Sil-Mon Li

It’s all happening this week! With the premiere of Star War Episode III: Revenge of the Sith occuring this week, it was probably a fitting time to announce the next generation of games consoles. The main announcements were made today at the E3 show however Microsoft did make a pre-announcement on MTV last Friday night. So in summary there are 3 companies in the “console wars”, the Nintendo Revolution, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 over the coming months (maybe a even a year!) we will find see if Charles Dawin’s theory of Natural Selection will determine who will win and who will be eaten alive!!! My first opinions of these consoles are as follows:

Nintendo Revolution: Out of the three consoles the Revolution seems to be on for a winner but only in terms of how it looks. However, I have yet to see the controller so I’m not going to give it all it’s glory eventhough I do lean towards Nintendo (only a bit!). I’ve had every Nintendo console since the NES and never another rival’s console (apart from the Sega GameGear). Power wise, it seems like it will be the lesser among equals with Nintendo quoting “we want to concentrate on the gaming experience”.

Xbox 360: First to release information on the system by showing an exclusive MTV event present by Elijah Wood. Looks wise, pretty poor. It’s a grey Dell desktop box on it’s side! Controller looks a bit wierd too. I’m not really that blown away with this machine. However, I like Bill’s tactics by releasing the Xbox 360 out before Xmas 05 (get those Xmas pre-orders now!) and then releasing Halo 3 on the same day of the launch of the PlayStation 3!

Playstation 3: Probably the most anticipated system to be release over the last 3 years. First looks… pretty poor as I can make picture it as an old HP bubble jet printer. The controller is even more bizzare! It looks like a boomerang or a banana?! However, this quotes the highest spec in terms of harware and performance with screenshots of games to blow your mind away. It’s also meant to support HDTV too!

My bets on bestselling console about this time next year will be: 1. XBox 360, 2. PlayStation 3, 3. Nintendo Revolution. However by next Xmas (2006), the position will have swapped with Playstion 3 in the lead and Xbox 360 trailing behind slightly and then the Revolution in last place as usual. It’s really all dependent on the games they release but Playstation 3 will be on top as always with the most versitile system. I won’t be suprised if Nintendo introduce another system while PlayStation 3 sales are still high. We’ll have to wait and see!