I have yet to be sold on the XBox. Sure it has a lot of good games, but I think it is Microsoft’s marketing approach which has always singled out the type of gamer I hate. You know the type—Gen-X, dew drinking, first person shooter playing fanboys, whose passive aggressiveness plays itself out over the net via frag-fest grossly overrated games like Halo. My disdain reached its peak when J. Allard introduced the XBox 360 in his blazer and hoodie, sitting down on the floor, trying to “keep it real” like a Saturday morning drug commercial. It makes me cringe when I think of the way in which XBox has continued to widdle the gamer down into this incredibly narrow category of the Total Request Live watching MTVite demographic that is completely unrepresentative of the majority of the gamer population. The result of this strategy is a public that is still convinced that gamers are just recluse junior high kids, participating in a childish distraction. The truth is the gamer population is a lot more diverse and, one would hope, a hell of a lot smarter than the marketing strategies of the XBox would lead one to believe. If we really were the putty in their hands they want us to be, then their E3 hype machine would have had us all under submission, but the result was actually that the more impressive PS3 demos created most of the buzz. After E3 XBox 360 still had a lot to prove.

Fast forward to the present; Microsoft has just announced their preliminary pricing scheme for the XBox 360 and, thankfully, I am not the only one who is pissed. Xbox 360 will be available in two forms, one is a crappy and worthless stripped down version without a 20 gigabyte hard drive, wireless controller, and headset. All highly desirable items which, when one considers the 360’s strategy of being an online console, are actually absolutely indispensable for their core audience of Halo players. The other has all of these things and, for most people is the only choice worth considering, especially given the stripped version is $299 and the full version is $399. This basically means that if you want to play next generation console games, you will have to be able to shell out $399 and $50 a game. This also means that many of us, myself included, will not be playing the next generation consoles.

Now wait, before you tell me to stop whining let me explain myself. I completely understand and acknowledge that these new systems have spectacular technology, technology that is undoubtedly pricey. I also recognize that both Microsoft and Sony are focused on revolutionizing gaming and creating consoles that equal and even outperform PCs and that they want to bury PC gaming. However, they are not quite there yet and because of this they cannot justify their price tags to the current market.

Consoles have always been expensive, but they have always been priced in such a way as to make them affordable as, for example, a kid’s Christmas present. This was because they served the sole function of playing games, a function which because of its limitations seemed to automatically govern the price. Of course, not all families could afford them, but generally if you wanted a console you could get your hands on one and not break the bank. Now, due to consoles being seen as media centers and competitors to PCs, the price has skyrocketed, effectively making them no longer the Christmas gifts of yore, but large-scale investments on par with a PC or laptop. This evolution and the accompanying price tag would be acceptable if the technology were proven and the 360 and PS3 were definite PC competitors, however this is simply not the case. While online gaming is certainly a solid market, consoles are still and will still be through the life of these next generation systems, inferior to PCs. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are transitional systems, not the real deal, and what do they need more than anything to facilitate this transition? Consumers! So why price these things beyond an acceptable threshold for someone such as myself, a lifelong gamer and console dominance skeptic who needs to be sold on this next step and who, by the way, is in what would be considered an average income household. I should be the exact market they want to reel in. Instead, I have been completely excluded and forced to do exactly what Microsoft and Sony don’t want me to do—become a PC exclusive gamer.

Well, at least until the price comes down.