Of course, this reminds me of why I steered away from the PS3 in the first place–I rather dislike Sony as a company these days, due to various of its policies (statements like the one above, the copy-protection ‘rootkit’ debacle).
Thanks for all the input, folks. My dislike for Sony aside, I’ll probably go ahead and take the plunge. The Blu-Ray player and other aspects of flexibility seem to be worthwhile, given the cost of a decent BR player, and the games look solid enough.
Unsquare Dance, do you have a link for that media center software? It sounds as if it might be worth looking into.
The PS3 has a free online community, but it’s not as good as the one you get on XBL for a measley $50 a year, which really isn’t that bad.
Also, I’d hasten to point out that, while the PS3 has a blu-ray player, which is cool, it’s far easier to stream media over your network to a 360 (no add-ons needed) which allows you to not only play movies/look at pictures/play music (which the ps3 does) but you can play mp3s during games, and they pause during cutscenes and stuff so you can watch them (which I don’t think happens on the ps3).
That said, the PS3 is a great system, i won’t rag on it. I just lent my buddy my Wii and he lent me his ps3 (he beat all 4 games he has for the system and really wanted to play Mario Galaxy) and I’ve been playing through some Little Big Planet, which is absolutely excellent. I’m going to be giving Valkyria Chronicles a try, too (and maybe MGS4, but I always thought the games are way too long and drawn out in story, purposefully convoluted, and just way too full of itself. Personal opinion, though)
More Ps3 exclusives I’d really dig on would be Ratchet and Clank, Warhawk (loved the original on psx and really want to try the new one, despite what all the heathens say) and I actually just learned that Way of the Samurai 3 is not going to be a ps3 exclusive anymore I scratched that one off my list.
It’s a great system, but imo if you have a 360 you have the console with better exclusives in all departments (especially RPGs, which are sadly lacking on the ps3, well they’re lacking even more on the Wii, but you know what I mean) so if the few ps3 exclusives coupled with the blu-ray player are enough for you than definitely go for the system. I personally could not justify the purchase (even though I really really want to )
The nonplaying of Mp3s during games is another disappointment I had with the PS3. That was a glaring feature that the original XBox was able to flaunt over the Ps2. I was sure the PS3 would pick up on it and add it. From what I understand. It’s possible to do, but it’s not well advertised to developers so they don’t bother with it.
I have never streamed media files to my Ps3. But, it is my understanding that you only need Windows Media Player 11 to stream to it. That doesn’t seem like that big of an addon. In addition, I think any DLNA capable media server can work with the PS3.
For whatever reason, you have to navigate to down to the folder or drive directory - it won’t just display the file or play it…if I recollect have to hit the triangle, then “View all Contents” or something like that…you can select the filename and it should play as long as its encoded in a supportable format.
didn’t mean to imply that you needed an addon with the ps3, just that one wasn’t required for the xbox360 as I had mistakenly believed someone in a previous post had said. I was in a hurry at work, sorry
)