Dear Playstation

I'm sorry that I was so prejudicial towards you in the past. We haven't always gotten along and I know that is mostly my fault. The truth of the matter is you are the most awesome thing in the entire world and I've had more fun with you than I have on just about any other game system.

Your sleek new design, albeit inconvenient, demands well deserved attention. You don't stand upright and you negate the ability to pile anything on top of you; you have forced me to rearrange my desk and use a large portion of it simply to have you, but you are worth it.

PS3, you do not look better than my 360. You don't have the classics of the Wii. You will not play the PS2 games of many years' past. Your controller design is unchanged from an imperfect design. Why do I love you, you ask?

Free downloadable demos.

I was never the kind of guy who downloaded demos for my PC, but this is because my PC is used for so many other things. It has videos and word processors and design programs and entire games loaded on to it that never look as good as they could and play rather choppily. For a machine that cost two grand, my computer started to suck awfully fast.

But you, Playstation, are, by definition, designed for playing. And so I play. Some of your demos are not fun at all (Condemned 2, although scary, was hard to control and all too easy to get killed by something you couldn't see. Maybe your demo shouldn't be the level where your character is drunk. Maybe I just think 1st person shooters are lame). Some of your demos are so fun that I want to buy them when I otherwise would not (X-Men Origins was beyond fun, Wet was surprisingly entertaining, Conan is a $14.99 discount buy). This last point is the most brilliant marketing strategy ever, especially for a more consumer conscious culture.

I don't want to take a $70 risk on a game that I don't know that I will like. If I were to buy Conan at its opening price, I would be disappointed and be less likely to buy a new game before I let it become preowned and dropped in a discount bin, or if it was a good game, wrapped in a "classics" package 3 years later. I would not buy X-Men, but now probably will. I would not even consider Wet, though now I will shop around for it. And I wouldn't have bought these demos if they hadn't been free, either.

This is why I love you, Playstation. I love you in the worst way. You make me want to spend money on things you've shown me I will enjoy, and I thank you for it. I see the marketing plan and I don't fall victim to it, I support it.



Thank you to those of you who made me buy one.