General

Joined: A long time ago...

Nice, long reply but I don't have much time so I'll make it quick and comment on the things I can at the moment. First off, as for some of the design issues, I haven't had a problem with the overheating. Sure, it might get hot but it's never froze on me yet. Unlike the 360 when it first came out. So for me, that's a non-issue. The online capabilities can definitely be fixed thru firmware updates. And I agree, much work is needed in order to even come close to what the 360 has. But you can't deny that Sony has taken it's first serious step in the online world. Again, much needed work there. As for the hard drive capacity, if there was ever a need to upgrade, my guess is they would probably come in the form of external hard drives that can be added. But even Bill Gates had briefly mentioned that the 360's 20GB hard drive was sufficient even if they rolled out their IPTV feature. Whether that's true or not remains to be seen. If you were to ask me if I've been duped with my purchase, I can honestly say no.

Joined: A long time ago...

"Theres just too many things about the ps3 that weren't very well thought out... whats the point of adding that online service when your limited by hard drive space? Ms thought that one out for sure... gotta have changable hard drives for something like that to be worthwhile... 60gb doesn't do much as far as downloading HD movies.... once you buy the ps3, your just stuck with whatever hard drive size you got when you bought it... No real world options at all... no ifs, and's, or butts on the matter.... your just stuck with what you get...."





Uhhhhhh what the hell are you talking about?   You can change out the hard drive in the PS3.  That is one of the 1st things I read how to do when I opened up the owner's manual.  It's actually quite easy to do to because of the way it was designed.

Do people even know what they are talking about when they start to bash a PS3???  Another common myth I read all the time online is taht if you buy a PS3 you are stuck buying only blue ray movies and you will have to get rid of all your DVDS.   THIS IS COMPLETELY WRONG.  The ps3 plays blue ray as well as regular dvds, music cds, etc.  The claim that "sony is forcing blue ray on people" is completely fallacious.  You can still play all your beloved dvds on the ps3.


Yes you need a hd tv to get the full power of the PS3.  CNN reported alittle while ago that 33% of households in the US already have at least 1 hd tv and that that number is expected to climb much higher over the next several years when prices of hd tvs fall even further.  The PS3, with all its bells and whistles, simply gives consumers more options in the future. 

BTW  Fight Night Round 3 for PS3 is absolutely disgusting.  It is probably the best sports game I have ever played.

Joined: A long time ago...

well, one of the guys I know that has a ps3 told me you cant change out the hd... but I should probably know better than to listen to him... its not a perfect solution, but I guess it works... Although from what I just read, its still questionable that using just any laptop hard drive may void your warranty... seeing as how I found this in their warranty statement:
"(2) THE PRODUCT IS USED WITH PRODUCTS NOT SOLD OR LICENSED BY SCEA (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, NON-LICENSED GAME ENHANCEMENT DEVICES, CONTROLLERS, ADAPTORS AND POWER SUPPLY DEVICES). YOU ASSUME ALL RISKS AND LIABILITIES ASSOCIATED WITH USE OF THIRD PARTY PRODUCTS"
Almost all my search results for information on changing the hd, had question of whether or not it voids the warranty...
That is actually better than the 360 setup if you can use whatever hard drive you want with out voiding your warranty then... cause you can't put a non-ms hd in there with out voiding your warranty... but I still don't like the fact that ms and sony both used laptop hard drives.... laptop hard drives get too hot... The other question at hand is how does the system handle owning multiple hard drives? Does it confuse things, or will it work seamlessly... My friend has 3 hard drives for his 360, and 2 of them are full... so saying that 60gb is sufficient is far from the truth.... He has tons of music, and tv shows.. and that hard drive space goes quick if you download the hd version of those tv shows... The size limitations of laptop hard drives will eventually be a limit for both the 360 and ps3... with hd crap, your talking gigs per movie or tv show.... and right now 160 is the max... pc hard drives would have made things a lot cheaper and more practical... soon people will be needing 1TB hard drives... I know a guy who has 3TB of movies and music on his media center computer and he doesn't have anymore hard drive connectors or room for anymore hard drives in his computer.... and thats not even counting what he can't fit on his computer... If people are to be using the ps3 and xbox360 as a media center device 60gb is bread crumbs...

Whats the longest you've played your ps3 for? My friends will overheat and shut off after about 1 1/2-2 hours of play. The screen just goes black, and the power shuts off after a few seconds..... Sony support told him to buy an aftermarket cooler for the system(which I have a feeling may be an attempt at tricking him into voiding his warranty, after reading that statement I found in their warranty).... Theres like next to no ventilation.... I've seen display models at the store do this exact same shit.... and supposedly sony did that on purpose according to that article I linked to earlier on in this thread.... If you call sony and tell them your ps3 is overheating, they will tell you to buy an after market cooler for the system... My friends xbox360 was overheating and they had him mail his in for a new one... which is exactly what sony should be doing...
As for the online stuff... I really don't think theres any practical way they can implement that now that theres software already on the market that doesn't work around that.... If they changed their online service to be more like the 360's, the games out today would not operate with it.... There would have to be a lot of recoding of those games for that to work right....
I really don't believe that 33% of america has atleast 1 hd tv... Over 33% of america can't tell you the difference between a regular tv and an hd(much like the guy who told me you can't change the hard drive in the ps3).... let alone what 720p, 720i,1080p, and 1080i mean for that matter.... I only know a few people that have an hd tv.... a lot of people confuse plasma or lcd tv's with hd tv's... there are plasma and lcd tv's that are not hd... your average consumer isn't going to really know the difference... You'd be suprised at how many people instantly assume one of those super thin plasma or lcd tv's are hd... I know a guy that sells tv's at best buy and he's earned a bit of commision on selling many cheaper lcd tv's to people just on the basis that they thought they were getting hd, but really weren't... I really would like to see what cnn based those figures on... because I've recently read the number was a lot lower than that... more like 15%.... Phone surveys aren't acurate because of my above statement, and sales figures don't mean anything because those plasma and lcd tv's don't last very long(lcd only has a 4-5 years life span, and plasma is less than that)... so there are people out there who are on their 2nd or 3rd hd tv... So the sales numbers don't exactly mean that 33% of america has one... of the few that I know that have true hd in their household, one of them has 3 hd tv's in his house.... so those sales figures can be very misleading....

Blue ray and hd-dvd wont make it... Just because the picture quality is better and they have hd-dvd and blue ray at the store doesn't mean they will see the light of tomarrow... Remember laser disc? the picture quality was far superior to vhs(laser disc was actually a vynle record sized dvd), but that really wasn't enough to draw people from vhs.... Dvd is still new to a lot of people... the lower end market of america is still just getting into dvd... which is exactly why blue ray and hd-dvd wont really get too far off the ground... The market has to be ready for change... The main reason people switched to dvd over vhs is because it was reasonble cheap soon after movies hit the market... This is like laser disc where everything is expensive right off the bat... I remember getting a dvd player when they first came out and only paid like $400 for one... I felt that was really expensive. The cheapest you'll find a blue ray is like $800 or more... and hd dvd isn't much cheaper... The cost of blue ray wont be going down any time soon because of issues with manufacturing the blue laser diode. The production yields aren't very high... Not to mention theres cheaper, faster, better technology looming in the distance... by the time blue ray and hd dvd come down in price a better format will have emerged. Does anyone remember that link I posted maybe a year ago about un-scratchable 1TB per square inch optical discs that have ultra fast read and write times? If anythings going to take the market... it will be that...

and one other point... its irrelivant now, because you can change the hard drive in the ps3... External hard drives are just bad news... I've seen people lose a lot of data because of those things.... Theres too many points of failure in the transfer of data. I know a guy that lost almost his whole business because he kept all his business stuff on an external... One day the database for his business wouldn't open up... then he discovered nothing on the hard drive opened up... I played around with it for a bit only to discover the usb 2.0 cable was bad, and all the data that had been passing accross it was corrupt... so it pretty much corrupted all the data he uses for his business... external is bad... The guy really would have been shit out of luck had I not fished an older version of the db out of the swap file on his desktop pc's hard drive... at least he got some of his shit back...


What I would really like to see, is a system made up of all 3 of the current systems highlight points.... 8 core console, with hot swappable 400g 3.5" drive, built in wireless and wired ethernet, motion sensitive controllers, online system very much like the 360's with improvements, support for hd, and ability to play any game ever made...
The ps3 can almost play any game ever made right now as it is.... you can install linux on it, and run a linux game emulator like mame(which will let you play nes, snes, genesis, master system, sega cd, 32x, sega saturn, neo geo, jaguar, arcade roms, n64, ps1 games, dream cast games, and 3do) ... but again.. those emulator programs are kinda shoddy, and the places you download the roms at are questionable at best... and the hard drive space would be gobbled up pretty quickly with all of that... Emulation is the only reason I would ever buy a ps3 if I were to get one.... Sony's design may come back to bite them in the ass sooner or later though... with the ability to do all that, piracy is going to be an issue.. You can already dump the games to a hard drive if you have the right equipment.. and with linux installed... you can just use the ps3 itself to rip the games to the hard drive...

Joined: A long time ago...

Neither of those articles say where those numbers came from.... cnn can be a reliable source of information for the most part... but you will find conflicting information on just as reliable sites...
I still seriously doubt 1/3 of america has hd.... That one article talks about plasma and lcd as if they all were hd... but that is not true.... I might believe 33% of america has a plasma or lcd.... but not the hd version.... a lot of those plasma and lcd tv's are "hd ready" which may be what they are refering to... but that does not make the tv hd... you still need to buy an hd tuner box, and the image quality will not be hd quality, as an hd tv with it built in would display.... This is because it has to convert the hd signal to something the tv can read... This is why I say those numbers are distorted... I have 2 tv's in my house that are hd ready.... but most certainly not hd.... My thinking is that the person who wrote that article may not have a clear understanding of what hd is, or what it means... I've seen a bit of botched tech articles on cnn.... HD tv's are some what of a touchy subject, simply because most people don't understand the difference between hd ready and hd.... shit, some of the guys selling the tv's at the store can't tell you the difference between "HD ready" and "HD".... I highly doubt the guy who wrote that even knows the difference.... you can tell by the way he worded the article...
think about this though... sony and ms have been talking about how the successors to the current new systems will be coming out around 2010-2011... by that time.... the ps3, xbox360, and wii will be outdated anyway....
besides... The newer media formats looming in the distance can store true to life video and are unscratchable, and when compared to todays hd standards aren't really an improvement over the real standing issues we have with dvd....

as for blue-ray and hd dvd.... I don't think either of them will win the public over.... Until there is 1 universal standard to replace dvd, people will likely stick with it... Think about how many formats sony came up with that never got off the ground.... You can find pages and pages of formats I've never heard of that they tried to develop and only released in japan... Remember when they were claiming that the umd was going to steal away all the dvd's business? Turned out they only released a small handfull of sony only movies on that format, and the movies they did release didn't really sell.... and you really don't find these anywhere anymore...
History has shown that 2 closely released competing formats = both formats failing....

Joined: A long time ago...

Yeah, I kinda agree with that guy... but I don't... you can change the sensitivity of the controller, so that twitchyness he's refering to can be dealt with.... I played call of duty for 3 hours straight, and my arm didn't get tired... maybe because im not a fat couch potato who writes game reviews and has never done a bit of exercise in my life... but hey... my girl friends arm doesn't get tired either.... I only got a bit tired at  first playing the wii sports cause you have to swing your arm fast a lot of times... but first person shooters like call of duty you can play sitting down, and rest your elbo on the arm of a chair and still be able to play fine with out tiring your arm...
People are actually losing weight playing the wii.... which is another thing thats going to draw in customers, people who want easy entertainment that will help them shave 2-3lbs... Theres actually a game thats just work out type stuff in the works... I think getting gamers off their fat asses is a great idea... The only people complaining about the controller making them too tired are people that need the exercise... the remote controller doesn't even weigh a pound! how can that be too much to hold for a few hours? its no different than using a tv remote to flip through channels for an hour or 2....