Jeff Hoy, American

I have picked my weapon in the next-gen console wars. I have bought a Playstation 3.

The reasons

The brand

There are many reasons why I went with Sony’s monolith, but the main reason is because it’s a PLAYSTATION F’n THREE!. The Playstation brand has been the dominant system (much to my chagrin, I’m a Sega Fanboy at heart and I was very sad to see the Dreamcast killed off so young by the dark beast Playstation 2) for the past 12 years. I have no reason to believe that the trend will not continue into the near and far future. There is some very stiff competition this time around, the Wii seems to be an unstoppable juggernaut for Nintendo and the Xbox 360 is certainly doing pretty well for itself in the North American and European markets, despite some nagging hardware issues.

The games

The 360 has been out for about two years now and it can boast of a very strong game library. The Wii has almost reached it’s first birthday and the hits just keep coming. Gears of War and Halo 3 for the big “X” and every game Nintendo has made for the Wii are certainly nothing to shake a stick at. But the Playstation 3 has it’s share of great games as well. Resistance: Fall of Man is a very cool game and Motorstorm is quite impressive in graphics and game play. There’s also plenty of impressive looking first and third party exclusive titles coming out in the near future, such as Warhawk and Heavenly Sword.  So the game library of the PS3 is looking good.  But let’s also not forget the inclusion of the Emotion Engine chip from the Playstation 2.  That chip allows for full backwards compatibility with the PS2 game library.  Thousands of games are available to play on the PS3 thanks to that.  But wait, there’s more.  The Emotion Engine also provides backwards compatibility with the original Playstation, so add to the list thousands of more games.  Compare that with the Xbox 360′s version of backwards compatibility, a software emulation solution that only works with a small part of the entire Xbox library.  In fact, only three of the Xbox games I own are compatible on the 360.  The Wii’s backwards compatibility is better, offering nearly full support of GameCube games.

The Blu-Ray

The Playstation 3 in addition to being a next-gen game machine is also a next-gen DVD player.  Sony was kind enough to include Blu-Ray high definition DVD playback in the console, without having to buy an extra accessory.  Currently Blu-Ray is winning the high-def DVD format war over the Microsoft backed HD-DVD standard.  Sales of Blu-Ray movies are about double the sales of HD-DVDs currently, despite lower costs for HD-DVD players and movies.  Also, pretty much every major movie studio is backing Blu-Ray.  Of course, most of them are also backing HD-DVD.  The only loser in this format war is the consumer I suppose.  But I don’t really care much about the disc format, only the high-definition video that I get to watch.  I have a 40″ full-HD LCD from Samsung, and I sit only five feet away from it, so unlike a lot of people, I actually can see a difference between high-def and standard video.

Why Now?

The price-drop

Right around E3 time (a large video game business convention) Sony announced a $100 price drop for Playstation 3.  I felt that the $500 price tag was a reasonable price point for such a capable machine.  Of course this price-drop has the appearance of a “everything-must-go” sell-out.  Sony also announced at the same time that they have discontinued the production of the current model (sporting a 60 GB hard-drive) and will be replacing it with a new model with a larger hard-drive.  The catch is the new model will be retailing for the original price of $600.  Once the $500 version sells out, there will not be a $500 PS3 available.

The emotion engine

As I noted in a previous section, the Playstation 3 includes within it the Emotion Engine processor that was responsible for driving the Playstation 2.  The reason I am pointing this fact out twice is that there is a very important piece of information regarding it and the new model of the Playstation 3.  It seems that in a measure to cut costs Sony has removed the Emotion Engine chip from the new model of the PS3.  Sony is moving to a software emulation approach similar to that of the Xbox 360.  The bad part of the deal though is that the software emulation will not have the same level of compatibility as the pure hardware style of backward compatibility did.  It’s upsetting that Sony chose this route, but that’s another reason why I got my PS3 now, instead of waiting.

Summer of Blu-Ray offer

There is a standing offer of five free Blu-Ray movies if you purchase a qualifying Blu-Ray player.  The Playstation 3 happens to be one of them.  The actual selection of titles you are allowed to choose from is kind of weak, but there are a few worth owning.  In total it comes out to about $125 worth of movies given to you for free.  The offer expires soon, so again, a reason for me not to wait any longer.

Conclusion

So far I am really enjoying my Playstation 3.  I own a few good retail titles for it and also have purchased a few games from the Playstation Network Store.  When I was having computer problems I used it to browse the internet and check my email, though the web browser isn’t the best.  Overall I would recommend the Playstation 3 if you have the cash to spare.  If you’re a bit short-changed but still absolutely need a next-gen game system then I suppose your best bet would be the Wii or a Xbox 360 Core system.