OneAndOneIs2

There was a run of Dilbert strips a while ago in which the company sold a bunch of keyboards that lacked the letter 'Q'. Dogbert wrote the apology script for the PHB. Going entirely from memory, it went like this:

It was wrong of us to sell keyboards without a letter Q. We're sorry. We're morons. We're dumber than squirrels. We hear voices and do what they say. I have broccoli in my socks.

This was the strip that went through my head when I read about some MS bloke attacking the Wii. Apparently, it's "not a great product" - in spite of the fact that it's flying off the shelves.

What makes him say this? Well, how can anybody take a GAMES CONSOLE seriously when it can't play MOVIES???

Seriously. He actually says that. A games console is only a good games console if it does non-games things like playing DVDs. You can tell he's a Microsoftie: only in Redmond do you find people who think that the best dedicated-purpose machine is the one that does a load of superfluous other things as well. The Xbox is a better games machine because all the Wii can do is play games. That's a real handicap in a games console, you know.

But the main problem, of course, is that while Microsoft created a new console by doing nothing more than blowing millions entirely on getting better graphics out of hardware that they sell at a loss, Nintendo created a completely different way of playing games and built it into a box that was cheap enough to make that they sell it at a profit.

The 360 does nothing more than play the same games as its predecessor, only with higher numbers of polygons, pixels, and FPS. That was all their investment in R&D could come up with. More of the same, only with a higher price tag.

The Wii, in contrast, came up with something genuinely new and innovative, with no requirements for cutting-edge (and therefore expensive) high-powered hardware. They realized something that the games industry has been ignoring for too long: Games need to be fun to play, not pretty to look at. Eye candy is a bonus, not the Holy Grail.

# A fun game with rubbish graphics will sell - remember space invaders? Pacman? Tetris?

# A fun game with better graphics will sell more. Doom wasn't the first ever FPS, but it was a huge leap ahead in terms of graphics.

So it's true that graphics are important. But what they seem to ignore is that:

# A crap game with superb graphics is still a crap game.

I've got Doom 1, 2, and 3. I mostly play 2 - it's got more levels, more weapons, and more monsters than 1. It's not got anywhere near the graphics of 3. But that's irrelevant because it's more fun to play. Graphics just aren't enough.

So I daresay MS is viewing the Wii with green-eyed envy as they sell their own best effort at a substantial loss and try to make an uninteresting cosmetic improvement sound like a radical new invention.

If only Dogbert were around to write a press release for them. . .

It was wrong of us to sell hardware for less than it costs us to make it. We're sorry we can't make an innovative product. We're morons. We're dumber than our helpful paperclip. We see sales go down and can't think of anything more than trying to make our games look prettier. I have a Zune in my socks.