Some recent events over the weekend mean the holidays are going to be a bit better for me than they were before this past Friday. Not in any kind of extravagant way, but it means I can now get both new systems without as much worry as there was before.
I was in LA for E3 when prices for the systems were announced and that’s all the retailers were waiting for before they started taking pre-orders. As soon as I could I called the local store in town to find out their supply and see about getting one ordered for myself. The only way I could get a system pre-ordered was doing so in-store. They would not accept them over the phone.
That’s when I called James and he got to the store after work and was able to get an Xbox One held in my name. Later that night when Sony revealed their price, James did the same thing and went to the store the very next morning and pre-ordered a PS4 for himself and for me as well – camera included.
Since that time, I’ve been pretty excited with the anticipation of the systems, but as the date drew closer, my excitement has settled. It’s actually quite mild, really. If I really give it some thought, I’m more excited for the future of these systems than I am for their launch. If I’m really honest, there’s nothing drawing me to the Xbox One or PS4 right out of the gate. If I had to choose, there’s KillZone and that is it. Even at that, I’ll likely rent the game and play it. It’s a title that if it were released for the PS3 right now, I’d do the same with or maybe even skip it altogether. Everything else on the PS4 and Xbox One is either not in my wheelhouse or can be played on my PC.
There are some digital titles I’m interested in that are exclusive to the systems like LocoCycle for the Xbox One, but even added into the mix that comes to one title per console that I have much interest in at all. So then why get the consoles?
Well, I know eventually I’ll be getting them. There’s just no way around that fact. One of these systems will have a must have title on it that I want to play. It’s a guarantee for the PS4 that I’ll want Infamous Second Son and ANYTHING that we see from Naughty Dog. On the Xbox side of things I can’t be as specific but they’ll bounce back a bit with some exclusives for their system that would eventually make me break down and buy one. However, the main reason is because of what we do every Saturday night. No one on the show is getting both systems. James was in the PS4 camp and that’s a maybe at the moment for him. Matt has a PS4 on pre-order. Jeremy isn’t jumping into next gen at the moment and will continue his course of gaming on the PC and current gen roads. ArJay will eventually get a PS4 but not at launch. In fact…none of us, even in the future, see ourselves owning an Xbox One.
Even still, I don’t feel like I am taking one for the team on this. The Xbox One is a system I know I’ll eventually own and I’m still going to try out some of the launch titles from it – none that I’m excited for, but I’ll still give them a go. Never hurts to try new things and they could easily sway me into liking something like RYSE or maybe even Dead Rising 3. I’ve never been a driving sim fan but if Forza has a DeLorean in it, well….
The truth of it is, I like to be a part of things like new console releases. I wasn’t there for the WiiU and, for me, it didn’t feel like what this currently feels like. I couldn’t look down the road a ways for the WiiU and see me getting that console for a game I really wanted to play. But here, I can afford it, and we can talk about it on the show, and I can say I was there when it released and I own a launch day system (something, by the way, I can still say for my PS3 launch day 60GB machine – not so fortunate with my 360, however). Six years from now it won’t matter. Hell, a year or maybe even six months from now it won’t matter, but it’s this weird thing for me – and it feels strange for me to think of myself not owning these systems when they release. I’m sure it has something to do with being spoiled as an only child or something like that – but whatever. This is what being an adult has always meant to me. As James once put it, I’m a 15 year old with the salary of a 35 year old.