Pyro, your post is remarkably well reasoned. I appreciate it, and you're probably very right in a lot of ways.
However, my thing about the PS3 is that... well, this is a post about the PS3 tanking and Sony taking losses on the PS3, and I think a lot of that is because of the misconception (and yes, I still think it ultimately is a misconception) that the 360 is the better machine. It isn't. In fact, for all the reasons I've already stated, it could be considered much, much worse. The PS3 has some other issues, some of which K-Man has pointed out, but all that does is level the playing field IMO, not give ground to Microsoft. Yet it's this general current of consumers in the sea of the mass market that do nothing but further the idea that the 360 is the console to own, and not based on anything real, just based on the usual ebb and flow of what's popular. And I think that sucks. A sizable portion of the people who would proclaim the 360 to be superior probably don't even buy enough games to take advantage of the bigger library, as they'd probably find just as much to like on the PS3 within their limits.
I just take offense at things that are accepted as fact or nearly so when that isn't the truth. It offends me. Does it matter why? I'm not really pro-Sony. I was very outspoken about my displeasure with them for a long while after the PS3 had been out. And while I'm not at all a fan of Microsoft, I own a lot of Microsoft products and use them, and I generally only complain about them when they explode in my face. In the case of the 360, mine hasn't even outright failed yet, but that by no means negates how completely and utterly bungled the fucking thing was. Have they ironed it all out by now? I guess they've taken strides, but the fact that my coworker just recently had to go in for his fifth unit isn't particularly convincing. The one that just failed wasn't long ago at all, and he hadn't had it very long.
Though I have to say, your general faith in the average gamer isn't something I share. I do agree that our viewpoints might be overly dismal at times, and sometimes we probably take our naysaying a little too far, but I'm sorry, there's a world full of morons out there and they have a lot of money to spend. And that's turned into a lot of sophomoric drivel that's sold by the truckloads. And it really can't be helped. We used to be a small industry full of creativity because there was little risk and not nearly as much money, but now budgets are huge, crowds are huge, and everyone has a shirt to lose. We wanted games to get respect and be treated better, and now that's happened. Unfortunately, the price of acceptance is often popularity. But we shouldn't be so negative, like you say, because for all the bad, it really isn't like the good has decreased. It's probably increased right along with everything else. Maybe the ratios are different, but what does that matter to us? We still have more good games than we could conceivably play in real life without retiring and having endless money to spend. And all the DRM shit will probably find some way to work itself out in the future, for good or ill.
It all goes back to ideology. There are some things that just seem, for lack of a better term, morally wrong. Restrictive DRM goes against what a lot of us feel is proper business conduct (not to mention some of it has wandered into realms of palpably questionable legality). Maybe we do beat the dead horse a little, but nothing good ever comes from rolling over and letting someone have their way with you. A fight's a fight, and as sick to death as I am of talking about DRM, there are times when it bears talking about.
As for Pug: well, there's God of War 3, and that's a poor example being it's pretty much a mass-market muscle-fest. But for some reason I just like those games. The epicness just isn't matched by most others, however bullheaded the concept. White Knight Chronicles still looks like something special and different. Demon's Souls is gorgeous looking, and could be a nice Diablo-style diversion. Flower has tons of potential. Crash Commando has potential too. Bayonetta looks goofy and awesome all at once. Heavy Rain is one I'm eager to see more on, despite how infuriated I was with Quantic Dream after Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy). Infamous sounded interesting. There are a few others I'm forgetting, and there's of course the next project from Team ICO which will likely be a must-buy for me, whatever it is.
