DS: If anything changed in my perception of the DS in the last year, it must be how well Nintendo has been doing as a publisher. Kudos to them. Second, he DS hardware was even worse than I expected, but with the DS LIte Nintendo managed to make at least a part of that go away. Especially amazing was the difference between Japan and the rest of the world in terms of the DS Lite's success. I didn't expect that.
PSP: No big changes in perception here. I think above all, the PSP fulfilled more of my expectations than I expected. The biggest change probably is that I'm surprised now how much I use the non-modded PSP I have - it has almost completely taken over. PSP to PS3 support came sooner and bigger than I expected, in the form of downloadable PS1 games and the remote control features.
Wii: I have always loved peripheral gaming, and I've noticed that a lot of people, especially casual or non-gamers, do too. I own several light-guns (even psx ones, which still work), a dance pad, two wheels, and Singstar mikes, and they're all big hits with guests, almost always. So, while I'm personally not in the least looking forward to a virtual hardware standstill, I see that Nintendo made the right choice. Maybe not my ideal choice, but certainly for a lot of other people it will do nicely for the next 2 years anyway. My perception changed, inasmuch that I feel I might actually enjoy some of its games, which is new for me, as it's almost the first time I have that feeling with Nintendo in 20 years (I had short moments of interest in the SNES and NES, but each time they lost to their full-keyboard counterparts, the C64 and 800XL, and then the Amiga and Atari ST). So while I think its graphics are going to be a big turnoff, I also realise that Point Blank and Time Crisis really still are great games on the PSX, and there is good potential for the Wii to achieve something similar. The only danger I see is that specialist peripherals are still going to be better than the Wii, and you only need a few good peripheral games anyway, but in terms of mainstream markets, that's probably not going to matter. In fact, with all games making an attempt to really use the Wii well, there are probably going to be some great things for it.
360: Originally I thought I was going to get both the 360 and PS3, just like the PS2 and Xbox last time. But as the year went on, I went from disappointment to disappointment. Next-gen games looked and played far worse than I had expected, and bring far less innovation. Also, whereas the original Xbox impressed me especially with the quality and polish of its hardware (despite being ugly), the 360 really doesn't. I'm still waiting for a redesign, at least internally - I want it to be quieter. It is also doing much worse than I even expected in Europe. While it is a great attraction to everyone who got themselves an HD tv, that is only just starting to take off here. However, I am greatly impressed with Microsoft. It's really going all out, and doing a great job of making good use of their 1 year lead. Especially in the U.S. there is a lot of support for the Xbox, and while I had expected this, I hadn't expected as strong a support from the media as it is getting. Especially the U.S. media were probably fearing a lot less from Microsoft, and are happy that Microsoft is putting up a great fight. They may even win in the U.S., building on a strong base they already managed to set with the original Xbox.
Speaking of which, the original Xbox died a much swifter death than I had anticipated. And I keep forgetting to cancel my Live subscription, partly because each time I'm then thinking, oh well, I guess I will cancel it next year because now I paid for a full year anyway, and I might still need it. The Live service has very much become a mixed blessing. Without it, the 360 loses all of its appeal to me, but with it, it cancels the attraction of the Core (no HDD), and negates any price advantages the 360 has. Backward compatibility was also disappointing, as is Microsoft's way of dealing with peripherals, forcing you into buying their products (though thank god, at least there is finally, for the first time in, what, 5-6 years?, support for a force feedback wheel). The software support though is nothing to complain about. Kudos to microsoft in that respect. I also applaud XNA, and Live Arcade, at least in principle - in practice, it is turning out to be a big disappointment to me, something worth way less than the downloadable demos of 'real' games, which is one of the 360's strong points - though at the same time it exposes the weakness of only having a 20gb hdd available. Hopefully XNA will help to address the Live Arcade problem.
PS2: which brings me to the PS2, which is the exact opposite! It just keeps getting great games. It just reminds me that if you bought a PS2 at launch day in Europe, for what would now have been well over 500 euros, you would have gotten awesome value for money out of it.
PS3: this went up and down, up and down. But it ended with a big up. First of all, we finally got to see it. On the hardware side, wow. It blew me away. Much better than I expected. I really was unprepared for it, expecting something equal in build quality to the 360 at best. On the software side, it also outperforms my expectations, in terms of how well it is doing after launch. However, this is somewhat diminshed by being late, which was a big disappointment to me. But apart from having a delayed launch, it is fulfilling all my expecations - the Linux, the browser, the firmware upgrades, the PSP like media player features, the PSP to PS3 interactivity, backward compatibility, and certainly not in the least the great start with support for bluetooth devices, surpassing my expectations by already supporting many existing bluetooth headsets. Downloadable demos and games from the Playstation Store are also better than I expected (though I did see it coming when the PSP was starting to pick up with downloadable demos). The combination of downloadable games and the sixaxis controller should also hold a lot of promise. I'm still waiting to see where the limits are for the sixaxis in terms of motion detection. While the Wii has a slight advantage with the sensor bar, the sixaxis has the cell to help interpret the actual motions and add them to physics, and this holds great potential. The end of the year really brought things up to speed with the great idea of Tekken 5
R as a cheap online game purchase, and a free demo of the beautiful GT:HD as well as Motorstorm really appearing to pick up. Very promising for me also was to see Resistance, because it shows so much promise in terms of physics - just check out the snow or the glass breaking or the hundreds of bullets reflecting from walls and so on. So, in the end, the PS3 is everything I hoped for and then some, with as its only disappointment its European release date. Although I had always expected spring 2007, I had really hoped they would actually have pulled off a global release in November. Finally, there is one nagging worry, coming straight off the GT:HD demo, which appears to have had force feedback support in a first version, but then this version was replaced with one that doesn't. The way I understand it, this probably means that we will be paying Immersion per game through a deal with PD and Logitech that is not yet finalised at this time. Of course there is still plenty of time to get it fixed, but right now, I really value force feedback in my driving games, and I don't like the idea that there are problems in this area. Other small worries are that the support for different resolutions and scaling is still not quite worked out, and that they were late in figuring out the online stuff - the Japanese really have a blind eye to this, but thankfully PD's boss seems to be picking up this issue as the GT:HD demo shows they are learning from PGR2's great work in this area, and he is also in charge of online gaming support. Also I'm feeling that Phil Harrison is doing a good job pooling global development resources, and London is a great place for that to happen, probably the best at this point in time.
All in all, though, it has been an exiting year. But not nearly as exciting as I'm 100% sure 2007 is going to be!
