Since I first used a PC at home -- a 486 SX/25, back in the very early nineties -- I've been a diehard PC gamer. I've spent marathon sessions in front of games like X-Com, Frontier, Civilisation 3 and the entire Ultima series, while exhibiting a constant and fanatical resistance against consoles. The problem was this: no matter how many cool movie licenses, or flashy graphics, or 3D effects consoles could provide, they simply lacked the support -- and often, the ability -- to play really great, deep, involving games... the kind that came with big manuals, and which needed a few days worth of exploratory play just to fully understand. Simply put, consoles were expensive, and console games were expensive simplistic crap.
So here's my confession. This is my inner gamer's new best friend.
Yes, I feel like a traitor, albeit a traitor with a fairly well-stocked game library. I'm still playing some games on the PC -- Neverwinter Nights still owns me in this respect -- but the Xbox has now stolen most of my gaming hours.
To some extent I've only learned what console owners have known for years: lounging around on the sofa or the bed and playing games on a TV is just a better way to relax than sitting a foot away from a monitor in an uncomfortable office chair. But that's not the root cause of my treachery.
Console hardware is now good enough to run games which, with minor concessions to handheld controllers and television resolutions, can match the depth and quality of a decent PC game. All three of the consoles on the market are powerful enough to potentially offer this kind of experience, truth be told, but the Xbox stands above its competition.
What makes the Xbox the superior gaming platform is not merely its hardware capabilities. It's also the fact that the developers of Xbox games have realised something that Nintendo and Sony have yet to completely figure out -- that the traditional rules about console games are simply wrong.
Conventional industry wisdom dictates that console games should be simple, straightforward, and preferably short. They should have little or no learning curve, and the player should be able to pick them up, play them for half an hour, and feel rewarded. Smartness, depth and complexity are all discouraged in the pursuit of the perfect console game form -- something with minimum difficulty and maximum appeal, that appeals as much to the casual gamer as it does to the dedicated player.
A game like Morrowind -- a true, undiluted, hardcore RPG -- could not have existed on a console of any previous generation. It would have belonged squarely on the PC, and it would have sold reasonably well on that platform. But it turns out that when you put the same game on the Xbox, not stripping it down or simplifying it in any way, well... it's actually just as much fun as playing it on the PC, if not more.
And the biggest surprise -- its sales figures have been healthy. As have those of Knights of the Old Republic and Deus Ex: Invisible War, two more of the most deep and elaborate games on the platform.
The rules were wrong.
At last somebody has realised that console games, when stripped down to gameplay, don't need to be dumb -- that there are people like me out there, who grew up on games with big manuals and plots that required more than minimum attention, and who are dying to recreate the PC gaming experience on their nice TV and in the comfort of their favourite armchair.
I don't have anything against simple games, as often they provide the best stress relief and outright entertainment factor. I like Jet Set Radio Future as much as anyone. But if I want to really get my teeth into something, I have that option too. I can wander a massive living world in Morrowind or build epic theme parks in Rollercoaster Tycoon.
I hope more game studios follow the Xbox model, on all console platforms. We should see many more elaborate games in the years ahead. The Xbox and its game developers have proven that it's viable. Now let's make good games.