Just before Digitiser began, in the year 84BC, we made a choice not to review Amiga games.
As you might expect, it wasn't a popular decision with Amiga owners, whose ire we further stoked by calling them idiots when they wrote in to complain (like the idiots they were... TROLLLLLL).
However, there was more to it than simply dismissing the format outright on a whim: between the team, we already had a Mega Drive and a Super NES - the two main formats at the time - so it was easy to review games for them.
Plus, we'd been struggling to get PR people to take us seriously enough to send us review copies. "You're a video games magazine on Teletext?" they'd cough, before swearing and hanging up to snort some more cocaine.
We eventually managed to do a deal with a console game importer, who had a shop in Park Royal (trivia: it's now a Kosher butchers); in return for a plug at the bottom of our reviews, they'd provide us with games (which we had to give back after a time).
However, they didn't sell stuff for anything except the main consoles. Crucially, they didn't sell games for the Amiga, the only other real format of the time (PC was still a slow-burning, esoteric curio back then). Additionally, Teletext wasn't prepared to buy us an Amiga anyway, because they hated us, so it was a no-brainer: we weren't going to review Amiga games.
Today's Amiga? The Xbox One. Sort of. Ish. Allow me to elaborate.
As you might expect, it wasn't a popular decision with Amiga owners, whose ire we further stoked by calling them idiots when they wrote in to complain (like the idiots they were... TROLLLLLL).
However, there was more to it than simply dismissing the format outright on a whim: between the team, we already had a Mega Drive and a Super NES - the two main formats at the time - so it was easy to review games for them.
Plus, we'd been struggling to get PR people to take us seriously enough to send us review copies. "You're a video games magazine on Teletext?" they'd cough, before swearing and hanging up to snort some more cocaine.
We eventually managed to do a deal with a console game importer, who had a shop in Park Royal (trivia: it's now a Kosher butchers); in return for a plug at the bottom of our reviews, they'd provide us with games (which we had to give back after a time).
However, they didn't sell stuff for anything except the main consoles. Crucially, they didn't sell games for the Amiga, the only other real format of the time (PC was still a slow-burning, esoteric curio back then). Additionally, Teletext wasn't prepared to buy us an Amiga anyway, because they hated us, so it was a no-brainer: we weren't going to review Amiga games.
Today's Amiga? The Xbox One. Sort of. Ish. Allow me to elaborate.
THE REASONING
See, we reasoned that the Amiga was on its way out. Having launched in 1985, it was already eight years old by the time Digi launched, and it just wasn't sexy compared to the exciting new consoles. There was, frankly, a whiff of death about it... Death by Computer Boys.
You could see the sharks circling the Amiga - and, by extension, Commodore - in a similar way when Sega launched the 32X, and then the Saturn, and then the Dreamcast. Those machines were never going to succeed, because they arrived into the world with the world expecting them to fail. It was pretty obvious that Sega was flailing around like a squid in a bin, and just piling bad decisions atop one another, like a drunk setting up for a game of Jenga.
See also: Atari - the Jaguar launch was the games industry's equivalent of getting diarrhoea on the way to climb Mount Everest, and having to turn back.
Far be it for me to say we were the best guys ever, but every single time we called it that a system or a company would fail - it ended up failing. Admittedly, that is because we were the best guys ever, but still... It pains me to say this, but I can see the shark fins approaching the Xbox One's liferaft...
See, we reasoned that the Amiga was on its way out. Having launched in 1985, it was already eight years old by the time Digi launched, and it just wasn't sexy compared to the exciting new consoles. There was, frankly, a whiff of death about it... Death by Computer Boys.
You could see the sharks circling the Amiga - and, by extension, Commodore - in a similar way when Sega launched the 32X, and then the Saturn, and then the Dreamcast. Those machines were never going to succeed, because they arrived into the world with the world expecting them to fail. It was pretty obvious that Sega was flailing around like a squid in a bin, and just piling bad decisions atop one another, like a drunk setting up for a game of Jenga.
See also: Atari - the Jaguar launch was the games industry's equivalent of getting diarrhoea on the way to climb Mount Everest, and having to turn back.
Far be it for me to say we were the best guys ever, but every single time we called it that a system or a company would fail - it ended up failing. Admittedly, that is because we were the best guys ever, but still... It pains me to say this, but I can see the shark fins approaching the Xbox One's liferaft...
KNIVES OUT
Since before the Xbox One launched, the long knives were out, and Microsoft stumbled blindly onto them.
From the moment Microsoft put its foot in it with the assertion that the machine would need to be always online (before backtracking), to stubbornly persevering with the unloved Kinect hardware (before backtracking), to announcing that Rise of the Tomb Raider would be an Xbox One exclusive (which seemed to please nobody), there's been a sense of one misstep after another.
Throw into this persistent rumours that Microsoft has toyed with the notion of selling off the brand to a third-party, and may yet do so (nobody wants to back a machine that its own manufacturer doesn't believe in), and sales figures that demonstrate just how far it lags behind the PS4, and the relatively lukewarm reaction to the likes of Sunset Overdrive and Titanfall, it's impossible to ignore that familiar whiff of decay.
What's worrying, is that once the slide begins it tends to prove virtually impossible to stop.
It's frustrating for me - I stubbornly loved the Xbox 360 despite not much liking the original Xbox, and despite everyone, in the early days, insisting it was a crap system. I stuck to my guns while harbouring a passionate hatred for the PlayStation 3. If there was a mutliformat title I wanted, I'd get it on the 360, and mostly keep the PS3 for Blu-Rays and Uncharted games. The one PS3 I ever bought sat behind the telly gathering dust for years at a time, while I went through three 360s over the course of the system's life (yeah, yeah... red ring of death - whatevs).
When it came to the new generation, it was the Xbox One I put my faith in, more out of sheer loyalty than any wrong-brained belief that I needed a Kinect 2.0. Yet somehow, things have now reversed - it's now the Microsoft machine that has moss growing on it, and it's the PS4 that I'm playing multiformat games on. Something has shifted.
Since before the Xbox One launched, the long knives were out, and Microsoft stumbled blindly onto them.
From the moment Microsoft put its foot in it with the assertion that the machine would need to be always online (before backtracking), to stubbornly persevering with the unloved Kinect hardware (before backtracking), to announcing that Rise of the Tomb Raider would be an Xbox One exclusive (which seemed to please nobody), there's been a sense of one misstep after another.
Throw into this persistent rumours that Microsoft has toyed with the notion of selling off the brand to a third-party, and may yet do so (nobody wants to back a machine that its own manufacturer doesn't believe in), and sales figures that demonstrate just how far it lags behind the PS4, and the relatively lukewarm reaction to the likes of Sunset Overdrive and Titanfall, it's impossible to ignore that familiar whiff of decay.
What's worrying, is that once the slide begins it tends to prove virtually impossible to stop.
It's frustrating for me - I stubbornly loved the Xbox 360 despite not much liking the original Xbox, and despite everyone, in the early days, insisting it was a crap system. I stuck to my guns while harbouring a passionate hatred for the PlayStation 3. If there was a mutliformat title I wanted, I'd get it on the 360, and mostly keep the PS3 for Blu-Rays and Uncharted games. The one PS3 I ever bought sat behind the telly gathering dust for years at a time, while I went through three 360s over the course of the system's life (yeah, yeah... red ring of death - whatevs).
When it came to the new generation, it was the Xbox One I put my faith in, more out of sheer loyalty than any wrong-brained belief that I needed a Kinect 2.0. Yet somehow, things have now reversed - it's now the Microsoft machine that has moss growing on it, and it's the PS4 that I'm playing multiformat games on. Something has shifted.
WHAT HAS SHIFTED, DEAR?
The games industry is different to how it was in Digi's heyday. That's obvious.
Plus, the players are much bigger fish - Microsoft is one of the largest corporations in the world, it has sunk billions into the Xbox, and we can't see it giving up the fight in the immediate future. Not unless, as I fear might be happening, the belief that the Xbox One has failed becomes ingrained in the collective consciousness, and it becomes a self-perpetuating slide.
Nobody wants to back what they see as a busted horse - and unless people are backing the Xbox One, there's no way it's going to be able to reverse the public perception. It's a snowball effect, and unless something happens, there will come a tipping point.
At this stage, I'm not sure how many exclusives, how many big franchises - even Tomb Raider or Halo - it would take to reverse this downward trajectory, and pull the system back from the brink.
We're not at a point yet where the Xbox One is careening down a slope towards an inevitable oblivion, but it seems clear that the PlayStation 4 has a significant lead - not just in terms of sales, but in terms of how positively people see it - and the Microsoft system is teetering at the top of the precipice.
I hope I'm wrong, and I hope it doesn't happen. The games market is better and stronger if there are competing systems, and gamers have a choice. And with Nintendo effectively giving up on the Wii U - let's face it, without Zelda coming this year, what is there on the horizon in 2015 to get excited about? - we need a Sony AND we need a Microsoft.
Then again, while I don't really, truly, want the Xbox One to stiff, I do love being proved right. So, y'know, swings and roundabouts, guy.
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
The games industry is different to how it was in Digi's heyday. That's obvious.
Plus, the players are much bigger fish - Microsoft is one of the largest corporations in the world, it has sunk billions into the Xbox, and we can't see it giving up the fight in the immediate future. Not unless, as I fear might be happening, the belief that the Xbox One has failed becomes ingrained in the collective consciousness, and it becomes a self-perpetuating slide.
Nobody wants to back what they see as a busted horse - and unless people are backing the Xbox One, there's no way it's going to be able to reverse the public perception. It's a snowball effect, and unless something happens, there will come a tipping point.
At this stage, I'm not sure how many exclusives, how many big franchises - even Tomb Raider or Halo - it would take to reverse this downward trajectory, and pull the system back from the brink.
We're not at a point yet where the Xbox One is careening down a slope towards an inevitable oblivion, but it seems clear that the PlayStation 4 has a significant lead - not just in terms of sales, but in terms of how positively people see it - and the Microsoft system is teetering at the top of the precipice.
I hope I'm wrong, and I hope it doesn't happen. The games market is better and stronger if there are competing systems, and gamers have a choice. And with Nintendo effectively giving up on the Wii U - let's face it, without Zelda coming this year, what is there on the horizon in 2015 to get excited about? - we need a Sony AND we need a Microsoft.
Then again, while I don't really, truly, want the Xbox One to stiff, I do love being proved right. So, y'know, swings and roundabouts, guy.
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
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