Next-Gen's Editors'S View: The PlayStation 3 Rebirth

It has endured a horrible introduction to the world, but PlayStation 3 has survived. Now it's set to prosper. Next-Gen's editor-in-chief Colin Campbell explains...

* The decision to go with Blu-ray was good because Blu-ray is going to emerge as the winning platform in the war against HD-DVD. It was good because millions of people will be upgrading to hi-def over the next five years. It was good because a significant percentage of them will make PS3 a central part of that upgrade process.

* Up until this point, Xbox 360 has represented the best value. No longer. PS3 is $50 more expensive than Xbox 360 but you get a bigger hard drive, you get a Blu-ray drive and you get to play online for free. It is becoming extremely difficult to argue the case that Xbox 360 is better value than PS3.

* For many people, it looks like a tres-moderne piece of under-the-telly technology. And, what‘s more, it carries the Sony logo and the PlayStation logo. For those of us entrenched in the biz, both these brands carry baggage. But for them out there - the Year 3 Console Adopters, the people who bought a DVD player after the Millennium - these are brands to trust. They speak of sophistication and quality.

* Will PlayStation Home make a difference? When I saw it a year ago, I was convinced that this piece of software would play a major role in the console wars. I still believe it has a touch of genius, the common touch, to take virtual living out of the machismo ghettoes of Xbox Live or the vacant loonyness of Second Life. If it works, it's an amazing thing.

This hardware cycle has confounded most of what we thought we knew about the console games market. We used to believe that there would always be an ultra-dominant console and a distant second-place. We used to believe that third place was no-where. It was once a central belief that games consoles ought not try and be something else; that convergent devices were anathema.
Those things don't seem to hold any longer. All three console manufacturers are in a strong position to take a win from this generation; simultaneously.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?op...=8734&Itemid=2

The first point about Blu-ray is a bit odd as I would argue that it's possibly just because the PS3 has a Blu-ray player in it that that format war has virtually been won. Even if it had lost the format war it would still have been very useful for PS3 games storage alone.

You seem to have chosen your HW comparison very carefully.
For £60 ($120) you get those improvements for PS3 over Xbox360 Premium when compared to the 40Gb reduced spec PS3 - IN THE UK at least. Or only a minor £10 ($20) more then the 360 Elite, (but then you have a smaller Hard disc, not a bigger one). The US market maybe the biggest but it is hardly the most representative as the rest of the world get ripped off in comparison.

I must admit that the free online gaming and the Blu-ray player, (especially now) do compensate quite some bit. Without those the PS3 would be having more trouble though IMO.

And c'mon the George Forman grill is not a real looker in anyones eyes except blind men. How many as a percentage of PS3 owners really think it's "a tres-moderne piece of under-the-telly technology" looks wise?

I think the PS3 looks just fine, but it isn't a masterpiece. Modern? Come on. The artsy folk shouldn't be writing about game systems, because quite frankly, half the shit that passes for art nowadays is just an ugly ass piece of metal, that looks like it was more an accident than an actual design.