By Andrew SheivachmanThe Daily Northwestern

To any hardcore gamer, launch day is more important than the holiest of holy days. Legal obligations, work duties and family responsibility are all thrown aside. Longtime friendships are destroyed, intimate relationships torn and abandoned like shrink-wrap. Gamers wait in the cold for days on unrelenting concrete, warmed only by hope. On launch day, there is only one goal: to obtain the video game system of your dreams. And hopefully a couple of games to play, too.

This Friday, 400,000 units of the new Playstation 3 will be released to the public in North America. Two different versions of Sony’s gaming obelisk will be available: a stripped-down $500 version and a pimped-out $600 iteration. The system houses fancy features described mostly in acronyms and boasts full high definition compatibility. Either version is an incredibly hot commodity currently fetching high prices on eBay and other online marketplaces. Around 20 games will be available at launch, ranging from the well-received Resistance: Fall of Man to the derivative Genji: Days of the Blade. Sony aficionados who haven’t preordered the system – and those were screwed over by the few consoles available – are currently waiting outside a consumer electronics retailer. Those are the anxious ones.

On Sunday, four million Nintendo Wii consoles will ship to North American stores. Gaming media has been drooling over the Wii’s unique motion sensing controls, with Time Magazine admitting to being “stunned by its universal appeal.” Retailing at $250 with a game included, the Wii is small, cheap and versatile. Nintendo seems unconcerned that the Wii boasts dated graphics and limited HD capability. The Wii has the potential to bring many non-gamers into the fold, thanks to the ease of playing with its Wiimote controller, appealing to the middle-aged and physically handicapped. The Wii will launch with around 30 games, priced at least ten dollars cheaper than the average PS3 title, including the intensely anticipated adventure title The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Few Nintendo purists are camping out for the Wii because Nintendo has produced an unprecedented number of systems for the launch. But they are anxious, too.

Besides the requisite anxiety, these hardcore gamers are also secretly worried about something much more sinister: stagnation. In 1983, the once strong video game industry collapsed due to a lack of innovation and extreme oversaturation. Systems could push more pixels, sure, but the quality of games decreased and the originality of titles petered out. The video game industry wallowed in financial purgatory until the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System, giving the North American gaming market a jump-start in 1986. Unfortunately for today’s hardcore gamer, the current state of the industry is starting to resemble that of the early 80s.

The Xbox 360, which was released last November, and the PS3 are remarkably similar systems. They each tout advanced, complex architecture that can produce detailed HD graphics. There are multiple cores and oodles of random access memory just waiting to throw protons at your TV screen. The PS3 has the fancy IBM Cell microprocessor, which is apparently a supercomputer apparatus rolled into a gaming machine. Both the 360 and PS3 have fleshed-out online components where a consumer can try and buy both new and retro games. Both systems are intensely powerful and focus on presenting a player with a vivid, realistic audiovisual experience.

But with the focus on the hardware’s insane power, actual gameplay innovation has been stunted. A year after the release, the 360 doesn’t have a single title that is decidedly amazing and also features innovative game play. The new Gears of War comes close to being a killer app, but it is reportedly just a polished, prettier rehash of previous games in the action genre. The PS3 boasts nothing really new at launch, as its lineup is composed of reworking of existing franchises and more polished versions of titles hailing from dated genres. While the pretty graphics may wow casual gamers, there is a decided lack of substance behind the PS3’s library.

If the marketplace becomes saturated with games and systems that are similar and unoriginal, the video game industry could falter again. The casual gamer may become bored by the array of sequels and rehashes by companies merely looking to cash in on the popularity of gaming. Sales are still strong, but consumers can only buy Grand Theft Auto so many times. We may be experiencing the preliminary stage of a second industry crash, which troubles me as a fan of new media.

Nintendo, however, has a clever strategy to preempt the second crash – it has made the Wii cheap and is providing varied, original content for gamers to experience. Instead of focusing on how many pixels its hardware can push, Nintendo is stressing the fun and accessibility of its new control system and titles.

Nintendo actually has a history of shrewd moves like this. Back in 1996, with the launch of the Nintendo 64, Nintendo introduced an oddly shaped controller boasting an analog stick. I remember holding the N64 controller for the first time, surrounded by a mob of loud children at a Toys ‘R’ Us kiosk, completely unsure of how to handle it. It was monstrous, smooth and three-pronged, completely foreign to me. I tried many hand configurations, but nothing felt right. Finally, some kid showed me how to slip my hand under the handle featuring the analog stick. It was unorthodox but ergonomic. I was soon controlling Mario with unprecedented ease and grace. D-pads were forever dead to me. Sure enough, every controller for every system after that boasted some form of analog stick.

Nintendo forced competitors to adapt and react, spurring market innovation in the process. In this sense, Nintendo is repeating history with the Wii. In another, they are expanding the realm of video games to a real level.

Next week I will comment on the events of launch week and give my impressions of the Nintendo Wii, which I will be playing non-stop. Hopefully, my experiences will give me some insight into whether the current console war will lead to a second industry crash.

If not, at least I will be giddy, bleary-eyed and covered in my own filth.

Reach Andrew Sheivachman at [email protected].