Do you people see the sale shifts?

[Sorcery]

rocketpig said:

Sorcery said:
MGO was lame because of Konami, not because of PSN. Granted... I doubt such a system would've even worked on XBL.

And personally, I think there's more to it than just paying for XBL. When people buy a Wii, I think they're sort of throwing their money away, since it's $200 for a minor upgrade to the Gamecube and motion controls. However, they're still buying a reliable system, and the only system that offers motion control. Currently, there is no alternative for motion control.

With the 360, it's different. If you want to download games you need a proprietary hard drive, if you want to play online you need to pay a fee, if you want wifi you need to pay $100 or mod a $50 router, and on top of that you have glaring problems with the hardware itself. More than anything, the biggest reason I question whether it's intelligent to buy a 360 is because there are alternatives. You can play most 360 games on a PC, and if you like playing in front of a TV, there's a similar console experience to be had on the PS3.

There are only a few scenarios where I really accept buying a 360 over a PS3 or PC/PC upgrade. If you don't want to play games online, have a PC that's so bad it's not even worth upgrading, like playing in front of a TV, and want to buy a cheap HD system, the 360 was 100% for you. The other scenario is if you're the type of gamer that wants to experience everything and doesn't care enough about cost to have it prevent you from getting something. I used to fall into the latter category, but $500, $400, and $250 launch price points and $60 games changed my stance.

I know I'm pretty opinionated about the 360, but that doesn't derive from being a PS3 fanboy, it derives from my decision in late 2007 to ultimately pass on buying a 360, and to wait for a drop in the price of the PS3. I wanted a 360 much more than a PS3 (I played my Xbox far more often than my PS2), but passed on it because I thought about the commitment to XBL, I didn't want a dead system (granted, this was before the 3-year warranty), I knew I'd need a wifi adapter, and I knew that eventually I would upgrade my movie experience to high-definition. As such, I'm probably a little extreme.

You and I came to very different conclusions in 2007. I looked at the 360 and it had the games I wanted to play so I bought one. I also bought a PS3 and was utterly disappointed in the machine because, frankly, its functionality was far behind the 360. It wasn't even close. No background downloading, the online system was shit, there were few games that weren't buggy as hell, voice chat was almost an afterthought, etc. The console is vastly improved now but I found it unacceptable that Sony released such a half-assed attempt at a multimedia/online console out of the gate. Now it's a non-issue but two years ago, the situation was vastly different.

In regards to the RROD, MS extended the warranty so I found it acceptable. I still didn't like seeing my box red ring, but knowing that I'd get a new one for free staved off a bit of my vitriol for the console's design quality.

It's all about what you're looking for in a console. I wanted to play the games I like (and later, use kick-ass features like Netflix) and those outweighed the negatives for the console. On the other hand, I could claim that anyone who bought a PS3 in the first year of its release is "retarded" like you did for the 360. The console was overpriced, there were few games, and the implementation of the XMB/online/extra features felt as if Sony slapped them together in a week. That sounds like a dumb purchase when put into that perspective, doesn't it?

That's why I said "tread carefully". It's against forum rules to say things like you did but since you're obviously making a point here, I see no reason to take action. You're allowed an opinion, just refrain from insulting language.

Oh I can't disagree at all with it being silly to buy a PS3 within the first year either, hence why I chose to wait for a PS3 price drop rather than buy one. At the time, I didn't think buying either console would've been an intelligent decision, since one would've cost a lot of money over time, and another simply didn't have much to offer (not to mention the issues both you and I have brought up). My immediate solution was to upgrade my PC with the money I was going to use to buy a 360.

 

I should clarify my original post though, since I said it was before the 3-year warranty and it wasn't. I remember disregarding the warranty because I knew MS didn't cover anything other than the RROD, and this was before people learned to take advantage of the warranty. Another issue is that I wanted to be able to play the system 7-10 years later, which in retrospect was a poor reason to not buy a 360, since the next Xbox will probably have backwards compatibility.

 

I suppose I can reevaluate my position for early-adopters, now that we've discussed it. But post MGS I'm sticking to my guns. :p

 

Thanks for the healthy discussion, I love expanding my perspective.