Interscription

And yet I can’t stop listening to him, week after week.  Here there be Kool-aid fans, ladies and germs.

Never hiding my blatant Microsoft fanboydom, I will shovel unmeasured heaps of Xbox 360-related propaganda in my brain with the tenacity of a strung-out coke whore.  It’s honestly unfortunate to hear the frustrating softball questions, the blind defense of poor technological solutions, and the painful ego-stroking that goes on week after week.  Let us take the second of these as a jump-off point…

Major Nelson will usually force a pause at the end of his podcasts, creating an "aftershow" which allows him to (I guess?) give his "off-the-books" remarks to his eager audience.  In a sickeningly biased statement, Major Nelson defends the noisy DVD drive of the Xbox 360, stating that the Blu-Ray disc "only spins at 2X, while our DVD drive runs at 16X.  I mean, we could slow it down to 2X IF YOU WANTED, but then you’d have to deal with corresponding load times…"  (Check the last two minutes of his most recent podcast to feel just a little bit smaller!)

Sir Nelson…can I point you to your collegue Andre Vrignaud’s article regarding the MUCH more comparible drive speeds?

This is certainly not the first time Lawrence has insulted his listenership with condescending snippets and holier-than-thou epithets of someone who has been in the gaming industry too long.  I find his remarks to be company-serving and largely useless.  In truth, his interviews are the ONLY reason to listen to these bloated slices of Xbox self-love, although he dilutes these choice encounters with some of the lamest, non-controversial questions in history.  (Politics is certainly in your future, Mr. Hryb).

I find candid fanboydom to be the only way to truly appreciate a particular thing, be it a console, a retail outlet, or a football team.  I would LOVE to replace him in a weekly podcast.  Love it.  Or get us someone from Joystiq or Xboxic, two of my favorite websites for gaming-related news, however biased they (and honestly, EVERYONE) can be from time to time.  Hell, even IGN will lay into Peter Moore when it’s warranted…

Listen, nobody here is advocating that anyone needs to be rude, but I really think that the industry needs to answer for the choices it has made.  My girlfriend has made more than a reference or two about the Xbox 360 being "my baby", and yet you’ll still here me rabidly attacking the jet engine that is the 360’s DVD drive, as well as the 13GB of addressable space on the 360’s optional hard drive.  (Oh yeah, and it doesn’t have to be THAT optional, guys…bump that 20GB down to $50, and release a 100GB, $100 model!  The people will love you!)  I know, I know, those two things are for another rant…

Perhaps it’s that, even though I particularly dislike The Major’s specific brand of communication (parental, fake, disingenous, belittling…), it doesn’t really serve M$’s interests to have someone who can’t balance the story honestly and fairly.  I know journalism has much more to do with spin than with facts, but this can simply be executed better.  Give US the access to these folks for interviews, Larry…we’ll ask them the questions you don’t know how to ask.