Me? Excited about consoles? Nevar!

As critical as I have been of the CPU decisions in the next-generation consoles, I can't help but be excited about their arrival. My expectations are properly set: I am expecting high end PC graphics on a console, nothing more, but I am actually happy with that. For me, just as there is no replacement for PC gaming, there is equally no replacement for console gaming. So in 19 days I'm looking forward to spending a good hunk of Thanksgiving, eating turkey and playing Xbox 360.

I have been quite impressed with Xbox Live; when it was first launched the whole idea was a bit silly to me: (MMORPGs aside) why would anyone pay for online gaming after you've already paid money for the game? But then after using Xbox Live, I started to understand it. For some reason, only a handful of PC games really "got" online matchmaking. On one end of the spectrum you had companies like Blizzard, whose Warcraft 3 online matchmaking was excellent and as easy as could be. But on the other end you had the crap that Ubisoft and Westwood put out, which was not nearly as polished (purely in the matchmaking sense, the games themselves were great). And then in the middle of it all you had the first person shooters, which didn't really have a matchmaking component; you sort of just hopped on a server and killed people - which is fine.

Like their PC counterparts, many games for the original Xbox unfortunately also suffered from poor online play. Microsoft's universal matchmaking system for all Xbox 360 games will hopefully fix that.

Unfortunately I am not insanely happy about the launch titles for Xbox 360, especially not the fact that I've only heard of one that has gone gold. Microsoft is missing their Halo this time around, but if all goes well they may have a stronger overall launch thanks to the fact that they have a much greater variety of what appear to be relatively good games. It's the "age-old" one supercar vs. lots of cool cars in your garage argument.

I'm not strictly a Xbox 360 guy though, I am quite interested in PS3, but right now it is too far away for me to get too excited about it. I am very curious to see how this will all play out, given the huge difference in console sales between PS2 and Xbox 1. Microsoft has truly learned a lot since their first attempt at a gaming console, I'm wondering if that is enough to take on Sony.

As for Nintendo, they could have a huge success on their hands, but I'm just not excited about it at this point. I get what they are trying to do, but I'm not sure if the Revolution is the right way to bring console gaming to the masses.