Playstation 3

Last week I got a PS3 as an early Father's Day present. It's a sweet machine. Yet, for all its marvels, I have to say my Xbox 360 is still a better platform. I know now that most multi-platform games that I'd want to play, coming out in the future, I'll get them for the Xbox 360.

Don't get me wrong, I love the thing. I love, of course, the Bluray player. And the built-in Wi-Fi. And the bigger hard drive. One thing I really like is the seeming openness of the system. For example, you can upgrade the hard drive, if you want, with any other hard drive, not necessarily an expensive first-party HDD (as is the case with the Xbox). You can install Linux on it (although this is not something I am planning on doing). You can run Folding@Home from it, which is a good use of all that raw power, when you're not using it. It has many things going for it...

However, as a gamer, one of the biggest thing it is really behind on is the networking aspects. I mean PSN. PSN is nothing compared to Xbox Live. Nothing! All this time before having a PS3, I heard the PS3 fanboys talking about how they got the same things the Xbox users were paying for, for free... well, let me tell you: no, you're not. PSN is years behind Xbox Live. And I think it's going to stay that way for a long time, because Sony has no incentive for improving something that they're giving for free.

One example where PSN can't touch Xbox Live: trophies support. And by the way, trophies are a relatively new thing for the PS3 (and I must say I love the way trophies are done). But the way they are supported on PSN is horrible. Same as friend lists. You can see your trophies online on PSN... but nobody else can. You can't even compare your trophies with your friends'. In fact, you can't do anything with your friends list online. It's kind of dissapointing when you're used to all the benefits of Xbox Live.

Another thing that was annoying was the set-up process. For some reason, for the set-up, the system used a cell-phone-like keyboard, which was a pain to use. Also, menus seemed very counter-intuitive... a lot of times I had a hard time finding things. Now, I am more used to it, and it's better... but it was annoying for a while. Oh, and Playstation Home? Useless. Nothing interesting going on there, except for a few games in the Arcade section. Well, it seems there is some sort of event going on tonight, so I'll check it out...

The Dualshock 3 is an interesting controller. I like the fact that it requires no external batteries, and so it is very light... but I hope that battery isn't dead in a year from now. I have to say that, at least for shooters, the layout on the Xbox 360 controller is much better, but that would be it... for all other games the Dualshock plays just nice, and is a very nice controller indeed.

Something I loved: The Playstation Store! In this case, the Xbox Live Marketplace has much to learn!!! For starters, it is fast! You click on the icon, and in less than a second it loads, and you have all the options displaying quickly. The XBLM on the other hand can be really slow loading lists, or even retrieving information about a particular item. I must say using the Playstation Store was a very refreshing experience. I wish Sony would put the same effort on improving the rest of PSN, which by the way, kept giving me connection errors for a couple of days at the beginning of this week (I haven't had this problem with PSN since then, I should add).

As a gamer, though, aside from all I've said above, in the end, it all comes down to games. As of now, the Xbox has the edge. Right now I'm playing inFAMOUS (great game by the way). This is a PS3 exclusive, which makes me happy to have a PS3. But there aren't many of these, in fact, the Xbox has better exclusives... however, it seems very soon there are going to be a lot more, so I'm looking forward to that (God of War III, Heavy Rain, Agent). Let us hope the games for the PS3 keep flowing, so that my PS3 doesn't end up like my Wii, just sitting there without much use, waiting for some excuse to be released to get some play time.