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Okay, my last few posts have been too politically themed. It's time for me to speak to the geeks in da house!
(WARNING! NERD CONTENT TO FOLLOW!)
We all know my love for the Nintendo Wii. It is the premiere dork party toy. Nothing beats it for having people over. I just turn it on, toss in Wii Sports and let the party "discover it". Within the hour you will have at least 4 friends gathered in front if it smacking tennis balls back and forth and having a great time. You don't have to teach people how to play, Just throw the wrist strap on them (the wrist strap is the only rule we live by. We got an expensive TV, you wear a wrist strap) and they figure it out. Even the folks that don't play get a kick out of watching people flail about.
Now alone, the Wii is pretty good still. I play a round of Tiger Woods Golf at least every week. Normally on Sunday or Monday mornings as I drink my coffee.
When it comes down to it, I'm a hardcore gamer though. I've gone through On line roleplaying game addictions (Everquest, Everquest 2), Strategy Marathons (Damn you Civilization IV!) and even shoot em ups courtesy of Half Life 2.
Every once in awhile I just want to sit down and play a good console game. It's a good way to unwind and even though the Wii gets you up off the couch, sometime I just want to plop down on it and make use of some of High Definition goodness.
So the time came for me to enter the Next Gen race between the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3....
E3 ( the big [or at one time big] gaming convention) was just held out in California. I was waiting for this to get under way to see if anyone had any big announcements like price cuts, big new games, or just something to sway me one way or another.
I was really sitting on the fence, and to start this off, I don't think there really is a wrong choice here. Both systems are just great for displaying the next generation of gaming. XBox is the leader right now in games and their online "XBox Live". Their E3 presentation was lackluster at best. They introduced a "Halo 3 Themed XBox" which honestly is just an ugly army green to clash with my entertainment set up. While Halo 3 might be the "must have" title this year, it just wasn't enough to sell me.
PS3 on the other hand shaved off $100 from their price to a hit a somewhat less silly $499. Now this caught my attention. I wasn't really shopping for a High Def DVD player, but if one just happened to come with my gaming system, then it's a great bonus. If Microsoft had tossed one into the XBox, it might have swayed my decision a bit. They do have an add on, but I'm not going to drop another $187 for something I'm not really sure I'll want yet.
The other points were that XBox has a ridiculous failure rate. Some are saying as high as %33. I don't want to get my new toy home just to ship it off in three weeks because it has "The Red Ring Of Death". They have extended the XBox 360 warranty to three years. That might sound good, but it's a really bad sign. Also, no built in wireless internet. I don't have a Ethernet cable in the room that houses my TV, but my WiFi is up and running just fine. Another $90 to add that feature to the XBox.
All in all, they $499 System looked like a value. I don't need a ton of games, just a few good ones. So many people are saying that Sony is going to tank on this generation of consoles. I just don't think so. XBox released their's a year earlier so they have a head start. They have some great games, but I really think that Sony might have botched the launch, but they are going to turn around and really start to show the power of the machine.
So, all things considered, I purchased a Playstation 3 from Newegg.com for $544.97 total including an extra controller. This is the 60gb model, but I'm not sure why everyone makes such a big deal out of hard drive size. The thing is removable and it's just a regular laptop hard drive. 60gb ain't cutting it? Bump it up to 160gb for $90 or less.
So far I've only played a few games, and man they are pretty. Motocross is just a fun little racing game. Driving the motorbikes is the shit and you can race on line. Virtua Fighter 5 was fine, I played it for an evening and shipped it back to Gamefly (which if you haven't tried yet, do so. It's great for auditioning video games).
Downloadable content has been pretty sweet. Calling All Cars is a great little game (keep in mind that you're only paying a few bucks for it.) It's a combination of RC Pro Am and Basketball. And Tekken 5 was downloaded at Arcade Quality and damn is it pretty!
I was also surprised at how easy the set up was. I loaded TVersity and was able to stream my MP3s and Videos directly into my Home System. Easy as pie.
Overall, I'm all kinds of impressed with the PS3. I think that it really is going to come into it's own as a great little home system.
I'm sure I'll chat about it some more, but my fingers are tired, and my thumbs are aching a bit. Thanks for letting me geek out.
Nerdcore for Life!
Landon
Posted by landon at July 20, 2007 11:31 AM