So, things have been awfully tight, financially for the last few months, but things re lookin’ up. Got $250 in cash from father in law and mom, the Wife says ‘Sure, got get a PS3, I want to watch Blu-Rays’.
A little background: I’ve got an Xbox 360, Wii, and an Apple TV (running Boxee) have a couple dozen games I play semi-occasionally, have a linux farm for storage and movie ripping, I’m pretty serious gadget freak.
But man. I just couldn’t buy a PS3. For one thing, $400 buys you the console and nothing else and THAT’s $150 more than I have in the B’day envelope. For $500, I’d get another controller, a cable, and no backwards compatibility from Costco. I’m not convinced it’d give me much more than I already have. Netflix’ll send me bluerays, and that’s nice, but I get MOST of that now with DVD’s, Apple TV, Netflix streaming on the Xbox, and Dish HD.
It’s wierd, it’s like I broke my consumer gland. The PS3’s pretty much the only family room consumer electronic I DON’T have. What I’ve seen looks pretty. And if I got that $200 combo drawing from Amazon, I’m pretty sure I’d buy one, but not at full price.
Does this mean I have to turn in my Geek Cred card?
No. The PS3 is really just not a very valuable peice of electronics.
Let me explain what I mean by that. The value proposition it is trying to s4ell is fundamentally flawed; not many people really want that. For a system which is, at best, marginally better than the Xbox 360, it is much more expensive and offers very few side advantages, like Xbox Live or the online Nintendo games thingy collection.
I haven’t played my PS3 for a couple of months until yesterday when I rented Little Big Planet which as turned out to be an amazing game that I highly suggest anyone play. I’m going to end up buying it. It will be one of 4 PS3 games I’ve bought. Ninja Gaiden, GTA4 and MGS4 are the others. And MLB the Show too so I guess that’s 5.
Not at all. I consider myself perfectly geeky ( is this a good thing :p? ) and I don’t even own a console of any sort.
In my case it’s not an issue of being a PC-gaming supermacist. A couple of my friends have 360’s and have urged me repeatedly to get one so we could play games online. I think they’re neat and I’ve come close to pulling the trigger a couple of times - but I just can’t do it. I am largely a strategy and RPG gamer. By contrast I’m largely uninterested or have only very limited interest in racing, sports, FPS, adventure, simulators or puzzle games. Given that, I can’t quite justify it to myself.
Beyond my own issues, getting a PS3 on top of a 360 ( in particular ), Wii and PC just seems like overkill to me. I can’t imagine why you should be chastizing yourself for being ever so slightly sensible :).
Well, I can say that there’s another way of looking at it: For awhile, at least, it was the best Blu-Ray player. The others were either more expensive, or didn’t have enough processing power to do what Blu-Ray was supposed to do.
IMHO, I think physical media is dead. I can get pretty much all of my needs from the internet or Satellite. I’d also neglected to remember a self imposed boycott of Sony products, based on a bad experience with their laptops, their burning desire to create new media types, and little things like keeping their media prices higher than the competition.
Looking at it closer, it seems like something they’re continuing to do when you consider the odd-ball mix of PS3 SKU’s that aren’t backward compatible.
I’d consider pulling the trigger… and leaving a nice, fresh hole in the PS3. That way you have received a free upgrade: your Sony console is now a buttugly doorstop. Definite improvement.
Anti-Sony sentiment aside, is there anything a PS3 could offer you that an XBox, along with a PC, couldn’t? Anything, that is that would justify such a cost? I think you made the right call.
I’m actually looking for a financially sane source of High Def movies…that could be a PS3 with Netflix…or? That’s the problem with where I stand right now. the high Def that’s available to me is more than I want to pay for. I go through 5-10 DVD’s month, if I were to rent stuff in High Def, that’d be nother $25-$50 a month I don’t care to spend. I’m hopin’ netflix ramps up it’d high def streaming catalog soon.
The occasional Blu-ray torrent I’ve downloaded (purely for scientific reasons) won’t play back on ANYTHING I’ve got as that huge 1080p signal just chokes the pipes. Course, I’ve only done it once, and that may have been a bad rip, but streaming video is certainly more art than science, it seems.
I just finished watching season 3 of *It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia- *upscaled for my HDTV. Later tonight, I’m watching the Blu-ray version of Bender’s Game. Yesterday, I played Little Big Planet and DeadSpace. Oh, and for my party last week, I streamed music from my networked hard drive (attached to my router, no PC necessary) so that I could play it over my TV/Stereo. When I’m not using it, it’s calculating folding.
All done with my PS3- I don’t have a DVD player anymore.
Granted, there are other electronics that can do all of that- but there’s no *one *item that can do it all.
I actually like my PS3. Is it perfect? No. I don’t regret buying it, however.
a small subset of their catalog is HD, so far I’ve just caught an episode of Heroes in HD. We’ve been using the streaming feature quite a bit and it works well.