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kingandyI 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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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
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
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-26 04:00 pm (UTC)There are routers that will take the USB sticks and give you wired & wireless LAN
no subject
Date: 2009-01-26 08:46 pm (UTC)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...
no subject
Date: 2009-01-26 09:03 pm (UTC)