Sony's latest debacle with the 2.4 update illustrates the sad state of the company. Nearly three years after the 360 offered these features, Sony releases a botched firmware update for a half-baked implementation (no cross-game invites/voicechat, no BGM for all games, trophy system released without any games that actually support trophies after nearly 2 years of releases, etc.).

It's hard to imagine a company falling so fast, so far - you almost have to try to mess up this bad. In my 30+ years of gaming this is, by far, the worst performance I've ever seen by a major console company in a particular generation. I'm not basing success on hardware sales, but on a company's performance. I'm a 42 year old marketing exec who has been gaming literally since Pong. Any company that see's it's market share decline by nearly 60% from one product release to another would be considered a colossal failure in any other industry.

Sony should have had the foresight to establish the infrastructure and ground rules so that ALL games in the library shared a standard set of features like MS did. Despite launching a year later, Sony still wasn't ready to release PS3 (or Blu-Ray for that matter) and just threw out the hardware without a set of guidelines. As a result we are treated to the segmented implementation of features, which results in a fractured user base and poor adoption of available features (again, just like the poor adoption of BD-Live features since Blu-Ray didn't have set standards at launch). For the life of me, I don't understand the defensive and apologist attitudes of so many Sony customers.

Sony used to be a very disciplined company, but now it seems to be run by committee resulting in the persistent delays and half-realized implementation of features the PS3 has become defined by. I've had a PS3 since 12/31/06 and have a PSP and PS2, so I'm not a fanboy. I love games and own all the systems so I can play any game that catches my eye. It's just frustrating to see a company that had such a strong reputation throw it all away in such a short period of time as the industry is better off with three strong competitors in it. I hope Sony has the humility to be chastened by these events and get it right for the PS4.

There has been a strange dichotomy regarding PSP hardware sales versus software sales to date. While the PSP hasn't enjoyed DS type sales, it has steadily built up an impressive install base these past few years. Despite this, PSP titles never break the NPD game charts leading me to wonder what all these PSP owners are playing. Maybe there really is a a problem with people hacking the system to illegally play games. Either that or it's appealing to gadget geeks who are using it for the other multimedia capabilities.

I think developers are still struggling with how to design a game for the system as we still see a lot of PS2 or multiplatform ports. Maybe the lack of a second analog nub is creating confusion on what type of gameplay mechanics should be utilized. Regardless, I think the system has developed a decent number of must-own games and I thought I'd list them below for consideration.

1. Lumines I and II

2. SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 1 and 2

3. Medal of Honor Heroes

4. Puzzle Quest

5. Jeanne D'Arc

6. Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters

7. Daxter

8. Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror and Logan's Shadow

9. Field Commander

10. Burnout Legends

The games above represent a decent variety of shooters, platformers, puzzle and racing games. I think one thing they all share in common is an understanding of how to develop for a system with fewer buttons and the ability to enjoy a game in shorter sessions. Additionally, for the platformers and shooters, these games effectively handle camera control without a second analog nub which seems to be the downfall of many other PSP titles. Using the face buttons to look is not ideal, but these shooters do a good job of scaling the difficulty and A/I while also taking this into consideration in the actual level design.

Several of these games also make effective use of the WiFi capabilities of the PSP (even supporting voice chat) further extending the life of these games with online play. Who says the PSP doesn't have any games?

I was pretty impressed with the recent updates regarding XNA at the Game Developers Conference this week. I think this may have flown under a lot of gamers radars or that people may not understand the full implications of this initiative. My roots are in PC gaming and I fondly remember all of the great mods for games like Half-Life, Unreal and Quake. Neil Manke's "They Hunger" HL mods are still among my favorite gaming experiences ever! Sadly, the mod community has mirrored the precipitous decline of pc gaming in general the past few years.

I hope that Microsoft's XNA initiative may help to resurrect this hotbed of creativity. By giving out the tools for free which allow cross-platform development (PC/360/Phones/Zune), MS is creating incentives for both individuals and start-up developers to take the plunge and benefit from some much needed exposure. Offering a preview trial on Live to coincide with GDC is a boon to the early adopters of these tools and exhibits great promise for what is to come starting this Fall when Community Games will be added to the 360 (presumably part of the Fall Update).

Having a low cost of entry to the Creator's Club ($49 for 6 months, $100 for a year) is a simple way to ensure that the self-policing nature of the system isn't over-run by malcontents. To be clear, the development tools are free - it's just membership in the Creator's Club to have a vote that costs money. I find it commendable that MS is willing to trust the XNA community to determine what is objectionable, rather than policing it themselves in a heavy handed manner. Whatever gets approved by this community can then be offered on Marketplace or independently by other channels (PC, etc.).

Both Sony and Nintendo have also made efforts to find and foster homegrown development to their credit. Nintendo with the upcoming WiiWare and Sony is looking for homegrown talents and putting their games on PSN. However, these are console specific and WiiWare tools are cost prohibitive to most individuals and Sony doesn't help with the development tools. By providing XNA for free to over 400 universities/trade schools MS is making an investment in the future which may pay dividends in goodwill and loyalty years from now.

My thoughts on recent developments in the movie format war below. For the record, I own 19 HD-DVD's and 12 Blu-Ray movies so far. Of those HD-DVD's, 4 are dual-format so I can watch those on DVD too. My new computer plays both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, so I'm well covered both in the living room and the home office.

1. Blu-Ray hasn't "won" anything. It still only represents .8% of movie sales and the jury is still out on whether a next gen physical media device is even viable given the rapid adoption of digital downloads and increasing market penetration and speed of broadband internet access.

2. Blu-Ray beating HD-DVD doesn't suddenly validate anyone's purchase of a PS3. The PS3 needs to be judged as a gaming machine based on its game library and feature set. It would be a sad reflection on the PS3 if its success was contingent on playing movies rather than games.

3. Back to HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray - the consumers never had a chance to make a choice (see .8% reference above). This was decided by movie studio exec's lured by "incentives" the Blu-Ray association paid them combined with the lure of more stringent DRM and region locking to further drive up their profits. Curious how only Toshiba's "incentives" got negative press last year, while Sony's have been praised. Surely, this has nothing to do with how much advertising Sony pays these publications (I'm looking at you Hollywood Reporter)...

4. Since before launch, MS has often stated that the 360 is a modular system. This allows consumers the choice to decide what features are important to them and gives MS the flexibility to respond to market conditions with new add-on's and SKUs. Toshiba dropping HD-DVD does nothing to change that. If market surveys show 360 consumers want a Blu-Ray add-on and/or SKU MS will put one on the market.

5. The phenomenal success of the Wii is all the proof anyone needs that movie formats have absolutely no bearing on the success of a "game" console.

The recent Blockbuster announcement regarding Blu-Ray support got me to thinking about what could explain the discrepancy between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sales. I think we're seeing the UMD effect here. PS3 owners (like myself) don't have any games to play so we're buying and renting Blu-Ray movies to justify our investment in the short term. Remember that UMD's saw a huge spike early in the PSP's life-cycle but once the game library finally expanded UMD sales imploded as gamers actually used the system for games.

PS3 will finally have some decent games to play this Holiday Season and I fully expect Blu-Ray sales to plummet at that point. I also have the HD-DVD 360 add-on and both look and sound great to me. However, I really prefer the extra features HD-DVD affords (in-movie experience is awesome - picture-in-picture commentary for those not familiar with this). Personally, I have 3 Blu-Ray movies and 12 HD-DVD's.

While Blu-Ray does enjoy more studio support, it's hard to reconcile the fact that a player costing several hundred dollars more (standalone players) would do better, particularly with all the free movie offers going on with HD-DVD. Backing up my assertion, I think it's worth noting that 900K of the 1 million Blu-Ray players are PS3's. Will PS3 owners continue buying $25-30 movies when good $60 games come out?

My 360 died again Saturday morning (actually it started acting up Friday night).  To add insult to injury, MS customer support wasn't able to process my repair order until late Sunday night because they were down for maintenance.

Unfortunately, this is my third defective 360 (2 refurbs after my initial unit died) so the next refurb will be my fourth.  Despite this, MS policy doesn't allow them to ship the boxes to send back the unit for repair via overnight so I'll be out another 3 weeks between all the back and forth.

Even with all of these reliability issues the 360 is by far my favorite console ever because of its features and games.  I just wish they could have made the initial batch of units more reliable (and quieter).

Anyway, rather than wait three weeks I went to Best Buy and bought another 360 along with a 2-year warranty (so I can just swap this one out if it dies on me at the local store).  Now, I'll put the refurb unit MS sends in the playroom on my standard TV for when my son or wife are using the main 360.  I'm such a s*cker for rewarding MS on their shoddy construction by buying a new one!

I just hope all the articles I read about MS finally addressing all of the quality issues last Spring are true and I don't have the same issues with this new 360.