Consoles

[kingandy]

I am once again considering a console purchase, and am once again torn.

The X360's recent price drop does, of course, make it massively tempting. In fact there's only really three things making me hesitate. The big one is the BluRay - obviously I don't have any BluRay discs at the moment, nor do I have an HD TV, but I am very conscious that a PS3 is £300 with BluRay built in, and a standalone BluRay player basically costs about the same. (Though as with any piece of technology you can pay as much as you want.) I guess I'm thinking that when I eventually do buy a BluRay player I might as well buy one with a PS3 built in, so logically if I'm buying a console of that generation I might as well buy the PS3 now. Even though BluRay is, currently, balls-all use to me.

I'm more or less weaning myself around that one with the reasoning that I wouldn't buy a BluRay player for £300 anyway - I'd wait until they're much cheaper (or I have an HD TV, or both). And if I do that, presumably the next generation of consoles will have arrived, so I'll have basically wasted the time. I'd do better to buy a X360 and enjoy it now.

Secondly is the wireless networking. Again, the PS3 has it built-in; my experience with stsquad's machine was literally a case of plonking it on the floor, connecting the power and the TV, and watching it go. It connected to the network, ran off to Sony, grabbed the latest firmware update and made us all a cup of tea^[1]. Microsoft, on the other hand, charge you £60 for the privilege. Now, again, this isn't a massive factor for me - I don't do a lot of online gaming, and connecting anything but my PC to the internet right at the moment is a little problematic. (My computer connects to the net through a mobile phone USB dongle, so I'd have to enable its wireless card and instruct it to act as a network bridge - something I've occasionally managed for the PDA, but it seems a bit unreliable and fiddly.) But it would be nice to know I could do it on occasion if required. If only for the firmware, and the online store.

The final hesitance is something that would probably come first in other people's books ... the Microsoft connection. It does make one feel slightly dirty.

At the end of the day though, I can't get around the simple fact that the X360 is half the price of the PS3, and the two components they've left out to make that price drop are both things I probably wouldn't make use of. Hell, I could even go for an X360 Arcade - which discards the internal hard drive - and drop the price even lower.

Oh and look, Amazon are running a special. the 360 with a second controller and two games, for only £180. That can't be a bad deal, surely...?

(Though I think they might be out of stock - there don't seem to be any available from amazon.co.uk, it's all through marketplace. Shouldn't they stop advertising it at that point? It all seems a bit underhanded.)

(EDITED TO ADD: Ahh, you have to go for this one, which is Amazon, and not this one, which is Marketplace. Weird, considering half the links on the bundle page go to one and half to the other ... and the "Frequently Bought Together" box uses the Marketplace. Presumably because it's technically cheaper, as the £80 saving isn't applied until you get to the checkout. Stupid computers.)

So anyway ... probably going to go for the XBox. And feel dirty.

[1] This is a lie

Comments

[kmazzy.livejournal.com]

def go for an xbox. much more choice of games right now. you don't even need to network it.

[samharber.livejournal.com]

Or just settle for a Wii and games that are fun to play together.

[wibblefish.livejournal.com]

don't know how big firmware updates are but for major ones it might be easier to take the xbox to someone elses house.

There are routers that will take the USB sticks and give you wired & wireless LAN

[kingandy]

Tell me more of these routers of which ye speak.

The USB stick seems to require to install some sort of software first (which comes on the stick's storage space and installs automatically), I don't know if that would work on a router...

[wibblefish.livejournal.com]

Not too up on them, 3 have their own that are a apparently specific to them. There are various others ranging from about £70 up which is more than I hoped. Apparently netgear routers with USB can be flashed with openWRT and made to work but how much skill is required I have no idea.

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

The PS3 is more of a rounded media savey machine. I'd add the ability to watch DivX movies off a plugged in USB hard drive is something I find very useful. I think the Xbox can stream stuff but only from a Windows server as (surprise surprise they have embraced and extended the UPNP spec).

Can you play all the Xbox 360 games with the X360 Arcade?

As you say the comparison of a console without networking, HD and disk to one with is a little bit Apples and Oranges. And of course if you do get the wireless accessory you still have to pay for XBox live to play online games (although I'll give them credit for having more stable servers as they are centralised and not P2P).

Obviously I was never going to but an Xbox360 so I have a certain amount of bias there. If you have the patience you could wait until the next PS3 price cut and the deepening recession to bring the prices down.

[kingandy]

"Can you play all the Xbox 360 games with the X360 Arcade?"

AFAIK yes. The real difference is you can't store 60GB of music on your machine - you still get 256MB of memory storage space for your savegames (most boxes seem to list a storage requirement of 1-5MB).

There are a few other hardware differences like what video-outs there are - also I think you don't get a wireless controller with it. As the name implies, it's very much for the casual gamer. Which I am, but not quite that much.

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

But the Xbox does have wireless controllers though?

[mj-uk.livejournal.com]

does by standard. only difference between arcade and "premium" is the hard disc (which u can buy seperatly anyway). the console isnt different just the hardisc

id say go for the elite, but thats just cos its black and not cos it has a bigger hard one ;)

[wibblefish.livejournal.com]

Thom plays videos off USB stick on his 360 all the time apparently.

Don't need a windows server, just vista I think.

There are ways around the streaming limitation I think. There's definately been a OSX app to stream to 360 so I wouldn't be suprised if there's an open source one.

[elektrobard.livejournal.com]

I have had my 360 for a while now and at no point felt dirty. It's a fine machine and serves any of my needs with ease.

[kestrana.livejournal.com]

I used to hate Xbox (the original) but my Xbox 360 has everything I could want. And honestly I think BluRay is this generation's laser discs. We're going to all downloadable or loadable content in the future and you won't have anything on any sort of disc whatsoever. I don't know if they have Netflix in Europe but being able to watch Netflix instant queue on my Xbox 360, plus download tv shows, game content, watch the news, etc. allowed us to cancel our cable package and finally I end with these two words: ROCK BAND.

[mj-uk.livejournal.com]

xbox does have (imo) a much better selection of games (since they made devil may cry cross platform :D)

[mj-uk.livejournal.com]

also (based on purely nothing than my own haphazard musings) the original ps and ps2 dvd players wherent as good as 'proper' ones. Not sure how the blu ray performs on the ps3 since it isnt a dedicated player

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

Blue Ray is fine on the PS3 with HD TV. DVD on the PS2 was an afterthought, BlueRay on the PS3 was in the design spec.

[mj-uk.livejournal.com]

ah that makes sense, like i said it was just hearsay and people dissing the ps3 i was going off. main reason i havent bought a ps3 is cos DMC4 came out on xbox