Is this Generation of Consoles the Worst Ever?
As I am well aware, this is very controversial topic. Many are massive 360 or PS3 fanboys, some even Wii fanboys. But my question, I think, is a legitimate one. I cannot think of another generation of consoles which has had so many problems as this one. This can be down to many things, but I think that it is mainly the manufacturers fault. Microsoft could have done something about the red ring of death, they didn't and even in the new Xbox 360 Slim consoles, you can get "a red dot of death".
With Sony, their console works fine and is very good, but the problems are that, firstly the console costs more to make than they sell it for and secondly that of course their online network is as insecure as a Windows computer. For my first point it is worth noting however that Sony make massive profit on the games and take a share of all Blu Rays sold, even though it doesn't change the fact that Sony make massive losses on every PS3 they sell.
Finally, we have the Wii. Being brutally honest, for a lot of users and for knowing people who Wiis, it is a console that you maybe use once every year and for one week after receiving it as either a birthday or Christmas present. Otherwise it just sits around unused under the television, and when you finally decide that you want to use it, you discover the remotes have run out of batteries and that something doesn't work, at which point, you don't even bother. While it was not a clever purchase for a considerable number of consumers, it was a masterstroke by Nintendo. The Wii sold very well, I think because of some good ads and marketing, but also because Nintendo acted like they had just invented the future of games consoles (which they really didn't).
Let's compare this to the previous generations. Of course, today's consoles are much more advanced (arguably a reason why they don't work as well). The PS2, easily the best selling console of all time, never had any over heating problems, never had the complicated and dreaded Playstation Network and the manufacturing cost was actually reasonably low (I believe).
The Xbox wasn't on sale for long, but it was a decent console, The first to feature a built in hard drive and a network that worked, it was, on second thoughts, the base on which the current generation was built. Instead of releasing the 360 so quickly, Microsoft would have done better do take more time and fix some of the problems they were obviously having with it.
Nintendo's console proposition before the Wii was the Gamecube. I admit that this didn't do well either and all things considered, this is the exception. The Wii's functionality is actually better than the Gamecube. That's not say that in the scale of things the Wii works well, but just the compared to its predecessor, it was better.
So, overall, I would say that the functionality of the previous generations is much better that the current generation. I AM NOT saying that the PS2 is a more advanced console than the PS3 for example, I'm just saying it worked much better. The simpler the product, the more chance it will have at working.
Henry Taylor-Gill Jun 2, 2011 at 6:30 AM
Reader Comments (4)
The GameCube may not have sold very well, but I thought it was a pretty good console for it's time. One nice feature was that it could play Gameboy games.
well excluding the first two generations yes it probably would be the worst
No. You don't know what you're talking about, I use my Wii everyday, so screw off.
This Annoyed Me when i read the part about the xbox getting rrod i have all of the consoles im not a fanboy of any of them, but the older maybe 2008 and down can get the rrod. the 2009/2010 xbox's not the slim hardly get red ring of death. mine is 2009 and i have never had a problem. now with the new one thats due to 2 things, no.1 the hard drive is not plugged in properly, no2 the vent on the top has been covered up.
Now with the ps3 you can get YLOD (yellow Light of death) look it up,