thomas fitzgerald.net

Ha this brings me back to the bad old days of the Apple / Windows flame wars where people in the mainstream technology press used to write massive amounts of untrue rubbish every time Apple did anything, in their best efforts to paste the mac in a bad light. Since those same people now can’t seem to get enough of Apple they have turned their attention to Sony. Of course certain “blogs” are leading the charge. Take this gem from Joystiq (Talking about the forthcoming firmware update to the PS3)

“The update, well, it’s, um, it’s … (how to put this?) … it’s lame it’s not gonna ‘un-lame’ your crippled PS3. What, you cry, but it was supposed to trump the Halo 3s, the Mass Effects — the best Mario game in more than a decade! We know. Sorry, folks. At least you can finally use your Canon printers.”

I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware my PS3 was lame or crippled. Talk about flame bait. This from an online games publication in their supposed Playstation section. Why the hell would you put someone writing about a console who clearly doesn’t like the console.

But wait, it gets better….

Engadget, reporting on the same story uses it’s own brand of nerd sarcasm it seems to think it’s readers find amusing:

“Sure, 2.00 might sound like a magical milestone, but in reality there’s not a whole lot here that’s going to revolutionize your gaming experience, and sadly nothing yet to bring online communication and play to parity with Xbox Live and Xbox’s handy dandy dashboard. “

Are you kidding me? parity with Xbox’s dashboard? The same dashboard that shoves ads in your face on every section even though you’ve paid for the console and paid for the network service. Sure, I want parity with that.

I’m not trying to rain on any xbox fans out there. Hey, I have one myself. For me, the issue here is brutally bad journalism. Why do these publications insist on qualifying every piece of news about the PS3 with how much better they think the xbox is, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with the story. It’s the same crap mac users have had to put up with for years, and it’s as untrue about the PS3 as it was about the Mac.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I can not understand why for some people, in order for a particular product to be a success, the competition must utterly fail and all but cease to exist. Is the game market not big enough for more than one player so that people actually have a choice as to how they spend their money.

Ok, rant over.