f13.net

Ok, I'm making the final push in talks with the wife to let me buy a PS3.  What do I need to buy with it?

I'm fairly certain I need an extra HDMI cable and a second controller, but what else?  How does the wireless hold up?  I can't run a network cable for it.  

Networking has worked fine for me so far. I haven't bought any additional peripherals for it.  The HDMI cable I'm using is the one that came with my 360 Elite  :grin:

To expand a bit on the networking, I've only had problems when streaming HD tv shows to it. I've had to degrade the quality a bit using the Google PS3 media server.  My PS3 is a fair distance from my router, however.

A terry cloth.  Motherfucker collects dust more than any other electronic device, ever.

From sitting around not being used?  It's gotta do better than my Wii.  Or did you mean literally?

Literally.  My PS3 rarely spends a day without being powered on at least once.  I meant that it's a dust-magnet.

Yeah, mine seems to get pretty dusty too.

Do the new PS3 packages come with rumble controllers? If not, I guess you should get some.

PS3 remote, If your going to do any media playback its cheap and works very well, as the only other option is the controller.

Perhaps a bluetooth headset if you want to chat,  just use a usb headset for comfort.


Found the wireless sketchy on media playback. Al tho I changed wifi routers and playback server so should really test it out again. Btw, grab ps3mediaserver (http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/)

I converted all of my movies to PS3 capable MPGs using handbrake and am able to stream 720p ones flawlessly over a WRT45G router that got equipped with OpenWRT.

I've really had no issues with wireless.

PS3 remote is worth every penny.

I think you meant MP4s.

Had a wrt54gl with dd-wrt using wpa2 and a pretty good db signal dropped all the time with "connection lost to server". Never could get past a ~45min show. We're talking a wifi signal of los five feet away.

I'm convinced that router was cursed, playing with a new wrt54g2 atm.

No, I mean H264 encoded .mpgs.

Fuser, I don't use any of that "on the fly" streaming conversion bullshit. I'm sure that stuff isn't helping.

Are you using mkv2vob? Handbrake doesn't even output files in MPEG container format.

Oh, snap. Right, I use handbrake for my ipod touch. Not my PS3. Hurf durf. Though, really, we're just derailing this. Anyway, yes, I use MKV2VOB.

I got the media remote... and never use it. The controller does just fine for me. If you plan to play multiplayer games at all I'd suggest a headset - the official one is supposed to be good but seems to be out of stock everywhere (in the UK anyway).

Can't comment on the wireless, never used it.

Of course the other thing you'll be needing is a copy of Demon's Souls  :grin:

Uncharted.
Flower.

Ok, so gathering from this the only must-haves when I leave the store are an HDMI cable and some games.  Thanks a ton, all.  Now please to be wishing me lucks. 

Yea, you'll need it, since you're buying a PS3 a mere few weeks before the slim is probably going to be announced.

There also is a rumored price drop happening soon too or has it already happened?

There's always a PS3 price drop happening soon.

No one outside of Sony corporate/marketing knows when though.

I suppose if I had anything to add for a new PS3 buyer, it would be to immediately buy a larger 2.5" hard disk so that you don't later have to bother with transferring your data.

I can't see it happening with the way Sony is bleeding right now (the whole company, not just the games division).  Plus, does't it still cost them like $40 for every PS3 sold?

Honestly, I'd probably have already bought a PS3 if I didn't have a 360 already.  Drake's Fortune, God of War 3, and Infamous all look like great exclusives.  Are they worth a $400-$500 investment in a new console when I already have a comparable game machine?  Nope.  I can't be alone in this.  Sony is just flat out boned for this generation.

HDMI cable, and wireless works great.

Mine came with a hdmi cable, but I got a 20 gig. Are the newer ones not?
Monoprice (http://www.monoprice.com) is good for cheap cables, having color coordinated hdmi makes figuring out which goes where much easier, blue/ps3 red/hd-dvd green/360

Yep, I'm waiting at least a week or two post-E3 till I buy.  I have that exact luck:  as soon as I buy it the PS4 will be announced.  heh. 

Derail is fine -- I'm interested in using my PS3 to play transcoded DVD content.  Is MKV2VOB a single step thing or do I need to rip the DVDs with something else first?  I'd love to get all my DVDs on the NAS in some format that doesn't lose (much) quality, suitable for playback on the PS3.

I also vote for buying a PS3 remote -- the thing makes a great bluray player.  Also I love the fact that the DVD player will do a straight 2x scale rather than just stretch-to-fit 1920x1080... much cleaner scaling that way.

Not sure. Will check tomorrow.

To my mind, that would be the smartest thing they could do. The 360's proice drops have put the MS machine in many many homes that would not have had them in. Which is where your second paragraph comes in..

I'm with you Big Gulp. I bought a 360 before the PS3 released, and with the system priced so high I can't justify it for anything out (or on the horizon). Losing the one exclusive I really cared about (FFXIII) was the nail in the coffin. Unless PS3 turns into JRPG heaven like the PS2 did, I'll probably wait til PS4/Xbox9001.

I don't think they're comparable. Maybe at first glance, I guess.. But there are subtle things about the system that when stacked up, makes it priced accordingly. I'd say that it was harder to stomach when released, but the 360 wasn't exactly cheap either. Not to mention that the PS3's price is relative to the 360, just for being released after it. Hell, relative pricing even lets Nintendo get away with the Wii's pricetag too. Which, technically, is far more ridiculous.

Handbrake will rip DVDs, mkv2vob will convert to MP4 that the PS3 will play. It's pretty much lossless to my eyes, in fact some US import DVDs I ripped look better than playing from the DVD directly.

And PS3 Media Server (http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/) running somewhere is a lot better for navigating etc.

If you rip your DVD into a single VOB file (a normal DVD has the movie split across multiple VOB files) the PS3 will play that fine without any conversion necessary.

mkv2vob is used to convert the latest high-quality Torrent movie standard of H.264 video and AC-3 audio in an MKV container file (superseding the older Xvid and MP3 in an AVI standard) to a VOB container that can play on a PS3. The PS3 can't read MKVs directly but it does support this funky H.264 in VOB format (H.264 in a VOB container is not part of the VOB spec, it's something Sony hacked support into).

Oh, awesome.  Disk is pretty cheap -- I'd love to just keep it in the original encoding.  Are there any decent tools for ripping into a single vob?  I forget what I used last time, but it did a filesystem level copy of the DVDs, giving me the multiple vob files and other gunk.


Also very cool.  I'm way behind the state of the art on this stuff.  Yeah, all the TV I've been grabbing lately has been h264 in mkv containers.  If I can easily convert this for playing with the ps3, I could ditch the little PC by the TV entirely.

DVD Decrypter will do it easily.

If you go to Mode -> IFO it'll automatically select what it thinks is the main movie title (as in DVD title, not the name of the movie) and all of the chapters will be selected*.

Under Tools -> Settings -> IFO Mode make sure "File Splitting" is set to "None".

Then you just pick a place to put it and it'll put it all in a single VOB.

You'll keep all the audio tracks and subtitles, if they are there, but you lose all the chapter markers, which can make navigation cumbersome depending on the player software.

* If for some reason you only want some chapters (like you have a favorite scene you want to make into a separate movie) you can right click in that chapter selection box, "Select None", and then manually select the chapters you want to put into a VOB file.

Honestly, how are they not comparable?  They're direct competitors for Christ's sake!  I can see the whole, "But it plays Bluray!" argument, but frankly I just don't give a shit about that, particularly when I'm a filthy pirate who rips all his movies and blank Bluray media is too expensive.  Beyond that?  Yeah, they're comparable.  They both play the same games more or less, at the same level of competency.  This isn't like the Wii where a ported game has to take a massive drop in quality.  We're still talking apples to apples here.

I wasn't saying any of that to particularly sell you on Blu-Ray or anything. To each his own. You're not right nor wrong. I was more interested in your general statement: "Sony is flat out boned this generation". And I think it's because the things that made it expensive, while justified, weren't obvious benefits from a gaming standpoint - like, say, much better graphics would be. You're an example of many people who don't give a shit about Blu-Ray, and therefore you put no value in it. So in turn, you just call the systems comparable. And if they are comparable in your mind, then sure, I see no reason to not pay less for a 360. It's exactly what you want.

Unfortunately, Sony is boned because quite a lot of you just wanted that too. But maybe boned is strong word. Definitely fail of some sort, but it's not like it's going anywhere, nor are the titles lacking or going to be lacking. It's still cool to have around, for sure. Not like some 3DO or some shit.

HD wars is (are?) the reason the PS3 blu-ray more expensive yadda yadda. Except BRD players are now much cheaper than buying an overpriced machine that plays pretty much the same thing as my 360 with fewer exclusives than I have fingers on one hand that I give a shit about while not upscaling my ps2 games.

Ahhh deja-vu threads.  :awesome_for_real:

Yea, but you have shitty taste in games otherwise you'd have bought a PS3 already for Demon's Souls and Uncharted. But hey, don't let reality get in the way of shitty taste.

You're all going full retard.

You don't get an opinion. You live in a country that probably spent less in total on legitimate games than *I* did last year.

Fix'd

It isn't deja vu, because I care even less these days. As for exclusives, I don't even play games in general as much anymore, and I still can see that there are more than 5 good exclusives. For you to still like games, and say that, kind of amazes me. You have great hate, sir.  :awesome_for_real:

5 is subjective.  For instance, I've never understood the appeal of the Metal Gear series, so I'd pass that up even if it was on the 360.  Demon's Souls?  Isn't that basically just a Diablo clone?  Yep, don't like that style of game.  I'd have jumped on Little Big Planet if the controls hadn't shit the bed and made the game a whole lot less cool.  For me that leaves Uncharted, Infamous, and the still unreleased God of War 3.  What else am I missing that isn't a pile of Japanese stupidity?

You're just being ignorant now. Stop that.

I honestly don't know.  Hence the question mark.  I guess I could have looked it up, but I don't own a PS3, and therefore don't care.  Of course, this kind of leads us back to the whole "Sony is boned" argument.

Sony isn't boned because you don't care. That doesn't even make sense. Also, most people, when they find exclusives they want on another system, start wanting it. You do realize that's what exclusives are for, right? You're just being a ridiculous outlier and I can't really tell why because there's no reason behind it.

Foresaw this at first title glance.

It was all fine and dandy until people came in who have absolutely no fucking interest in the console. It's like, "Why even click on the thread?"

We come to the cockroach races to watch the cockroaches crash.

Live costs money.

That is all.

Also for the first time ever someone made hardware worse then Sony hardware.

Fuck 360

So there's a slim coming out, eh?  Any rumors on the price point?  The wife and daughter are big Kingdom Hearts fans and I'm under penalty of death if I buy a 360 instead of a PS3, so I'm waiting it out at this point but that's good news for me.

The two real questions for me will be, will the slim be reasonably priced, and will it have full backwards compatibility.  I won't buy a PS3 without the latter, and can't buy it without the former.

I strongly doubt any iteration of the PS3 will do backwards compat.  They're making too much money from PS2s still.  I would love having it all in one console, but at the end of the day I just won't buy/play PS2 games if I get a PS3.  I'd love it, but doubt it. 

It's something of a matter of principle for me, because they had it at one time and then removed it.  If they had never had full BC in the first place (like the 360) I wouldn't have this much of a hangup over it, but the idea that they had it and took it out pisses me off to the point that I refuse to give them money.

That said, if I ever have the money and see an old 60gb version with the hardware BC on ebay or something and feel in the right mood, I might chance buying it in that manner.

What they took out was the PS2 chips that were just soldered onto the mainboard of the PS3. This is probably one of the reasons along with nanometer reduction that they were able to make a slim model at all.

I can see being pissed about say, a giant 80GB without hardware back compat, but a slim model? That makes no sense.

Didn't some of the other models have software-based backwards compatibility, though?  The 60gb and original 80gb models were both software-based, I thought.  I remember being pretty annoyed that Sony decided to remove the software backwards compatibility from later models, and it wouldn't affect a slim model at all.

The Euro versions have no backwards compatibility at all, hardware or software.

I think I need a chart to keep track of all the PS3 versions around.


I'm only half being a smart ass here.  :uhrr:

Ask and ye shall receive.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS3#Models)

The best of my understanding (based on interactions with some friend who work there and general observations) is that they thought they were going to be able to do entirely software based ps2 emulation, then it took longer than planned so they dropped in the ps2 chipset (similar to how ps2 "emulates" psx) as a stop-gap, then they either decided it was going to be really hard or expensive to actually make the software emulation solution work and/or just wasn't worth it.

Which makes me glad I bought a launch PS3 which can play PS2 content.

I bet we eventually see PS2 emulation, if only so that they can sell the PS2 library to us again via playstation store.  If it's technically difficult (which I think it is -- PS2 is a really bizarro machine which would be a pain to emulate well without a *lot* of headroom), we might not see this until PS4 or whatever the next generation is.

Yeah, removing the chip I can sort of understand, but both models in production now don't even have the limited software BC that the older ones did, and I suspect a slim version wouldn't either, and I see no technical reason why they can't.  It may not be perfect BC, but neither is the 360's.

Yeah i'm glad i got an original model with the chip. Still a lot of entertainment to be had from the PS2

edit - that said, i'd be compelled to sell it for a hefty price  :awesome_for_real:

My library of 360 games outnumbers my PS3 games something like 20:1.  That said, I think the PS3 is a superior machine in nearly every way.  Blu Ray.  Built-in wireless.  Negative RROD.  Quieter.  Connections.  Nicer looking (eye of the beholder).  Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.

Also, I know some people aren't sold on Blu Ray.  These are people I'll never understand.  With the right setup, it is completely amazing and a whole metric fuckton better than standard DVD.  The PS3 is, by most accounts, a really good BR player, and that justified the purchase as far as I am concerned.

I've got a slim PS2.  So it finds itself easily on the TV stand shelves.


I'd almost rather play anything on the PS3 just because of the noise.  The 360 is obnoxiously loud. The two game libraries of mine as starting to converge, but I've traded in a lot of 360 games and the only PS3 game that's made it back to Gamestop is LittleBigPlanet (I made some reaches with 360 game purchases that didn't work out).  Still, the 360 is going to get exclusives and Bioware games will hit it before they're ported to PC, so it'll always have its use.

I'll get one in Sept/Oct I've been promised.  It's a big purchase for us right now because we're paying off some debts.  Shouldn't be too bad though, maybe I'll hear about a price drop before then, or the slimline unit. 
Meh.

EA bought the Mass Effect IP. I'd imagine Bioware stuff will hit the PS3 also.

Well, I guess we've all learned who wears the pantalones over at the old Hawbit estate.   :awesome_for_real:

Sony kinda doesn't seem to want people to buy the thing though.  Too expensive, and they pulled out BC with entirely too many models of the machine.

Given how insanely successful the PS2 is this is a serious drawback.  I have too big of a PS2 library to buy an overpriced machine with a handful of worthwhile games!

If I could get a used 20 gig for 200 or 250 for the 60 with BC I would for Little Big Planet, Disgaea 3, and Valkyria Chronicles.  The Blu Ray and improved video output for my PS1 and 2 games would make the expenditure worth it.

But as it stands, I am currently thinking about getting a 100 dollar slim PS2 to replace my aging early 00 machine and ignoring Sony this generation entirely. 

They seem about ready to do the same sort of incompatibility fuckup with the PSP, turning it into an iPod Touch except without half the popularity if not more. 
(And existing owners lose access to their UMD games?  WTF?)

Infamous is the first PS3-only title that's really made me QQ a little that I can't get it. Going to take more than that to get me to spring for the console price given the economy though.

She's an attorney defending bank-side foreclosures.  I'm a pseudo-librarian.  She wears her pants and mine.   :oh_i_see:

Afrika seems to be coming to America courtesy of Natsume.

This is a pretty amazing era for Sony, somehow among all their hubris, they seem to be inviting other devs into the PS3-era by letting them publish SCEI titles (the other 2 being Demon's Souls/Atlus and BADMAN (Yuusha)/NISA).

Excitement.

The ps3 seems to be the most appealing out of the three console systems at the moment. Truly the greatest joy of this console generation was not owning any. But I picked up demons souls asian version like 2 weeks before atlus announced the US release. I don't even own any current gen systems but didn't want to have to deal with the possibility of Demons Souls going for 100+ used in 1-2 years from now. Especially since it seemed to be one of the reasons to get a ps3 because it looks decent + unique, regardless of the fact based on what I've seen and heard about it, it sounds like "I Wanna Be The Guy The PS3 Game". So I doubt it's much like diablo. Diablo has always been more like Gauntlet NES with loot. Only reason to play = Necromancer.

If I absolutely had to go with a current gen console system, the ps3 seems like the one which sucks the least. 360 only has value if you import, for me anyways (cave shooters). And the wii, well, it's the wii. The only games of interest seem to be No More Heroes, that new Vanillaware game and Sin and Punishment 2. As for games like Galaxy and Smash Bros? No Thanks, I was tired of those before they were released.

I was planning to get a ps3 after demons souls arrived, but since e3 was so close I figured I'd wait and see if any changes would be made. Though it's very unlikely, still planning to wait till after. My reasons for wanting a ps3 = Valkyria Chronicles, Demons Souls, MGS, "Project Trico"lol, and maybe Steambot Chronicles 2.

lol wat?

(http://application.denofgeek.com/images/m/telek/scanners.jpg)

That was really fucking random.

I don't know how this got started, but Demon's Souls isn't like Diablo.

Yeah, well, you'll have a hard time proving that without sending me a copy of Demon Souls.

There's Motorstorm and maybe the second one. Uncharted. Possibly Demons Souls and inFamous. That's 4.5 games I'm actively interested in playing. Not worth AU$700 to me just for the box that comes with a game or two I wouldn't have bought. Plus, say, AU$360 for the 5 above games (conservatively) brings me over $1k for that before even counting a second (or third, etc controller) or any other must have odds and bobs, or a new HDD. Not worth it.
I'd probably do it if BC was still in it, but no, so, no.

No personal interest in LBP, MGS, Resistance or Gran Turismo (or Halo, for that matter). I'd probably buy some Ratchet, even Singstar, etc if I owned the system but won't buy a system for Ratchet. I also don't give a shit about unreleased games that are in development. When they're released I'll start caring.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_3-only_games



Don't you do this to pretty much every Wii or 360 thread?  :roll: Besides, I have an interest in the console. Just not enough of an interest to buy one at this stage. I've always said here that I'll eventually get one, and that's probably still true. Really though, the BC is my sticking point at this stage.



Now tell me about this Diablo game.

PS3 = M.A.G (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gameplay-premiere-mag/48643?type=flv)


/thread




 :why_so_serious:

Using that logic. Phantom > PS3 and 360.
 
:awesome_for_real:

We are not using the same logic.

We gave up on a media streaming server, and instead spent $100 on a brick USB.  Far easier to move over all your files and watch them glitch free.

Yeah, looks nice. but FPS on a console using thumbsticks.. well I won't say = FAIL, but it's not for some of us, no matter how pretty the previews look.

Also, GAMES IN THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTAR. Unreleased exclusives are irrelevent to me until they're released.

I do prefer my FPS with M&Kb. But, that looks sweet, and its made by zipper.

Just say you don't care about the games of the present either, it's easier that way.

Why? Because I don't bother to jizz in my panties about something that may be out within a year? Or because I'm unfazed by half a dozen PS3 exclusives?
FWIW, the 360 at this point in time has fewer exclusives I would buy a system for, but that doesn't matter anymore because I already own the thing, and most of my games are non-exclusives anyway.

Your wannabe snarky comment makes no sense anyway.

Snarky comment  :awesome_for_real: Stop being so defensive. I'm just eating some pizza and talking a little bit here.

[edit] My "snarky comment's" point was that you were saying the same thing about games of the present, before they were released. You used that same kind of line, now they're here, you still don't care. Just unleash the hate already!  :awesome_for_real: That's my point. And don't think I care that much to want to egg you on or anything. I don't really.

Defensive? Meh, you misinterpreted my tone as much as I did yours, baby.  :heart:  :awesome_for_real:

Not sure which games you're saying I was saying I don't care about before they were released. I'm sure there were upcoming but now-released games I didnt and continue to not give a fuck about, but that's par for the course for anyone.  :awesome_for_real:

The 4.5 PS3 exclusive games I listed I like, and would buy if they were on the 360. When I eventually get a PS3 I will snap them up, it's just not personally worthwhile for me right now. That shouldn't be too difficult to comprehend.  :awesome_for_real:

The rest of the PS3 exclusive library, and most all of the 360's exclusives I don't really care about. Most of the games I have a personal interest in are multiplatform. That shouldn't be too difficult to comprehend.  :awesome_for_real:

Those are the games I care about. I hope one day to marry one of them, I care for them so deeply.  :awesome_for_real:

 :oh_i_see:

This part stood out to me.  All the 360 has to really warrant purchasing it over any other console is shooters, so I found it odd when people say this, even factoring in the multiplatform.  Not that I'm disagreeing about the mouse+keyboard bit...

I bought my 360 for two reasons at the time: Chromehounds and Dead Rising.  Strangely, I got a lot more value out of Chromehounds since I got into a really good clan of guys.  Dead Rising is one of those games that should have been an instant classic but its random Japaneseness sabotaged it (stupid photo taking mini-game, escort mission hell, a finite time limit, etc).  Unless a lot of that stuff is corrected, I'll probably skip DR2.

Anyhow, what Azazel said goes for me, too.  If I had to make the choice right now, I'd buy a PS3.  I've already jumped into bed with a console, though, and the limited exclusives I'm interested in for that platform still don't compel me to shell out $400 minimum just to have the machine to play them.  I still think Sony is boned this generation.  To be fair, both MS and Sony got their asses handed to them by Nintendo, but Sony had such a huge position of strength last generation that losing so badly to MS has to gall them.

I find the huge companies subsidising the hardware and purchasing exclusives to give it value so distasteful I'm happy to miss out on anything unique to the console.

Well, other than I wouldn't buy a wii anyway because while I like the concept of a casual gaming platform the actual product hurts my eyes too much.

Out of curiosity, what exclusives do you think Sony bought? I'd really like to know.

Unless you were talking about Microsoft. In which case, well, yes, that's always been their gameplan.

yeah, if anything some of the previous exclusives became non-exclusive because of microsoft's....mmm...deep well of generosity. really the only exclusives on PS3 are first and second house. and a few things that don't attract xbox gamer's as well, like jrpgs.

Pretty much in the same boat as some here.  There are some exclusives I want, but not enough to shell out for another console at the PS3's current price point.  They drop it down $100, and then I'm game.  My 360 is enough for me otherwise.

Well, sure, microsoft have always used their monopoly supplied deep pockets to make up for the limitations of their products.

I must admit I was surprised that you could suggest there are no PS3 exclusives. But I think what you are saying is that Sony funds or owns the game developers and thus isn't buying the exclusive rights to the title itself.

Things like this - "Following this, Sony gave them a deal to develop LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation 3 in exchange for exclusivity and ownership of the intellectual property" from wikipedia, them paying rockstar to produce a PS3 exclusive title, your comments in the demon soul's thread and the recent complaints over Sony messing about with ghostbusters makes it hard to argue they are not spending a lot of money slanting the market in favor of their own platform above and beyond any technical advantages it may have.

I'm quite serious when I say I have no clue what you're getting at and that your post is cryptic.

And how are they messing about with Ghostbusters?

They took over distribution and suddenly the xbox and PC release became "sometime later this year" rather than simultaneous is my understanding. I don't really follow console news that closely.

Also, he explained why he holds the opinion that Sony "buys" exclusives.

In Europe, Ghostbusters might've been delayed, but then they didn't have a publisher at all in Europe at the time, as far as I know, no one was picking it up. In America, all the console versions are launching day and date together.

As for LittleBigPlanet, I think they courted the big 3. I know for a fact Nintendo turned them down first. I don't know if they went to Microsoft at all after Sony said yes.

This comment makes no sense.

I don't understand what you're saying about Demon's Souls here. From is neither Rockstars nor someone to have faith in prior to Demon's Souls. That was, as far as I'm concerned, total luck on their part.

I can't think of a single case where Sony bought the rights to something and pulled Exclusivity away from Microsoft. Nintendo wouldn't make a good comparison because pulling an exclusive from them, well, that would just be strange. I don't even think Microsoft has tried to do that.

Sony paid the creators of little big planet and rockstar (and I am sure others) a huge amount of cash to make a game that will never be playable on the PC or 360. What definition of exclusive does that not fit?

Simpler version. My PC is perfectly capable of playing little big planet. The studio that made little big planet would almost certainly make some additional cash (enough to cover porting or letting a third party do it) if they released a PC version on steam. They won't because under the terms of the contract with Sony they are not permitted to even if it made economic sense. Sony does this to increase the value of their proprietary hardware through making it the only way to play the game.

The same argument no doubt works for a great many other titles (including things like demon soul's?).

I find it distasteful and choose not to buy an un-needed duplicate hardware platform just because some corporations has tied games to owning it. They're legally entitled to make it a PS3 exclusive and I'm free to not buy it for that reason.

This would be the same if I owned a PS3 and looked at microsoft exclusives.

It would be a good result for the consumer if the market could decide which hardware platform is the best and games companies could decide which platforms they target. Purchasing or developing platform exclusive titles warps that.

Look, we know why people don't like exclusives.

But the majority of what you're saying is an entirely uneducated look at console gaming. What game did Sony pay a huge amount of money for? You do know Microsoft is the one paying for exclusive DLC right? And LA Noire was started back in the PS2 days when Sony didn't have to pay ANYONE for ANYTHING because they were the only game in town worth publishing on (hell, it might even be in production for the 360 as we speak). As for Little Big Planet, no, that's not quite how it worked sadly. I'm not sure Media Molecule ever wanted to do multiplatform stuff at all.

The problem is you're using an argument that fits for Microsoft but makes no sense for Sony because you don't know:
1. How their exclusives came to be.
2. Don't follow console news.
3. Aren't very well informed as to the nature of the market.

One of Sony's MAJOR problems this generation is the fact they're not doling out money for exclusives when what they desperately need is MOAR GAMES. More JRPGs, more good shooters, more Everything. They, by far, have the best first party games this gen and if they didn't before Demon's Souls/Uncharted, they sure as shit do now. But they just don't have the numbers they pulled back in the PS2 days. A lot of that is going to the Wii just because It's Cheap and has a large, if undefined (by publishers and marketing) userbase.

No, they really really don't. It doesn't work at all simply because that's not Sony's gameplan. Look, there's a LOTS of things worth ragging on Sony for this gen. Their behavior with first party and exclusive games is not one of them. And for Demon's Souls, it's just a terrible argument. From doesn't make PC games (ever) and th game wouldn't have even worked on the 360 because the online component is a huge part of the game and Microsoft decided to split their userbase between silver and gold. Even if it wasn't a Sony owned IP, the game still wouldn't have come out on the 360.

tl;dr Stop talking out of your ass. Unless you find some concrete example of Sony writing a huge check on a major product, you're just speaking from a totally uninformed position. Rag on something that's worth ragging on.

Edit: The same goes for LittleBigPlanet btw, an online component that's sliced between paying and nonpaying people would ruin LittleBigPlanet. That's why Nintendo and Sony were the ones that were courted.

Sony's failure this generation has to do with 3 things. 

1:Price
2:Price
3:Price

Yep.  $200 less expensive at launch, and I would have gotten the PS3 within the first month or two.  If any had been available, cause at that price they would have been selling out.

Now they're $200 less expensive, but they cut key functionality.

Yeah $450 for a system is fucking stupid, no doubt about it.  Never again I just don't like console games enough for it to be worth it.

It's like everyone forgets how your nickled and dimed with the Xbox to even get a platform close to the PS3.

PS3 80Gb MGS Bundle $480 (I think, I had a crap load of giftgards etc but it's a lot less today)

Xbox 360 Pro 60Gb $300 (Kung fu Panada/Lego Indy to get a jasper)
Wireless adapter $90
Play and charge $30
Live! Gold $60

That's $60 per year, and a second controller + battery used to be $10 more, but I think they dropped in line when the PS3 ame out.

I'm not even going to mention the rage of a decent headset price.

$5-10 more for the remote control, it goes on and on...

The PS3 pairs with any bluetooth headset right?  I've tried several different headsets for my 360 and the best I found was my $1 cellphone headset.  Which sucks.

Also, has anyone tried this thing (http://www.splitfish.com/?uid=4nkpfqinh2cvv3t0) with the PS3?

(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/680305/imgp7822.jpg)

I'd like to know if there is lag and whether aiming feels mushy in-game.  The revision released this year will be at E3 so I can imaginary test it out when I imaginary attend.

A friend swears by his, Schild was suppose to get one for review.. what happened with that?

They started releasing info about the new one.

Not really - MS just offers an 'a la carte' approach versus Sony's 'everything in one box' arrangement.


360 = $200-300
Wireless adapter - I've got mine wired to my router right next to my PS3 and other consoles.  Comically, I wish my Wii had an ethernet port out of the box.  Wireless for something that will never get moved once connected is hardly a requirement.
Play and charge - if you buy this, you fail.  You can get 8 2500 MAh rechargeable AA batteries and a charger for $20, and never have to tether yourself to your console or leave it on all night just to charge your controller because the USB ports aren't powered unless the console is on.
Gold - $30 for 13 months.  If you're paying more for it, you should visit Amazon on occasion.

For $250, you can be playing everything but the Sony exclusives.
Sony needs to drop the price, but seeing as they're still losing ~$40 on each PS3, I'm not sure if they can.

I think being able to throw any 2.5" SATA drive in a PS3 merits consideration as well.

I bought my 360 about 18 months ago, not last week. The price difference, even then between ps3 and 360 was significant (it's even bigger now). Software was much more heavily slanted towards 360 in quality at the time. Also, Dead Rising and ZOMBIES! Though after playing it I found the same flaws with it that Big Gulp has.

They both have positives and negatives as far as the accessories go, as well. Though wireless is a non-issue for me (I also have a Wii that I'll never hook up to the net because fuck buying a fucking RJ-45 plug for $80) I like how the PS3 can have any notebook HDD slotted in for a fraction of the cost of the 360's overpriced undersized HDDs. And so on in both directions.

We just got a PS3 a few weeks ago.

My son tells me that we absolutely cannot leave a disc in it when we power it down or else SOMETHING REALLY AWFUL WILL HAPPEN NO REALLY.  I'm skeptical. 

What gives?  Anyone know?

Btw, wow am I impressed.  Ratchet & Clank is the favorite of the few games we have.  Crystal clear.

I've left a disc in mine when powered down since I've had it.  I'm afraid to do the same with my 360.

Weird.  Never heard of this.  I bought my PS3 when the console launched in the US, and I believe it's almost always had a disc in it (either the last game I've been playing or movie I watched) since then, with no horrible side-effects that I'm aware of.

Is he worried that the disc is going to get damaged if he leaves it in? If so then he may have bought into the FUD that was going around during the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD war days that Blu-Ray discs are easily damaged because the layer of plastic that sits between the "data material" and the outside world is thinner than it on an HD-DVD or a DVD disc. To compensate for this Blu-Ray discs have an "anti-scratch" coating (e.g. TDK's Durabis) to protect that side.

I've left discs in my PS3 since day one.  BRD, DVD, games....not a single problem ever. 

Never had an issue with discs left in my 360, either.

I even drove my ps3 across the country with a disc in it (forgot about a bluray) with no ill effects. I think it's had a disc in it almost the entire time I've owned it.

And I bought the ps3 without wireless, as there's networking where it goes, and being able to simply pull out the 20gig drive and slot in a 320gig with no hassles was a joy after upgrading an xbox drive.

Thanks!  It sounded dumb to me - I didn't think that it could be right.

I'm sure nothing would come of me leaving discs in it. I'm just paranoid that I'm going to anger the Gods and red-ring the sucker.

Oh, psaw. That just happens naturally.  :awesome_for_real:

So no price cut announced at E3.  I still want to play Demon's Souls when the Atlus US release is available.  Buy now with the Dell 15% off + free shipping coupon or continue holding for a price cut?

I say wait for a slim, but that's logic talking (yes, I still think it's coming this year)

I always buy something when I can afford it.

Chances are you'll piss away the difference 8 times over by the time the price actually drops or if/when there will be a slim.  Buy now if you can,  import DS and your gaming world will be complete.

Dell has had PS3 offers quite a few times over the past three months.  Don't make it seem like it's now or never. 

Damn I really want one.  There's a pretty fair number of games I'd like to see now.

do what i did.  start saving up little bits of cash.  $20 here, $5 there, maybe an occasional $50, by the time you have actual money saved up maybe the slim will be here or maybe a cheaper PS3 in general.

You could always keep an eye on ebay.  Got my PS3 there for $250 in perfect condition.  I'd recommend checking the Buy it Now listings every so often (regular auctions always seem to end up fairly close to retail price, whereas with Buy it Now you can sometimes catch someone who doesn't know any better putting one up pretty cheap).  If you find something for a good price, make sure the seller has a good feedback rating, read through the description a couple times to make sure you know what you're getting, and don't hesitate to ask the seller questions.

Making a major purchase over ebay can be a bit scary for some people, but as long as you take all the proper steps, you should be ok.

I'm not a fan of eBay, and greatly prefer not owning preowned things, but for picking up a ps3 and some games I ended up going this route which resulted in purchasing a 60gb version ($260 after shipping). I've seen ~10 of the 60gb in the last two weeks go for $250-300 and some had games, controllers, or HDMI cables with them. I was going to pick up a new retail one a while back but then figured I'd just get a 60gb one and get a 2yr SquareTrade warranty for $50 I think it was, and in the worst case scenario I end up with a brand new ps3 for a cheaper price.

Sure I'd prefer a slim body type, but considering what I got at the prices I did ($130 for Demon Souls, SF4 + Akuma Controller, Uncharted, and Valk Chronicles) in close to new or brand new I'm very happy with the purchases off ebay. But the most important thing, to agree with Velo, watch the feedback ratings, ask questions, and be patient.

Just won an 80GB PS3 with BC off Ebay for $260.  Now to hope the rest goes right.

80GB PS3 is software back compat. There's a list somewhere with issues.

Yay for a cool wife! 

Got a PS3 tonight (and a Samsung 32" 1080p LCD TV).  Unfortunately, not the one I was telling you about, schild.  Already sold; wasn't paying attention to the post date for the ad on craigslist.  But nevertheless, stoked.  Anyway, came with Uncharted, bought Infamous and MGS4 to go along with it.  They (best buy) didn't have Demon Souls. 

Fuckers.

Got it home.  Unpacked everything.  Forgot an HDMI cable.  Doh.  And the USB wired controller is going to have to go  How long does it take the wireless controller to charge, and does it charge with the system off?

This question probably belongs in the Quick Tech Question thread, but can two wireless devices operate off the same Linksys WRT54GS router?  I've got it set to WPA2whatever security thing for wireless devices.  When I went to enter in the WPA Shared Key on the PS3 network set up, it promptly booted my wife offline on her laptop, telling her another device with the same IP has logged on (or something similar).  So, I'm guessing the answer is "no"? 

Heres hoping its an HE (http://playstation.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/playstation.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=232&p_sid=XpJjnzzj), oh and the search linky (http://www.us.playstation.com/Support/CompatibleStatus) schild's talking about.

Demon Souls is only an import at the moment, NA release is coming up sometime.


It's only needed for charging ;)


Yes its no problem to operate two or more devices off of the wireless access point. Did you copy the same IP as your wifes? If so just increment the IP or use DHCP on the router to handling passing IP's out by itself.

Thanks for the other info.  Now, I'm going to be real honest here.  I have NO idea what you just said.  So, I'm going to answer yes to 'copy the same IP', and 'saywhodawhat?' to the rest.

nothing really

Yeah, I know.  Figured it wasn't a big deal, as I recently bought a used PS2 (we use my roommates as mine is a first gen and is quite temperamental) for the girlfriend to use at school, and she'll be completely done soon.

Probably will pick up Uncharted and Disgaea 3 as a kick off, and BlazBlue and KOF next month will now be purchased on this instead of 360.

According to Wikipedia (assuming that chart is correct) the 80GB model in production now has no backwards compatiblity whatsoever.  Only the older 80GB model that is now no longer in production has the software compatibility.

Correct.

A few hours to charge to 100%, and the PS3's USB ports are not powered when the system is off.  Old Motorola cellphone chargers (Mini-USB) work great, though.

As for backcompat, the easiest way to check is to count the USB ports on the front of your PS3.  If there's 4, you have software BC.  If there's only 2, you don't.

You can check for specific games here:
http://www.us.playstation.com/Support/CompatibleStatus (http://www.us.playstation.com/Support/CompatibleStatus)

If I owned a PS3 and not an XBox 360 (never owned either of them yet), would it still feel like I was missing some of the best games? For a long time as a neutral observer, the 360 seemed like where the best games were. The 360's red ring problems and nickel-and-diming always put me off, as did the PS3's upfront cost, but I might pick one now.

I'm primarily a PC gamer. I already have a Sony Blu-Ray player (came with my Sony HDTV), a Wii and balance board (because I'm fascinated by input device technologies), and a long-dead Xbox 1 (Christmas tree lights problem).

You'd be missing out on Gears of War 2, Fable 2, some Halo games, and that's about it.  Even Alan Wake is supposed to get a release on Vista.

Is there any word on PC launches for Fable 2 and Gears 2?  Both those games' first editions were released on PC 9-12 months after xbox. 

They'll be announced eventually. I really can't recommend Fable 2 to anybody though. That thing is a joke.

I don't think GoW2 will get on PC, Cliffy B raged about piracy with the first game.

Finally got the PS3 hooked up tonight with an HDMI.  Getting lots of blue static pops.  The fuck? 

Any ideas?  First inclination is a bad HDMI cable.

Edit:  Also, freezes up 17 percent in to updating Drakes Fortune.  Awesome.

Oh, Craigslist. How doth never disappoint. :(

Try formatting the whole damn thing or something. If you haven't, you should've anyway.

Bought it new.

Fixed the connection/download issue.

Moved it to another TV.  Worked flawlessly.  So either I'm getting some bad interference in my office or the TV is bad.  Going to pull the TV out of the office and set it up temporarily somewhere else and see what happens.  FWIW, my router is sitting 4 feet away from the TV that's acting up.

I get green noise on some screens on my Vizio if it helps you feel better. But mine is ooooooooooooooold. I could probably fix it, but I'm lazy and it doesn't effect gaming.

My purchase might be getting bumped up to mid-July.  From there I only need to see if we'll get a price drop or slimline announcement. 

The PS2 game thread got me thinking.  What are the must-haves for the PS3?

I'm going to pick up InFamous because it looks cool, along with Uncharted.  I'll snag Demons Souls when it goes American.  What else?

Depending on your game type/genre preferences:

Resistance 1/2
MotoStorm 1/2
Metal Gear Solid
Little Big Planet

If you don't have a 360 and are after more than platform exclusives:

Saints Row 2
Guitar Hero WT/Rock Band 2
Lego Star Wars

Hard to go much more into depth without knowing what genres you like.

Ratchet & Clank.  Yes, I love this series and I'm not insane.

lol, almost every exclusive is pretty fun to me, barring the downloadables. heavy on the action side, but they're all pretty good. just depends on whether you like their respective atmosphere or not. top games for me are uncharted, lbp, and maybe now that i think about it, valkyria.

I'd say download Wipeout HD at least. There's a new Wipeout in the works, but Wipeout HD's pretty cheap. umm.. the Last Guy is pretty cool too.

MGS4
Disgaea 3 (If you're into srpgs)
Valkyria Chronicles

I did not like LBP, but a lot have. The jumping physics drove me crazy.

Other genres like shooters and racers, I'm just not that into.  Multi-platform console you can figure out for yourself.

I enjoyed the first two on PS2 very much.  When they made the design shift for the third/Deadlocked I felt it lost something. How do the new ones hold up in comparison?

I've been replaying the first one recently and it's got some definite charm, like the chatty Gadgetron vendor and the music.  I do find that I miss some of the bits added to the later ones, though.  The Future portion of the series continues the development of the line towards relatively story-heavy play while keeping Deadlock's refined (?) combat.  I'm not in love with most of the weapons in the Future games, unfortunately, but the platforming and combat is great.  It's still funny, too.

Personally I feel that Quest for Booty is even stronger than Tools of Destruction, which is good because the generation-leap problem was very obvious in ToD.  QfB has some great puzzles and atmosphere.  QfB is also damn funny.

For anyone else in Canada. Dell Canada (http://accessories.dell.com/sna/products/Games_Entertainment/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&sku=A1518790&dgc=AF&cid=3881&lid=77903) has the Logitech cordless Mediaboard Pro PS3 (http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/gaming/playstation_3/devices/3616&cl=US,EN) on for $39.99 +tax (shipping is free).

How is the wireless keypad compared to the keyboard? If it is a decent accessory I'd much rather have the keypad over a keyboard.

Also, I hear about 3.5" HDD tray adapters so I could use regular desktop HDD instead of the more expensive 2.5" HDD, has anyone tried one they'd recommend?

If you've gone this long unless you want to play RPG's, 2d fighters or racing games I'm not sure what the point is.  You have BR which means you can't justify it as a player and as a pc gamer I would expect you to not need shooters.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001FRTP94?ie=UTF8&tag=f13-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001FRTP94

PS3 is the deal of the day (80GB @ $350). There's 3 editions on the page, click the one that just says 80GB.

Dammit I don't quite have the cash for it.  Thanks for the link though.

I wonder if this means they're clearing them out for a new bundle like Target and Walmart are getting. Or clearing for an announcement.

The PS3 I purchased off Ebay, pulled out the hard drive, popped in a 500GB (it's what I had lying around), hooked it up, and went to the races.  Watched a bit of Casino Royale on Blu-Ray (pretty!), played some Uncharted (pretty and fun!), and downloaded some stuff from the Playstatino Store.

I think I prefer the Xbox Live Marketplace overall, but I dig spending real money instead of fucking around with Microsoft points.  Plus my girlfriend just about died being able to get FF7 on her PSP.

Only thing I'm not feeling is demo installation.  I downloaded something, and I can't do much with it without an install, so why doesn't it just do it automatically?  I'm assuming that while Microsofts demos and such are straight executables, the PSN stuff is archived in some fashion?  It just seems like a weird extra step.

After Uncharted, I'm probably going after Infamous next.  BlazBlue/KOF will probably be for 360, since I already picked up the FightPad for SF4, and there can't be that much difference between the two revs.

I agree, this bothers me a tiny bit, but really the fact that I can use actual money instead of abstract points really takes care of most of my gripes.  Also I can't seem to remove an expired credit card from my XBLive config, which is something I have to pay attention to every time I add points, so PSN++.  Buying things on PSN is so easy that I have to remember to SLOW DOWN and see if that LBP costume is also part of a bundle which might save me a dollar or two.  I also like the Add To Cart bit for when I'm buying a lot of little things.

I really wish that I had had the patience or foresight at the time to replace my PS3 disk immediately.  Good job.

i found a way to avoid the double install hassle of the PSN.  que everything you want to download from store late at night.  then go to far right and choose "shut down" and check the little box for it to shut down after it installs.  go to bed. 

Neat.

Is there a way/workaround so that you can use PS2 controllers on the PS3?

No sir.

Apparently there is no way to get the ps3 controllers to work w/ vista64 or any 3rd party controllers that suck less. I'm looking at you L2 and R2 you fuckers.

Expect a price drop in 31 days because I just got mine today!  What a smooth system.  Makes my little Wii look so lonely next to it. 

My 4yr old immediately took to the controller, had her little Sackboy jumping all around and changing it's colors.  That's something she simply couldn't do on the Wii.  The Wii controller setup isn't intuitive enough. 

Picked up:

LBP
Ratchet and Clank: Tools of something or other
Oblivion (because it crashed all the time on my PC)
InFamous
SW: Force Unleashed

Really stoked.

That would make Activision happy since they threatened to pull PS3 support if there isn't a price drop soon.

I think you're right. I just have to be patient for PC release dates and ultimately I can play everything with what I've already got.

Kotick is such a tool.

Not that it matters, their products are on par with EA's bad days now.

Of course they do have what's probably the biggest selling non-Nintendo franchise of this gen.

hm... what's the PS3 selling for in the US? $400?
If they sold it here in Aust for that equivalent, it'd be under (or about) AU$490-$500 and I'd be much more likely to buy one.

Instead they insist on keeping the RRP sky-high at AU$690-700. Or in your money, that's US$570.

So I continue to not own a PS3.

Activision’s Kotick: ‘We May Not Make Games For The PS3 Next Year’ (http://paidcontent.org/article/419-activisions-kotick-we-may-not-make-games-for-the-ps3-next-year-)

There's a thread about that asshat.

Yesterday I hooked up the PS3 to our 42" Sony LCD we bought earlier this year and moved the old janky DVD player upstairs for kid use.  We were halfway through the first season of Lost on DVD on the old player and decide last night to watch a few more episodes.  Holy Cow!!  The picture off the PS3/HDMI cabling is phenomenal. 

Also, LBP is tons of fun.  I see how people were off about the controls feeling a little loose, but the charm of the game makes up for it so far.  Both the kid and my wife really had a good time. 

But you know the best part?  I can download Spyro 1-3 (for PS1) from PSN for my wife.  She's going to go crazy, those are her favorite games ever.   

Amazon's doing Gold Box sales for PS3 today it looks like.

Gold Box (http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox)

Nothing terribly interesting except CoD4 and what looks to be Fallout 3 though.

Looks like it will be HAWX, GH: Metallica and Fallout 3 on sale later today, after Wolverine and CoD4.  From what I can gather from the clues.

The CoD4 deal is all day.

Yes yes yes its rumors about a PS3 slim but here's some interesting tidbits

That's old.

I got a splitfish frag 2.0 in the mail today. Wondering what game I should try it with. Would try Modern Warfare but don't have it for the PS3.

The government's been using PS3s in array, so that's gotta be helping with moving units and driving down cost of production.

Tons of places have been doing that - since release. I'm not sure why you'd think that would drive down the cost of production. I'd wager it really doesn't move that many units, not in the short term and especially not in the long term.

I think they'd rather be moving units to people who buy games.

Its nice to see they have gotten production down.  Maybe its time to I dunno, pass this shit on to consumers so I can play the handful of games that were dipshit enough to be PS3 exclusives?

Price goes down meaning used 20 gig BC machines should go down.  I then buy one, for a nice 200-250 and pop in a 100 gig HD for like 50 more bones eventually.
(I cant believe how easy it is to replace the HD.  I guess even SONY can do something right eventually..)

I can then play LBP, Disgaea 3, and Operation Darkness with maids instead of characters dressed like they might actually be in mid 20th century Europe.  And possibly that Demon Soul game everyone here spooges over.

You would figure the cornholding Nintendo's cheaper products have given them might have gotten through their thick skulls by now.  They finally made a system that doesn't break if you look at it funny, but then they screw the pooch on price.

Operation Darkness is a 360 exclusive.

Little Big Planet is owned by Sony.

NISA and SCEI are like brothers. They've always approved of their work where they wouldn't approve others. After the success of Disgaea, they had to, and it was a smart move.

The price on 20GB won't go down unless BC comes back.

You talk tough for someone who says absolutely ridiculous shit. You should stop that.

Please to be seeing a review asap.

I'm actually going to email them and tell them I'm not reviewing it. The mouse is so terrible that it ruins the whole experience I don't know why they thought it was ok. It's hard to explain how bad it is, but my wrist started hurting after pressing the left button like 5 times. It's terrible. Too much exertion required to push it down.

If it were a Razer mouse type short throw set of buttons, I'd recommend it to anyone - at least for Resistance 1 which is what I tested it with.

When aiming with the SplitFish mouse does it feel as responsive as aiming on the PC?

No, it feels as responsive as a console. Except my accuracy is much much better, I don't ZOOM close to a head and inch to it with an analog stick, instead I zoom right to the head. If that makes sense. Mouse still sucks an egg.

Curious is it more of a spring issue, plastic molding or just a piece of shit?

I don't understand why they just don't put a USB type a socket + 5 button hid device support in its firmware and keep the price the same. Do some "works best" with xyz vendor who knows their shit on mouse building but have it all tinker able/profiles for major mice in its desktop app.

Because the mouse has the standard PS3 buttons on it + start. So, X, Y, O, etc. It's hard to explain how bad it is, seriously. I can't find the words, except "bad."

I just bought a FragFX v2 last week as well, and all of the buttons (both on the mouse and the nunchuck part) are super cheap feeling:  squishy, with lots of play and wiggling around and absolutely none of the positive feedback that you get from even the cheapest PC mouse.  I think it's a product of making each button an analog input instead of a purely digital one (you can check this using their comically bad programming & customization software).  The mouse is also a tad small for my liking.

That said, it beats the piss out of thumbstick aiming.

Yeah, I'm still getting one. Hopefully they may change the manufacturing by my birthday.

Learn to read.  I was referring to Valkryia Chronicles.  Since its sort of the same game as Operation Darkness, only more Otaku.
Since the cast of OD don't dress like maids and shit and almost look like they may actually be in a WW2 combat zone.  Just one with zombies, vampires, and werewolves in it.
(Man, throwing a grenade at a zombie horde just doesn't get old.)

And I could really give a shit about game company politics.  Its always been stupid and it always will be.

Nintendo started this crap back in the 80s  (or at least perfected it) and its really never ended since.

That's some powerful stupid.

 :facepalm:

Operation Darkness is maggot-infested shit next to Valkyria Chronicles.

If you don't give a shit about company politics, why are you acting childish over Sony's?

Because he's a cheap, deluded, stupid asshole.

It's maggot-infested shit even before you start comparing it to Valkyria Chronicles.

Its funny I am having fun with it, but oh well.

Schild you don't like Dragon Quest so clearly your opinion of games is like, totally wrong.

So suck mah balls.  :oh_i_see:

Zombies, vampires, werewolves <> WWII <> watercolor people in a fake europish nation

Someone help me with the math, I'm not sure it's valid.  Maybe I should just play the game since it's fun.

I don't know about the full game but the Demo for Operation Darkness was putrid feces.

I would have made more sense if I had specified Valkyria Chronicles.

Silly question, I was cleaning up some data last night (old saved game data from trials) and decided to run the system updater. It re pulled/reinstalled 2.80. This ever happen to anyone else that you reinstall a system firmware previously installed?

Not I.

I have enough to buy a mid-priced game tomorrow.  I've played quite a few through demos and such and I'm down to two.  Which?  I can't decide. 

Uncharted (now that it's $30)
Valkyria Chronicles

I've got lots of 'actiony' games already, but don't have any RPGs, of which VC is supposed to be decent.  Then again, Uncharted is supposed to rock. 

Valkyria Chronicles is more of a sRPG.  You don't go a questin'.

Both are worth the money. 

Hard choice, though I'd probably lean towards Valkyria Chronicles if only because the best Sega RPG's have a bad habit of becoming near impossible to find.  Skies of Arcadia is one example.

Didn't want to start a new thread but Little Big Planet GOTY (http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/08/17/announcing-littlebigplanet-%E2%80%93-game-of-the-year-edition/) edition announced, Modnation racers beta invite in the box.

It's a trap!

Son of a bitch. I want that beta.

Well, I did want to pick LBP up at some point.  Guess that would be a good excuse.

I wonder what the long-term effect of double-dipping in the VG industry will be? From a consumer standpoint any game that relies heavily on DLC looks to be a much better bargain if you just wait, and unlike movies games don't cost 19.99.

I can tell you I had no interest in purchasing Fallout3 till their GOTY was announced with all the content. Question is hows the PS3 port of it play?

Having played it on the 360 and PC, I can assure you that it doesn't matter how it plays, you should get it on the PC.

Fallout 3 was exactly what I was thinking of specifically.

Although I guess the comparison to movies is flawed in that you can't buy things like commentary as DLC for a DVD. When DVDs double dip typically the later editions offer things you couldn't get anywhere else, whereas games offer things you could already get just as a more attractive bundle.

Games with paid DLC generally tend to come in cheaper when the bundled versions are released.

I don't see a problem with this.  It's essentially the same thing many games with expansions already do.  Offer a "gold" or "platinum" version with all of the expansions included.  Grabs people on the fence, bargain seekers and others.  It's not going anywhere as a strategy.

Some games have hurt their potential for not going this route.

People that want the game and don't care about saving $30 dollars a year down the road will still buy it at release.  Future DLC isn't going to affect my purchases one bit.  Of course, I've tended to ignore DLC for the most part as I rarely think it's worth the purchase.

Any game, DLC or not is a better bargain if you wait.  GOTY editions don't generally save you much, if any additional money over buying the base game (which will be heavily discounted at that point) plus all the DLC included in the GOTY version.

This for sure ^^  I've just ordered 3 games for £40, much nicer than 1 for £40  :awesome_for_real:  You just have to wait 3-6 months.

Essentially you pay the premium for the content sooner than others, even DLC works this way.  The big problem I see for companies is when they start releasing a relaunch pack and not adding some of it to DLC for their customers who paid the premium, like LA is doing with SW:Unleashed repack.  That gets under my skin because I already paid and it definitely makes me want to wait on their games in the future.  That could have some impact on future launch sales, maybe.

Don't punish me for paying you more money, earlier.

PS3 Slim $299 at Kmart! (http://www.kmart.com/shc/s/p_10151_10104_018W014436760001P?adCell=W2)

Nice.

Wierd PSN is offline for two hours during the conference too.

That pretty much takes the piss outta the press conference, as if everything else didn't before.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND HERE WE GO

I haven't posted yet because nothing notable has happened. They're doing their normal song and dance about numbers.

I am very interested to learn if GAMESCOM deserves a thread hijack.

It's a 2 hour press conference and Microsoft and Nintendo have exactly nothing in SonyLa,, errrrrr Europe. Yea, it'll probably be "important." It'd be a lot more important if someone had lugged a fucking video camera there.

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2009/08/18/live-from-gamescom-scee-press-conference/

Yea, without a live feed, I'm already bored. E3 ruined me. Don't even have the strength for cap lock.

Digital comics?!?!

laem

I wish they would have LBP sackboys as the characters instead of trying duplicate them in modnation.

So far the press conference is underwhelming.

The most shocking thing about this press conference thus far, and I have 3 different live blogs open, all using Cover It Live, is how slow of a typer Crecente is - we're talking dog slow. Jem Alexander at SCEE however is a maelstrom of words.


I disagree with what you said. Modnation racers is aping a few select designer toy styles with incredible precision.

Bah.  I'm going to have to wait for the summary before I return to proclaim "N U T ' S  I N  Y O U R  M O U T H" or not.

Unless we want to start taking shots at Crescente.

"The Digital Reader isn't just comics, though  -- more on that at a later date."

Pondering with the ebook reader stuff as of late you will be able to sync etc

PSP Apps are called Minis. Instead of you know, "Games." In 15 seconds, we'll know if they have balls to make indie games.

Wait, make that 0 seconds, and no. Still going to be licensed shit. Not taking on the iPhone this round!

Fuckit, I'm showering, text isn't fun. I'll get myself filled in on this news later.

Slim PS3 is official first week of sept $299, all the same features. Pricedrop on existing ps3 hardware today.

No mention of BC that I saw. And I wonder if the slim will have as easily replaced a drive as the regular ps3.

Whoa, the PS3 in the US is 1/3rd the price it is in Europe and slightly less even than in Japan?

Nope "same features" was the wording so no BC. Not like you could of really expected it as its been totally ripped out now for a while of the PS3.

Shitty that BC isn't making a comeback.

Does it look to anyone like the hard drive in the Slim is going to be easily user replaceable?

SCEI marketing materials as presented by Engadget. (http://www.engadget.com/photos/sonys-slimmer-ps3/2216344/)

I have no experience with the existing PS3, and it's too dark to tell easily in that picture.  If I can't upgrade the hard drive in the Slim, I'll get a price reduced Heavy (or whatever they end up being called) instead.

Based on those photos, I'd say no.  Or at least it won't be as easy.

I think the HDD access hatch has been relocated to the front of the machine (the little panel with all the logos to the right of the USB ports).

Yea, that is where it would have to be but my glass is half empty.

You lose the touch-panel buttons, seemingly the ability to switch out the hard drive, and a stand costs extra.  But otherwise, it's about time Sony.

Where's the pictures of the power brick?

Oooo. That Slim looks sharp. I hope the speculation about the hard drives being a pain isn't true.

Reference PS2 Slim power brick. :oh_i_see:

Was anything mentioned about backwards compat for PS2?

No.  And it's probably not coming back for awhile.  Sony likes selling PS2s.  It's was only in there to get you to buy a PS3 NOW!

It worked! :awesome_for_real:

No way its using a PS2 slim size power brick.

Yea, I was way off.  I'm thinking it's external and XBOX sized.

Yeah its going to be big, I'm curious about the lack of any obvious fan in the new slim. There's no air intake at the front or the sides/bottom either.

New Heavy Rain trailer (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gc-09-heavy-rain/54362).

I'm hearing 299 euro for a EU PS3-Slim. Anyone know if these fuckers are region-locked?

AV cables? Seriously?

It's a 250W power supply, it could very well be internal.

Super Stardust team does top-down zombie shooter, Dead Nation for PSN. (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175639)

On second looks that might be right as there's a marking for AC on the back and the specs mention an AC cable but no brick etc.

That's cool then.  I just bought one a few months back.  If the slims had BC I'd feel ripped off, but that's really the only issue.  The extra $100 is w/e.

Whoa.

I refuse to click the Heavy Rain trailer. I know it's awesome, of course it's awesome but I must go in blind.

Hard drive is in the front, still easily removed.

No power supply. Keke.

Crap. Now choosing between the Slim and the price reduced Uncharted bundle is actually a difficult decision.  I wanted an easy out.   :why_so_serious:

The obvious answer? Both. :awesome_for_real:

No BC? Not that it would be a deal breaker if I were considering buying one.






FUUUUUUUUUUUU! This is terrible! If I get a paying position I'm fucked. Demon's Souls + Cheaper slimline PS3.

Oh hai new trophies/profiles already on playstation.com

(http://profiles.us.playstation.com/playstation/psn/visit/profiles/binfuser)
Get your Portable ID! (http://www.us.playstation.com/PSN/SignUp)

That zombie game looks almost identical to the Zombie Apocalypse game that Konami (?) just released. (I think it released already...)

$299 price is pretty much the best anyone could have hoped for on PS3.

What a pain in the ass to find:

Playstation Network -> Login -> My Profile -> Tiny Portable ID button

(http://profiles.us.playstation.com/playstation/psn/visit/profiles/schild)
 (http://www.us.playstation.com/PSN/SignUp)

Do ANY of the PS3's have BC nowadays?  I know it kept getting scaled back.  Not that it matters as I still have a fully functional PS2.  The slim will get me to buy a PS3, finally, around x-mas.


The C.net article (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10312144-1.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1) I read mentioned they cut the power consumption in half using the new cell processors, so the fans can be smaller than on the current PS3's.

None have PS2 BC. Last shipping confirmed units were the MGS bundle which was last fall.


Still theres a ton of venting on my current PS3-badonkadonk. Really amazed at how little obvious cooling it requires. Must be heatpipes taking it all to the back but wtf is the cold air intake. I cannot wait till someone rips it apart to see the layout inside.

Think the lower cost of the units now drives up demands for someone to break the PS3 copyright protection? I'm really shocked at how long the PS3 has stayed un-modded.

I guess PSN is being hammered, I can't access my Tiny ID.

I have to admit that the slim is looking awfully sexy, and I'm damn near tempted to grab it and save my launch system for PS2 chicanery.  Maybe when the price is reduced further...

Wish the portable IDs were about 1/4 of the height so I could put it in my sig.  Not putting that monster in there as is though.  Avoiding the ire of the mods.

It will be interesting to see what kind of bump this gives to their sales. I'm personally in no hurry to ditch my 20gb (upgraded hdd to 160gb) machine as I actually use the BC frequently.
Let's see what that trophy card thing looks like
(http://profiles.us.playstation.com/playstation/psn/visit/profiles/FortusDei)

(http://profiles.us.playstation.com/playstation/psn/visit/profiles/ahoythematey)


Suddenly, I'm feeling inadequate.

I like the PS3 Slim design, a lot. A lot less ridiculously monolithic than the old style. I do however enjoy my ol' 60GB and its hardware back compatibility.

I feel like I should replay Uncharted again suddenly.

The reason it matters for people like me is because I'd like slightly less clutter in my home entertainment area, but more significantly, because upscaling actually makes a big huge difference on a larger TV, as evidenced by my 360.

I'll continue to wait and see. The Australian Price will, I'm sure, continue to be horrifying.

Wise decision :awesome_for_real:

PSN EU doesn't seem to have the tiny ones  :oh_i_see:

 (http://mypsn.eu.playstation.com/psn/profile/Apocryphai.png)  (http://eu.playstation.com/psn/profile/Apocryphai/)

Got an email from EB just now. AU$499, Available from Sep 3rd.

AU$499 = US$409

US$299 = AU$364

So we're only being shafted by about $100 this time. Yay.

 :why_so_serious:

I'm not saying it's in any way reasonable, but why not import from another region?

(http://www.alpha-duplication.com/pages/duplication/images/blu-ray-region-map.png)

This is what is known as Australia getting treated like Africa.

Which is to say "no one gave a shit when they decided to draw up blu-ray regions." Yes, that means - imo - Europe was fucked also.

Japan and America and Hong Kong being the same region? PRICELESS.

Poor French Guiana as a tiny island of blue in the yellow mass :p

Has anyone used an external HDD with a PS3 before? Maybe that's an option, if you want to expand with this one. ??? Either way, I'm sure the built in 120gb is enough, so long as you're not trying to make it a media center or something.

Anyone upset with the lack of certain release dates and such for PS3 stuff should really go look at the Microsoft thread.

I made a joke about Microsoft TOTALLY RUNNING OUT OF STEAM last year at some point. Whatwith companies like Ensemble shutting down and Big Huge Games just hitting the toilet and flushing itself and Bungie "switching teams" and the PGR people just leaving them behind.

But honestly, I didn't think it'd be so bad that Molyneux wanks for 48 minutes and that's the whole presser.


The hard drive. Can. Be. Upgraded.

External HDD, yes, I've used one before for transferring music.  As schild said, though, the internal can be upgraded.  Easily.

Ah..

I'm still fine with 60gb surprisingly. I don't care to keep demos on there for long though.

Honestly, I don't anticipate needing to upgrade the hdd if you aren't looking to store a large amount of video on the machine.  Even then, just plugging the usb cable from my external works fine, so I haven't bothered.

Having the option to do so without having my wallet raped is nice, though.

i'll start adding video to my machine when PSN home gives me a bravia, and streams it on there in mini version.  :oh_i_see:

Schild got it in one.

If the PS3 had BC I'd buy one, or if we were the same Blu-Ray region as The US or HK, I'd import one from the US or HK. Games being R-free while movies are not is really an annoying move.

As it stands, I could import one from the US/HK, but then it wouldn't run a lot of local discs. Yes I can import them, but sometimes it's just nice to go down to the local big-w or JB sale and buy a bunch of movie discs and not have to research if they'll work or not. Since DVD region locking became a bit of a joke here from the beginning (most brands), DVD imports were never a problem. Unless you got a Sony dvd player...

Is that region-locking for movies only, or games too?

Have fun. (http://www.llamma.com/PS3/repair/PS3_disassembly_tutorial.htm) Dissipator's a bit of a monster.

Only movies. I think there's like one EA game or some shit that's region locked.

No brick.
http://reviews.cnet.com/2300-10109_7-10001399-1.html?s=1&o=10001398&tag=thum;nextThum
Gallery of them unboxing a  slim PS3.  The last pic is the standard-looking PS cord vs the X-box power brick.  Only composite cables in the box, but IIRC the PS3's have been doing that for a bit now as a cost-cutting measure.

That's really impressive no external power supply  :awesome_for_real:

The last pic you linked to shows a brick.

Yea, the 360 power brick.

Reading captions is hard.

In my defense your avatar is distracting.

Oh and LOL at the inevitable price drop.  Maybe next generation Sony!

External power supplies keep the heat away from the main box. Not having an external brick means the heat is inside the PS3. They must be confident that it's not much. Or more likely, the new hardware produces so little heat that it's safe to include the PSU heat.

I think the Slim looks great and I plan to buy one.

Did the original fats have power bricks?  Because the newer fats don't.

No.


I don't understand this post. Maybe next-gen what? The PS3 is now $50 more than the Wii.

Fifty. Dollars.

Anyone who even buys a Wii from here on out is plum retarded - OR - doesn't have an HDTV. In which case, they're pretty much plum retarded, or broke and shouldn't be buying gaming systems.

Could be interesting when the cutthroat Christmas bundles and sales start up. No need to rush into the initial batch.

You only say that because you're in Australia. :awesome_for_real:

I see a 360 in one of those pictures, so it must come with one of those as well.

God damn stupid bundle bullshit.

People interested in picking up a Slim for the holiday season might want to think about pre-ordering soon (http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24932).

Some places are offering sales on current 80gb ps3. Down to $269 CAD at staples  :grin:

Nah, I have a 360 remember, and with all but a few PS3 exclusives that I'm interested in being readily available to me already..  :awesome_for_real:

Velorath - I'm sure if there's a local shortage here, they can just reroute some PS3s from Nigeria or Botswana. Or I'll wait till next christmas.

Any chance the original 80GB PS3 will be bundled (perhaps with Uncharted) for $300 somewhere?
I like the slim, but have no real need for 120GB and no bundle.  

And anyone here besides me who actually likes the styling on the old version better?

edit: christ, BB is already pretty much sold out

$299 was the magic price point Sony needed. It has been pretty obvious for a long time now they needed to get there, and well, they did. And that's that.

I'm really not sure what Microsoft's next move is as they don't have shit for exclusives coming out.

Nintendo will just drop their price at TGS in response most likely. Or Space World. Or whatever the hell their event is.

Yeah, I like the styling of the old ones, but smaller is definitely better. The network name for my PS3 has been Monolith from Day 1.  :grin:

That said, it's still the best PS3 (the 60 gig/BC). One of the few times I've splurged for gaming hardware, and not regretting it.

MS's next move will likely be the Natal bundle sometime next year.

I'm not entirely sure that's enough.

The woman without child and pedophile install base simply isn't high enough.  8-)

Edit: Also, by then GT5, Uncharted 2, and FFXIV will be out. Not to mention that FFXIII is apparently coming out on the PS3 before the 360 version now.

Price, marketing, and media backing so far have been the biggest factors in each consoles' success so far.  Games, not so much.

Well, the 360 has Halo ODST and Mass Effect 2 coming out.  And those are exclusive to the 360.  So I doubt they are terrified of the Slim.  $299, like you said, has been obviously needed.  With it's features, that should be the tipping point to get cheap ass people like me to fork over. 

Sony has rocketed out of the gate, but the 360 and Wii are halfway around the track.

I don't know that Halo ODST and Mass Effect 2 will attract new customers to the 360 though.  Chances are if you're interested in those games you already got a 360 for Halo 3 and ME1.  Splinter Cell: Conviction might bring in some people though, and maybe Alan Wake if they market it well.

I agree with Velorath.  Who doesn't already have a 360 that might want one?  I'd wager the same people who would buy used copies of Halo and Gears of War to go with it.  I'm not counting the people who are buying replacement 360s.

I've still not bought a 360.. I wouldn't mind having one, but other shit comes up, and it's not really important.

This sounds exactly like the same thing I did last time around. I bought the Xbox when it was really on the cheap, and just used it for a couple of Bioware RPG's.  :grin:

The 360 needs to embrace itself as a creation machine and let the PS3 be for raw exclusive entertainment. 
As it's looking now, that's where the companies seem to be steering themselves.
Problem is, one market is much larger than the other.   :oh_i_see:

Aaaaaand, BB just took down their slim pre-orders and pretty much their entire stock is gone.  Time to go retail hunting.
My HDTV arrives on Monday, must has PS3.

You guys are crazy, the ps3 is probably the ugliest thing I've ever spent over $100 on.  It looks like a squat fugly mass of cheap black plastic that is always dusty looking.  I don't regret the purchase, but I do wish I had more time and money for bluray discs, god BR is fantastic looking.

I'd agree if Microsoft hadn't started making consoles.

You're gonna argue which console is uglier? Cue special olympics pic.

We're not, because I said its the ugliest thing I ever spent over $100 on, I wouldn't ever buy a Microsoft console even if it was the last console on earth.

Considering most of them tend to be out in a living room where everyone can see it, yea, I like my consoles to be aesthetically pleasing. The PS3 at least blends in nice with home theater equipment and doesn't look out of place. The 360 looks like a tumor in a wooden or black entertainment center.

I named mine Knight Rider.

The 360 was never really designed as a home theatre piece.  Was always just a raw-gaming machine (big reason why many treat em like crap and carry them in gaming backpacks).  And anything "gamerish" is usually quite ugly.  I like the old PS3 design because the buttons are minimal and the gloss finish matches high-end HDTVs.  That matte finish on the slim to me would stick out a lot more on a TV stand.

This is bullshit. They had videos, exclusively got Netflix, tv shows, and all sorts of other non-gaming shit before Sony. Not to mention they tried to downplay Blu-Ray, and tack on a nasty looking HD-DVD player. Add to that the insult of their HDD pricing and their release of a black one with a much larger hard disc - called ELITE, no less (still surprised Pioneer wasn't all up on their ass) - and you've got something more than a "raw-gaming machine." Which it never was, since when you played games it was doomed to break.

I'm actually having a hard time finding my games under all the advertisements and videos and shit, so, uh... what schild said.

Me, but the continued hardware failure rate means I'll probably never buy one, even though I'd have liked to.  If MS had fixed that, I'd have bought one long ago and not looked twice at the PS3. Now that Sony has hit my $ threshold, I'll give them my cash and ignore the 360.

This is why my Xbox almost never gets turned on anymore, and why I for the most part don't buy games for it.  I hate the NXE.  I liked the old UI.  It was functional albeit a bit ugly.  The fact that loading the game in the tray isn't the first option that pops up now when the system loads is beyond retarded (assuming you don't have autoload turned on, which I don't, because it mostly gets used for the Arcade games).

Nah, The 360 has the gamer lead at the moment (new PS3 price point will lessen that) so they were going after the left-field-casual demographic with project  :pedobear: and stupid Molyneaux presentations. Really though, it's the 3rd parties who make all the best stuff (IMO) so it doesn't matter what they (or Sony) try to embrace at this point.

As for ugly consoles, the 360 is okay looking. You should be thinking about the US SNES, or the ugliest of them all, the Original XBox. You know, shaped like an X. With a circle of stupid in the middle of the top of the casing. Still makes for a great media centre, though.

You aptly point out that you are someone who might not want one.

Ard.  Ard.  Hey, Ard.  Last Remnant.

I've been playing it.  But it's the only thing my Xbox has been turned on for in like the last six months since I finished Tales of Vesperia, and I'm still thinking I should have just paid full price for the PC version.

I KNOW BECUZ DATS WAT IVE BEEN DOIN

THIS THREAD R4 PS3, GTFO  :uhrr:

edit:  this applies to both of me, if that wasn't obvious, or you, or... whatever, I'm so confused

I don't mean to say the PS3 is some hallmark of design, but I prefer the piano black to the duller black on the slim. I've got Samsung equipment to match it, I guess.  :oh_i_see:

Generally speaking, I don't think there's actually been a cool looking console since the PS1 :P

I don't even think the PS1 looked good.  But who cares?  Let's face it, no game console looks so good that it won't be a cockblock.  "Yea, baby, this is my pad..."  "Like, is that a GameCube?  Gross.  I'm outie!  Come on, girls."

Oh, I'm quite embarrassed that I have a PS3. Good thing no one really knows how much it cost.

What a pussy, I'm not embarrassed and I have two. Of course, I refuse to splitscreen game, so it makes some back-asswards sense to have two. Also, because I got the second one for $214 and it's a 60GB BC.

I don't get why Miicrosoft hasn't done a slim or at least a redesign of the console since the pieces of shit I guess have a failure rate of 50% or thereabouts.

That's fucking class action lawsuit material, but I think the same study that reported that said that only like 4% or so of 360 owners wouldn't buy another one due to the poor build quality. They've got some real retards on the hook.

I think I've put more hours on my 2 month old PS3 than I have on my 2 year old Wii.  Unless Sony really screws things up in the next decade or two, I'm not sure I'll buy another company's console ever.  Unless they go super cheap, like buying a 360 at $100 or something.  The only issue there is that it's not just $100.  Need cables, extra controllers, Live access, etc.

Too much hype a few months ago over Demon's Souls so at this price I broke down and pre-ordered a slim. Just got a shipping update on it - Delivery estimate: August 27, 2009. Didn't expect it that fast, I haven't even ordered a copy of DS yet. Time to search threads to see what else I need to pick up.

Uncharted is down to MSRP of $30, MGS4 is the same.  My favorite game so far has been InFAMOUS.  Had to get Oblivion because it never ran correctly on my PC. 

Download Fat Princess and Flower, both of which were great experiences.  That should hold you off for a few weeks. 

I'd hold off on MGS4 if your ever going to attempt to do trophies with it. I sent my PS3 in for servicing (fan issue) and lost all my save game data so now i'm waiting for if they ever patch it like Uncharted was.

Today I pre-ordered a PS3 Slim at JB Hi-Fi for A$494 with a HDMI cable thrown in.

The "Game" chain of stores is buying used Wii consoles for A$280-ish instore credit. So I'll probably trade them my Wii for some PS3 games.

um.. well done?

I'll wait until later, when the christmas bundles arrive though, since when I get a PS3 I'll also want another HDMI cable, a second controller, a BR remote, a bigger HDD to swap in right away, and, you know, some games. That'll bump up the purchase by at least $300 before any of those game things get involved.

You need a drive bigger than 120 right away?

That's what I was thinking.

It's really more than adequate. Unless, like I said, you want to turn it into a media center. But why would you if had a PC? Games will certainly not hog that space.. Especially if you were very discriminating when it comes to games. Which you are.  :grin:

I'd get the larger drive upfront so I then never have to think or worry about it later, and more importantly don't have to lose my saves and such. My original XBox makes for a fine media centre on the second TV. The PS3 by the way will be plugged into my TV and not my monitor. Basically, throw a TB in there, and forget about it forever.

BTW if you have a Sony Bravia TV you won't need a remote. The Slim has Bravia Sync which lets you use the TV remote.

I don't know what the hell people are putting on either console that they need bigger drives (unless they have really cheap 360s with like 20GB drives).

I have 2 60GB PS3s and neither is halfway full. I delete shit when I playing it.

I have an elite 360 with a harddrive that is incapable of being filled. Mostly because it will probably never get turned on again. :awesome_for_real:

Video on demand stuff? I have no idea what such services are available or what the quality/retention time is, just suggesting what could fill drives.

Anyone on this board that uses video on demand instead of just grabbing shit off the net and streaming it has shamed me and my people. And by my people, I mean the jews.

[... goes off to watch true.blood.0210.hdtv.xvid-notv]

That's slim only, right?  I've never been able to get my Bravia to recognize my 80gig PS3 as an HDMI device, although it is. 

Surely that's a function of the firmware and not the hardware, in which case it might come with FW3.00.

I'll throw my hat in with the "get a larger drive right away if you are going to do it at all" group.  No, I haven't filled up my 60GB.

Also you won't lose your saves if you do a backup to an external, so it's not really critical, just bothersome.  A note about the Backup option is that it seems to get everything, so you will either want a large external or you will need to pick-and-choose if you are using a USB stick or something.

I almost said Memory Stick.

That's going to make it pretty hard to play Alan Wake.

I froth so little for Alan Wake that waiting for a PC version two years from now is easier than waiting for Borderlands 50 days from now.

If streaming Netflix classifies as VOD then I'm guilty... with a Tivo & 360 it's the best 9 bucks/month I've ever spent. Besides I'm old and lazy and consider torrents a hassle vs. that cost. But like others mentioned, the streaming takes up little to no drive space. With a 120g drive in my 360 I just recently hit 50% capacity, and I'm lazy about cleaning stuff off it.

... I still feel dirty paying for it.


edit - typing is hard

Guitar Hero/Rock Band DLC mostly, XBLA Games, a half dozen or so demos that can sit there till I get around to demoing them. Also with a good chunk of "real" games I'm playing at any given time installed to save the wear on the drive. I also had a bunch of videos on it at one point.

And yeah, we know you  :heart: your ps3 and don't like your 360. Good for you. Maybe you should sell/trade in that sucker along with your Wii? :awesome_for_real:



I have a Samsung, but that's interesting to know at least.

I keep the shitty systems just in case they have something I absolutely positively can not miss.

Even the Gamecube had a couple games I HAD TO PLAY DAY 1. But then I got them on the PS2 and enjoyed them more there (god I hated the GC controller).

That's a fair enough cop.

/derail

Until now I kept consoles until they broke or the next generation hit but this holiday season I may sell my Wii.  Natal and the PS3 wands will let me go full retard just fine and I won't have to deal with terrible graphics to do so.  Depends on how strong I feel the call of Mario and Zelda I guess.

/rerail

A local Best Buy has a bunch of slims in stock today and I am going to pick one up.  Besides Uncharted I was thinking about Folklore.  Posts from 2007 seem to approve but will it feel dated now?

Folklore always felt dated, but boy is it gorgeous.

I don't think age is Folklore's problem.  Don't forget to get the dlc for it.

Fuck! The PS3 Slim can't run Linux.

Edit: or I should say they removed the ability to install other OSes on it. It could probably still run Linux if somebody figured out a way around that (like taking the drive out, installing Linux that way and putting it back in).

Is this confirmed on 2.80 or newer firmware?

Dunno. The articles I read didn't mention if they removed that feature from the non-slims in a firmware update. I would doubt it though.

What version do the Slims ship with?  I kinda assumed 3.0 but no idea.

Oh, whatever will we do. :roll:

They are not removing it from the non-slims. They are removing it from the slims due to the overhead required to support it from a hardware perspective. The quote was something like "Other OSes were not in our 'lower cost' efforts and thus were removed". Non-slims will continue to support booting from other OSes.

Not that it matters as they still refuse to unlock the RSX chip. No "real" development can occur until they do and I've given up hope that it will ever be the case. The chief reason I bought a PS3 is that I was under the impression that it would replace my aging XBMC. I was very, totally, and horribly wrong.

Mine came with 2.76.  Also, I was not prepared for the XMB to rock my face with awesome compared to the other consoles' menus.

Have the multiplayer connectivity issues in Fat Princess been successfully fixed?

Nice, they ship them out such that you can patch it right away.

The XMB is what a console interface should be.

And you can mod that fucker without paying for expensive themes!  Second thing I did after putting in a larger hard drive.

Good point, you can use any old jpg as a background.  Pictures of the family can make it hard to find the icons, but if you want to whip up something in a editor and use it, easy easy easy.  Also there are quite a few decent themes for free.  Currently I have the inFamous icons with the standard wavy background.

Or you can use high quality PNGs and not have artifacts.

Yes.

So. Um.  Does anyone make a better PS3 controller than Sony?

Really, really hate the PS3 controller.

So my slim showed up the other day and I must say I was impressed out of the box. It's got a good footprint, it's quiet and I didn't have to spend an extra hour during setup to figure out how to hide a monstrous power brick since there is none, yay! My copy of Demon's Souls hasn't showed up yet so I picked up a used copy of the original Uncharted on the cheap and it's a fun little game. I think I'm most excited about the silence of this thing though, as my 360 has been my main DVD system it's nice to not need to crank the volume up to overcome the noise of the system. I probably need to poke around more, but my initial opinion is that 360 still wins on the interface and online integration fronts. I'm one of the wacky ones that prefered the switch to the new 360 UI. Not to mention, jumping on the PS3 bandwagon now gives me a few of the now classic early releases on the cheap, which is a bonus.

I also haven't figured out if there's a setting to allow downloads to continue after powering the unit off, still waiting for 3 demos to finish DL and show up as playable.

IIRCC, just go to "shut down" over the profile names, and you will get the option.

If I wanted to upgrade the HD on the PS3 (slim) after I had a bunch of saves and other data on it, would this method work?:

* Take out existing drive

* Install new drive (using firmware on flash drive)

* Hook up old drive via USB (i.e. installed in an external case)

* Copy files from old drive to new drive

Basically I'm trying to decide if I get a PS3 soon whether or not to upgrade the HD immediately or wait a while until I fill the original drive.

I didn't investigate, but at BB earlier I saw the slim was sold out.  However they had a 80gp unit for $299 right beside it.  Why would you buy the slim in this case?

40 GB more space and about half the power usage (if you care about such things).

Technically it should work. I lost all my saves swapping consoles tho  :uhrr:

What happened?

I copied my PS3 data to my PC via 4GB flash drive.  It's just normal files in folders, nothing magical.  This includes the PS2 and PS1 saves I carry around.  I'm suppose your method would work but if it was me, I'd copy the files to an external that wasn't part of the swap process.

It said the data was secure content written for the previous console. Where the chip/id/mac whatever it uses to prevent copying of data, it wouldn't restore the saved data.

Firmware 3.0 just went live.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/08/31/playstation-3-firmware-v3-00-update-imminent/

Edit:

• Wtf is with this sparkles bullshit
• Old UI gone(you can use classic but the colors etc are definitely not "original")
• The icons scaled up huge and unchangeable
• Friends list now has bars which are pointless besides a jarring experience
• Message center is organized now
• Menu's/trophies seem a bit faster
• OS install is still there on my phat(confirming the news from before)

You are required to update to 3.00 if you want to access the store now :oh_i_see:

Couple things missing from the above plus link but mentioned in the release notes:

Audio can now be output to multiple connectors simultaneously

During video playback the right stick can now control the speed and direction

Holy shit those sparkles are annoying.

FUCK you can't turn off the scrolling ticker now FUCK

You'll live.

Maybe. They better have a panda avatar soon, though!

The network file access is way faster, and generating thumbnails isn't bogging down as much. Also a new slider indicator when your scrolling down a lot of content to show how far from top and to the bottom you are.

Also i think they did something with the media control. Unless its new to me you can hold on the circle right to fast forward and release to go to play. So a tap + hold sets you up at 10x speed and then release to jump right into play.

Oh rewinding streaming content way more fluid @10x

I don't mind the sparklies, there seems to be no enforced scrolling ticker on the EU version and I do like the better media streaming a lot.

Not keen on the giant icons though  :oh_i_see:

Cool.  Now only if they could do the same thing for the video, that'd be golden.

I didn't even know you could turn off the ticker.  Didn't look, though.  I will have to update this afternoon, didn't know it was up.

That's like the first thing I did when setting up my PS3. I hate those sorts of animated visual distractions.

Same. Fuck I don't need to be thrown advertisements the instant I turn on my ps3.

The whole store under every menu is pretty much crap when regions like canada cannot buy videos  :uhrr:

I don't spend enough time staring at the XMB for it to bother me, I guess.  Or I spend too much time having the 360 Dashboard inflicted upon me to feel any nag from the ticker. vOv  I'm suspicious of the new store thingy, integrating it more tightly into the XMB could pass my annoyance threshold.  I can't wait to find out how angry this update makes me!

On the old version I was having issues with downloading demos in the background, even if only 1 was in process it wouldn't work. This update fixed that issue so I'm happy with it overall.

I didn't mind the sparkles or ticker that much since I was able to pay no mind to them. I don't like them, but it's not troublesome or going to make me want to punt my ps3 or anything.

Change your background theme to remove sparkles.

First thing I did after installing the update was switch back to the classic theme.

I just switched the background to Classic, the oh-so-slightly-larger icons are fine.  The new font is also just a tiny bit larger, which is good for me and my setup.  That ticker is a bit more distracting, though.

I found a few new options, or I think I did since I don't remember seeing them, such as the option to turn the controller off after 10 minutes of inactivity.

That was in there before 3.00. My Slim which came with 2.72 or something like that had that in there already.

I have an active imagination.

It did, and so did the 60 I bought from Gamestop.  Schild wrong?  HOW CAN THIS BE?  :P

Too bad I didn't get any manuals or boxes or anything.  Just a massive ass clamshell that threatened to cut me.

Thankfully my upscale DVD player's HDMI cable works on the things so no need to compete with the 360 and Wii for the component/composite slots.

Opening cinematic to Cross Edge looks purdy.  Wish I could put the Sixaxis LR 2 Triggers on the 360 controller, and the Wii's Classic Controller D Pad.  I would then have a damned perfect controller.

I plan on getting a Madcatz SF4 TE stick since I can use it on 3 generations of PS games, plus on my iMac for Mame and Commodore 64 titles.  H.E.R.O. would be  :awesome_for_real:  with a fearsome beast like that.

I have Warhammer 40K to play so more thoughts and questions will wait.  (And speaking of expensive shit I don't need I preordered the new badass Space Hulk boardgame. )

Mock away fanboys.

(Oh yeah, Operation Darkness is pretty kickass, outside of it being on the abusive side of the SRPG difficulty curve.  Its no Fire Emblem or X Com Terror From the Deep mind you, but it sure as hell isn't Shining Force either.  One mission ended up taking 2 weeks of casual play to beat and it required grinding France, a little Energon, and a lot of luck.)

I currently have cheap ebay bids (hell, selling crap I don't need on ebay is financing this economically retarded purchase!) on LBP, Disgaea 3, and Valkyria Chronicles.  Outside of Demon's Souls though there aren't many games I absolutely must have, though I will probably get Virtua Fighter 5, SF4, and Soul Calibur 4 since I will have a stupidly expensive/awesome joystick.

Gamestop had them used for $200 and $299 respectively when I got my second 60GB. Are you telling me they went down further from there? If so, I can't be blamed for them being idiots.

Gamestop's website lists the 60 at $329.99.

My 80 doesn't have BC anyways, so I'm probably going to sell it to a friend and grab a Slim.  Smaller and more power efficient.  If I had a BC system, I wouldn't even think about it.

I found a new copy of Folklore for $15 and am waiting for it to arrive.  I had first tried a local GameStop that was supposed to have it in stock but a manager had taken it.   :uhrr:

While at GameStop the clerk tried to sell me on some other PS3 games and I told him I wasn't really interested in anything until Demon's Souls.  He laughed and told me to stay away from it because it is too hard to be fun.

He went on to say if you go around a corner you might get killed because you didn't have your shield up.  Then you have to fight back to your body.  And you might die again.  You see other players dying.  And the bosses will kill you.

At first I didn't understand how he viewed anything he just said as a negative.  And then it clicked.  Standing in front of me was bizarro schild.

Me love Wii, it am the best!

Is there a demo of it on PSN?

No idea about this gamestop manager, but that description sounds as fun as pounding nails into my dick old-school Everquest.

saturday, Saturday! SATURDAY!  :awesome_for_real:

This sounds like any one of the gamestop people in Austin. I have yet to find a good gaming store here, which is shocking simply because of how many game devs there are.

Haha, that is exactly what I thought.  I was reminded specifically of dying several times in a row and losing a level while trying to recover my corpse in the bottom of Dalnir.  Oh how I raged.  But looking back with my rose colored glasses through a rose colored window in my rose colored house, I miss consequences to dying. 

Not EQ though.  That can burn.

It's the best console game I've ever played.

And there wasn't a demo in Asia, so I can't imagine there would be one here. I can't think of a single Atlus game that ever got a demo for that matter.

I almost linked this (http://www.holybadman.com/) but realized it's N1 and not Atlus.  I get those two confused a good bit.

For new games you are pretty much screwed, but you may want to check out Game Over (http://www.gameovervideogames.com/).  Gamefellas (http://www.gamefellasentertainment.com/) isn't as nice a store, but they almost always have some nice deals on older systems.

When gamestop and EB merged, Austin pretty much ceased to have good game stores for buying current stuff.

Having to use FAT32 for the filesystem sucks donkey balls.

Game Over and Gamefellas have terrible, terrible prices and clerks.

Sounds like one of us has had some abnormal experiences then, because I've generally had a reasonable experience in Game Over.  Gamefellas is very hit-or-miss, but I have found a few things there that were underpriced.

The PS3 Slim hard drive replacement is very easy. There's one screw on the bottom hidden behind a small panel you have remove (a fingernail can pop the panel open or you can use a small screwdriver). Then the panel in front that the hard drive hides behind slides open and you just pull the hard drive tray out (the hard drive is underneath the Blu-ray drive on the Slim). The screws were very easy to remove on my machine, unlike some of the stories I read about the screws on the fatties.

Oh, you mean Wednesday?  My Marines are clipped off, and filed, just waiting for me to Dremel off all the Blood Angels iconography and make them Crimson Fists and Pre Heresy World Eaters.  The door holders are all basecoated black and awaiting some silver drybrushing.  The Broodlord is clipped together and prepped, and a couple of his homies are too.  (I prefer the original Space Hulk era Stealers personally.  But these will get painted up classical GS colorscheme.)  All the pieces are organized and in baggies.

And to prepare for the upcoming Genestealer Apocalypse I have been playing some V2:  http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2009/08/space-hulk-mission-1-1-comic-report.html  And of course, using VMWare Fusion to take the Space Wolves through Teardown's Space Hulk V1 game.  (Yes I have a bright and shiny PS3 and I am mostly playing with toy soldiers and low graphics fanmade projects.)

But I do have a quick PS3 question.  Is Smooth and Widescreen the only BC options?  I was expecting something... sharper, ala some Antialiasing or tricks the emulators all pull off.  (Oh yeah anyone who wants to friend me can do so as I am on as Cpt_Rufus )

And how is Resistance Fall of Man?  And can I really use Mouse Keyboard for it if I want?

Oh and my fancypants joystick will need to be pretty so which of these 5 pictures (4 are in 1) would be best?  
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2530/3885018671_2980e4a953_o.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2527/3885018587_86f7c6f6f9_o.png
I'm partial to Nei, the Vindicare Assassin, and the VF1S with Fast Packs in Gerwalk for how they would look on a joystick face, but I do like all of them.  Finding nice widescreen pictures I would like was a pain!

Now I just have to hope that just announced Data East arcade collection gets on the PS3 as well.  Bad Dudes and Magical Drop 3 with a nice joystick?  Hell yeah.  (Shutup about emulators.  I go legal first dammit.)

What the hell are you doing?

As I mentioned I am gonna get that ridiculously expensive Madcatz SF4 TE stick for my new expensive game console.  You can mod them in various ways including the art.  Thus the pictures are ones I may choose from to use on my stick.  And thus I am asking for art opinions on them.  But in the interests of page size, I shall turn them into a link instead.

Spoiler tags work too.

It's tomorrow here. So picking it up then. Might open it up and have a browse, but no chance of playing it for a few weeks, so they can sit unpainted on the sprues for awhile. Or possibly forever.



Um, dunno. Whatever you like? Prettying up a joystick with printed artwork is a bit like using those stupid stickers they give you with Guitar Hero games to me.

Jain Zar's tremendously bad taste in artwork aside, the SFIV CE sticks do need their picture replaced, and the buttons needs to be replaced with Sanwa buttons, but that's neither here nor there. It's nothing like using the guitar hero stickers.

These things?

http://www.itechnews.net/2008/12/11/mad-catz-street-fighter-iv-fightstick/ (http://www.itechnews.net/2008/12/11/mad-catz-street-fighter-iv-fightstick/)

I can't contain my indifference for the artwork. But for me, agonizing over replacing them (especially with those pics) is the same thing.
Really though, he can do what he wants. I won't ever use his joystick, :why_so_serious: so what do I care?

Well, yea, agonizing over pictures is just stupid. And yes, particularly when they're THOSE pictures. This one is much better.

(http://l337sheet.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/pedostickte1.jpg?w=500&h=333)

ok, I LOLed.  :awesome_for_real:

Ok then Mr Art snob types, then you find me some good art to use.

My preferences:  Phantasy Star and Ultima series (Solo games not the online MMO stuff),  Robotech, Super Robot Taisen, Contra, Castlevania, Aliens Transformers G1 and Beast Wars, Warhammer 40K (Chaos Space Marines primarily).

I also like the Batfamily, Giant robots of all sorts, the SR 71 Blackbird, and Dragon Quest.

Put your mouse clicks where yer mouths are then.  I am open to suggestions.  Constructive ones.  I know, that's HARD and all, but why not try it on for size?  Its amazing what it can accomplish.

Would have been much better if they could have somehow made his crotch under the stick.

See, this is your problem:


I mean, I like some of those things too, but I don't need them on my joystick.

But here, take your pick of Blackbirds.
http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=sr-71+blackbird&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=t96gSseQHISIkAXA1pjXDw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1

Or if you like Alien, buy this book, and get a colour photocopy done of the image of your choice.
http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=20214

Or this one (large format book - both of these are worth owning):
http://www.biblio.com/books/74639012.html

There's also a bunch of decent-quality Giger images here if you just want to print.
http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=561

If you must do 40k, fuck that shitty wannabe-Mark Gibbons pencil art and go right for the good stuff:
http://www.redknuckle.com/images/sales/world%20eater.jpg
http://www.freewebs.com/trolllock/mark_gibbons_warhammer_004.jpg
http://www.redknuckle.com/images/illustrations/fabius.jpg
http://www.redknuckle.com/

This one is perfect for a joystick in terms of layout
http://www.redknuckle.com/images/0808/grimaldus08_main.jpg

For Batman, stay away from cutesy fanfic line art and go right for the good stuff.  :awesome_for_real:
http://thecia.com.au/reviews/b/images/batman-and-robin-6.jpg

..Okay. but there's evocative stuff like this around.
http://www.studiodaily.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/batman_imax.jpg


Or, you know, whatever Phantasy Star charpics or Southern Cross Dana Sterling wankfest floats your boat. Like I said, it's your joystick.

Are you trying to install linux?  I, for one, am interested in your tales even if I'm not interested in doing it myself.  Also, I agree about fat32.

No I wasn't since I have the Slim. Formatting a drive larger than 32 GB for FAT32 turns out to be an issue under Windows XP. And then when I did manage to get a drive formatted larger than 32 GB it would BSoD one of my Windows machines :uhrr:

I also now understand why people take the time to convert stuff to H.264 to playback on the PS3 even though it can play MPEG-2 files and converting to H.264 takes forever. With MPEG-2 you are much more likely to bump into the 4 GB file size limitation on FAT32.

Is streaming from a PC not an option?

First of all, your taste in shit sucks. So that's a big problem. Second of all:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/39720/games/castlevania/Castlevania_pck.jpg
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/39720/games/castlevania/Cv_Cover_copy.jpg

But I don't really believe you when you say you like Castlevania given all that other shit.

I do this off my NAS and my Windows box. It's so easy to join!

ffmpeg + cron, you can script it to auto convert for you and dump the result anywhere your script can access via the network.  Seems pretty fast as long as what you are converting can fit in memory but that may be due to the settings i was using.

side edit to keep on topic: any chance the Sony Aino (http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/products/mobilephones/topics/aino/fastwebhsdpa) isn't going to be a piece of shit?

What NAS are you using?

Some cheap iomega thing from Frys. The Storcenter IX2 or some shit.

Batching is not the issue, it's simply the time it takes do it. At, say, 6 fps conversion speed a movie takes 5X "real time" to convert.

My computer converts H.264 at 70 frames per second. I don't understand why yours is going so slowly.

You can stream though a media server. It doesn't seem to like AC-3, though. Not sure why yet.

Neither my Vista Box nor my NAS have a problem with AC-3. I rarely stream anything off vista anymore though.

Edit: I Suppose I should mention, I never stream anything above 720p. All of my hard drives are old 7200RPM crap.

Cause you are using sucky settings? :awesome_for_real:

Not sure how you got to 6fps, I've only used ffmpeg to down convert 720p to flv for the web, a 500meg source file (30min or so of video) takes like 10 minutes to convert.  Which is 3 to 5 times faster than doing the same job using the craptastic adobe flv encoder on Win XP.

ffmpeg's Sorenson codec conversion is blazing fast. It's how YouTube manages to keep up with their load.

Random..

(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2009/09/vgcharz-20090904-383.jpg)

Link (http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/04/ps3-and-xbox-360-hardware-sales-jump-last-week-amid-price-cuts/)

Thought it was interesting that the 360 and PS3 are competitive with the Wii, for a change. Who knows if that lasts.

On the week of the new PS3 release you'd expect to see a nice spike.

100%+ sales over last week is a nice spike, but next week will be interesting as well with the $100 price drop on the 360 elite to match the ps3 slim price point.

The thing about a 360 price drop is that more people already have one.  I saw some inbred assholes pick up a PS3 Slim at the Best Buy today.  It has begun.

I can't help but notice the "Source: VGChartz" text in the bottom right of that image.

True, and I do agree to that point. The only thing is, though, the ps3 with their 100% increase in sales over last week is just now selling equal amounts of units as the 360 is before the 360 elite's $100 price drop. That's why I think the next week, well the next few months really, will be very interesting to watch.

Speaking as someone who owns a 360, doesnt yet own a PS3 and as someone who has been quite critical of the PS3 since it's release, I have to say that a new buyer would have to be stupid to pick up an Elite over a PS3 if they were the same price. For a list of reasons as long as my arm.

In fact, there's no point to the Elite at this stage anyway. Put the 120gb drive on the Pro as standard and call it a day.

Got my PS3 Slim (previously only had a PC and a Wii). Got a pre-order deal with a HDMI cable and Assassin's Creed thrown in, and still $10 cheaper than other stores. Grabbed a second-hand copy of FIFA 09 which I've been wanting to play. Also bought bargain bin Gears of War and Halo 2 for PC, because I've never played them and catching up years late on PC is my solution to missing Xbox 360 content :)

Years ago, I attended the launch of the original PS3 as a journalist, and considered it laughably feature-bloated and overpriced. But in 2009, the Slim is about right for a current console.

Impressed with how compact it is for how powerful it is. Looks tiny sitting on top of the Tivo. The range of capabilities is great - slotted right into my Wi-Fi household out of the box, plays any format of disc from CDs to Blu-ray, and stores CD music. It's great that unadulterated USB is used to connect stuff.

The Blu-ray loading is WAY faster than my dedicated Sony Blu-ray player (which will go to my sister or ebay), but the picture and sound output in Blu-ray is noticeably weaker (on a Sony Bravia HDTV hooked up to a Yamaha amp and JM Lab hi-fi speakers). The buildings at the start of The Dark Knight Blu-ray shimmer amazingly on the Blu-ray player, but not so much on the PS3 Slim. The DVD upscaling also looks weaker than the old Blu-ray player. I'll cope - it all still looks great, just not quite as great, but the speed of operation and versatility of the device are a good trade-off. Oddly the CD music output from the PS3 Slim sounds better than the Blu-ray player.

I lasted about 5 minutes in PS Home or whatever their online world is. That seemed awful, like they had asked EQ2 launch-era SOE for MMO advice.

Messed about with real games for a while, then went to bed. Woke up and played another CD, saved it on the PS3. Part of the household now.

Have you fiddled with the video preferences yet (for blu-ray/hdmi/and video).

God I fucking hate quick time events. The developers who put those in games need to be round up and shot.

Probably not enough. I looked at sound output preferences and they confused me.

What are people using for voice chat on their PS3s? (Planning ahead for MAG :awesome_for_real:)

I'm looking at the Sony PS3 Bluetooth ear piece and the Turtle Beach P21 headphones. Any other good options out there?

I tried my cell phone Bluetooth ear piece (BlueAnt Z9) but the quality wasn't so great and it doesn't have the nice features like the Sony one has (mute button, in-game viewing of settings, etc.).

The TB headphones worry me cause I have a fat head and I'm not sure they would fit especially since I wear glasses and circumaural ear pieces tend to press the ear stems painfully into my head but I like how you get game sound and voice sound from just the headphones (which is what I'm used to on my PC) rather than having two separate audio sources.

I'm using the blue-tooth ear bud that came with warhawk.

EDIT: looked it up, Jabra BT125 BlueTooth Headset

Edit: Does the Jabra have a mute button?

Does it look like this guy?

PlayStation 3 Bluetooth Headset (http://www.amazon.com/PlayStation-3-Bluetooth-Headset/dp/B001BR95PW/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1252499658&sr=1-9)

I know SOCOM and EndWar are bundled with the above but I'm not sure which model Warhawk comes with.

(Some of) The warhawk box(s) comes with this one:  Jabra BT125 (http://reviews.cnet.com/headsets/jabra-bt125/4505-13831_7-32117555.html)

Do any of the buttons on the Jabra work in-game as a mic mute button?

That i do not know, honestly I dont have many hours using it, but you asked what we would be using. Never needed to mute the mic, best I can do is look for the manual when I get home for you. I think schild has this model as well, maybe he knows more.

There's probably some way but it's not always convenient (on the Z9 you have to hold the Vol- button for 3 seconds) and I'm just used to muting things on my cell phone itself. The Sony model is nice cause it has a nice big honking mute button right on the front (side) of it.

The reason why I'm asking is I have year around allergies so I don't thinking you guys want to hear me constantly blowing my nose into the mic :uhrr: :awesome_for_real:

yeahhhh dont do that.  :grin:

Okay, I bought an old style 80GB PS3 on Sunday, and I'm just not feeling the love.  I bought Infamous, Little Big Planet, and Uncharted for it, and the only game there that really struck me as concentrated awesome was Uncharted.  I hate the way the controllers feel (I understand that that's probably just because I'm so used to the 360), particularly how twitchy the analog sticks are; they're just way too sensitive for me.  Needless to say, I've got the buyer's remorse real bad and will be taking it back today.  If this were my only console I'd be quite happy with it, but considering that I already own a 360, the exclusives for the PS3 just aren't good enough to justify owning both.

What didn't you like about Infamous?

So get rid of the 360. The on exclusives there are Forza and Halo. Nothing else is even worth mentioning.

I can return the PS3 for the full value of it.  I can sell the 360 for what, $50 at PawnStop?  I also own something like 20 games for the 360.  Why would I ditch a platform I'm already heavily invested in for one that I'm not all that happy with?

It's not that I didn't like it, it's a decent game.  If it were out for the 360 I'd proudly own that copy.  It's not worth owning a new system, though.  I'd call it a B+ game.

Culdcept Saga.

Demon's Souls.

HAHAHAHAHA.

No, seriously.

Looks good.  $300 good?  I have my doubts.  Be honest with me, how Japanese is it?  I realize it's dark fantasy, but it was also made in Japan by Japanese people, which means I'll probably hate the damn thing if past history is at all reliable.

I'll let everyone else answer since I can't be trusted.

No you can't :awesome_for_real:

I didn't detect any weeaboo in Demon's Souls, but I might not be trustable either.  It's probably too hard for you, though.

'Nuff said.  I don't react well to frustration.  I like my fun tubes heavily greased, thankyouverymuch.

It's a great game, but the fact that you will die in the intro might irritate you.  It's one of those games where the player has to skill up to get anywhere.  I'm all about fun these days, and even fishing in Animal Crossing stresses me out.

Even if you don't die in the intro, a dragon punches you in the face and kills you to make sure you die.

It's pretty much the game I use to define whether people game for fun or game as a cathartic hobby these days.

Of all the millions of crazy things you've said about the game, this one has probably guaranteed my purchase.

You know, the things he says about the game are not actually crazy.  He does froth a lot but he keeps to the facts.

I'm saving this game for when I don't have a job. :oh_i_see:

Heh, I played Dragon Souls for about 30 minutes yesterday after not playing for months.  Got stomped repeatedly.  It really is a game that you get drastically better at the more you play. 

Unfortunately the baby woke up and I had to leave a corpse with 5000 or so souls on it.  :awesome_for_real:

I'm going to second this, nothing on here has been a lie or over exaggerated. The game is truly phenominal and you only die because you suck.

I dont think I would take back the ps3, mostly, because I think that felling you have, is the 360 huge slow ass controller withdraw.

Getting ready to go right now.  Honestly, there's one exclusive game that I bought that was fantastic, and that was Uncharted.  Unfortunately it's not exactly a game with shitloads of replayability.  Sorry, but $300 for one really fantastic game isn't worth it to me.

You're more of a Madden/Halo type anyhow.   :awesome_for_real:

This is the main reason I don't boot it up now.  I'd like to make some progress but I know that I'll just spend hours trying to not die in the beginning area.  No, not right now.


I was thinking the same thing.  Untraining yourself from the 360 controller might be hard.  Usually there are sliders to change stick sensitivity in game options, so I was thinking it must be the stick placement, grip size and convex caps.

I'd also like to ask BG what was wrong with inFamous?  Not that it matters, just curious.

As for $300 for a console, I suppose you have to consider how many times you are expected to pony up for a replacement.

I don't think it's worth trying to convince him otherwise. He's going to end up buying it again after reams and reams of shit comes out for it, but we can just wait til that happens to post nelson_haha.gif.

It's a toss up between that and his next RROD.

 :ye_gods:

Bah, I've left that much and more laying around and can't blame anyone except myself: couldn't get back to where I died.

 :oh_i_see:

I'll try again.

:facepalm:

When you start talking about something other than games, I can be slow to notice.

I can assure you there was no infanticide.  I thought I was being rather clear within the whole new father/Demon's Souls framework.  :oh_i_see:

I could have sworn there were more games than three on the PS3.  :grin:

Not sure about more than three exclusives, but I haven't paid much attention since I decided to buy everything on PS3 from now on.

Let's see, there's Demon's Souls, Disgaea 3, some Bluray variant of any God of War, Gran Turismo 5 (whenever that materializes), infamous (apparently subject to opinion), LittleBigPlanet (YMMFVAL), Metal Gear Solid 4, ModNation Racers (next year), Ratchet & Clank Future series, Siren: Blood Curse (if you like that sort of thing), Uncharted 1+2 (I have confidence), and Valkyria Chronicles.  I don't know if White Knight Chronicles (early 2010) will be any good, but hey, Level 5.

schild's recommendations are on the Wiki:

http://wiki.f13.net/index.php/Recommendations:_PS3_%26_PSN

He doesn't have Ratchet & Clank so his relevancy is called into question.

Just found out the other night that the last GT5:Prologue patch ate my saved file :uhrr:

Especially since he has Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, and  Heavenly Sword on there.  Maybe that acceptable back when the PS3 was new and there still weren't a lot of games out, but I can't imagine recommending those to anybody now.

Why?  If and when they've got more games that I actually want then I'll buy the system again.  What, do you think the system will get more expensive by then?  What exactly have I lost?

I find the 360's sticks superior as well, but the PS3 controller is a better general purpose controller.

Either way, I only paid under $250, so I'm satisfied.  I'll probably trade up to the Slim at some point, but no rush.  Uncharted, Infamous, and Disgaea 3 were worth the purchase, and Sony's E3 showing is what made me take the plunge anyways.

Heh, ate lunch with one of the few "gamer" types at work.  When I said the game was from Japan, he immediately started in with the JRPG cliche critiques.

Then when I said it was hard, and explained some of the difficulty, he immediately dismissed it.  When I said it was difficult, but you get better and really get into it, he dismissed that as well.  People don't want to get better at games any more, I think they expect Fable 2/Halo level of difficulty so they can feel good about trouncing shit AI and uninspired level design.

If I can tollerate it, it really isn't that bad. I couldn't even finish Super Mario Galaxy, which both my brother-in-law and 11 year old nephew manged to (last level frustrated me a bit too much).

There's really nothing wrong with either of those games. It's not like we're talking about shit like Lair.

Would you really recommend either of those games to anybody at this point?  Especially considering Heavenly Sword is still pretty much full price at places like Amazon?

Heavenly Sword? Sure. I would. I enjoyed the shit out of it. Genji 2 though? Not so much. Lair? Not so much. Dynasty Warriors Gundam? Sure, 1 or 2. But I'd say they're both cheating bastards of games and overly hard unless you start at a lower difficulty.

Fuck you, I liked Lair.

I'd also recommend Heavenly Sword to people, so my taste might be in question.

Your taste is far more in question due to Lair than Heavenly Sword.

Heavenly Sword is worth playing just for the voice-acting of the "bad guys" if nothing else. Also, they did a nice job with her hair (most of the time).

That is exactly what I look for in a game! 

That was a not so veiled jab at the thread that is currently about hair.

You know, I'm almost the exact opposite. Especially because when I read review sites that do a head to head I almost always see something like "oddly, the PS3 version had more slowdown/graphical issues/other technical bugs than the 360 version." I just finally decided that for whatever reasons alot of devs have more problems with the PS3. I suspect it's something akin to the issues the Sega Saturn had: the architecture is just hard to program for.

Hmmm, shit.  I just realized:  The PS3 Slim doesn't come with an HDMI cable, does it?

 
$10 with shipping from newegg. I think my PS3 only came with a composite cable. 

I happen to use my 360 elite cable for mine.  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah, its just that it was one more thing to order that I forgot to.

But now I realize its probably a moot point, as my monitor came with an HDMI cable I'm not using.  So hurray! 

Only thing left to worry about when it finally arrives is how to plug it into my computer speakers.

The Slim only comes with an AV cable with composite and stereo outputs (RCA jacks).

If your computer speakers accept stereo RCA inputs then you don't need anything extra. You will need to change the Sound Settings so sound is coming out of the AV Multi connector rather than the HDMI port (or you can have sound coming out of both if you want on the Slim).

If your computer speakers only accept an 1/8" stereo mini jack you'll want something like this thingy (http://www.amazon.com/3-5MM-Stereo-Male-Female-inch/dp/B0016LC5VY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=musical-instruments&qid=1252536214&sr=8-2).

And I would say the voice acting is a very good reason to skip Heavenly Sword. It's well beyond horrifically bad. Also whomever at Sony thought they had to compete against the Wii by putting in the "AfterTouch" controls needs to be drawn and quartered.

Ah, then I know why we are opposites.  If I want a game and it is available on PS3 and 360, I get it on PS3 because of the 360 console itself being garbagy.  It's like an outboard motor with advertisements that locks up after long periods of not saving, plus it has Miis on it and doesn't like static IP addresses.  Although it hasn't locked up with Last Remnant for some reason, probably because I can save anywhere.  That game has terrible performance anyway, probably for the best that Squeenix couldn't get Unreal Engine to work on PS3.

The PS3 has been out long enough that I'm hoping the learning curve is mostly done.

I'm at the point where I'm starting to consider where games are superior on the PS3 over the 360. - I've held off buying Arkham Asylum until I get a PS3 because of the big chunks of exclusive DLC.

I perfer the 360 in general, but paying for Live isn't attractive, nor is the limited storage space. Especially with the 120gb HDD limit compared to unlimited for the PS3, and the fact that I have a bunch of music games on 360 that are the things that suck up all the HDD space.. :uhrr:

Haha what? This isn't even an opinion thing, just, WHAT?

Also, you can turn off the after touch shit and just control that stuff manually.

Maybe the acting is a love or hate thing.  :grin: I thought the whole game was pretty good and underrated.. Probably selling at a cheap price these days to boot.

it's one I plan to pick up on the cheap. Now if only I could find that thread where we discussed the best games to pick up for a PS3, I could plan my software pre-purchases...  :why_so_serious:

Maybe if you buy it from a 3rd party seller on amazon or something.  Don't think it's even in print anymore but amazon is selling it for about $50 still with 4 left in stock.  EB doesn't have it available online but lists it for $50 as well.

I bought my copy through Amazon from a 3rd party.

Given the length of the game, I think it would probably be better to rent rather than purchase.

The two I found helpful when picking up my ps3 were this one (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15953.0) and the F13 wiki suggestions (http://wiki.f13.net/index.php/Recommendations:_PS3_%26_PSN). It just seems the suggestions list isn't updated with any 2009 games though.

For 2009 so far, there's Arkham Asylum and inFamous.  I'd add Prototype if you liked Crackdown or the good Hulk game, it's good fun.

UFC 2009 (cross platform) was pretty decent as well. Sunk a lot of hours into that.

For PSN downloads, Fat Princess. At $15 I don't see how that isn't worth mentioning as a must have.

If you like console shooters (LOL) there's Killzone 2 as a PS3 exclusive from this year as well. It has very nice visuals but the actual gameplay, while very polished, is nothing special, at least as far as I've played through so far. Haven't tried MP yet (I suck at console shooters).

My biggest gripe with Infamous was the lack of aim assist.  There's already too much shooting in that game, and without an aim assist I'm not just not going to be bothered to play it with analog sticks.

Two months now and I still can't stop playing as Destructoid on Bomberman Ultra with my roomies. Fun game.

There's also Resistance 2, although it was technically from the very end of last year.  I still vastly prefer it's coop mode to anything else I've seen.  Haven't mucked around with it's competitive mode though.  It's weapons are a lot more fun than killzone's.

Awesome!  Thanks for the tips.  I'm actually a complete noob when it comes to sound and video wiring.  Perhaps you (or anybody else) could help me out here.  This is the situation.

Heres my speakers:
(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/41488/speakersmain.jpg)
Green and Pink cords plug into my PC.  There is one jack on the sub where the cord for the speakers plugs into.  The little circle disk thing is the volume control, and contains the only jacks I can find for plugging anything else into.  These jacks are for the microphone and headphones.
(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/41488/speakersdial.jpg)

So, what would I need to do?  Would I have to run the converter thing you linked into something like the microphone jack?  Run the PS3 cables through some other weird splitter converter thing so the green/pink cords are shared between both the PC And PS3?  I'm rather lost.

I hated the acting and voices in Heavenly Sword. They were so over the top and silly that it would have ruined the game if the rest hadn't been equally as bad...

I considered grabbing this the other day but I'm still a bit wary. Is this the kind of MP game that can be fun to hop in a server or play for an hour or two or is the fun dependent on being lucky and getting on a good team? (or playing against a terrible one) None of my friends have a PS3 (yet!) so I hesitate to spend money on a game if 9/16ths of the fun is playing with friends.

I've had fun on crappy teams, but can't deny it's more fun with even teams or just being on the winning side. IMO though, as short as the single player mode is (1.5-2hours or so), I still think that alone was worth the $15 just due to how fun it was.

You can't go wrong when the end credits play Sir Mix A Lot, the main prince is named Prince Albert, and the biggest part of the game is playing capture the flag with a princess whom you have to fatten up so the other team needs more people to carry her. All this while chopping people's heads off  :heart:

Teleku, I believe the thing we need to find out first is what sort of audio input your PC has.  Could be optical or minijack.  PS3 outputs optical, which I only remember because I use that, otherwise probably RCA plugs.

The fun in multiplayer Fat Princess comes from any form of successful teamwork.  Every team will have at least one non-idiot player.  Pick a complimentary class and stick with the non-idiot(s) and you will have fun.  But you will see the occasional player who decides to help "defend" by repeatedly throwing big bombs around your castle, blowing up your teammates and gates, with no attacker in sight.  

If you don't want multiplayer then instead of Fat Princess with bots I suggest Flower.  I was not sure about zooming flower petals around but its good.  Plus it has more immersive and intuitive motion controls than any non-Wii Sports game.

Well, heres the back of my motherboard (an Asus P6T):
(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/41488/p6tmotherboard.jpg)

I use the onboard sound card, which has the standard 6 audio connectors (what ever type of jack those are).  I just realized looking through the specs, however, that I have 1 S/PDIF Optical jack also.  Which I've never even bothered figuring out WTF it did, but am now reading is for optical sound.  So, yah me?

:Love_Letters:

Don't let things like "they were supposed to be over-the-top and silly" get in the way of complaining about it.

Yes Infamous is a LOL Console Shooter too. However, the design of the world makes it much more forgiving for those of us that suck at thumbstick aiming. The ability to flee onto rooftops from ground troops (though some of the enemies can chase you onto the roofs) and the usually ample cover up there makes it easy to pick off enemies from a safer distance when your aim isn't so good.

The first shooter I tried was Uncharted and I sucked so bad at it I had to melee all the enemies in the very first scene. Tried Killzone 2 and I could barely hit stuff there. Finally switched to Infamous and did fine there once I learned you could escape via the rooftops and your basic attack has pretty decent range for sniping enemies on the roofs. Then when I switched back to Uncharted I found I wasn't so sucky at shooting anymore (it's still painful compared to using a mouse, of course).

If you ever do get a PS3 again and play Infamous I recommend you give the "escape to a rooftop" strategy a try anytime you engage more than 1 or 2 enemies on the ground until you get good enough with thumbstick aiming.

One of those mini jack ports should be a line-in. Get an adapter like I linked above to convert the RCA stereo connectors from the PS3 AV out to a stereo mini jack and then plug that into your line-in port on the PC. Bring up your volume control/mixer and make sure your line-in isn't muted and you should be able to hear the PS3 sounds through your computer speakers. Or get better speakers -- most computer speakers these days come with an "iPod" aux input that you could use in the same way as the line-in on your PC.

Many games get bogged down in stalemates, where neither side is coordinated enough to rescue the Princess. If you don't care about winning or losing and just like chopping/blowing people to bits you might have fun even in the stalemate situations. If you do care about teamwork and stuff like that you might get frustrated. I tend to quit a lot of games right now cause they get bogged down.

I tend to just search for deathmatch or tower games, to avoid that problem.  Capture the flag in ANY online game tends to breakdown into retardation.

Welp. Ordered my first PS3 games last night from a super-cheap place in the UK. Should be here next week. I figure I'll get a handful (5-10) of cheap but good games in advance of the console itself, so I don't have a PS3 and like one thing to play on it.

Heavenly Sword and Motorstorm.

I would have gotten Uncharted as well, but they were out of stock. So I'll get it in a few weeks. Maybe Overlord as well, since to buy the PS3 game with DLC included, new from the UK costs about AU$4 more than buying the DLC pack for 360, and doesn't take up HDD space.

When Demons Souls comes out in the US, I'll see if any kind F13er wants to pick it up for me from whoever is selling it cheap, and if not, I'll wait until the play-asia price drops a bit. (No Euro or AU release on the cards, you see).

Don't want to get too much, since I'll no doubt be buying a Christmas bundle that has a few games attached.

Infamous when the price drops a bit, Arkham I'll buy at the same time as the PS3, Prototype when the price drops a bit (on whichever of the 2 platforms). UFC I'll wait until the next one, which will no doubt be much improved. I liked the demo, I can just see that the followup will have a lot of stuff fixed, and it's only about 8-10 months away (with plenty of other stuff to play, see above).

WTF is Fat Princess?

Oh, I know Schild is a SingStar fan - what are those games actually like? As unmanly as it is, my wife and I enjoy playing these games together (GH, Lips, RB, etc). From what I understand, Singstar is like Lips, only vastly superior. What's it like?
(yeah I know, I have read wikipedia - but I want to know what humans think as well).

Resistance and the other one (Killzone??) - both FPS and no 3PS option? For some reason I can handle 3rd person console shooters but not FPS.

Do Warhawk or Valkyria Chronicles have a demo?

Valkyria Chronicles *had* a demo on the PSN unsure if its still there.

What's cool about Valkyria Chronicles is that you don't need a demo.  :awesome_for_real:

Thanks for all the help Trippy!

Because you're sending me a copy for free?   :awesome_for_real:

Did you ever figure out that just shooting from the hip autoaims?  :grin:

Both are first-person only (barring where you are controlling vehicles and such).

Yes. The PlayStation Store has a lot of PS3 demos available. They tend to be quite large (usually > 1 GB each), though.

No I was too busy going "Fuck stop staring at your fucking feet, no fuck it not the sky either!" to notice that when I was first trying it out.

Thank you and thank you. I'll skip the shooters and pick up both demos before popping for the games.

PS3 hardware question:

Friend of mine comes over once a week with some movies and or videos on a external hard drive. I had been streaming the nights entertainment from my PC using azures (i could never get that PS3 server program to work...ever.) So, last night we tried to hook up the drive directly as the ps3 is currently running on wireless because i have/do not want to take a cable from the back of my apartment to the front. Anyway.

It did not see the drive. I read it needs to be a fat32 formatted drive to be seen (and of course, its not). SO, we tried a thumb drive, the machine recognized just fine, but said there were no videos present, i assume this is format or codex issue (something i guess the azures  was fixing?). Other than that, I'm not sure whats up/wrong.

Anyone have any experiences reading videos and movies in data form off external drives or thumbs? Tips, considerations, rules of note?

To your last point, I still see those kinds of things to this day. Usually, all I buy for the PS3 are its exclusives with rare exceptions where the PS3 gets a better "extra". Like Soul Calibur 4. If I had to have a Star Wars character in my Soul Calibur I much preferred Vader.

As for your main point, I'm one of those weird people who has had zero problems with his 360. I'm an odd statistical anomaly. I got my 360 a couple of months after launch, when they were still new enough that you had to get there early and get in a line to get one. I got the next to last one that day.

Make a directory called "VIDEO" at the root directory. Then put whatever videos in there. You can make subfolders in there if you like as well. There may be issues with the container format and codecs if you try and play them straight from the PS3 rather than streaming it through a media server. H.264/AAC in an MP4 container is the preferred combination but it does support a few other formats:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_system_software

Odd, it says AVI, we had AVI on the thumb, but not in the VIDEO folder. Persnickety thing.

It supports AVI as a container but it only supports a small subset of the possible codecs that can be within it. Xvid/Divx + MP3 works fine, though.

Fat Princess is a download-only, top-down, capture-the-flag multiplayer game.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAhRZVT7P0w

Also, when you get your PS3 connected, go cruising through PSN for a little while.  The 3.00 firmware makes it kinda hard to avoid PSN now, but that's OK because it is very nice.

So is there anything else I should be aware of other than Fat Princess that isn't on the PS3 recommendation list (why isn't it on btw, heard lots of great things about it)?  List looks pretty solid for all the top games worth playing.

Though I've just noticed that the Playstation section lacks Final Fantasy Tactics.  Where does one submit recommendations for the wiki so that I can fix this horribly horrible over site?

I think the recommendations are very disc-centric, which is why I suggested browsing PSN.


Oversight.  Also, NiX is in charge of the wiki.

There's a separate section for PSN recommendations. The recommendations haven't been updated in a while, however, which is why some games from 2009 aren't on it.

The #10 Top Download on the PlayStation Store at the moment is "Bat Country" :awesome_for_real:

(It's a Rockband song by Avenged Sevenfold)

Also, Walmart is selling it for $20 (sold out online though, and not sure if this is a permanent price).

Thanks for the tip on that.  It's one that was on my list but couldn't justify the $40 with at least two full price games next month.  Picked it up, but had to wade through gaggles of trailer trash to get there.  Likely would have been better to just pay the $40.  :)  That's only the second thing I've bought in my life at Walmart.

Thanks for that heads up, there's a few people I wanted to send this to this holiday season so this will be great to order from.


 Walmart Bingo (http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k46/revritter/Wal-martBingo-1.jpg) makes those trips much easier to deal with

How'd you go with that, by the way? You got suggestions from both of us a week or more ago now.

Dammit!  I was registering my name with PSN, was almost through, then it suddenly said connection to the host timed out.  Had to restart again, but now its saying I can't use my username.  Can't log in with it either, so apparently its now lost in limbo land.  Damn you again Sony!

So you tried registering on your PS3?  I had to stop part way through my registration but I did it on my computer and picked up where I left off without a problem.  Try https://store.playstation.com/login.gvm

What's this threads power level sir?

(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/39720/f13/ps3_power_level.png)

You can also hit the triangle button with the drive selected on the movies part of the XMB.  There's a show all or something similarly named that will show you everything on the drive and not just what is in the VIDEO folder.

That makes sense.

Thank you, I'm retarded, and didn't even think about them letting you create an account on the internet.  It worked fine when I registered online.  Last time I owned a console, they didn't do all this fancy hooking up to the internet shit  :awesome_for_real:.  Consoles and computers are in completely different worlds in my head still I don't make the connection, though I can see that's now obviously changed.

Really digging the PS3.  PSN is really nice, love the functionality of the system, the built in wireless for everything is great, and graphics look awesome on my HD monitor.  Odd considering how much I was bashing the PS3 when it came out, but now they've finally improved enough to draw me in.  Except, of course, this brand new most updated slim version I bought doesn't play fucking PS2 games, but it wouldn't be Sony if they didn't fuck me somehow.

You mean it's cheaper, right?


/nelsonmuntz

Yea, I'm not really sure what he means by changed, since none of that stuff he listed has had a substantial change that he would know about, if at all. Even the PSN changes have been incremental and frankly there wasn't a problem with it at launch.

So, yea, it's cheaper. That's all they changed.

They also striped out a lot of shit without adding anything... but I guess that's what he meant: cheaper.

Here's a really stupid question for you guys.  Assuming that converting the power isn't a problem, what is preventing taking a North American PS3 and hooking it up to an HD television in Europe?  Same question for a 360, while we're at it.

I mean, logically I cannot see why resolution would be an issue, because it isn't like we're talking about PAL vs NTSC resolution differences (720p is 720p, no?).  And the region coding (which isn't a problem for the PS3 anyway) would be between the game and the machine, not the machine and the TV.  Or am I way off?

Sorry, changed was to strong of a word.  I just meant to say that they finally got it at a decent price point (matched with the 120 gig HD), while finally building up a big enough library of games to get me to commit.  There was practically no reason to own one the first couple years with the library they had, especially at the price.  Also, the smaller size is quite nice (old PS3 was god damn huge).

720p should be 720p the world over.  Not sure about bluray regions though (they're different than DVD regions but I forget how exactly).

The BluRay region map was posted somewhere around here.  Duplicating for great justice.
(http://www.alpha-duplication.com/pages/duplication/images/blu-ray-region-map.png)

Right, I know that the region coding can prevent you from playing a North America disk on a European, but that isn't the question I am asking.  What I want to know is what is stopping someone from taking a NA machine with NA disks and plugging it into a 720p European television set.

I think 720p is 720p, like Quinton said.  Let us know how it goes. :oh_i_see:

I was hoping for a more definitive statement, Yeg.  I'm asking on behalf of someone else, and I'd hate to recommend lugging a 90 pound console across the ocean for a short trip only to find that it isn't going to work.

Well, I found
at http://www.avforums.com/forums/ps3-media-streaming/477721-can-ps3-play-blu-ray-720p.html

Yeah, and I guess I already knew that.  But is there anything else preventing this from working?  I'm starting to think it's worth a shot.

Your recalcitrance?

:why_so_serious:

I didn't really read this thread, just opened last page and saw this map, so ignore me if I am asking somehting that has been debated before. But.. what's with that map? I thought blurays were regionless. I bought NA games and they work on my PS3, and I recently bought a bluray movie in the States (Rocknrolla) and keeps working on my PS3. What am I missing?

But since I am here, let me ask you all something very important to me and my PS3 (*summons Schild*): WERE THE HELL ARE MY BELOVED JRPGs?! I bought this console almost 3 years ago and the only JRPGs I am playing on it are PS2 ones. Yeah, Disgaea 3, Valkyria's Chronicles, and that's it. What the fuck went/is going wrong?

Zing! 

Again, I just don't want to be the douche that tells this guy it's going to work and then, you know, it not working.

PS3 games are region free. Blu-Ray movies are supposed to be region locked, but in reality very few of them are even if it says so in the box.

It really is a bit odd that at the moment XBOX360 has more JRPG's than PS3. Not that much more, but still.

Lots of blu-ray movies aren't region locked.

http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=50447

Or do a similar google search.

How about regular DVD's is it unlocked to play all regions or is there a hack to unlock it?  

My wife doesn't like watching her Aussie stuff on the computer and our current DVD doesn't have a region unlock code/hack.  I suppose I could just burn a region free copy on my PC but that is a pain.

Unfortunately DVD playback on PS3 is region locked, and as far as I know there's no way around it yet.

Hey, could be worst.  I can't even play the PS2 JRPG's on mine, so I just have to hope they eventually port them over  :awesome_for_real:.

In other news, Final Fantasy Tactics was released on the PSN in today's update.     Though they seem to have forgotten to add a speed up combat option which is going to piss me off.

Valkyria Chronicles is a PS3 game.  If it makes you feel better, the 360 JRPGs are not well-liked.

Not well-liked is an understatement. They're universally bad. The Mistwalker stuff was almost passable, but not really.

So, what's coming other than 3D heroes and FFXIII?

White Knight Chronicles, Star Ocean: The Fixed Version, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Last Rebellion (NISA), and I'm sure some other stuff that hasn't been announced. It's a short list compared to the PS2 though for sure.

I think you might be confused because there are different HDTV broadcast standards around the world but that's different than sending and receiving "raw" HD video. I.e. the PS3 is sending uncompressed HD video to the display device so it's not relevant that, say, the US uses ATSC for its broadcast HDTV standard while Europe uses DVB-T.

If the display in Europe is "HD ready 1080p" then they will be fine. If it's just "HD ready" they may have to tweak a few things since the PS3 prefers to display at 1080p (though lots of games are only 720p).

Also the US PS3 slim does have a universal power supply. Dunno about the older models.

OK, I'm having some issues with the wireless network.  When ever I turn on Fat Princess, it informs me I need to download the 1.2 update, which is pretty small.  It starts going, but always stops somewhere between 9 and 13%.  It states that the PS3 was disconnected from the digital media server.  I then try again, and the same thing keeps happening.  This is also happening for the MAG update.  I know the damn thing works with my wireless connection though, because I downloaded MAG, Mega-man 9, and Fat Princess, much larger files, with no problems or disconnects at all.  But it chokes and dies every time I try to do these small updates  Whats even more weird is that I tried it once, and suddenly fat princess loaded fine, not even asking for an update.  I played around with it for awhile, then stopped the game.  When I tried to load it again, I'm back to the ever failing update again.

Uh, anybody have any ideas?

Wireless just being flakey maybe? My experiences with wireless networking have always consisted of "works sometimes, not others, for no readily apparent reason".

Seems unlikely. :oh_i_see:

I can't remember the title but I think Nippon Ichi is putting out a PS3 game that isn't Trinity Universe.

Last Rebellion. Like I said like 5 posts up.

Edit: Trinity Universe is published by Idea Factory, so I'm nothing but worried about that. Last Rebellion is being made by N1 in tandem with Hitmaker.

Eh, yea, I confused that one with some idea that Atlus is putting out a 3D Atelier game.  Need sleep.  I blame Fallen Earth.

Just saw this, I think I'll buy this version for my yearly playthrough of FFT. Anyone know of other changes besides the Dark & Onion Knight class additions and the multiplayer support? Also, anyone see anything on the MP and if it is any good? I am thinking co-op play would be a bit weird, but some good group vs group action in competitive play would be  :awesome_for_real:

Eh? Did they release FFT from the PSP or PS1? This would be the first PS1 game they've made changes too if it's the latter.

Wait, Final Fantasy Tactics, multiplyer? Where can i find info on what is different in this version?

From everything I'm seeing, it's actually the PS1 version moded as opposed to the PSP war of the lions version.  Especially since it's the PS1 logo even popping up on my screen when I launch it. 

So, they added MP and the new classes to the PS1 version? I'm finding that hard to swallow.

I love the original. I still need more info, Google is simply telling me that its there, and the PSN website is as detailed as ever (http://www.us.playstation.com/PSN/Store/20288).  :oh_i_see:

I don't intend to buy FFT twice unless some magical process allows me to use my original saves.

As far as I can tell  this is a straight up vanilla port of the PS1 version, not the War of the Lions version.  The graphics are definitely a bit dated, but for being over a decade old, hold up tolerably well.  There is no multiplayer or any of the cutscenes or enhancements from the War of the Lions version.