Citing the usual sources-who-shall-remain-nameless, Bloomberg reports what everyone’s been assuming all year — that Microsoft‘s going to launch its next game system sometime in late 2013. All that seems left to deduce, then, is when Microsoft’s going to lift the curtain: at the E3 video games expo in June, or a Microsoft-specific event. I was hoping they’d wait another year or two, frankly, since nothing about the Xbox 360 feels dated to me, but assuming 2013′s now inevitable, here’s what I’d like to see a new Xbox-whatever-it’s-called embrace. Don’t make graphics the selling point. I don’t care about better graphics. Not the way I used to, back when all the cool kids had 3dfx video cards and pass-through cables, and ran special executables to make Quake and Tomb Raider look extra-nifty on PCs. You can make the argument that Skyrim and Oblivion were just prettier versions of Morrowind, that Grand Theft Auto IV was an easier-on-the-eyes repeat of Grand Theft Auto III, that BioShock was a mass-market version of System Shock and that both Halo 3 and Halo 4 were Halo re-skinned (settle down, I liked Skyrim, GTA IV, BioShock and those two Halos plenty). I’m just saying that if what’s next amounts to Call of Duty: Photo Ops or The Graphically Mind-Blowing Scrolls or Halo’s Awesome New Polygon Parade, well, that hamster wheel’s getting pretty tiresome, isn’t it? For all the guff we give the Wii about its last-gen hardware, some of the most interesting games this generation — hello Super Mario Galaxy, Xenoblade Chronicles, Metroid Prime 3, The Last Story and Zelda: Skyward Sword – are on Nintendo’s no-one-plays-it/can’t-do-HD/still-better-selling-overall console. Besides, I’m ready for something like Call of Duty: Not Tactically Brain-Dead at this point, aren’t you? Don’t over-think Xbox LIVE. My favorite thing about the Xbox 360 isn’t the games, it’s the game-space they live in: the colored-tile interface, the simple but efficient friend system, the achievement hunt and gamer score overlay, Xbox LIVE Arcade and Xbox LIVE Marketplace’s top-notch indie fare. Whatever’s next still has to live in 1080p-land, just like the Xbox 360 (it’ll be awhile before we’re running ultra-HD TVs,![]()
