Rise of a Ninja. However this doesn’t really go far enough, why have some titles that allow it but not others? Next generation, no region locks at all, please?
4. The fear of homebrew
Microsoft embraced homebrew in their own way through the Community Games section on the new dashboard, making it accessable with no console modding. They seemed to have gotten the hint that people like running homebrew. If Sony and Nintendo embraced it in the same way, especially on the DS and PSP, then the argument that people only mod their devices to play homebrew goes away and they have a legitimate case to shut down stores that sell flash cards and pandora batteries.
5. Achievements
What started as a fantastic idea, a cumulative high-score of sorts across all games, has become utterly worthless. Avatar: The Burning Earth on Xbox 360 started the trend of easy achievements, it was possible to get the full compliment of points in the first level of the game by mashing one button over and over. While more recent titles have not been as easy, easy point titles do exist, and in fact several of my friends now seek out the easy games and play them to completion. Most of these titles are kid’s games, which make their gamercards interesting reading.