Let me start by angering the world of Nintendo fans. Consider the fact that I do own a Wii… A heavy gamer, looking for his or her first next gen console has two options. The Microsoft Xbox 360 or the Sony Playstation 3. I have both of these consoles and wanted to shed a little light on the recent price drop and how that makes buying your first next gen console quite the difficult proposition.
It used to be easy. The 360 was $399, the PS3 was $599. So you could get into gaming on the cheap with more game options with a 360. To make matters worse, there were basically two games worth buying for the PS3. Mark it a clear win for the Xbox 360.
With the announcement of the price drop to $499, a cool Benjamin makes this decision a bit more complex. To further complicate matters I will bring in the matter of HD video watching.
With the ability to watch HD movies on both consoles and rendering the need for a dedicated HD movie player moot, now the numbers get very confusing.
Now, for $399 for a 20GB Xbox 360 Premium, and an addition $199 for an external HD-DVD add on drive and another $99 for a WiFi adapter to get online, you get a great next gen console with an incredible gaming library…in an admittedly cludgy form factor, that could possibly pancake 3 out of 10 times (Thanks for the extended warranty Microsoft) That is also as loud as a Dust Devil….for $697. (Is it obvious that I have a little bit of 360 Camp Defection going on?)
So for $198 bucks less, (or $100 bucks less if ya don’t care about HD-DVD) you can get a sleek 60GB next gen console, with build in WiFi, Blu Ray (Which has much more of the hit movie titles unfortunately), camera card readers, the ability to install other OSes, Bluetooth capability and an admittedly not as graceful online marketplace. What is a gamer to do? With Sony’s “Home” coming out soon and a steadily growing list of A+ titles, it could get even more unclear.
I still love my Xbox 360 and Rainbow Six Vegas may just be the best game I have played in years, but I love Ninja Gaiden Sigma so far and Resistance Fall of Man and Motorstorm were both fantastic.
My opinion? If you are an online gamer, go with the Xbox 360. It has a hell of a lot more users and Xbox Live! kills any other online gaming platform. If you are more of the solo el gamero….I would go with the PS3.
Or you could be a dork like me and get both!
