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Has gaming technology progressed so far that it's no longer reliable?
>> From gwn.com:
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In looking at this more recent crop of consoles, though, I begin to have questions about where the technology is heading. I've been lucky with my PS2 in the sense that it hasn't had the various "disc read error" messages or other technical issues that so many people have suffered through (but I hardly play the system anymore, so it hasn't had a chance to give me any problems). My original Xbox works most of the time, occasionally freezing up in the middle of a random game. So while for the most part I've been OK, I know that there was a pretty large group of gamers that have had issues with both of those consoles over their lifespan.
The Xbox 360, though, is a different story. I'm on my fifth or sixth console now, and this latest one is giving me random issues. I've had to deal with everything from the red ring of death to the disc tray not opening to the system just not playing certain games. In listening to the gaming world beyond my living room, I hear similar stories echoed through message boards and in the game store where I work. While I don't personally own a Playstation 3, in keeping my ear to the ground I hear more horror stories about overheating, locking up during games or movies, controller issues, and such.
Which brings me to my point (yes, I have one): Have the console manufacturers overstepped their limits? In the race to get more photorealistic graphics, more immersive sound, and more features (online! movie playback! music! deep frying!), have we gone past the point where we, as humans, can even build the tech we're envisioning?
My basic thought is that maybe we've just built too far ahead of ourselves, or at least farther than is affordable in a consumer space. We've gotten so focused on what the machine can do performance-wise, that we've stopped making sure that the machine can do the most basic functions, like turn on and play games. Rather than take the time to ensure that everything works like it should, there's a race to see how much we can pack into the shell before sending it out into the world, before it's ready to be there. The end result is that the systems are malfuctioning at a much higher rate than they should, and everybody is shrugging their shoulders and saying that this is to be expected with such a high tech device.
Perhaps we've just hit this "disposable" mentality where we don't even expect to get more than a few years out of a machine before we've moved on anyway. The manufacturers don't expect us to still be playing the console once their next generation hits the shelves, so at most the machine has to last five years before they want us to rush out and buy the shiniest new toy. In the earlier days of gaming, when the next generation of consoles was not assured, maybe the mentality was different.
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Full Story: gwn.com (2 pages)
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