Last week I traded in some of my games and systems and walked out of the local GameStop with a new PS3. It was a risky venture, especially since I traded in my Wii and my 360 to do it. Madness, you might say, and you'd likely be right. I've hardly touched either since January, however; I don't feel I've lost that much. I have a Mac and thus couldn't tap into much of the 360's functionality beyond streaming music and pictures (and that required purchasing a program called Connect360).
I'm not that much of a gamer. I often pick up the major games, I don't like first person shooters, sports games or car games at all (except on very rare occasions - with particularly brilliant implementations). Right now, for instance, I have Marvel Heroes, God of War II, Resident Evil 4, and Shadow of the Colossus. So, what I look for in a gaming platform is a good selection of games in general but more importantly, I'm looking for media center options. I want to 'live my digital lifestyle' and use all my digital movies, music, etc on my HDTV.
So, I purchased the PS3 as a bit of an impulse buy - I haven't been following it too much because the price more or less completely cut me off from planning on buying it anytime soon, and Sony's astonishing arrogance over the past year or so about it all irritated me somewhat. But, the Xbox Elite being released irritated me somewhat as well (given that it had many of the features it should have had to begin with) and GameStop was offering extra trade-in money for the 360. Also, I had heard that Sony was touting the PS3 as a media center, the hub of a media home, etc.
I was quite surprised, you'll understand, to find out it didn't really do anything terribly exciting. The PS3 suffers from a massive failure of vision. It is a pretty black box with enormous untapped potential, but all that potential doesn't change that it is, indeed, untapped. So, let's break it down.
- Blu-ray DVD Player - this is nice, don't get me wrong. I picked up The Fifth Element and Kingdom of Heaven - but there really isn't a whole lot out there right now. It's not Sony's fault, but it must be considered.
- Web Browser - The browser is pathetic. I won't say it's as bad as the Wii's, but it is still pretty awful and Sony should be ashamed it ever was released in the state it is in. It frequently fails to load a page without multiple attempts, its zoom and scaling levels are very extreme, and you really just never know what will work and what won't. The upside is some, rather surprising, sites do work. Such as YouTube, Google Video, and last.fm. None of these work well, mind you, but they do work. Pandora would work, I imagine, except the flash implementation doesn't allow one to type into the flash frame to enter a musician or login. Last.Fm works okay, but I'd avoid it. YouTube requires frequent page reloads, but once it starts working works well. Google Video is rather painful to deal with due to the zoom levels. This actually speaks to the web browser's poor integration in general, as it makes terrible use of screen real estate. In that spirit, it often cuts off the top of the screen on my 1080i TV. Honestly, I'm not wanting to read blogs on my PS3, but I would like to use those media sites in my living room.
- The Playstation Store - nice. Here's an issue with the failure of vision - it's a nice store, it works, you can buy things - but there are no movies, no music, no TV shows. The 360 has this, admittedly it has a poor selection, but it does have it! HD versions, no less! You'd think with this $600 dollar media hub, I could actually get some media. I also find it rather hard to read, as it doesn't allow you to zoom in and cuts off the edge of the screen on my television.
- User Interface - The UI bites. I'd like to pretty that up, but really it just bites. It works fine when you're using the basic functionality and is fast and efficient, but it handles any media you may have stored in it rather poorly. Not easy to navigate, and you can't create playlists. For a media hub, this is rather unfortunate.
- Streaming Audio/Video, Syncing with computer, podcasts, etc. - There is none of this. There should be. There is no reason the PS3 can't do everything the iTunes integration the Apple TV can do. The fact it can't do any of it but actually store files you manually move there is rather sad. And appliances like the Apple TV are not anything new, I've had something that streams video from my computer for years (not well, but it does - and the UI is better!)
- Installing another OS - I was surprised to find Sony makes it easy to install a second OS on the device - linux, actually. I was not able to successfully do this, but that's not Sony's fault - there was some problems with the version of Ubuntu I was using, and I didn't care enough after I found the following out: Sony has limited access to the video capabilities so that anything particularly advanced (like divx files) isn't going to play well on the guest OS. So, my dreams of creating my own little media box with the guest OS went out the window with this. Sony is showing no signs of changing this, though there is a petition for them to do so, for whatever that's worth.
- Games - well, I don't know. I'm playing all PS2 games and flOw right now, as there are no PS3 games I have any particular interest in playing that I've not already played on another platform. But, there are some very interesting things in the works that I'm looking forward to (Lair, LittleBigWorld).
So, there we have it. I know I sound down on it, but really, I'm not. I'm optimistic. Sony has mentioned they will be having videos shortly. And hopefully, they won't botch that by doing something like pricing them to sell only, or overpricing in general. The problem was not having this in the beginning, and more! They should have included a strong media browser, specialized in viewing sites such as YouTube, streaming video and audio, a universal messaging client... Sony needed to create value upfront to help people get over the monstrous price tag - because if you are going to price something at $600 and call it a media hub - it needs to be a media hub.
Article comments
1 - some guy
I couldnt have put what i feel about the ps3 in words better than you just did.
2 - waco2austin
Sorry, I just couldn't get past the first two sentences...
"Last week I traded in some of my games and systems and walked out of the local GameStop with a new PS3. It was a risky venture, especially since I traded in my Wii and my 360 to do it."
At that point I was already convinced that this guy will be shooting up his school any day now.
3 - Gideon
I did certainly get a lot of crazy comments from my friends. But, it really comes down to value. There are some 1st party games coming out on the 360 and Wii I want, sure, but there are some on the PS3 as well and the third party games, the bulk of what I generally play, are everywhere anyway.
So, for me to do this was really a decision about the extras - and as extras go, the PS3 wins. The Xbox has some nice features, if you have Windows Media Edition or one of the vista versions that support it - but I have a mac. I don't have a lot of hope in Microsoft making the Xbox friendly to the Mac (or even most windows users) but I can simply attach a small portable drive to my PS3 and watch whatever I like.
So, from my point of view I got the most poweful gaming system, a blu-ray DVD player, and a media center in exchange for two other gaming systems I wasn't using much. No big loss.
4 - Rudy
When Sony years ago make public that they were going to sell a new Playstation I was very excited...
Monday in the afternoon, I was in a Mall and I made a bet with my wife... You'll never buy me a PS3... She did !!! After 30 minutes she came back with the box... And you know what... I didn't fell excited at all... I don't know why, but I took the box and ask for reimbursement... It is maybe what you have told us... It was 600 euros - 10% reduction(540 euros) and even I asked for my money... I don't see anything int. buying a PS3...
It was maybe too late on the market...
5 - Me
Browser fails to load? Mine works fine (and yes, it's wireless and recieves the signal from my other house out the backyard). Sure it's a bit slower than my PC but I like it more that Internet Explorer. The real downside to the browser is that you can't download to the hard drive. All pages load for me. The zoom level? You do know R2 and L2 increase and decrease it right? I agree with you for most other things though.
6 - waco2austin
I'm sure I'll get one eventually, but I'll have to 1) wait for a significant price drop, at least $200. 2) wait until there are a decent selection of games to play. Right now nothing really stands out to me other than Resistance or maybe Motorstorm. 3) wait to see if Bluray actually catches on or if I will prefer HD-DVD or just dump both formats altogether and just download all my hi-def movies.
7 - Gideon
@Rudy- Actually, I felt very similar. Usually I can't contain my excitement, but I was pretty stoic about it all. I'm not feeling buyers remorse, which I usually get with everything, but.. I do understand your point. I'm certainly not suggesting other people go get them. If Sony lives up to itself, I don't think anyone will need urging. But they have to do that first.
@Me - it's usually pages with any sort of flash content. And yes, I do know about the zoom options and use them - it is just that they seem to be pretty extreme (too far and too close) and just leave lots of blank space on the sides of my screen.
8 - adk
Quite amusing - you say you spent a year being angry about Sony's arrogance, then drop every other system you have to reward them and match their price point?
Without even checking their claims, i.e., "I had heard that Sony was touting the PS3 as a media center, the hub of a media home, etc."?
Sounds like you are Sony's dream customer. I realize this will seem like a personal attack. That is not my intention, simply trying to illustrate that this is precisely where Sony gets their arrogance and disregard for customers' rights / needs.
I truly want 1080p gaming myself, I do feel you on that - its just tought to read you complain about about them then turn around and reward their crap practices.
9 - Gideon
Well, it's selfishness - my other systems weren't doing anything for me either, and as bad as Sony is - Microsoft is still the worst of the lot and Nintendo hasn't produced a large number of good games on a system in ages - the decision was between the 360 and the PS3. Also, I wasn't totally unaware of the setup, but I was not as aware as I should have been. It was a spur of the moment decision, really.
But, that being said... A week later, and while I'm not thrilled that I cannot stream video (and, honestly, I've figured out ways to do so since then - though, admittedly, not well), I am thrilled that I can drop in a DVD-R or external hard drive and watch anything I like in mp4 format.
I'm not going to buy or not buy something, however, just because I think Sony has been a bunch of jerks. I have far more contempt for say... Atari or Hasbro, and they still get my money from time to time. My abstracted opinion of them relative to my desire for "x" doesn't equate. I think the whole iPods/iTunes/Drm situation (as it was previously, not where it is going - though still there regarding video) is real crap too, but I'd choose my iPod over any other mp3 player out there.
The price point, however, became moot in the sense that I wasn't spending "cash" I was trading in other things. I'd have never, ever spent that money on buying it outright, but the way I did.... I'm okay with. And while I must admit I occasionally miss my 360, I enjoy watching content I've downloaded on my television much more.
Oddly enough, I've no real buyers remorse. It's a damn nice system, and I'm getting more use out of it than I ever did the other two.
Given my 360 bricked TWICE due to MS's sheer incompetence, I'm especially happy with my ps3.