Console Selection and Me

One of the (rather frightening) signs of growing older is that time seems to move faster the older you get. The span of time between the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo 64, its successor, was five years, during which I went from 5 years old to 10. So, the SNES was, at the time the N64's release, the dominant console for half my life (there was, of course, the Nintendo/Sega rivalry back then, but it always seemed a bit 1-sided - Nintendo was Coke to Sega's Pepsi, even tending toward the same identifying colors.)

The PS4 and Xbox One came out in 2013, about a year after Nintendo launched its Wii U, which was, shall we say, not a great success (though it seems they recaptured that Wii-level "everyone's second console" energy with the Switch in 2017, a sort of mulligan that seems to have paid off well, though also puts Nintendo out of sync with the console generations - which, frankly, might actually be to their benefit.)

The point is, as the PS5 and Xbox Series X (Jesus, who the fuck at Microsoft comes up with the names for their consoles? Sony's are boring, but at least you know what you're getting. Shouldn't the "Xbox One" be the original Xbox? (Further confusion: I actually wrote Xbox One X originally, just demonstrating how confusing Microsoft's naming scheme is)) are coming out now about seven years after the release of the last pair of consoles.

Given that I'm 34, and not 10, the time seemed to zip by a lot faster (even if the past four years have felt like a century, 2020 has felt like a decade, and the last week felt like a year, but for entirely non-Video Game related reasons).

As an adult, I also have more expenses that go beyond my entertainment, so while dropping 500 bucks once every seven years isn't going to totally break the bank, I'm find myself a lot more reluctant to grab a console the moment it comes out, fearing that I'll only wind up getting a handful of games for it before it's relegated to a dusty shelf when the newest thing comes out.

I think the practical thing is to look at games that I really desperately want to play. When I was considering the Xbox One or the PS4, the main factor that sold me was Bloodborne - though I had played primarily on the Xbox 360 in the previous era, the exclusive games for Microsoft's console were not really drawing me, while Bloodborne just seemed so cool that I had to try it (and it wound up being one of my favorite video games of all time.)

Right now, then, I suspect I'll be getting a PS5, probably because the Final Fantasy Remake series is exclusive to Sony's console (at least the first part was, so I assume the whole thing.) Remake has reawakened my love for Square's flagship JRPG series, and even tempts me to check out XV (though I'm given to understand that the combat system is not as good as FFVIIR's.) And if ever they decide to make a Bloodborne II, I'm super down for that.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I feel like Nintendo's decision to launch the Switch three years ago was a brilliant move, and if they have a new console in the works (which they probably do by now,) I think they should wait another three or four years before launching it, so that people who are looking for a change of pace from the PS5 and Series X will be interested. I know I'd feel a lot less conflicted picking up the next Nintendo console if I wasn't immediately weighing it against a sort of "mainline" console.