PS3’s go on preorder sales tomorrow…

Avid Sony supporter. Still buy PS3 eventually when price drops a little since Sony has always and will remain the top of RPGs. Microsoft dominates the US but not across seas. Mainly because they do the sports games. Asia doesn't like sports games. I don't either. I want an interactive movie. Sony has always come through with games like those.

I suppose Blue Dragon might change that, but Microsoft still hasn't gotten it for expanding into the Asian markets. Until that happens, they won't be taking the place of Sony there any time soon.

I think I'm going to go with the Nintendo. Something about the other two seems to be heading in a direction I'm not really interested in.

Mike: you don't have an HDTV do you? If you do you wouldn't consider the Nintendo. At least in my opinion. There are plenty of casual games on Xbox, though. Way more than I can play.

Xbox 360 for me... and yes, I have it connected to an HD set. Honestly, I don't have much time for gaming these days, so I only play a handful of titles (will make time for Gears of War soon though). That said, we use the 360 all the time as a Media Center extender, and it's awesome in that capacity. Streaming and recording HDTV from my MCE PC in the other room via Ethernet is phenomenal. I also listen to MP3s and play photo slideshows in high-def all the time.

Sony is not getting my monies. No HDTV (but HDTV bittorrent if that is what you mean :P) and I will buy myself the new Nintendo.

Michiel: yeah, if I didn't have an HDTV I'd get the Nintendo too. But Xbox 360 is stunning in HDTV and PlayStation promises to be even better. There's a reason why everyone wants to come over my house and play Xbox. And it's spelled HDTV.

I am getting the Wii (Nintendo)... why? cause it seems to have real growth potential in gaming ideas, and as a gamer, excites me the most at the moment. I will consider 360 vs PS3 sometime in the future...

Actually I thought about something... You have posted some entries in the past about how companies should open up in new ways with regards to communicating with customers... Wonder what you would think of this...
Here is a link (http://wii.nintendo.com/iwata_asks_vol1_p1.html) to Nintendo's President Iwata discussing various aspects of the Wii with the Wii designers, in a series that has been getting new entries over the last month... I have found the entire set very interesting, lots of talk of why specific technologies were chosen, etc...

Shauntu: I like that, thanks for letting us know!

I'm not going with PS3 or 360. I'm waiting for the Nintendo Wii. Their franchise games like Mario and Zelda are just better games. And they have great games for families. $600 for a PS3? Are they kidding? And any of the good 360 games come to the PC anyway. Why do you talk about how "stunning" the games are? Sure, the HD games look great but how long does that last if the game isn't good?

I have a PS2 but I am going with the 360 for its interoperability with Media Center, Zune (even Ipod) and the whole experience

Brett: I have dozens of great games on Xbox 360. My son plays it all weekend long. Have no idea what universe you're living in. There's more games than I can play on it.

$600 for a PS3 comes to less than $20 a month on BestBuy's credit plan. Come on now. I pay more to go to a movie with Patrick and buy a hot dog and coke. You think people actually pay $600 all at once for these things? You've gotta be kidding. One of my brother-in-laws lives in a poorer section of Milpitas. Every home on his block has a huge big screen. Every single one.

And I don't care how good the game is, if it's not in HD it looks like crap. I'd rather play Geometry Wars.

Wii will grab real gamers, PS3 will still dominate worldwide, Xbox 360 clinking in a for a nice second place finish. No wars, give each unto it's own.

BluRay won tho, 50GB dual-layer already, and it has studio and industry backing, not that Sony made it easy, what a screwed up company...

Your HD-DVD's will be collector pieces soon enough, quaint as 8-track tapes or Beta carts. But the whole next generation is a wash, plain ole' DVD ain't going anywhere anytime soon. If anything, more the trend is in terms of MPEG 4 and DIVX.

Art direction and skill has a lot more to do with whether a game "looks like crap" than simply the number of pixels displayed on the screen at once.

Sure HD is cool but surely you'd agree that how a game plays, how fun it is, how engrossing it is, is not solely down to how it looks? Take a look at screens of Mario Galaxy or the new Zelda and tell me that they don't look great.

Writing off the Wii because it's not HD is short-sighted. It's not competing directly against PS3 and 360 - Nintendo is taking a less well travelled road.

I have a HDTV and purchased a 360 on launch day. I'm as early adopter as the next man but the graphics don't make the game. They help but they are not the be all and end all.

I'm an early adopter of HD. I was a PS3 girl all the way...up until about two or three months ago. The price, the delays, the ridiculous statements started to get to me and I requested a 360 for my birthday. I absolutely love it. For some odd reason, it's a completely different gaming experience than what I was used to on our PS2.

I'm not really understanding the comments about the graphics. It's almost as if people are assuming that beautiful graphics automatically mean the game isn't good.

I briefly considered getting the Wii, but at this point, I'm not interested in investing $250 in something that doesn't take full advantage of HD and which a Nintendo employee basically called a "glorified Gamecube". I hardly played my Gamecube and it started collecting dust almost immediately. I've found that Nintendo games aren't my cup of tea.

I haven't decided yet, I like the PS2 games more than the XBox games so only time will tell whether I will like the PS3 games more than the XBox360 games. Nintendo's controller has me going but it does not have HD, so I guess in the end I will decide PS3 or XBox360 on what games are available and then buy my console with my HDTV in one go.

It'll be a Wii for me, the 360 has awesome graphic capabilities (and I'm sure the PS3 will too), but I think the Wii will be the most important console since the original Playstation. Nintendo is doing some really innovative stuff with the controller and the "Mii" feature, if the online gaming part is comparable to Xbox Live then I think the Wii will be a big hit.

Put in another vote for the Wii...

I already have a 360 and don't see the point of the PS3 being such an expensive machine when I already have a gaming system that does HD. In all honesty, my 360 has been gathering dust as I play my Nintendo DS 99% of the time. The games are actually fun! This same aspect looks to be carring over to the Wii with the new controller interface and 20 years of back catalog Nintendo games available via Virtual Console over time...

The Wii is the gaming system that I'll be waiting in line/pre-ordering.

HG TV, Xbox 360 (got it) and Wii when it comes out. Sony screw me once and I don't need them anymore.

I'm still trying to decide if I should get PS3 or Xbox360.

For some reason the Nintendo Wii doesn't strike me as an interesting piece. It might be because Gamecube was such a letdown for me.

oops HD not HG...

Well I already have an HDTV which look awesome, still I think this Christmas I'll be getting the new Nintendo :)

Well, I don't own a TV at all. Thinking about getting a Wii to connect to my spare monitor. I rarely play games... and I want something my children (current 5 and 2) can play on and have fun.

The Wii wins...

I have had a 360 since the day it came out (just like the Xbox before it). I love it on my 106" 720p projection screen. The PS3 just like the PS2 before it isn't as compelling.

I can't wait for the HD-DVD so I can get into that on the cheap.

One comment for Christopher Coulter. It is a bit early to declare Blu-Ray the winner. Also Divx is MPEG4 and both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray support MPEG4, so you are right MPEG4 is here to stay. However feeding 9-15 Mbps for HD quality MPEG4 is a little tough today.

>But, want to know which system you’re going for? So, >do you have an HDTV? Which system are you going with? Xbox 360 or Playstation 3?

No HDTV yet, no 360 (yet?), certainly no PS3. Wii? Definitely. Why?
Well, obviously if I can't afford a HD display, the Wii is the way to go. 250$ + existing hardware is less than the 1300-1600 entry fee for participating in the HD-fest. That calculation only works if the Wii is significantly different than the Xbox and PS2, which, odds are, it is. Of course it doesn't compete with the 360 or PS3!

Buying consumer electronics on credit is a mug's game - I don't feel like paying for the privelege of spending money (interest!) when I can spend time waiting instead for the price to fall. If I wait two years the 360-core may have fallen to 250, or I may have an increase in pay that meets the gap. If I wait four years, the PS3 will be in reach. I'm patient. I can wait. Meanwhile, the competing HD display technologies will sort themselves out (I'm rooting for SED, personally), and hopefully the HD disk formats will as well.

postscript: I don't intend on buying a PS3 largely because of Sony's, ah, how shall we say it, "difficulty" understanding "customer needs." (ATRAC, rootkit, etc etc.) The fact that the price per unit of time equation works out against Sony is kinda funny. Sure, it helps that it won't be testing my resolve any time soon. :)

I'm in quite a hassle.

I really really need to get myself an OK computer to play the one game which turns me on for the first time in ages - Spore. And I'm definetely buying the Wii so that I can play the nostalgia of my life - Zelda. And I know I'm going to end up buying a nice PS3 so that I can play any awesome games that I want and use it as my media center.

The thing is:

I haven't gotten around to get myself an awesome HD-TV yet and I don't really play a lot of games very often.

So as I said. I'm in quite a hassle.
But I really need to get one of each.

André Hedetoft
Geek Movie Director
Help me sell 1000 T-shirts so that I get to make my next Geek Movie over at http://www.andrehedetoft.com

I'm a 2001-adopter of HDTV, so at this point, I have three: 27" Fullscreen, 34" & 60" Widescreen. Why have multiple HDs? Multiple places to watch and game in HD. I went with a 360 at launch last year. Why? I picked HD-DVD as an eventual winner in the high-def DVD format battle, so the PS3 was a no go for me. $200 this season nets me a high-def DVD player Another reason? I can pull in free OTA HDTV on my WMCE box and stream it to ANY of my HDTVs by using the 360 as a Media Center Extender over WiFi. HDTV everywhere I say. ;)

Hum.
On further thought, I have to confess it's not all about the benjamins. It's really about the fact that the Wii has the first really new UI that might be more than just a flash in the pan. There have been custom controllers for consoles and computers before, but as acessories - so they never changed the interaction metaphor. Light pens, anyone? Power glove? Right. The attraction of the Wii isn't that I could play prettier games - it's that I could play genuinely new kinds of games.

The other reason - well, I don't have faith in Microsoft or Sony's desire to be flexible in how I use their hardware as a media center. A "flexible" game console is too amenable to pirated games. The economic incentive isn't there either - the money is in the software, the games sold, not the hardware.

Right now I have a PS2 sitting in my living room. It has an empty harddrive bay, and a disconnected ethernet port. I could have been using that as a remote-controlled, mp3 playback box for years now, but Sony crippled user access to their hardware. From my couch I can see the dustbunnies through the vents.

That's branding, Sony. Every day I see an advertisement for a failed product sitting beneath my TV.

-r.

Have had a HDTV plasma for 3 years now, never looked back.

Hooking up a powerful PC to a large HDTV is just so sweet (games, hd movies, surfing from the couch).

Was not tempted enough by the xbox360, but will be getting a PS3 for sure (whenever it comes to Europe).

Does PS3 still promise dual 1080p?

Kevin C. Tofel said:
"I can pull in free OTA HDTV on my WMCE box and stream it to ANY of my HDTVs by using the 360 as a Media Center Extender over WiFi. HDTV everywhere I say."

That's pretty cool but:
- what kind of WiFi are you using?
- how much bandwith do those HDTV streams take up?
- what resolution is that OTA HDTV? Is that resampled along the way?

-r.

Rhandir, I've done this via 802.11g, but had much better results with 802.11a. These streams need a good 20 Mbps and they are not resampled. These are the same resolution as captured. I wrote this project up last year: http://www.engadgethd.com/2005/12/15/hdtv-over-...

Thanks Kevin!
I had sincerely believed that only ethernet cable could handle that kind of thing in real-world conditions. Boy am I glad to be wrong! Excellent!

It is a bit early to declare Blu-Ray the winner.

I thought ya'll be early adopters, on the geeky bleeding edge. But it's merely reading the tea leaves, not early if you go by content producers/studios, and that's what counts; not just a cheapo HD-DVD add-on for Xbox 360...which what the HD-DVD camp seems to be betting all chips on.

The only real winner of yet? DIVX, imho. But will someone not rid us of this DVD-5 spazz. DVD-9, DVD-10 and DVD-18 hardly took off, and DL media is ungodly expensive. But something triple NTSC, PAL, and SECAM, will be welcome...even tho NTSC has won the game, really. But multi-format, multi-layer disks gonna be the rage...I rally hope HD VMD gets some teeth.

Ack...'really', but I 'rally' it too. ;)

PS - Plus then there's the NEC dual-format Blu-ray/HD-DVD chipset...

@Chris - I've never gotten the impression that the "HD-DVD camp" was betting all their chips on the add-on for Microsoft (like Sony is with the PS3). They released their players early on in the year at half the price of the Blu-Ray players and have been steadily releasing movies. It doesn't appear they were betting all their chips on an add-on that Microsoft wouldn't even confirm would be sold for several months.

I'll be buying a Wii before either of the other next gen offerings.

Anyone with HDTV should not think twice about getting the PS3. Check out the demos and the graphics, Xbox360 and Wii look like a drop in the PS3 ocean.

I'm pretty annoyed that these game consoles that are now also "networked media players" are so restricted in what they can play.

There's absolutey no reason that I should be able to listen to internet radio or play any frickin' video format I want to on my X-Box 360.

To say that DVD-9 never took off would be incorrect. At this point I can say with pretty high confidence that every mass produced DVD on the store shelves is DVD-9 and has been so for several years. DVD-10 was mostly a stop gap until DVD-9 production ramped up. People just didn't like to flip the disc in the middle of the movie or they didn't like not being able to tell which side is which. Now DVD-18 is pretty much a fantasy, I own one of the few discs ever made (T2) and it works great. Just isn't worth the hassle to create.

Dual format players may help, but really a single standard needs to emerge to move this forward. At this point it is unfair to compare 2006 DVD sales to 2006 HD-DVD + Blu-Ray. A better comparison is 1996 or 1997 DVD sales to 2006 HD-DVD + Blu-Ray sales.

Oh and one more thing as a flip side to the mentioned NEC chip for combo player. There is the idea of a triple layer DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray disc. However the costs look to be so high that they would only be useful for BlockBuster/Netflix to reduce redundant inventory. Look at the cost of combo DVD/HD-DVD and imagine what the Blu-Ray would add in mastering and production costs.

I like my xbox 360 with and without HD.

It does lock up on occasion. It is loud. It looks great. A lot of the games are quite fun and can really chew up a lot of time.

I like the Nintendo games more for the character/platform game franchises. They are appealing - especially with kids. Other than Lego Star Wars, I have a hard time finding games that make sense for kids on the xbox systems.

Any suggestions?

"Xbox360... look like a drop in the PS3 ocean"
Are you on dope@Mohammad

Currently have a 360 and love it. Will also get a PS3 :-) Both will connect to the 42" Pioneer HD plasma and Miller and Kriesel sound system :-)

I have both systems and love them both but the only problem with 360 is the red ring of death, you can't go wrong with either system, but I would get a HDTV you would be amazed at the picture. I got a 50" plasma and I love it everytime I turn it on. Play Heavenly Sword (PS3) on a HDTV and you won't go back to a regular tv

I agree with people here, Xbox 360 brakes so much, im on my 3rd one and got fedup so decided to send off to repair depot at Microsoft yet again and this time also buy a PS3 as a backup.. or maybe even I will use more than the Xbox 360. When the PS3 Home 3D world comes out I believe sony will win - http://www.ps3home.co.uk/ if you havent seen it yet and of course it has blu-ray!

I purchased the new 80GB PS3 and got a good deal: http://gamerhome.co.uk/game/?pid=B001DTETLS&...
It cost me only £289 and was the new 80GB and comes with wireless controller and a free game.