Negaview

The sony playstation 3 was first announced amid a flurry of pre-rendered cinematics at E3 2005. The possibilities were endless, afterall it would have the cell processor with 9 parallel processors crunching numbers, and blue-ray support. The cell processor which was so awesome that Apple decided to junk it completely and go with intels core2duo chipset. How is the playstation 3 really? Read on and find out.

First of all the hardware is excellent. Lets get that out of the way right now. The failure rates are low, the blue-ray works (and is probably one of the best blue-ray players you can get for the money), and it comes with everything you need (Hard drive, wireless modem, rechargeable wireless controller). I’m not the biggest fan of the dual shock 3. Simply because i prefer the analog sticks of the xbox 360. The ps3’s analog sticks have almost no give, and i can’t stand the convex nature of the sticks as well as the triggers. When it comes to the reliability, lots of PS3 fanboys like to point out the red ring of death on the 360. The truth is you hear about it all the time. People on their 3rd, 4th, even 6th or 7th 360s. However, stop to think. These people were willing to put up with all that bullshit and they STILL play their 360s. Most other products that failed that much, would probably see their customer base switch over to the competitor.

Where does the ps3 go wrong? First thing. PSN. Yes, it’s free. Lets just say, you get what you pay for. No universal invitation system? No universal party or voice chat over games system? I gladly shell out the $50/year for xbox live. The headaches i’ve had trying to play killzone2 with friends were enough to completely kill my interest in that game. They did add home, which sounded great on paper i’m sure. In reality it’s fantastic if you love loading screens, and watching pathetic guys hit on other guys who are posing as women.

Next the XMB. It just doesn’t feel very intuitive. Particularly when it comes to messages. If a person sends me a message it shows up in the upper right corner of my screen. I hit my PS button and it opens the XMB. Then i have to navigate to my mailbox, go to received mail…. etc. On xbox live i press the xbox button and it goes straight to the message. I know all the mentions of xbox make me out to be a fanboy, but the truth is xbox live is the gold standard of online console services.

The sad fact is that the playstation 3 is just not thought out very well. The software is clunky, and the internet service is bare bones to say the least. At least they’re starting to get better games, but even their exclusives aren’t all that great. This is one console purchase i regret making. Oh and in a supreme example of ‘not well thought out’, why would the ‘ultimate’ HD videogame and blueray player come with… *drumroll* COMPOSITE CABLES. Cheap ass motherfuckers. I just laid down $399 for your system and you can’t even front me a component cable? Or better yet HDMI? Fuck you sony.