Playstation 2 Hardware BS

March 1, 2003

This is the beginning of the end. It has begun.

What the hell am I talking about? My PS2 is crapping out. The first sign was when The Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers game by EA wouldn't even load up. I checked online and found that a lot of people were having similar problems with other EA titles. It seems newer versions of the PS2 have slightly different innards (as is the case with almost all video games systems, they "evolve" as time goes on), and some games that work just fine on the 'new' PS2s don't work at all on old ones. What a nice thank you from Sony to all us early adopters. Still, it wasn't that big a deal to me. I don't play a lot of sports games and every EA title is multi--platform anyways, if I want anything I'll just get it for the cube or box and have it look better. No big. I must have been in a really good mood that day.

Then comes the next ominous portent... I rent Virtua Fighter 4 (oooooo... spoooooooky....). I play it for a few days. Decent little game. If I had scads of cash burning holes in my pockets, there's a good chance I'd buy a copy. But that's beside the point. The point is that one day I went to play it and it wouldn't load. The disc hadn't left the tray since the last time I played it. The PS2 just all of a sudden couldn't read it. Lovely. Reminded me of all the fun I had with my old Playstations (note, if you will, the s on the end). So I did what all seasoned Sony owners do, I turned the unit on its side. It worked. Which is fine in the short run. But what happens after the side standing trick stops working? And the 45 degree angle trick? And my elaborate system of levers and pulleys? What happens when my Piece of Shit 2 dies?

I'm fairly certain I'm not going to buy another one. I just can't support Sony's flagrant lack of hardware quality. Most everyone I know had to buy more than one Playstation. And this trend looks to be repeating itself. No wonder Sony sells the most systems. Fuckers. Hopefully the PS3 (or whatever they end up calling it. Probably nothing with Playstation in the title, since Nintendo gets money from each unit sold. Neat how the legal world works.) will be backwards compatible. But there are still games I want that are coming out for the PS2. Specifically Final Fantasy online. But that's a fairly sizeable outlay of cash. I really want to play the game, but how can I spend all that money when I don't know if I'll be able to play it for any extended amount of time? I can't. So Sony's continued devotion to putting out the lowest acceptable quality hardware continues, and I continued to get screwed.

The sad thing is, I'm sure I'll be writing this exact same article once the next next generation of consoles has been launched.

Damnit.

- Tyler