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PS3 Early Thoughts

It's been about a week since I got my Japanese PS3, and so far, I'd say I'm...marginally satisfied. Tomorrow I'll have my US system as well, but I'm not buying any new games with it, because frankly, Ridge Racer 7 and Resistance (the two games I got at Japanese launch) are the only games I'm interested in right now. I don't mind the lack of interesting PS3 games at the moment, as my wallet is already hurting from all the other stuff I need to buy, but I hope it's not another 12 months before anything decent shows up like it was back when the PS2 launched.

A year ago, I wrote some initial thoughts on the Xbox 360, and I'm sad to report that I was right when I said Sony wouldn't have anything as cool or complete as Xbox Live with PS3. Granted, "never" may have been a strong word, but at this point, they've already fumbled several really obvious aspects of their online infrastructure. Not offering players a complete service like Xbox Live is a big mistake IMO. Why can't you voice chat with other players at any time? Why don't they have any kind of alternative to Achievement points? And worst of all, why do you get message notifications during gameplay if the only way to check them is to exit the game and go back into the XMB? How pointless is that? Their online service is very disappointing right now, but I'm hopeful they'll fix a lot of this stuff with future firmware updates. At least the PlayStation Store seems easier to navigate than Xbox Marketplace (which is horribly designed IMO), but there's not much content available yet, so it's hard to really compare.

On the plus side, the system is extremely quiet (much moreso than the 360) and the UI is surprisingly nice. I've had no problem having it detect my SD cards and USB devices, though I haven't tried out Wi-Fi yet. I also haven't messed with backwards compatibility much, though I'm hearing a lot of games have display issues, which is weird considering the PS2 hardware is built-in (i.e. it's not being emulated). And lastly, being able to install games to the HDD rocks. Microsoft needs to do this ASAP (and offer a larger hard drive, too).

(Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: don't believe the hype--not having rumble in the controller sucks. Sony can and should fix this ASAP.)

It'll be interesting to see how things improve over the coming weeks as new firmware upgrades become available. Personally I don't care too much about being able to play PS1 games on PSP (supposedly coming in the next update), but I am excited to be able to purchase and download older games for play on PS3. Convenience is everything. I've bought 13 games on Xbox Live Arcade in the past year, and I can guarantee you I wouldn't have bought half of them if I were in a real store with time to actually think about the purchases. That's not to say I regret buying them, because I don't--I just prefer the instant gratification of being able to click a button and start playing within minutes.

So yeah, like I said--marginally satisfied. But I knew what I was getting myself into, so I'm not surprised at all. If I were giving advice to a friend, I'd definitely tell them to wait; there's really no need to own a PS3 right now unless, like me, you're A) a crazy game nut, and B) one of those people who has to be the first to own everything. Even as I bought it, I knew I wouldn't be getting a ton of use out of it in the first six months. Will it eventually be the Best Thing Ever? It very well may be! But for the next few weeks at least, I think most of my time will be spent playing elsewhere. Especially with Gears of War and Zelda: Twilight Princess to keep me busy...

I'm in America right now to pick up my US PS3 and Wii this weekend, so I should be back with more updates on that end soon. Three more days until Zelda!!

SEGA: WTF?

Why is it that SEGA Genesis titles on the Wii are going to cost 800 Wii Points (sorry, "start at" 800 points) in North America ($8 USD), whereas the same titles in Japan are going to cost 600 Wii Points ($5.12 USD by today's exchange rate)?

And more importantly, where does SEGA get off charging $8 per title when consumers can get 6 out of the 10 currently-announced Virtual Console games along with 22 OTHER Genesis games and a bunch of bonus content (unlockable arcade games and interviews with the original developers) on PlayStation 2 for $19.99?

Is there something special about these Wii versions we don't know about? Online multiplayer, maybe? New levels?

I know there are some SEGA folks who read my blog -- I'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Between this and the PSU pricing fiasco ($10 per month for a game that's barely evolved over six years and has non-working voice chat seems a bit unfair to me), I'm starting to lose what little faith I had left in your company.