What is more important to you, a hard drive or backwards compatibility? This is to compare which entry level console is more appealing to you, the 360 Core or the assumed $399 40 gig PS3 that MIGHT lack any PS2 backwards compatibility, period. Price can be a factor in your decision too, but this is mainly about which is more useful overall for a system to have.
Keep in mind that a lack of a hard drive will affect how games run on all models of the console, or could prevent you from playing a game at all. It almost certainly precludes you from playing online. Also, you cannot download demos and can only download some of the downloadable games available for a system online, assuming you have a memory card.
Lacking backwards compatibility would force you to own the older system to play those games on the previous system. In this hypothetical construction, it precludes all software emulation.
I would just like to see what is more important to people. Personally I choose a hard drive over BC because I love demos and downloadable games. I also own 2 PS2's, although I know this isn't the case for some people.
Please contribute your thoughts.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
and Wii 
