It's been a long time since I last wrote about feeling dirty about my PS3 purchase. However, that's not the topic of this entry. feel free though to read the previous blog post as well for some background on the whole "dirty" thing.

My launch 360 finally died a hot death a few weeks back. It just stopped displaying anything at all, and despite trying to use different cables, and on a few different sets, it still wouldn't work. It however, did not show the red ring of death as many have done to others... it just stopped working.

I figure I bought one of the first boxes, have purchased (and subsequently sold) over 100 Xbox 360 games as well as the HDDVD kit, not to mention about 12 HDDVD movies and 4 controllers... plus those damn Scene It controllers and a dance pad for my boy. All told around $6000+ worth of 360-centered merchandise. As someone who has spent that kind of green on a company's product, I expect a little leeway with the customer service department.

I call up 1-800-4-my-xbox and encounter one of the rudest customer service reps around. I tell him my problem, and he says "Huh. Sorry to hear that. Send it to us and we'll fix it for $179." I explain that I have spent a large wad of cash on their product, and that since the 360 is known to have some hardware quality issues in general, I don't think it's good business to refuse a solid customer a simple repair. He replies "Yeah... do you have the three red lights?" I told him I did not, and he said "Then it's going to be $179."

So yeah... I purchased the 2 year warranty from GameStop, and naturally it was outside of that warranty too so I was pretty much screwed. After looking at all of my games, accessories and everything else that would be worthless without a 360, I opted to use some store credit and a little cash to get a 360 arcade and just snap my HDD onto that instead of having the monkeys at MS have my machine and charge me $179. The thought did run through my mind to trade all the accessories and games in for something else, but I already have both a PS3 and Wii so there wasn't anything big to go for.

In any case Now I feel bent over a barrel by two companies... and I might have even said all three if the Wii didn't grace us with Super Mario Galaxy recently. hehe... That alone justifies it's existence at this point.

In the meantime, I'm writing a pretty scathing letter of complaint to MS and see if they won't fix my old machine for free. If so, I'll probably box one or the other up and eBay it, if not I'll probably crack the box and see what I can do inside with the parts.

Let me explain and then I've got some ranting to do...

I noticed Circuit City was running a deal where you could get a 60G PS3, 5 free Blu-ray movies by mail in, and an extra PS3 Sixaxis controller for $499. Effectively making the PS3 around $359 if you take into consideration the cost of the movies and the controller. Not a bad deal at all, but still a sizable chunk of change I wasn't really planning to use on a PS3 right now.

Here's where I start feeling dirty: I bought Motorstorm and Resistance and downloaded the Ninja Gaiden: Sigma demo. All good games, but I didn't feel any real "wow" factor from them. To be fair, I didn't feel any "wow" when I first fired up the 360 eitherso I guess I should stop expecting that. Regardless, they were good looking and pretty fun. As I looked through the PlayStation store and looked at the upcoming release list, I couldn't help but feel Sony shammed me.

Let me back up, I had no intention of buying a PS3 until a substantial price drop and more must-have games hit shelves. The reason I jumped so early, besides being a good deal, was the news that not only are they phasing the 60 gigger out, the replacement 80 gigger has incomplete backwards compatibility. It's still at 88% or thereabouts, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the 30 or so Xbox games I own but still can't play on the 360, and I want to get all of my old PS2 games working on the new system.

So I feel shammed basically because they enticed me to buy before I was intending to, and because they pull a price drop followed by a discontinuation and effective downgrade in future versions of the hardware. Oh and yeah... I know you can purchase HDMI cables online on the cheap, but in retail stores, the cheapest I could find was a $40 cable that was 3 feet. Which is about as long as the charging cable they put in the box for the Sixaxis, making charging while playing it worthless unless you want to sit around 2 feet from the TV.

And another thing, why can't I play Resistance in 1080i?? My largest and oldest HDTV only supports 480 and 1080i. When I fired up Resistance, it told me the optimal resolution for that game is 720p. Since that set doesn't do 720p, I went ahead and played anyway at the settings I had made in the console settings. After thinking to myself "These graphics really aren't very good," I checked the resolution on the TV, and sure enough it had set me at 480.So in order to play my PS3 games I have to go into the bedroom and play on a 26" LCD that does 720p. Grrr... it does look great in 720p but it's on a screen half the size I am used to gaming on. (UPDATE) Apparently most of the games out right now for the PS3 won't display in 1080i... So far only Sigma has ran at 1080, and of course the Dashboard/Media Crossbar does too. Yay.

And criminy this sucker's heavy and puts out a boatload of heat! Thankfully the fan is substantially quieter than the 360's fan, but it does get hot regardless.

Oh and what is going on with loading times and installations? Does every game have to install on the HDD before it's playable? I thought that was the point of console gaming, that you can just pop a disc in and go... apparently times are changing.

*sigh* I don't mean to be pessimistic, but I guess I just was expecting all of the fanboy rants I hear in System Wars daily to be exaggerations, which some are and others are right on the mark.

Those things being said, I am optimistic about the future of the PS3 and the games it will have within the next few months and years. Heavenly Sword looks great, and now I don't have to wait to play Haze. Little Big Planet looks interesting as does Infamous and Uncharted but please don't mention MGS4... I am evidently the only person on the planet who can't stand the MGS series. It's a long story.

In addition to gaming, I have a one year old son and old Disney movies in HD is a nice bonus. (XBL only gets the new ones) However, I couldn't locate any of the old Disney BR discs at any local retailer... Have they just not been released yet on BR?

So yeah, I'm sure I'll have more positive things to say in the future, but I had to get this out for the time being. I feel they are valid complaints especially for a high end piece of hardware. But many will likely shout "teh bias Mod!!!"and that's fine. People who really know me know what kind of person I am... and that's good enough for me.

How time flies. On monday morning (June 19th, 2006) my baby boy decided he had been cooking long enough and made his first appearance here in the earth. I have photos, but for the life of me I can't get them transferred to upload them. I have them on a little SD card, so they'll get on here eventually. Probably after I become coherent enough to do so.

Operating on a total of about 7 hours of sleep spanning the past 4 nights doesn't give the mind much wiggle room for things other than basic thought processes and keeping my major organ systems and perhaps locomotion to some degree.

For the life of me I can't remember how I got to work this morning, because I don't remember a single minute of the drive over. The drive takes about 15-20 minutes so somehow I drove my Jeep from point A to point B without incident. I count that as a miracle in and of itself.

The true miracle of it all of course was the little guy and his mommy who deserves much more credit than I could ever claim for bringing him here. Sure I helped as much as I could, and it was a fascinating experience for both of us, but she went thru a ton of pain to get the little guy here which I am fairly sure I wouldn't be capable of if the roles were reversed. (Setting all obvious physiological differences aside )

Anyway, I just wanted to tell everyone the great news.