[davidjaffe]

I will jump in with a few points:

a- I know how to spell 'great', asshats. I typed a design doc today and a blog entry and a crap ton of IMs. Give me a break :)

b- While I appreciate that there are gamers out there who care very much about graphical upgrades, I am not one of them. Any more than I really cared to upgrade from DVD to HD. I did it because I could afford to and we needed a new tv and I am glad I did cause the picture looks stunning. BUT I could have lived with DVD quality for 5-10 more years and been just fine. So while the argument against my desire for a one console biz may work FOR YOU because you care much for the bleeding edge of graphics, don't be either a) so arrogant or b) such a poor debater to assume that your argument works for everyone and thus, you've 'won' the debate. For people like me- and we are legion given the success of Nintendo DS, Wii, and the rise of casual games- your argument does not hold water.

c- I still am not sold on the fact that my tv analogy is flawed. Every TV- for the most part- can play EVERY SHOW. And not just every show from today but from the original broadcast from what? 60 something years ago?!? And show makers can jump right into content from the get go without having to reinvent the wheel every 5 years. Us game makers can not do this and you guys suffer for it (not graphically but play wise and feature wise and COST wise ((69.99 for game?!?)), you totally do). So for those saying, "But I want THIS feature from console X, and THAT feature from console Y"...I get it, I hear you. I KNOW you do. But consider the alternative. At CES this week there were 3D televisions and tvs that did all kinds of things that will probably never get off the ground. And no one will really miss it. But they are going to start missing great television because the writers- who make the content using the stable tools of the biz- are still on strike. You are right, you lose out with my plan. But you lose out with BOTH plans (mine and what we have now). And all I am saying is, if I gotta lose something to gain something, I would take better content (with a degradation in features and graphics) over bleeding edge graphics any freaking day. We can disagree, but I hardly thing you can call my opinion wrong. It's just we value different things in our games.

d- Yes, perhaps I should have said format versus console so the DVD/Television analogy worked better. But the point is still the same. For the analogy not to work it would mean that I could ONLY watch LOST on a Sony tv and you could ONLY watch the presidential debates on a Samsung and there would be crazy fights to see who gets the exclusive rights to air NFL games. When you think of it that way- and that is the way the game biz is- it sounds insane, doesn't it? I think we have simply gotten USED to the way things have been for so long that we don't even stop to consider how nuts it really is.

David