Breaking my video game streak...

I grew up playing the Atari 2600. I know that at one point I "bought" my Dad the game "Superman" for the Atari for Father's day - presumably because I wanted to play it.

In 1985, my parents bought me and my sister a Nintendo Entertainment System, complete with the light gun and the robot-thing.

At some point during the 16-bit game era, my sister and I ended up with a Genesis. It was several years into the era, we had not immediately jumped into the 16-bit era.

In 1996, I received a Nintendo64 for Christmas. I was pretty surprised. My roommate ended up with a PlayStation, so between us we had the best of both worlds.

Because I worked in the "industry", I was able to obtain a PlayStation 2 and a GameCube very close to their release dates in 2000 and 2001 (I think I had to wait a month or so after they were released).

But I don't own an Xbox360, a PlayStation3, or a Wii. I'm not sure that I ever will. If I do, it'll be after the prices drop. The Xbox360 and PlayStation3 are too expensive right now. Plus with one betting on HDDVD and the other on Blu-Ray, I'd rather wait and see what happens there. Many publishers are no longer doing exclusive titles for just one console, so with the exception of a few games, it really doesn't matter which one you buy. The Xbox360 online experience is very nice though, we'll see if Sony's measures up. The Wii is pretty interesting - I haven't played it yet but I'm very curious to see what they've done with their motion-sensing controller and how it ties into the games. It seems like it could be a great "social" gaming platform. The Wii's technical specs are really low, which lets them keep the price point low. Plus Nintendo's Intellectual Property is second to none, and people will buy Mario, Zelda, etc. no matter what type of game system it's on.

I still like video games. I think Guitar Hero is a lot of fun. And sitting down with some friends and playing the latest multiplayer game can be really fun too. I just don't invest as much time as I used to in playing games. And with many of the PlayStation3 or Xbox360 games, if you don't put enough time into the games, they just don't become fun enough. Every once in awhile there are games that you can play for either 5 minutes or 5 hours and still enjoy (SSX and Katamari Damarcy come to mind). Those are the games that I am more interested in lately.

To all the parents who have kids saying they won't speak to anyone ever again if they don't get a PlayStation3 this holiday... well, good luck with that.