Before the accusations of bias and advocacy start up, I would like to clear somethings up. First of all, I find flaws in all the video game competitors (that means Sega, Nintendo, and Sony). I have written editorials in the past bashing both Sega and Nintendo, and if I had the patience to I could do a similar editorial to this one but with the Saturn or Nintendo 64. Now that you have read the disclaimer, on with the show. Sony's Playstation came out of the gate smoking from day one, September 9th 1995. The ad campaign, and the media hype helped it to surpass Sega' Saturn in just one weekend. From day one, Sony has maintained its position as the 32 bit console sales leader. Unfortunately not all is well in Sony Land...... The main problem with Sony's console, is the way it is made, cheaply. Just holding a Playstation gives you a flimsy, fragile feeling; it's as if all the Playstation's components are lose inside the plastic casing. This contrasts with it's competitor, the Sega Saturn, which feels solid, sturdy, giving the user a tank like sense of security; there's nothing that can hurt the Saturn. As for the Playstation, it feels like it can fall apart at any moment, shattering to pieces in your hands just because you touched it wrong. Of course this is not the case, but the Playstation’s fragility, has caused some real problems. Numerous reports of Playstation lenses being knocked out of position have surfaced on usenet and other sources. What this means is that the Playstation is unable to read any CD at all. An other notorious problem associated with the Playstation is the skipping phenomenon. What skipping is, is when the Playstation tries to play FMV in a game (such as Resident Evil) the video skips, giving a "hiccup effect". This occurs when either two things happen: the lens gets knocked out of place or the system overheats. If the system overheats you got an easy so solution. Make sure the Playstation has proper room to breathe ( air out though the air slips) or simply blast a cool fan on the Playstation while in use. If it's a lens problem, your screwed. You can either open the Playstation and do some screwing around with the lens, or turn it upside down, which looks funny, but surprisingly works. Of course most normal people would just call Sony and get them to fix it, right? Wrong, Sony tries to say the problem doesn't exist, and if you somehow happen to convince them that something is wrong with your system, you have to foot the $80 bill to fix it; even if it's under warranty! Talk about customer service. An other Sony problem, is the memory cards. For twenty bucks you get enough room to save just 15 games (assuming each game takes up only one block, which is not always the case). This is a total rip-off, especially for someone like me that likes to have every little thing saved. In contrast the Saturn comes with pre-installed memory to get you started, and its memory cards though they cost more ( 50 bucks) will last you a lifetime. The lack of pre-installed memory adds to the Playstation "price" making it 20 dollars more than its competitor. In the end, the customer (myself) feels like their being nickeled and dime to death by Sony. As a side note, imagine how many people bought the Playstation figuring they could save their games to it, only to have to run back to the store to buy a memory card? I would guess a good number, it even happened to one of my friends (for whatever that's worth). Big problem with Sony is the double edged sword of having an easy system to develop for. This results in hovelware and lots of it. Most educated gamer's can spot it a mile away, but average Joe might not. This results in average Joe buying shovelware and getting fed up with videogames and moving on to something else. Can anyone say, crash? I know you can. This is the exact same situation that occurred in the first videogame crash, and Sony might be leading us down that path again. For everyone's sake lets hope not. An other reason not to cheer for Sony? Its monopolistic practices. Sony is intent in having every videogame company in its back pocket. It has already succeed with a few major ones: Psygnosis, Eidos, Namco, and few others. If Sony starts to have too much control in this business we might have a flashback to the mid-eighties when Nintendo and its NES ruled the land. Nintendo put restrictions in manufacturing and on where third parties could publish, among other things. None of them good for gamers. An other thing that could come of this, is the slow down in technological advances. This is what Atari did before the first crash, refusing to release a new system that made any advance over the old one, which made the videogame market stale. In perspective most of the above scenarios will hopefully not occur. Sony is not the market leader for nothing, it has a system with a lot of variety and quality games, along with great marketing. This editorial was written to remind everyone that no one, not even Sony is perfect. Hopefully I have giving you something to keep in the back of you mind, and hey if Sony one day rules the videogames world, don't say I didn't warn you. - Fernando Mosquera

Sure, it's a powerful system; but how well was it made? The Playstation gets shovelware by the droves, here's an Acclaim logo; enough said.