Brad Shoemaker has resisted the siren call of achievement points so far, but Geometry Wars may yet have its way with him. Challenge him to finally join Xbox Live at [email protected].

　　Console role-playing games need to develop beyond the current standards, because as they are now, they just feel antiquated. As other genres become more and more nebulous and intermixed, role-playing games still adhere to the same formula that has been used for the past four console generations. Driving games have certainly moved beyond Pole Position, first-person shooters have moved beyond Wolfenstein, and it's about time that role-playing games moved beyond Final Fantasy. We don't need an entire reworking of the mechanics of role-playing, but it would be nice to at least get a slight reprieve from the cookie-cutter characters and uninspired narratives that have been diluting the genre over the past several years.

　　If you can't change the game itself, at least you can change the way you access it.

　　And it's not just role-playing games. None of the classical genres are exempt from this kind of design stagnation. We've already seen it seeping into the "next generation" of gaming with the Xbox 360's sound, but uninspired, launch lineup. Kameo, Call of Duty 2, Project Gotham 3--they're all good games, but if you've played action adventures, first-person shooters, and street racers for a reasonable length of time, you're not going to find anything shockingly new about them. Same games, new coats of paint. Sure, original ideas pop up here and there, but for every Katamari Damacy that comes out of left field, there are a thousand cookie-cutter sequels and copycats cluttering up the shelves, not moving innovation forward at all.

　　If design isn't advancing much within the established software categories, at least the form and functionality of the new hardware itself is highly invigorating. It used to be that a game console was defined entirely by its games, because playing games was the one and only thing it could do. You put a game in, hit power, and the game appeared on the television. Starting the system up without a game inserted netted you nothing but a blank screen. But as consoles have gained new features--first CD drives, then USB ports, now hard drives and Internet connectivity--they've naturally made available a whole realm of functionality that was previously unheard of in the primordial, cartridge-bound days.

　　First it was a simple CD audio player and save-game manager, as seen in the earliest disc-based systems like the SegaCD. Next came the first generation of consoles to employ 3D graphics--and who could forget the PlayStation's clunky interface for editing save files on memory cards? Finally, with the PS2 and Xbox we started to see out-of-game user interfaces that provided some degree of extra functionality and system-level feature control. But it has taken until now for someone to come up with a console whose user-interface internals are so elegant that you'd want to sit there messing with it without even putting a game in.

　　Say what you will about the current crop of Xbox 360 titles, but Microsoft did an absolutely bang-up job designing the hardware--or, more specifically, the user interface and available features--of the console itself. It's not an exaggeration for me to say the first time I got to sit down with a 360 and just explore the system that I did in fact spend a big chunk of time just playing with that lovely interface before I did anything else (despite having a stack of games to try out). I suspect most new 360 owners have had a similar experience--the interface has an eye-catching visual design, it's extremely responsive to your input, and it lets you do so many things from the same place. Tweaking your video and network settings, managing your friends and messages on Xbox Live, downloading new demos, even plugging in your iPod--it all happens seamlessly from the same attractive interface.

　　Microsoft has also wrapped the experience of playing a game with enticing new features, the virtues of which my cohorts have lauded and gushed over previously. The persistent gamer profile is a masterstroke of usability, what with its almost transparent management of per-user save games (no more fumbling through a list of saves in a house full of gamers to remember which one is yours); its instant notifications through Xbox Live of who's online and what they're doing; and especially the achievement points that first seemed gimmicky but have now proven to be a compelling replay incentive, if recent fanatical behavior around GameSpot is any indication. Microsoft has improved the gameplay experience by rethinking not the games themselves, but the trimmings around them.

　　C'mon Sony, let people develop their own software for this incredible device you've made. You know you want to.

　　Then there's the PSP, surely the most advanced and marvelous handheld ever conceived. Again, the software lineup to date is somewhat tepid, but the potential of Sony's portable hardware is enormous. Look at the screen on that thing. Look at what they're already doing with movies on UMD, consider the access to mass storage via memory stick, and imagine what else they could do with all the hardware that's packed into the PSP. Sony's already doing a good job of adding new functionality to the system, from new video codecs to the recent Web browser. But think about the possibilities if the PSP were actually opened up to even limited home-brew software development. It's a compelling package already, but if you could get online and find little applications that covered every need you could possibly have, who wouldn't want to buy one?

　　When the console makers started to slowly integrate game-unspecific functionality into their consoles, many hardcore gamers cried foul. It was around the time of the Xbox's announcement that you heard people complaining they might as well just stick a PC under their television and cut out the middleman. But all those hard drives and Ethernet ports and Wi-Fi connections haven't diluted the gameplay experience one iota. Au contraire--they've only enhanced it around the edges, making the same sorts of games you've been playing for years that much more enjoyable. Nintendo may be the only console maker looking to shake up the very fundament of game design in the next generation, but it sure is nice to see Microsoft and Sony pursuing peripheral avenues of innovation, too.

　　Next Up: Better. Faster. Stronger. by Jason Ocampo