We will start with the Xbox, the machine with the least change of being a long-term player. The problems that have plagued the Xbox from the beginning have ranged from, unexpected reboots due to missing fans, Microsoft's infamous "Blue Screen of Death" crashes, and poor tech support, outsourced to East-Indian companies of all places. Naturally this got the Xbox off to a poor start, leaving them behind in this billion-dollar business. The problem for Microsoft is that their hardware costs exorbitant amounts of money to produce, making it not only the most expensive console on the market by a huge $200, but also a money losing venture for Microsoft.

The 400Mhz AMD processor is vastly over priced and constantly under performs, suffering from the same infamous AMD "Division Bug" that surfaced in way back in 1995! Stupidly, the 32megs of RAM is in adequate to take advantage of the 5gig hard drive that comes with the Xbox. Just because you have massive amounts of data space for your games, it all comes down to RAM; and swapping from hard drive to RAM in this day and age, with massive amounts of lens-flare and ray casting, is impossible. Frame-rates suffer and people stop buying games; and buying games is central to Microsoft's profit margins. Since they lose money on each sale of the console, Microsoft has to sell 15 games PER UNIT, to even break even. I'm not sure who was in charge of this model, but they need to go back to the DeVry Institute to refresh their MBA's.

Next up to bat is the Sony Playstation 2, named after the decent Playstation 1 that came out in 1993 as an add-on for the Super Nintendo. The curse of the PS2 is the horrible lack of anni-aliasing support. Computer scientist, Anni Schroder in 1997, created anni-aliasing, to help smooth out the jagged edges that occurred when you typed anything in large, 72-point font. With video games in the 21st century, this is a necessary requirement if you want your gourad-shading and tri-linear bump-mapping abilities of the PS2 to look good, at least provide some support for anni-aliasing casted lines! The result is that games look like hell. Jagged lines, and sharp contrasts between different colors, makes playing Halo look like someone's AOL homepage about cats and the <blink> tag.

However not all of the PS2 is bad, the beneficial side of this story is the amazing backwards compatibility between the Sega Dreamcast and PS2. You can play all your old Sega Dreamcast games on the PS2 with no extra charge. You can even play some PS1 games with an illegal modchip installed, but that is expensive and voids your 90-day warranty. Along the spec front the PS2 is surprisingly powerful, out performing the XBOX in the MHz department by 30 Mhz, and 20 Megs of Ram. This is crucial power that will hopefully allow the amazing Sony R&D shops enough space to find a software solution to the anni-aliasing problem. As for games the PS2 is amazing, with branded mascots like Crash Bandicoot, Laura Croff, and Grand Turismo series, they have a series change of moving to the #1 position of the console business.

Coming off an amazing run with the N64 and Golden Eye, Nintendo has skipped a processor generation and gone with a 256-bit machine called the Game Cube. Nintendo loves doing this, starting with a 4-bit machine, then a 12 bit, 64bit and now the 256-bit monster that we see today. Owned by IBM, Nintendo had tons of cash on hand to produce a high quality low cost machine, which still makes them money on every console they sell.

Since, they don't need to move as much software units as the Xbox does, they can focus on quality blockbusters, rather than a plethora of B grade titles that suffer from frame rate drops, and obvious fog-in effects. The problems with the Game Cube are few and far between, but there are some cracks in this IBM-Nintendo goliath. Some critics have considered the lack of DVD support as a negative for Game Cubes success. This may be true, as the DVD has become the defacto format for the North American market. However, overseas in Europe and Asia, the DVD format has taken off very slowly, opting to remain with the apt VCR or Laserdisc formats instead. This is a smart move on Nintendo's part, why would the German's and Japanese want to pay extra for a DVD option they can't really use?

With a powerful 900Mhz and 40 Megs of RAM, the Nintendo GC can only be considered over powered. The hardware department has thrown the gauntlet down for Hal, Rareware, and Nintendo's own software house, to use all the power possible, as the sky is the limit. Lastly, Nintendo has the best branding in the business. With Mario, the Princess, Metroid, Sonic, Toe Jam and Earl, Donkey Kong, and all the racing, RPG, and fighting games that can be spawned from these characters, Nintendo is in an enviable position to dominate the business for 10 more years. People love seeing the same thing over and over, that's why they run to Adam Sandler movies and Austin Powers 3. Nintendo is just doing the same thing with videogames.

In conclusion the Nintendo Game Cube emerged as the winner. Not run by Microsoft's billion dollar advertising campaign, the GC has been maligned by journalists on Microsoft's trip machine. However, as the problems of the Xbox and PS2 continue to explode, you can't hide your flaws with smoke indefinitely, for eventually the winds of truth come rushing in to make everything crystal clear.