PS3 efficient? Hell no! It uses more electricity than my refrigerator, occupies a bulky place, twice the size of PS2, there is nothing efficient about it. What I call truly efficient is Wii, N64 or PSone. They hardly spend any energy, very easy and cheap to produce etc. Efficient is a different criteria btw, not an average of the other three. I am not a Nintendo fan at all but they seem to produce the most ideal consoles of all time. I guess this is why The main stream love Nintendo so much. Very user friendly, lovely, cute, tiny, silent.

My ideal console would be...

$100-$300(max no matter how wealthy i am) for the console itself
$30-$50 range for games
Keyboard & Mouse support for all games
Produces very little heat thus has no fans and is quiet and clean
Is manufactured well enough that it will function properly as long as it is cared for properly
USB for optional components
One technological generation below high end computer graphics... dont want or need cutting edge
Wireless controllers is a +
Targetted towards popular resolutions to work well on most TV's... ie i wont upgrade my tv just for a game

Backward compatibility with its previous consoles is a big ++ but not required

Things I dont want...

Rumble... I dont want it and wouldnt pay for it
BR/HD DVD should be an optional addon
Media Players outside of games... I dont want to pay for them since i have other devices
Online & Networking features should be an optional purchase, i wouldnt want to pay for them on a console

Ok I guess I gotta make a poll about those qualificiations rather than my biased opinion, lol. I may be wrong of course, I am not saying I am totally true, but trying to find what people think, this is why I am sharing it with you!

Let me explain why I regarded all these like that...

I said NES is not small enough because it is way bigger than any of other Nintendo consoles, also bigger than all Sega Consoles except Saturn as well as PS, PSone and PS2mini. Any objections to that? Dont tell me Master System or Genesis was bigger, no, they were smaller than NES (at least the one I saw) but larger than SNES admittedly. PS2 was much smaller than Xbox but come on, it was twice big as PS! Thats over my limits.

About Silence... All nintendo console I know were quite but maybe not GC, because I didnt have much opportunity to play it. So if you people say it was noisier than Xbox or DC than I will consider Noisy.

But... but... the PS3 is much much smaller than your refrigerator, and I bet your fridge can't grill! 

I know the Xbox was very loud. it was like it had a motor inside it. ;)

"I know the Xbox was very loud. it was like it had a motor inside it. ;)"

I couldnt agree more! DC had the same damn problem especially when spinning the GD.

Freedquaker, I was comparing the NES to the Master System, size-wise. Its width is abou 1.5x the NES's length (estimating... my NES is at home, but I've got an SMS right here). If the Master System is good for size, then the NES is, too. Comparing it to my roommate's PS2, it's about as tall (but slants down the front, so actual physical area is less), and is slightly longer. It weighs a *lot* less, though.

I think the physical dimensions of the console are less important for space considerations than whether or not the drive is side or top loading and the console needs room to circulate and exhaust air.

While the physical size of the PS3 console and 360 power supply are generally exaggerated, I don't think there is much dispute that these consoles waste an additional amount of space at least equal to their size in clearance around and behind the console. And while the Wii may be efficient, it runs notoriously hot in its WiiConnect24 mode, which is suspicious given that it doesn't really *do* anything -- at least I haven't seen the blue glow from the slot loader on my machine in at least a month.

Cartridge based units suffer from the top-loader, which requires clearance not just for the height of the cart, but to get your hand in there too. Clamshell CD drives suffer the same problem.

Lastly, the design style will dictate whether you can place one console on top of another, which is a huge benefit if you own several consoles and want many hooked up at once. Unfortunately, most consoles are designed with curved tops or and absence of flat surfaces to discourage this, either to prevent the owner from stacking consoles that generate a lot of heat, or to discourage customers from setting drinks on top of the hardware.

Considering all of these factors, I think the only two consoles that were designed really well for the small entertainment center were the original front-loading NES and the Panasonic model FZ-1 3DO. The original PS2 I'm throwing out on the basis that it was ribbed for no ones pleasure coupled with the fact that its drive whirred louder than a jet engine no matter how new or old it was. :p

The fan probably doesn't operate in wiiConnect mode. I'm not sure it's possible to overestimate the size of the 360 power brick. The 360 would be (conservative estimate) 546.6645645645 x the size of a ps3 if the power brick was inside it. This efficiency score is all messed up. I could keep a cup of coffee or tea warm while I play my ps3 just by setting it beside the ventilation port. Now that's efficient.

Graphics of PS3 with the Wii controller and multiplayer possibilities of the Xbox 360!