Most forms of DRM these days are getting more and more draconian and it's only hurting the companies--there was huge public backlash when it was revealed that Diablo III would only be playable, regardless if you were on single player or multiplayer--while being connected to the internet. So you can't play this game during bad weather that'll disrupt the internet, or play on a long plane ride. Hell, when questioned about it, Blizzard flat out told people to "play some other game" during such times. Would it really kill them to make it so that single player doesn't need a constant internet connection to play?

Another really bad example of DRM: Mass Effect 3 for the PC. If you play multiplayer, and use the quick match option to try and find a simple match to play, there's a small chance you might end up on a hacked server. And if you do, that's it. Your entire EA account is toast--EA will ban you for playing on a hacked server, accident or not. By doing so, you lose access to any games you bought on their Origin platform, including Mass Effect 3, which is exclusive to Origin. So you've bought more than one game on Origin, EA's essentially stealing all of that money. All in the name of anti-piracy! *sigh*

EA in general tends to piss me off. Their policies tend to do some pretty hefty damage to games--like Battlefield 2142. The one Battlefield game I've ever been interested in playing, and I can't ever play it. I could only play it on my Windows XP computer, which wasn't good enough to play it consistently without crashing. When I got my current machine, which uses Windows Vista, it had the specs to handle it.

Except for the fact that it used Windows Vista. Battlefield 2142 can't run on Vista; but EA was kind enough to make some patches to allow it to run on Vista! Unless you use the 64 bit version of Vista, that means you're pretty much screwed; EA only released patches for XP 32 bit, XP 64 bit, and Vista 32 bit and refused, for whatever reason, to make one for Vista 64 bit, and ignored pretty much every request on their official forums to make one.

Then there's the whole EA/Bioware PR disaster that came with Mass Effect 3 and it's ending... but that's spoileriffic so I won't get into it here. Bioware's support for their games after launch is also pretty terrible. Full of bugs? You'll have to wait months for a patch and you'll be lucky if you get more than one. And they won't fix all problems, even if they're pretty major. For the record, you still can't run Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening and the Dragon Age: Origins: Soldier's Peak DLC without having some incompatibility issues with items in-game. On the PC version, you can install some mods to fix that (though the nature of the bug means you're uninstalling it and reinstalling it every time you make a new game). Xbox or Playstation versions? You're shit outta luck! You also can't import items acquired from Soldier's Peak into the Awakening expansion, EVEN THOUGH THEY MENTION THE EVENTS IN THAT DLC IN AWAKENING. They've never bothered to explain why, either.

Dragon Age II had some pretty bad bugs in it, one of which would permanently mangle your character's attack speed. It took MONTHS for them to fix it.

*Points at the PS3* That.

While free online has it's perks and they HAVE managed to improve the online quality, little things like having trouble reading their own discs without workaround, lollygagging until far too late on release, price drops and backwards compatibility, as well as outright terrible customer service and - this is the big one - INCREDIBLY INSECURE SERVERS AND AN INABILITY TO PROTECT THEIR CUSTOMERS, I simply have no desire to play with it.

While I loved the PS1 and adore the PS2 on a level usually reserved for the SNES, the PS3 has seen no end of issues, and that's reflected in the amount of quality games released for it. While we can argue that Medal of Brothers Recon Duty is good - and while it's not my kind of game, I won't argue - there's simply not enough content beyond that to really warrant my buying it. I've owned two (Friends threw them out because they stopped working) which I refurbished, and my room mate has also owned two, there's simply not enough there anymore.

And it makes me sad inside, Sony. You killed a part of my childhood. Well... Man-boyhood. But whatever. The conversion from Sony Fanboy to Microsoft - MICROSOFT! I WORK WITH COMPUTERS CONSTANTLY! - fan was a painful one.

I hold up hope that they'll keep their losses to a minimum and learn from their mistakes with the PS4. God, I hope they stay in the race.

But the Steam and Google concept consoles sound amazing.