I often wonder if anyone besides me has ever played the original Atari cartridge system. The reason I am bringing this up is that back then video games were a bit more simple. You slid in the cartridge, grabbed your controller and you were good to go.
There were not half the accessories and other such junk with those games. In fact the first real game accessories did come out with the Atari, however these more often than not were necessary to run the game. However now it seems like every system has a list of accessories longer than my arm. The worst offender by far, being the Xbox 360.
I get the idea of offering different kinds of controllers (specially when the standard controller sucks!) and of offering remote control controllers. Yet Xbox doesn’t stop there, oh no, they have to keep piling it on. Now you can get special hard drives, different skins and cases.
You can hook up fourteen controllers (god knows why you would ever need too, but you can) and an endless assortment of other items. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if next time I step in my local game shop they have an item that will pick my nose for me. My only question is when this madness is going to stop?
Image via Wikipedia
Whatever happened to the game? I mean isn’t that why we bought the platform is so we can play a game on it? If I wanted something other than game playing from my platform, I would buy something else, I promise I really would. Yet there they are, lining the shelves, more things to attach to your Xbox 360 than any reasonable human being could ever find a use for.
The saddest thing of all about this though is how many people actually have all this crap. I mean the other day I visited one of my friends who I will refer to as “hard coreâ€. As I stepped into Hard Core’s house I noticed that an amazing amount of wires were tracing trails along his carpet. I asked him what was up and he proceeded to launch into a dizzying description of all the latest accessories for his Xbox.
I listened politely for a bit than with a deep sigh I sat down on his couch, bowed my head and began to weep. Maybe I am just getting old, but I really miss the days of Atari.
As much as I understand your position its just the fact that we as people will always want bigger and better. True some people like simplicity but to upgrade there is no use in introducing a whole new system, you jsut plug a few things in and you have eatures youve never had before. I personally dont have too many things but I like the customization options on todays systems. It makes games more familiar and it gives you ease when you need to do things like for example there is internet browser on a palm sized instrument, when before you would need to be at a fixed location with a screen the size of youre chest and a keyboard half that.
Well if people like “hard core” are using this stuff then I hardly think it’s uneccessary.