Wii!!

The New York Times had an article today about the Wii vs. PS3 situation, and I was delighted to see that the Wii is doing even better than before. Nintendo's stock prices are up 40%, and Sony's stock is taking a big hit. Wii is even selling far better than the Xbox 360 did in the same launch period (the Xbox 360 launched ten months ago).

The Wii is selling out as soon as it's available, and the PS3 isn't selling quite as fast. That may actually be good for Sony, because they lose money on every PS3 that they sell. While Nintendo actually makes a profit on each Wii.

Why do I care about all this? Because I like to see intelligent thinking be rewarded. Microsoft and Sony kept working on these ridiculously expensive, super-high-resolution graphics-intense-to-the-point-of-raving-psychosis game systems...and frankly, they took video gaming away from me. I couldn't afford those systems, and even if I could, I wouldn't be willing to play John Madden Football XXIXXXVLCIXXXXVI, no matter how many gigapixels they used to render the sweat-drops on each flawlessly digitized steroid-crazed football "hero".

Nintendo blew the doors off their behemoth-sized competition by bringing fun back to console gaming. It's a classic David & Goliath; not one game pundit thought that Nintendo had the slightest prayer of challenging Microsoft or Sony for second place, and now it looks very possible that Nintendo will end up back on top of the market.

But the thing that has really impressed me is the comments on the Time's story. Out of 130 messages so far, I've seen 128 in praise of the Wii, and only one each that prefer the Xbox 360 or PS3. That's pretty stunning. Unless some Nintendo group out there has been Freeping the comments, it also seems a pretty good sign that Sony and Microsoft are headed for a thumpin'.

And that suits me just fine.

Wii!!

The New York Times had an article today about the Wii vs. PS3 situation, and I was delighted to see that the Wii is doing even better than before. Nintendo's stock prices are up 40%, and Sony's stock is taking a big hit. Wii is even selling far better than the Xbox 360 did in the same launch period (the Xbox 360 launched ten months ago).

The Wii is selling out as soon as it's available, and the PS3 isn't selling quite as fast. That may actually be good for Sony, because they lose money on every PS3 that they sell. While Nintendo actually makes a profit on each Wii.

Why do I care about all this? Because I like to see intelligent thinking be rewarded. Microsoft and Sony kept working on these ridiculously expensive, super-high-resolution graphics-intense-to-the-point-of-raving-psychosis game systems...and frankly, they took video gaming away from me. I couldn't afford those systems, and even if I could, I wouldn't be willing to play John Madden Football XXIXXXVLCIXXXXVI, no matter how many gigapixels they used to render the sweat-drops on each flawlessly digitized steroid-crazed football "hero".

Nintendo blew the doors off their behemoth-sized competition by bringing fun back to console gaming. It's a classic David & Goliath; not one game pundit thought that Nintendo had the slightest prayer of challenging Microsoft or Sony for second place, and now it looks very possible that Nintendo will end up back on top of the market.

But the thing that has really impressed me is the comments on the Time's story. Out of 130 messages so far, I've seen 128 in praise of the Wii, and only one each that prefer the Xbox 360 or PS3. That's pretty stunning. Unless some Nintendo group out there has been Freeping the comments, it also seems a pretty good sign that Sony and Microsoft are headed for a thumpin'.

And that suits me just fine.

BOMBS!

On the way home tonight, my train stopped at Walpole. Everyone was ordered to pick up their belongings and get off the train while the police searched it with dogs. It was cold as hell, so no one was pleased about that.

We stood around while police with dogs searched the train, went through the crowd, and inspected the undercarriage of the train. It was cold, cold, cold.

For quite a while no one told us anything, but finally a conductor told some of us that there had been ten bomb-like devices found in the area, and that possibly some threats had been phoned in. Five of the devices had turned out to be hoaxes, but they were still checking the rest. The whole goddamned thing seemed surreal. All the passengers (and there were a lot of us, it was a full train) gossiped and bitched about the situation. One guy near me didn't even have a decent coat on; he was freezing.

There was a TV crew and reporter down the platform. I noticed that the dog was a big brown one, very friendly-looking; its tail was wagging like mad. That kind of ruined the Gestapo feeling I'd been working up (as it happens, I'm reading The Great Escape right now). At one point the dog came right up to me, and I was momentarily imagining that the cops would think I had a bomb...but it kept going.

I called Teri, told her what was going on, and said I'd call her back once I knew more. After about fifteen minutes I called her back, and loudly said "Hi honey! They just started the strip searches, and..." which got a big laugh from the crowd. At that moment the police let us get back on the train. So all in all we spent about twenty minutes standing in the freezing cold.

Turns out that it was some sort of promotional thing for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a show I sometimes watch. Turner Broadcasting, the company responsible for it, have apologized. But there's no email address on their contact page, and somehow I suspect that's a new development.

BOMBS!

On the way home tonight, my train stopped at Walpole. Everyone was ordered to pick up their belongings and get off the train while the police searched it with dogs. It was cold as hell, so no one was pleased about that.

We stood around while police with dogs searched the train, went through the crowd, and inspected the undercarriage of the train. It was cold, cold, cold.

For quite a while no one told us anything, but finally a conductor told some of us that there had been ten bomb-like devices found in the area, and that possibly some threats had been phoned in. Five of the devices had turned out to be hoaxes, but they were still checking the rest. The whole goddamned thing seemed surreal. All the passengers (and there were a lot of us, it was a full train) gossiped and bitched about the situation. One guy near me didn't even have a decent coat on; he was freezing.

There was a TV crew and reporter down the platform. I noticed that the dog was a big brown one, very friendly-looking; its tail was wagging like mad. That kind of ruined the Gestapo feeling I'd been working up (as it happens, I'm reading The Great Escape right now). At one point the dog came right up to me, and I was momentarily imagining that the cops would think I had a bomb...but it kept going.

I called Teri, told her what was going on, and said I'd call her back once I knew more. After about fifteen minutes I called her back, and loudly said "Hi honey! They just started the strip searches, and..." which got a big laugh from the crowd. At that moment the police let us get back on the train. So all in all we spent about twenty minutes standing in the freezing cold.

Turns out that it was some sort of promotional thing for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a show I sometimes watch. Turner Broadcasting, the company responsible for it, have apologized. But there's no email address on their contact page, and somehow I suspect that's a new development.