Tips for the Suckers (The PS3 Warning)

By Kanrei

This is an open letter to the suckers. Who are the suckers? They are those fools you see lined up in the front of your local Target or Best Buy store waiting to get a Play Station 3 (PS3) being released tomorrow. Some have been there for days; some have quit their jobs to wait in line; most are planning on selling their purchases on Ebay for thousands and not one of them are going to get a PS3 tomorrow. Not a single one of them.

I should firstly state that I am a Play Station 2 owner and lover. I also owned and loved my first Play Station more than life itself, so I am not an unbiased person when it comes to this subject, but even I have no plans to purchase this new evolution in home gaming technology. There really does come a point where enough is enough and these new systems have just leapt past that spot. I mean the graphics of the Xbox or PS2 were light years beyond the Atari 2600 I grew up with yet the game play remains fairly the same. It is still running, driving, shooting, and saving things. It is just a matter of how graphically intense the images are. I personally prefer the cartoonish appearance of video game violence over photo-realism. For me the PS2 is perfection, but that is just me so why am I calling these PS3 dreamers idiots today? Well, because they simply are.

The first problem with the PS3 (and the Xbox360) is simply the format it uses for its DVD player. As most people do not know there are two competing formats for the next-gen DVDs: Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. The two are not compatible with each other and both formats will not survive. With the Xbox embracing HD-DVD and the PS3 embracing Blu-Ray this simply means one of these two very expensive systems will be invalid as a DVD player within a year. Remember the VHS/Betamax war? How are those Betamax machines holding up today?

Secondly is the lack of PS3 exclusive titles. Play Station used to have titles that you could only get for their system. For example, Grand Theft Auto had always been on Play Station only for a year after release. Xbox owners had to wait, but not any longer. Sony is releasing the PS3 with far fewer exclusive titles which really makes which system you decide to buy inconsequential to the games you will be able to play on it. Since Xbox 360 has been out for a year and readily available on store shelves today this gives them a major advantage.

Speaking of the store shelves issue, that is the third strike against the PS3. They are only releasing 400,000 of the most anticipated toy to the United States. There were quite possibly more than that in pre-sales which means every store is sold out before they are even stocked. Stores like Best Buy did not allow pre-sales, but they will also be only stocking approximately 25 per store so good luck to all those campers out there.

The last big mistake Sony has made is the price of this system. You do have two choices of which model you want to buy, but at $500 and $600 it really does not make that big of a difference. This is still a massive investment for most people and, considering it comes with NO GAMES and only one controller, this means parents can expect to spend at least $700 if they want their kids to not fight.

You do not need to buy a single PS3 game for this new system in theory, but that is not going to work in practice. Sony had advertised that the PS3 would be able to play all PS2 titles which sounded wonderful until they just announced this week that it did not work out as they had hoped. Not all PS2 titles will work and, with over 2000 titles they really cannot let people know in advance which will work and which will not. I can forsee many sad and crying kids this Christmas.

I realize the sucker title must sound kind of cruel, but how else would you describe a person who sleeps out for days to purchase an over-priced video game system that they probably will not be able to get and will not work as advertised if they do? What word do you use to describe those people who must be the first to get something regardless of their need or ability to afford it?

My advice to the parents out there is to take the money you planned on spending on this year’s “Tickle Me Elmo” and use it instead to by a ton of games for the system your kids already own. Unless you already have a HD TV you really will not be using the new system to its fullest anyway and most of the software coming out for these systems are already available on the older generation with the same graphics and game play. The only difference is the price.