As some of you may already know, I'm a big time gamer. I'd be hard pressed to be pulled from my Xbox 360 (current game of choice, for what it's worth, is Rainbow Six Las Vegas 2). But my wife did an amazing job for my 30th and picked me up a Wii. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I had enjoyed playing Lego Star Wars for hours on end. Seriously, as a nerd...wielding a remote and using it as light saber is high up on my nerd list. I was going to write a review, but what's to say about it that hasn't been said? Wonderful system...and I'm anxiously awaiting the release of Mario Kart the 27th of this month for the system.
But that's not the reason for my post. I got a bunch of Best Buy gift cards this year for my birthday. So I used that to justify picking up a PS3. As many of you know, I had been a staunch supporter of HD-DVD. But I just sent away for the old box to ship it to best buy for a store credit. In need of a new player, and with Final Fantasy 13 looming around the corner, it had to be the PS3.
A quick list of crap I wish I knew before I bought it:
- Everything is Bluetooth. Everything. My wonderful Harmony remote won't work on the damn thing because it's Bluetooth. I have to buy either their own remote or an extender for it that's another $55 bucks. Wonderfully annoying. Or a $20 remote with a USB plug in that allows DVD controls. Thank you Sony for your proprietary crap!
- Firmware updates kinda suck. I never understand why game console makers don't upgrade firmware as they release the hardware. You know, we just made a batch of PS3's and version 2.3 of the firmware is on it...let's do that instead of 1! I'm sure part of the reason this thing is taking so long is I'm going from firmware 1 to 2.3. Ugh.
- As an upconverting DVD player it works well. And it connected quickly to my Apple Router. I tried to setup to their Sony Network...but I had to do a firmware upgrade first.
- Thankfully I had my old HD players HDMI cord..but seriously. Your selling a $400 system without one? And could your USB cord to a controller be any shorter? Who sits 5 feet from their TV?
- It feels very Playstation 2, which probably isn't a bad thing. No updates really to the controller. The interface just screams Sony. When Microsoft released the 360, it made updates to its interface everywhere. Not so much here. Again, gaming on a PS2 wasn't bad. But it wasn't bad on the regular Xbox either and they made several improvements to the controller.
Other than that, we'll see. As I said, until a game comes out for it I won't play it a ton. But I will use it for movies.
Oh, and the design kind of stinks. Part of the sale of this thing was that it is, in my opinion, the best Blu-Ray player on the market due to its flexibility. But the thing is bulky and curvy. I can deal with bulky, the HD player was and so are most of the other Blu-Ray players. But the curvy-ness is just an annoyance.
2 comments:
I've been thinking of taking the plunge into getting a PS3, and my only reason for waiting is that I don't see any must have games for me on the horizon. I still might get one to play blu-ray, but I might just get a player for my computer and play them that way. That's even cheaper.
I think the only thing that has pissed me off is that now only the 20gb and 60gb versions (both discontinued I believe) are the only ones that have the Emotion chip to do hardware PS2 emulation. The rest are software and we see how well that's gone for XBOX. Now in order to play most of my PS2 games, I'll have to pay right out the giggy to acquire one on Ebay. So far every auction I've tried has gone over the $500 mark.
That's really the only reason I have one, movies. And I do have to say that as a movie player, it's outstanding. But if I watched more movies on my PC I'd get one of those instead.
BTW, I'm still appalled that it costs $50 per blank blue-ray DVD.
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