This isn’t a general question to invite trolls. I have a specific need.
This past week I finally upgraded my bedroom TV from a 15+ year old 19 inch TV/vcr combo to a 42 inch LCD TV and bluray player. Now I’m thinking about including a game system. I’m not looking for a main system. I have all that in my living room. I would be mostly looking for lite gaming. This isn’t as easy as it initially appears. I might want to do some media streaming from my Windows home Server and maybe some web surfing as well. My options:
a) Build a pc. Does all three but at a higher cost. I also want to get away from the pc.
b) Wii. Does lite “gaming.” Maybe too lite but has a web broswer.
c) Another 360. Does all three but buying another 360 seems a bit ridiculous. It is the one I’m leaning towards.
d) A PS3. I could access psn titles which could be fun. Plus Little big Planet. It is the one system I don’t have from this generation. However it is a bit expensive, I already have a blu ray player, and streaming from a Windows Home Server seems questionable based on my google searches.
e) Something else I haven’t thought of.
To answer the question, why on earth why I want to do this at all: Basically this is to solve the issue of me staying up downstairs till the wee hours in the morning while the rest of the family is asleep upstairs.
If you already have an xbox, think a wii won’t serve your needs and want to get away from a PC, then looks like the PS3 is your best bet. Process of elimination, haha
I already have a PS3, Wii and 360 for the living room, and I was in a similar situation. I got another 360 and have no regrets. The 360 has the most games I want to play on it, and in the bedroom one I mostly play light XBLA games, but also games like Dead Space and Condemned, where I like having a smaller room with no lights, with headphones on. And if you get a memory card, you can switch back and forth between the two 360s easily, just make sure your profile and save games are saved on the memory card.
Plus there’s the added benefit that when I have my brother over, we can sometimes play system link games or even XBL online games in the same house.
Does the 360 have a browser now? Anyway, if you don’t have any interest in PS3 exclusives, the 360 seems like the best bet since it’s quite a bit cheaper, though if you didn’t already have a Blu-ray player the PS3 would be the obvious choice. Do you see any value in having a Blu-ray player in both locations? That might be another reason to get a PS3. I stream video from my PC to my PS3 all the time and it works great, but I believe the 360 can do the same thing, plus Netflix support if you’re into that.
Bear in mind that whilst streaming to a PS3 from a Windows Home Server can be a bit shonky, TVersity is a simple and much more robust solution that I’ve been using with great success - it can encode any incompatible format on the fly into mpeg2, which isn’t ideal in terms of picture quality, but does mean you’ll never bump into anything that doesn’t work. Plus, if money’s no object and you have all the other systems, you might as well get the PS3 and check out the odd exclusive. There’s some great light gaming stuff on PSN (though the same is true of Xbox Arcade, I guess), like Burn Zombie Burn, SSD, Flower, the PixelJunk stuff and so on.
why not simply move one of the consoles from that main room into your room: like the ps3 or wii(although waggling in the wee hours?)
I would pick up a PS2 if you dont mind going back a generation to play on its huge library of games. They are pretty cheap by now and they have a great selection of single player games in nearly every genre.
I voted for the 360 before I read your question. I’d revise my answer to the Wii. It’s got a unique set of games and avoids the redundancy of the PS3. I have a PS3, but don’t own any boxed games for it because I haven’t liked any of them enough. I bought and sold MGS4 and Ratchet and Clank. (I do have Flower, some PixelJunk games, and some other downloadable games.)
Because then the complaint will be I’m hold up upstairs while everyone is awake down stairs. I know, it sounds crazy. Is it really a big deal that it takes 20 seconds to walk the stairs to find me?
No announcement, but it’s gleaned from their sales projections. Obviously they can’t announce a price cut in advance. Bill Harris goes into it in detail. Plus this month’s analysis on Gamasutra (Behind the Numbers) goes into it a little bit too. They’re also predicting a $100 price cut, but admit that it could be $50.
Here’s the relevant quote from the ‘Behind the Numbers’ article:
The PlayStation 3 will likely receive the first price cut. Sony itself continues to be coy about its pricing strategy, but virtually everyone agrees that it must drop the price of the PlayStation 3 by at least $50 in the next two or three months.
Given Sony’s global hardware sales target and the size of the U.S. market, we continue to favor a $100 price cut, preferably in August. Without such a cut, it seems unlikely to us that the PS3 base in the U.S. will contribute enough to help Sony reach the stated goal of a 30% increase in system sales.
True, it’s speculation, but it’s based on Sony’s own projections, so it’s pretty safe.
There are also very heavy rumors that a pricedrop will be in august to coincide with Madden. Right now BestBuy.com is offering a PS3 with free copies of Killzone 2 and MGS4.
PS3 or 360 are good choices. Let me say this: PlayOn turns the 360 and PS3 to media monsters. Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, CNN, ESPN, (Crackle, GameTrailers, Adult Swim w/ plugins), local media. The amount of content I have to watch on my systems are mind boggling.
my advice: get a used 60gb ps3. Price-wise, you have a lot of options, and can get lucky with a barely used 60gb ps3 for $350. Also, they come with a bluetooth remote while only the high end ps3’s on the market bundle one AFAIK.
The ps3 library on it’s own is kind of weak, while there are some great games on the ps2. I was disappointed with the supposed “ps2 upscaling” but other than that I’m happier with the choice I made in terms of price and features.
I don’t use the ps3 for anything but games since getting a blu-ray writer, but the 60gb ps3 has a neat card reader that would come in handy if you record stuff on a video cam or digital camera. Streaming is also very easy, the ps3 can connect to network drives and/or computers on a LAN and it can play divx/mp4. It’s a good media solution overall.
Buying another 360 would be crazy. Go with a PS3 after the inevitable price drop - even if you only use it for ‘light’ gaming, the PSN store has a much better range of stuff for that than XBLA.
