Flop Trumps

I received an email yesterday telling me that the new official Playstation 3 website has gone live. It's a typical Sony affair, heavy on marketing and very nicely designed, but light on all the things that I, and presumably most people, actually want to see - screenshots and video. I didn't spend too long there, but I don't think there's any game footage at all.

The specs are all in place, but they mean nothing to me whatsoever. I recall reading in Edge, the forerunner in pretentiously anal gaming journalism, that the PS3 will have 'one teraflop floating point performance'. What? Having been gaming faithfully with Sony for ten years now, with a few Nintendo flirtations on the side, none of which have satisfied or lasted very long, all I care about is one question: Will it trounce Microsoft?

The answer, of course, is yes. But I wish Sony would stop being all Japanese and just tell people that. (Note I haven't considered Nintendo's effort. Wii'll see how it does, but I think everyone knows what the outcome will be. Flush?) I've spent some time with an XBOX360 recently and the graphical capabilities are remarkable, but none of the games I've played so far have added anything to my PS2 experience but a few smoother lines. Granted, it's early days, and I expect that lack of innovation will be the thorn in the PS3's side too until developers fully grasp the capabilities of the machine's 'cell processor'.

By which time Nintendo will have announced their retirement from the hardware market altogether and Microsoft will be desperately trying to churn another Halo out, hoping to recapture the magic (of an over-rated PC-lite FPS).

Console wars? It's always been more a polite exchange of statistics, but hopefully soon one of them will punch the other one in the face, steal their trump cards then run away. Now that would be cool.