My PlayStation 2 stopped working last week. Well, it didn't completely shut down, you could still use the browser and edit the files on your memory cards, if you wanted to for some reason, but it stopped recognizing games and no amount of lens cleaning seemed to make a difference. This was my second PS2. The first one stopped working in the exact same manner. I can't remember what possessed me to buy a second one, but that's enough of that. Fool me once, Sony, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

It doesn't seem to have dissuaded the dozen or so people who lined up in front of the local Target the day before the PlayStation 3 came out, but the PS2's established record of fragility and my profound annoyance at having a second system break only hours into Final Fantasy XII was enough to get me to go out and buy an XBox 360 that very minute. I packed up my PS2, several dozen games, my old XBox, and since I was getting into the spirit of things my seldom-used Gamecube as well and hauled them down to Electronics Boutique. Thanks to my pack rat tendencies I had cases and manuals and in most cases the original twisty-ties for everything from the Game Boy Player to PS2 controller extension cables to the GC/GBA link cable I used exactly once to play Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. I think tallying up what the trade-in value for all of this crap was severely taxed the patience of the EB clerk, but eventually I walked out with an XBox 360 premium bundle, a second wireless controller, rechargeable battery packs, Call of Duty 2, FIFA Soccer '07, and Gears of War. Besides an entire generation's worth of accumulated gaming hardware, all it cost me was $21.

The XBox 360 is great. It's just a very sleek consumer device, taking advantage of Microsoft's superior engineering corps and the lessons they learned from their first console (no more giant-sized controllers). I've barely scratched the surface of its online functionality, noting only that you can download movies, TV shows, and old games including Lumines and the original DOOM. I didn't play a lot online with my old XBox, because I'm not a very competitive person and being trashed-talked by foul-mouthed 12-year-olds isn't exactly my idea of a good time, but even so one of the major selling points of the 360 is Microsoft's incredibly well-designed and functional XBox Live service. The 360 is designed from top to bottom with Live in mind; there's a dashboard button right on the controller so you can send and receive messages from friends even when you are playing single-player games. The way Microsoft forces its brand into every bit of every game, even third-party tiles, is insidious and reminiscent of how Windows tries to force you to use Word, Internet Explorer, and Media Player. For a video game console, however, the enforced uniformity is largely a good development. It's neat that every game has a set of "achievements" which automatically get posted to your gamer profile and even the XBox web site. Of course, now that my crummy skills are a matter of public record, all claims I ever might have had to being a real hardcore gamer are lost and gone forever.

I identify with hardcore gamers because almost all of my circle of friends in high school were those kind of guys. I don't play first-person shooters with their reflexive ease, sadly, because most of the time they spent fragging, I spent practicing the guitar, which in terms of eventual college hookup currency was definitely the right choice. Nonetheless I wish I was hardcore, and I realized trading in all of those old PS2, Gamecube, and XBox games that I have been buying games for many years as if I was. A lot of those games I traded in I barely played. They turned out to be too difficult, or too time-consuming, and I went right back to playing franchise mode in FIFA. And practicing the guitar more.

Well, I still want to be a gamer, but this changeover of systems presents a good opportunity for me to be realistic about what kind of gamer I am. From now on, I'm not buying any games except for ones I know I'm going to play backwards and forwards (again, FIFA). For the rest, well, I signed up for Gamefly and I am going to make an effort to play major new games and record my thoroughly non-hardcore perspective here in this space. I might be a few months behind the curve, but at least I won't be pretending I'm something I'm not. And I'll definitely save a lot of money.