Can we stop doing the cute thing where we pretend this is a three-way race.

PS2 is already past 40,000,000k shipped worldwide, probably staring at 50,000,000k like it left the oven on, and Nintendo and Microsoft are still standing around explaining why their boxes are secretly better if you ignore what people are actually buying.

Nobody cares.

Sony won because Sony understood the living room. Period.

GameCube is a nice machine. I like Nintendo. I’m not twelve, so I can admit that. But no DVD, little discs, purple handle, and then everybody acts shocked when normal people don’t want to put it next to the stereo. It looks like something your nephew brings over in a backpack.

Xbox is powerful. Great. So was the guy at the gym who couldn’t read. It has Halo. Good for it. It also looks like a VCR got drafted. Microsoft showed up late with a brick, a Duke controller the size of a sandwich tray, and a business plan that basically says “we have money.” Fine. Spend it. Sony already has the shelf.

PS2 plays DVDs.

That’s the whole column.

You can write 900 words about anti-aliasing and texture shimmer and emotion engines and whatever other dork garbage keeps IGN boards alive, but out in the actual world, dad wants to watch Black Hawk Down, mom wants to rent A Beautiful Mind, your brother wants Madden, and you want GTA III after midnight with the volume low because the house is asleep. PS2 does all of it.

One black box. Under the TV. Done.

And don’t give me the “DVD playback isn’t gaming” routine. That is loser talk. The console under the television is not an abstract purity test. It is real estate. Sony took the real estate. DVD got them through the front door and Grand Theft Auto locked it behind them.

That’s how adults win.

The PS2 library is already stupid. GTA III, Metal Gear Solid 2, Gran Turismo 3, Final Fantasy X, Devil May Cry, Madden, Tony Hawk, Virtua Fighter 4, SOCOM coming in hot, Vice City about to show up and ruin everybody’s semester. Third parties are living there because the installed base is there. The installed base is there because the machine sells. The machine sells because it plays games and DVDs. This is not complicated unless you are emotionally invested in a lunchbox.

Dreamcast died. Sad. Great little system. Wrong war.

GameCube will have classics. Of course it will. Nintendo always has classics. Then it will still be sitting in the corner looking like a Fisher-Price purse while PS2 eats the whole retail wall.

Xbox will have Halo guys. Every generation needs one loud tribe with Ethernet cables and cargo shorts.

But PS2 is the default. That is what winning looks like. Not winning the message board. Not winning the spec sheet. Winning the house. Winning Christmas. Winning the dorm room. Winning the apartment with the futon, the receiver, the stack of DVDs, and the guy who says he only bought it for movies but somehow owns Tekken Tag.

DVD was the Trojan horse. Games were the occupation.

And yeah, I love DVDs. Of course I do. I like commentaries. I like anamorphic widescreen. I like chapter menus. I like buying The Matrix again because the transfer is better. I like a shelf full of cases that makes me look like I have taste instead of a hard drive full of stolen garbage named CAMRip_FINAL_REAL.avi.

PS2 understood me. PS2 understood America.

Nintendo brought charm.

Microsoft brought horsepower.

Sony brought the DVD player everybody was already going to buy and attached the best games on earth to it.

That’s the generation.

Nuff said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5876093&forum_id=2...id.#49952779)