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GoNintendo 'End of Day' thought - Destin Feature: Make them perfect.

by destin_legarie
31 January 2011
GN Version 3.1

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Another weekend has come and gone. I feel like it just got started. Can’t we get someone to change our weekends to three days? Isn’t there anyone out there that wants just one more day of rest after a work week? I guess I’ll have to work on that later, because it’s bedtime now. See you in a few, short hours!

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Out of all the consoles today, not a single one is perfect.  Each is a flawed piece of hardware, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fixed.  The question is why the hell hasn’t any of the companies behind the big three done anything to fix them?  Sony releases firmware constantly, the X-Box just had an update, and so did the Wii.  So where’s the update that’ll give everyone what they want?

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The Playstation 3 is the most baffling of all.  Here’s a company that updates more than Joan Rivers updates her face (I’ve been watching a lot of Nip/Tuck lately) and still we don’t get what we want.  They know that people want a) backwards compatibility and b) cross-game chat.  These are by far the two most requested items, and backwards compatibility was even included with the original 60gb and 80gb models.  Since then it’s been stripped, and though it seems other options are available, no solution has been offered.  The point is they can offer this feature, they just choose not to.  They instead decided to rip it out and release PSOne classics on the PlayStation network.

As for the cross-game chat, 30,000 people registered and signed a petition saying they want the feature so where is it?  What’s the hold up?  They’ve released at least 5 firmware updates, 1 of which was major and still no sign of the feature that the users have been waiting for.

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Then there’s Microsoft.  Now I can’t complain much about their services, but I can complain about how much they charge for it.  $60 a year?  Really?  They keep pretty good care of those paying customers, but with the price hike from $50 to $60 this year they’d better.  One thing users have really wanted for the 360 is a non-proprietary hard drive.  Instead they decided to lock their users out with the new models and again make the same “mistake” by making proprietary hard drives.  Would it have been so horrible if users could upgrade their drives like they can on the PS3?  Microsoft seems to think so as they’d rather charge outrageous prices for a hard drive in a shell, preventing people from easily modifying their own hardware.  If the devices were reasonably priced then fine, but don’t punish your paying customers under the guise of piracy prevention.

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And finally lets take a look at the Wii.  A solid platform with one or two flaws that come up again and again.  The friend codes and the fact that in-game chat has been removed from most of the games.  That friend code problem has been the bane of many a user’s existence. Thankfully Nintendo has taken notice of the complaining.  With the 3DS they’ll be improving the problem and will now implement a one number interface.  But why with the numbers again?  Do my friends call me 0029-3958-3091-3092 or do they call me Destin?  They call me Destin so what the heck Nintendo?  Ditch the numbers and let people use an e-mail addresses or something.  I’m an individual an so are your users.  I praise their attempts to fix the issue, and I think the new system on the 3DS is going to be great when it launches, but they can do better.

Now what’s with the chat system? The developers behind the Conduit 2 wanted their users to have a chat feature at any cost, but when they asked Nintendo if they could allow Wii Speak to be used with their game they told them flatly “no.”  Why the hesitance?  Why not allow your users to enjoy the platform to the fullest?  Speaking of the platform not performing to it’s fullest, why no DVD player?  Maybe they couldn’t get it perfect so they decided to scrap that functionality in the end.  I don’t know.

So the point I’m trying to make with all this nit-picking (and that’s really what it is) is to ask the big three why they don’t fix it?  In this day and age of firmware updates, why do we still have these problems?  If someone has a good answer I’d love to hear it.  All of these consoles can easily be patched so it baffles me when we see these flaws that so many are begging to have fixed.  Take it for what it’s worth, I just think that they all can do a little bit better.  So what have you got big three?  Are you going to fix your particular problem?  I assure you, we’ll be keeping an eye out to see if you do.

What do you think?  Are the consoles just fine, or would you like to see some improvements?  Let us know in the comments.