It's been a while since the last entry and I guess I never did follow up on that Xbox failure rate issue. At this point I don't really plan to however I'm going to make short of mention of it. As you might know (if you read earlier blogs) I own two 360's, I've now had two broken ones (fortunately not at the same time). At time of writing one is actually off being repaired. It's been gone for 3 weeks and I should expect to be waiting another 2 weeks to get it back (no big scale game nights for a while then). Of the 5 RL friends I have who own 360's, 4 have had broken ones, 2 of whom are waiting to get theirs back from repair.
Broken consoles, makes you wanna do this:
Moving on slightly but sticking with similar subject matter, the Xbox Elite is due out in the UK on 24th August 2007. Initially I was sold on it, 120GB HDD, HDMI & black finish. That used to sound better. You see, at first I thought the Elite would use the new chips (65mm as opposed to the current 90mm) which would lead to a cooler, quieter more reliable system but I was wrong. The core components of the Elite are the same as the premium (which is the same as the core) meaning that the Elite is as likely to malfunction as a core system bought a launch. Now, the premiums as of next year will be fitted with HDMI ports as standard making the Elite even less impressive. Had the Elite included an HD-DVD drive (more on that later) and built in Wi-Fi then I would have gladly accepted the £330 price tag (premium costs £280 and is expected to have a price cut soon).
We know the HDD is 120GB but lets face it, that isn't pushing the price up. Microsoft has been ripping us off with HDD since the start. £70 for 20GB is a joke. The HDD is nothing more than a modified laptop HDD. As it stands, the extra £50 gets you 100GB of HDD and a black finish. It's not exactly worth camping out for (not that you'd have to).
Looks hot, but its whats on the inside that counts:
Microsoft 2, Sony 1.
If two 360's weren't enough I have finally gotten around to adding Sony's most recent entry into the system wars. Hooked up to another recent purchase, a 40" Samsung HDTV and the PS3 looks pretty impressive. However, I only own to two games though (Resistance and Motorstorm) as most games available are multiplat and looking better on Xbox 360. That's not a fanboy statement but a fair point. Sony's machine has some impressive hardware but its difficulty to program for is leading to a shower of weak ports. This, I suspect is temporary and soon the PS3 will begin to flex its processing muscle.
My Wii continues to gather dust. I consider it my portal to the VC and little else at this point (Megaman FTW). Nintendo's E3 '07 was a slap in the face to the true gaming community. Instead of giving us games, they choose to spend most of their stage time blowing their own ego and introducing crap in the form of Wii-Fit (which, laughably, they couldn't even get to work properly on stage). The Wii isn't for games, it's a medium they're using to force more peripherals onto the gamers or in this case, the casual market who didn't give a damn about them 5 years ago. This isn't a graphics complaint; good games don't need stellar graphics. The Wii is puking casual crap all over itself, it literally is a cheap date you wanna forget about the morning after. With tacked on controls and almost no online the Wii is perfect for all those non-gamers out there. Nintendo may be raking in the profit this gen but they have already died a more humiliating death than Sega. Megaman and Metroid are the only thing keeping my Wii out of the pre-owned section of the nearest game store.
Is this reason enough to keep the Wii in spite of Nintendo arrogance?
Bioshock demo hit Xbox Live last night. I didn't really following Bioshock too closely until recently when it perked my interest. Having played the demo, I'm definitely getting in line to buy. Amazing graphics, animation, sound, & controls. The story shard in the demo was enough to perk my interest and gladly accept that this is a single player experience only (not that one can't wonder how good a multiplayer could have been).
Coming to an Xbox 360 near me soon (assuming its not being repaired)
