PC, Xbox 360 or PS3?

[GoodKingJayIII]

So far, I'm real digging my PS3. Best entertainment purchase I made in a long time.

My Dad bought one just for the Blu Ray player, and my younger brother (who still lives at home) gets to reap the benefits! I played with the system while I was home for Thanksgiving and I was really impressed.

 

[Mallus]

I played with the system while I was home for Thanksgiving and I was really impressed.

What games did you try?

 

[dema]

Thinking about it

I have owned 2 Xbox systems in the past. One I gave to a friend to borrow, until the world ends. Well it burned itself, so I took my controllers back for safe keeping. Then I got another one so my girlfriend (now wife) can do something together at home to kill time ( we barely breathed on it.) That one we gave to her brother with a load of games and all the controllers. He modded it to play, well, all games from any pre-Xbox 360 games. I'm not a gamer anymore but I like to occasional shooter, fighter or flying game.

I saw the Wii in action yesterday, it seemed fun. Our adopted family consisting of folks in their 50's, 60's appeared to like the bowling game. I was drinking and eating then sleeping so I did not play the game system but it seems the most fun for regular folks. My time in gaming pasted about 15-20 years ago when I was in my prime (heading to be 30 soon.)

My B-Day is coming in about 3 weeks so I was thinking of getting the 360 Elite with another controller and a few games (spending about 850 max.) Oh I had an Playstation I think too, god knows who got that one.

I have the HD TV thing going. I'll have to rewire for the Ethernet. So Xbox 360 is the way?

Gaming titles I'm thinking about would be;
Halo 2 or 3 ( bearly got to the middle of Halo 1 before I lost time and interest) ,
Soul Caliber 4 ( in June),
Call of Duty 4 ( is suppose to be good, but with Halo do I need another shooter?),
Ninja Gaiden (x which ever, it was a kinda cool)
Prince of Persia or God of War,
I would think Guitar Hero, Rock Band would be cool, but I have a real guitar and prefer real drums to buttons. I guess you can say I prefer real sword and guns too but, it's hard to find a place around here to play with such toys.

The HD DVD box is about 200 xtra, don't know if it's worth it.

So the people out there seem to think Xbox 360 is the way to go. How is the system about not committing suicide. And also I have cats, that like to rub against things, their hair ends up ever where. I clean my PC fans and chips 2 times a year. I clean my HD TV fan. Do I have to worry and is it easy to clean the 360 fan and vents.

Thanks.

 

[John Crichton]

The HD DVD box is about 200 xtra, don't know if it's worth it.

So the people out there seem to think Xbox 360 is the way to go. How is the system about not committing suicide. And also I have cats, that like to rub against things, their hair ends up ever where. I clean my PC fans and chips 2 times a year. I clean my HD TV fan. Do I have to worry and is it easy to clean the 360 fan and vents.

It really depends on what kind of games you want and if you care about how much you are spending and if you will be using it to watch HD movies.

I love my 360, but it doesn't have the kind of games I really love. It does have Mass Effect, which is worth owning a 360 for, to me as a RPG fan. And I just got an Elite and it runs cooler and is less noisy that the older 360's. I expect that means it will be more reliable.

Problem with the 360 is that the accessories really add up fast. $450 Elite, $180, $50 one year Xbox Live and then you go from there with battery packs, the recharging kit and such. Oddly enough, it turns out that the $500 PS3 is a cheaper investment. You really only need an extra controller. The problem with the PS3 is the current lack of games where the 360 has a big advantage right now.

If you like FPS, racers and fighters the 360 has lots of those and will fit you nicely. However, if you want more selection than that or if you want to watch Blu-Ray movies (check a list of what is available for each HD format if interested) you could go with a PS3.

It's all about what games you like and if you'll be using the unit to watch other HD content.

 

[Rackhir]

Gaming titles I'm thinking about would be;
Halo 2 or 3 ( bearly got to the middle of Halo 1 before I lost time and interest) ,

Heard nothing but good things about both of the games, though Halo 2 was for the original Xbox and won't have all the bells and whistles of 3.

Call of Duty 4 ( is suppose to be good, but with Halo do I need another shooter?),

Its a different kind of game from the Halo series, but I probably wouldn't rush out to get it if I had Halo 3.

Ninja Gaiden (x which ever, it was a kinda cool)

Supposed to be good, but extremely difficult. Also is just a remake of an earlier game, so you may have played it.

God of War,

God of War is great, but a PS2 title and isn't available for the Xbox as far as I can tell.

would think Guitar Hero, Rock Band would be cool, but I have a real guitar and prefer real drums to buttons. I guess you can say I prefer real sword and guns too but, it's hard to find a place around here to play with such toys.

Rock Band/Guitar Hero are social games, especially RB. Playing a Guitar for real, will not help you even a little bit, nor is the game anything like playing a real guitar/drums/etc...

The HD DVD box is about 200 xtra, don't know if it's worth it.

Almost certainly no. Especially if you have an upconverting DVD player.

So the people out there seem to think Xbox 360 is the way to go. How is the system about not committing suicide. And also I have cats, that like to rub against things, their hair ends up ever where. I clean my PC fans and chips 2 times a year. I clean my HD TV fan. Do I have to worry and is it easy to clean the 360 fan and vents.

You are probably going to have problems with a 360 then. Might be later rather than sooner especially if you get one of the newer models with the cooler running chips, but there is something close to a 33% failure rate on the 360s and plenty of people have had multiple machines go bad on them. I would look into the ways of making sure you are getting one of the machines with the newer cooler chips for certain.

 

[John Crichton]

Almost certainly no. Especially if you have an upconverting DVD player.

As good as upconverted DVDs look, they don't look as good as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. However, screen size does make a difference.

dema - How large is your screen and can you display 1080p.

 

[Rackhir]

As good as upconverted DVDs look, they don't look as good as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. However, screen size does make a difference.

Yes, but the stand alone HD-DVD players are down to about the same price (sometimes even cheaper) as the add on drive and are a much better way to try and watch one.

 

[John Crichton]

Yes, but the stand alone HD-DVD players are down to about the same price (sometimes even cheaper) as the add on drive and are a much better way to try and watch one.

The quality of those players are somewhat dubious for the moment. That said, you are probably right about the standalone players if I'm reading between the lines correctly: Wait a bit longer and the price and quality will be just right for HD-DVD players.

 

[Arnwyn]

I'll ditto John Crichton, pretty much word-for-word, with an additional note that the "lack of games" for the PS3 is now close to becoming a fallacy.

At this point in time, most of the 3rd party games are multi-console (eg. the aforementioned Call of Duty 4, GH3, Rock Band, Soulcalibur 4, etc), with really only Halo being excusive... and if you lost interest in Halo 1 (arguably the best of the bunch) you'll not be happy with either 2 or 3, which are much worse - so the PS3 is getting tons of games now.

And, for my money at least, the PS3 exclusives (eg. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Ratchet & Clank, Warkhawk) are equal to the 360's now (Halo 3, Mass Effect, and uh...uh... Crackdown...?), before even mentioning how shoddy and unreliable 360s are.

 

[Rackhir]

The quality of those players are somewhat dubious for the moment. That said, you are probably right about the standalone players if I'm reading between the lines correctly: Wait a bit longer and the price and quality will be just right for HD-DVD players.

Most of the ones I've seen on sale are simply last years models getting cleared out. So there's no issues with them, other than them not having all the latest bells and whistles (like 720p vs 1080p).

However, there's also the issue of the future of the formats. Neither HD-DVD nor Blu-Ray are setting the world on fire and even their "Big-Hits" don't even sell a tenth the number that the DVD release of the same movies do. There's some talk about '08 being the year the format war gets decided, but I'm not holding out much hope for that and fully expect that neither format is going to "win". I strongly suspect that some sort of download service/format/device is going to nip in and kill both formats, much as iTunes did with DVD-Audio and SACD in the audio realm.

That's one of the reasons why I tend to favor Blu-Ray, IF you want a high def media now. Since Sony is likely to continue to support the format and/or be playable longer. If only because that's the format for the PS3 game disks.