Next-Gen... again

Earlier tonight, I saw two things that got me thinking about "Next-Gen" video game consoles due out shortly. It brought to mind years gone by, and the now-defunct systems that were, in their time, the "Next-Gen" beasts of the future.
One thing I saw was tonight's South Park episode partially revolving around Cartman's desire for a Nintendo Wii. I guess with this, and the PSP episode a while back, the boys behind South Park are going to write episodes endorsing new game systems as a habit. I was surprised by the choice of the Wii however, and not the Playstation 3 as the object of his affections. True, I'm not as plugged into gaming as I was once, but since when did anyone care about Nintendo again? While it is more than capable technically, the Gamecube is a closed architectured, non-versatile heap that you can play games like Pokemon on. Perhaps the Wii is the image revolution Nintendo needs. It seems to be packed with all kinds of gimmick... but so was the Virtual Boy.
The other thing I saw was an extremely creepy ad for the Playstation 3. It has what appears to be a baby doll staring at the shiny new console. The baby doll then goes through a series of emotions (and a possible seizure) which include a tear that goes down its face, while all kinds of funky crap goes on in its eyes. Why are new systems advertised this way? This commercial in no way makes me want to buy a Playstation 3. I'm not sure what the hell I was watching or what the hell it could really motivate me to do. It was just odd. Don't get me wrong. It was a different kind of odd than Sony's "Enos Lives" and "U R Not E" commercials that heralded the original. This was just completely creepy. I hate to say this to Sony, but it reminded me of Sega ads from years gone by. I don't recollect if it was the Dreamcast's "It's thinking" campaign, the Saturn's "We're never going to sell any of these" campaign, or both, but Sega produced some odd ads. Here's a thought: show what the system can do without the theatricals. If Sony starts releasing add-on systems that pile continuously onto the system, start to worry.
Oh, for the days when all it seemed like anybody cared about was the advertised data width.
"Sega Genesis is twice as good as NES because it is 16 bits instead of 8!" the ignorant masses would scream.
It's just too bad that logic (or "math" as they called it) didn't work on people when Atari was trying to sell the 64-bit Jaguar in 1994 when the dominant game systems were 16-bit. I need to stop thinking about all of this. I've got the old "Thirty-two.... X... Welcome to the next level" growl stuck in my head now, and it will potentially give me a bigger headache than thirty minutes of Virtual Boy play. Arrrrggghhh! Red lines!
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute