Sam Kennedy weighs in his opinions on the PS3.
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I Love My PS3 This may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you (it sure came as a surprise to me), but I am absolutely loving my PS3 right now. Whenever I mention it around the office I get quizzical looks from people, but it's true - now that I have it all hooked up at home, I'm really starting to enjoy my new Sony machine. And no, I am not writing this as a response to Milky's blog entry from yesterday. I've been meaning to post about this for a few days now (in fact, Milky bought his PS3 in part because I had been talking about how much I had been enjoying mine).
I'll admit, I didn't expect to be this happy with it. In fact, for a while there I had the PS3 basically sitting in its box for weeks, since we have plenty at work and that, outside of Resistance, there hasn't been all that much that I've been excited to play (not to mention that I was just too damn busy before the holidays). But now that it's in my living room and hooked up to my HDTV, I have to say, I'm quite impressed. I've been playing a bunch of games, downloading stuff like Gripshift and GTHD, and watching lots of Blu-ray movies thanks to netflix. It's been awesome.
What I especially love about the PS3 is the elegance of the machine and the experience - it truly feels HD. The system design (which I kind of despised at first but have now come to admire), the interface (I know some people can't stand the minimalist Cross Media Bar, but I like it), the startup music - it's all so sexy. There's something so cool about hovering over GTHD on the XMB and seeing the cool wallpaper and hearing the chill music in the background. Then there are the little touches that just add to the PS3's overall sleekness - it's super quiet, it has no bulky power brick like the Wii and 360, and the touch sensitive buttons are neat little addition.
It's interesting, because after reading about the problems others had with setting up their systems with Wi-Fi and what not, it all went really smoothly for me. It's actually funny - when I first went to hook up my PS3, I was all worried that I would need to get a hub so I could split the signal from the wireless adapter hooked up to my 360. But then I realized that I completely forgotten that the PS3 had built in Wi-Fi. And from there, it was so easy to get online, and thanks to my super fast internet connection, I was downloading large demos in no time.
Now, I know the PS3 experience is far from perfect - Sony seriously needs to patch a bunch of stuff and the game library is totally lacking right now - but I can see why Sony made a lot of the choices it did with the system. It might not make sense initially - especially with the sticker shock - but it will eventually. After all, the PS3 may not be for everyone yet, but for people like me - people who want the slickest console experience and want HD movies - it's fantastic.
Take, for example, the Blu-ray drive. Never mind the movie playback for a second, but as we continue to see bigger games, companies are going to want more than a DVD's worth of space - today's games are fine (just look at Gears of freaking War)...but tomorrow's games? We're already starting to see multi-disc games like Blue Dragon on the 360. Not that swapping a disc is the end of the world, but lots of publishers won't want to do the multi-disc thing - and developers will be stuck with what they've got. Of course, whether the extra storage space afforded by Blu-ray will really mean all that much to games depends on who you talk to - some developers think it's going to make a huge deal, while others maintain it's all about being efficient. I'll tell you this, though: I quite enjoy the new boxes for PS3 games - sure, it means absolutely nothing to the gameplay experience, but after seeing Blu-ray/HD-DVD boxes, standard DVD cases feel so five years ago.
Then there's the hard drive as a standard in the PS3. Using Blue Dragon as an example again, if Mistwalker was able to store even just some of the game code on the hard drive it
could have been accomplished with just one disc. But Microsoft doesn't allow publishers to do that since 20 percent of its audience base is without a hard drive. So what you end up with in a case like that is three DVDs that have a good deal of the same code repeated on each (only the story, character, etc. data is what differs). It'll be interesting if Microsoft ever starts allowing companies to make games that are playable only with the hard drive. After all, it's allowing Konami to break the 50MB rule for Xbox Live Arcade (which ensures XBL Arcade games fit on a standard memory card) with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I'll be one of the first to download SOTN when it hits, but what sort of message does it send when Konami is allowed to break the rule for its game and others aren't? Or that some Xbox 360 owners won't be able to play the game without buying a hard drive (or new memory card once those are released)? These are the sorts of problems Sony avoided by having the hard disc as a standard.
Now, one of the things I still wonder about with the PS3 is the lack of rumble in the controller. I haven't missed it so far - in fact, I haven't even really noticed or thought
about it - but I wonder if I will with certain games down the road. I'd love it if Sony brought out a new controller with rumble included - I'd definitely buy one - but I don't know if it's something that we'll continue to ask about down the road. My gut tells me we will, though. In speaking with one of the third party peripheral manufacturers recently, they informed me that they've tried to make a rumble controller for the PS3 - if only for the PS2 games that supported it - but it appears that the function has been completely blocked from the controller signal from the machine. Basically, if Sony can't do rumble, none of the third parties are allowed to either.
I do quite like the SIXAXIS, though. My first impression of it last year was that it felt cheap since it was so light - and I don't think Phil Harrison was happy when I told him
that. But now that I've gotten used to it more, I'm starting to agree with his stance: by being so light, you do kind of forget that you're holding a controller. It actually feels more natural.
So yeah, I've been enjoying the PS3 quite a bit. I'm sure some of it is no doubt the excitement of having a cool new toy to play with, but I'm also really happy to see that the
system isn't the bulky, overpriced, mess that it's often been made out to be. In talking with Milky yesterday, we discussed how the PS3 can't seem to get a break. Most of it likely stems from Sony's typical problems of too much hype and arrogance - which basically invite people to gang up on the company the second it slips up - but I wonder when the turning point will be.
It's interesting, because despite the stories of the terrible initial launch and that you can now readily find systems in stores, the PS3 is actually off to a great start. In the first two months of release, it sold better than the Xbox 360 did in its first two months last year. It also sold better than the PS2 (best selling game console to date) did in its first two months. And the PS3 cost $600 freaking dollars! Yet, somehow, it doesn't feel like the PS3 is a major success. People expected more.
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