Take a look in every corner of your gaming room, and I am sure you will find a pile of plastic gaming peripherals in one of them.  Everyone has it, whether it’s secretly tucked at the bottom of a coat closet, or in a far away crevice of your living room (guilty here). The gaming industry has been transforming into a world where you need a specific peripheral for everything you play.

Over the course of gaming consoles history, the evolution of the “gold standard for controllers” has been a long fought battle.  The original Nintendo set the bar with its simple directional pad plus A and B buttons, that would only be outdone by itself two generations later with the analog stick featured on the N64.  After that, PlayStation and Xbox fanboys clashed as to which controller was king.  However, throughout the course of gaming history, we as gamers only needed to choose between which system had the best controller and that was that.  From there, we were free to play any game for that system, and we were content.

Sure some gimmick game peripherals were released, like the Power Glove, the SNES bazooka, or the microphone for the Sega Dreamcast (and that freaky, talking fish game, Seaman).  But those were few and far between, not ever seeming like a whole market segment on its own.

Times are a-changing.  It seems like every game these days has either its own peripheral, or some additional “thingy” that enhances the game in some magical way.  There’s the million rhythm games and their ridiculous mounds of plastic, each year adding another guitar, violin, or clarinet.  Soon we will all be adding a DJ booth to that pile to collect even more dust.   Then there is the Wii, and its growing number of contenders:  The Wii Fit, the plastic steering wheel, Wii MotionPlus, and soon the Wii Vitality Sensor Whatchamacallit.  There is also the Tony Hawk:Ride game with its hoverboard and just recently, the rumors of a COD: Modern Warfare 2 specific controller.  The list is moving away from the rhythm category and crossing over into every game genre.

As fun as these games can be, is there a point where we as gamers start to feel like we are pissing away our money, only to be forced to hold another piece of plastic in our hands?  Or would we rather these companies start to spend more time building epic, engrossing titles that hark back to the days when the standard system controller was the only thing between your hands and an interactive universe.  Where you would sit on your couch, not moving for anything other than to go to the bathroom, grab a fresh beer, or call the pizza guy.  I believe I would fall for the latter.  Sitting here staring at my very own “Corner of Plastic”, I would trade it all in right now for Final Fantasy XIII (And about $400 of my wasted money back).

[Images via Google Images]