Pickin' up a PS3? A Wii?

[Digital Limit]

Who's getting a PS3? What games are you getting?

What about the Wii? Zelda, I take it?

[schnitzel_bob]

I plan on getting a Wii eventually, but I don't ever get consoles on release and I couldn't afford one anyways. And yes, Zelda is the main reason.

Hey Smapdey, any official word on whether Twilight Princess has become a Wii exclusive or not?

[halomizer]

i don't know how many times i have to say fuck the ps3.

[dimsum411]

ps3 is black, so no

wii = white power, so no

[Digital Pimp]

Getting a Wii and Zelda, oh and Zelda is not just a Wii exclusive, there will be exclusive Wii features integrated the new controller scheme as well as some different graphical enhancements. Zelda will be coming to the Gamecube around December 12.

[Digital Limit]

But, according to Cassamassina from IGN, the Wii version is far and above a superior version.

[psydude20]

Man, I don't think I've been this excited since I first got an N64 back in the day.

I plan on standing in line on Sunday to buy a Wii. Luckily the mall where our gamestop is doesn't open until 9, so I won't have to wait overnight. I also have a friend that works at GS that said he'll do his best to "reserve" me one.

I reserved a copy of Zelda about 1.5 years ago when it was originally scheduled to come out for the GC. I switched it to the Wii version today, but they told me they won't be able to get it to me on launch day. I'm thinking that CoD 3 will hold me over until then. It looks like so much fun with the Wii.

[NiteX]

Grabbing me a Wii this Sat night. I figured it was pointless to preorder seeing as how NA will be getting over 1 mill. My local walmart will surely have some at midnight and not many people will be there. Besides I'm bringing some force. A good friend of mine that knows some kick boxing will be coming with me, and if any kid give me lip the fightin G will rain down on his ass.

[Phobo]

im picking up the ps3 in march!

[halomizer]

the wii looks pretty sweet but don't have a job so i'll have to wait till i can find one in like 4 months.

[san_pali]

Ok, the wii is out in the states!

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/6458/wiibd5.gif

Soo.. Has anyone of you got your hands on it? does it live up to the hype amassed during all this months? it's just a gimmick?

[Digital Pimp]

Got a Wii Sunday morning, went to my Best Buy at around 3 am and waited 6 hours, luckily a friend I hadn't seen in a few years was there and we went and got a few 12 packs to while away the 6 hours in cold, cold by FL raised standards like 45-50 degree F.

Anyway Wii sports is fun and is a great way to intro the console to family and such, played my mom in bowling and my dad in golf. Both of them picked up on how to us the Wii-mote within seconds. Zelda is great, sure it is a GC game, but they integrated the control scheme of the Wii into it excellently. Fishing is great so fun, as is combat. Though with this heightened control over Link it seems like maybe the Wii makes him just a little too overpowered. Yes it shows it a gamecube game in terms of graphics but they have been tuned up a bit for the Wii hardware. My only gripes are: No orchestra for the music, just midi synthesized but still very very good. Lack of voice acting, though this could be a hit or miss due to sometimes the worst aspects of a game can be the voice acting in terms of actor choice and how they envision the character and handle the line readings.

I haven't made much headway into the story yet due to the fact I had work yesterday and I slept when I could after waiting all night. Though what I've played so far is great, another AAA Nintendo title and possibly their best yet. I've actually never played a Zelda game through so this will be my first and so far it looks to be a great time.

So is the Wii a gimmick or a new revolution in gaming? Well that depends on the developers. Some companies are hitting the Wii-nail right on the head with integration and use of the Wii controller like Nintendo and Atlus (they do Trauma Center). Others just tack on the Wii-mote extras much like some have done with the touchscreen capabilities of the DS. I hope Nintendo really does help the 3rd-party devs a lot more this time around and I also hope that the 3rd-party devs make some outstanding Wii games that will be remembered much like Rare was back in the N64 days. I'm hoping they don't merely label the Wii as a place for them to dump cheap to make Gamecube era games and turn it into a console where only 5 or 6 games are worth owning like the Gamecube was.

When all is said and done the Wii has been great so far. I feel like I'm more integrated into the game this time around now that I'm controlling the physical action on the screen instead on just pressing and X button and moving a right analog stick to aim. Like I said before it will be the devlopers who decide if the Wii is a gaming revolution or merely a gimmick. The hardware and capabilities are there, they just have to put in that little bit of extra effort to make it the former and not the latter. Of course that little bit of extra effort may cost thousands and a pushed back release date, but hey if they can deliver I can wait, impatiently but still waiting.

[psydude20]

I was 21st out of 20 people in line on Saturday night, so I wasn't able to get one.

My big question for people that got Zelda is should I bother waiting until I can get a Wii to buy it, or would I be better off just going with the GC version since that's what it was originally designed for?

[Jwr5]

Have you played Rayman Raving Rabbids? I think thats the name. From what I've heard it's one of the better Wii games out now.

[Hobbes874]

Played a PS3 on Friday on a 42" plasma and truthfully it wasn't that impressive, graphics like a 360 except it had a decent amount of lag in games like Gundam:Crossfire.....think I would pick a 360 over a PS3 at this point but we'll see what developers do in the next few years. Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to play a Wii even though I really want to, if I had the money for a nex-gen console I'd prolly lay my money down for a Wii but I'll play the waiting game at this point.

[Digital Limit]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/MasterChief88/132.gif

[Digital Limit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/arts/20game.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

A Weekend Full of Quality Time With PlayStation 3

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By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: November 20, 2006

Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.

Ever since Mr. Stringer took the helm last year at Sony, the struggling if still formidable electronics giant, the world has been hearing about how the coming PlayStation 3 would save the company, or at least revitalize it. Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun.

Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise.

Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the world’s most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the world’s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other.

The PS3, which was introduced in North America on Friday with a hefty $599 price tag for the top version, certainly delivers gorgeous graphics. But they are not discernibly prettier than the Xbox 360’s. More important, the whole PlayStation 3 system is surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online.

I have spent more than 30 hours using the PlayStation 3 over the last week or so and may have played more different games on the system — 13 — than probably anyone outside of Sony itself. Sony did not activate the PS3’s online service until just before the Friday debut. Over the weekend a clear sense of disappointment with the PlayStation 3 emerged from many gamers.

“What’s weird is that the PS3 was originally supposed to come out in the spring, and here it came out in the fall, and it still doesn’t feel finished,” Christopher Grant, managing editor of Joystiq, one of the world’s biggest video-game blogs, said on the telephone Saturday night. “It’s really not the all-star showing they should have had at launch. Sony is playing catch-up in a lot of ways now, not just in terms of sales but in terms of the basic functionality and usability of the system.”

Sadly for Sony, the best way to explain how the PlayStation 3 falls short is to explain how different it is to use than its main competition, Xbox 360. When I reviewed the 360 last year, I wrote: “Twelve minutes after opening the box, I had created my nickname, was in a game of Quake 4 and thought, ‘This can’t be this easy.’ ”

I never felt that way using the PlayStation 3. With the PS3, 12 minutes after opening the box I realized that Sony inexplicably does not include cables to connect the machine to a high-definition television. Keep in mind that one of Sony’s main selling points has been that the PS3 plays Blu-Ray high-definition movie discs. But high-definiton cables? Sold separately. The Xbox 360, by contrast, ships with one cable that can connect to either a standard or high-definition set.

Then, before you are even using the PS3, you have to connect the “wireless” controller to the base unit with a USB cable so they can recognize each other. If you bring your PS3 controller to a friend’s house, you’ll have to plug back in again. The 360’s wireless controllers are always just that, wireless.

If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesn’t seem too complicated, but the PS3 can’t do it.

In that sense it often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3’s online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, you’ll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you can’t download in the background while you go do something that’s more fun (like play a game). On the Xbox 360, not only are files downloaded seamlessly in the background, but you can also shut off the machine, turn it on later, and the download will resume automatically.

The PS3’s whole online experience feels tacked-on and unpolished. On the Xbox 360 each user has a single unified friends list, so you can track your friends and communicate with them easily, no matter what game you are in. On the PlayStation 3 most games have their own separate friends list and some have no friends function at all. There is a master list as well, but in order to communicate with anyone on it, you have to quit the game you are playing.

There are some high points. The multi-player battles in Resistance: Fall of Man are excellent. The arcade-style action in the downloadable Blast Factor is suitably frantic.

But the list of the PS3’s disappointments remains, from its undersupported voice chat to its maddening cellphone-like text messaging system. (In frustration I ended up plugging in a USB keyboard.) Overall, Sony seems to have put a lot of effort into cramming as much silicon horsepower under the hood as possible but to have forgotten that all the transistors in the world can’t make someone smile.

And so it is a bit of a shock to realize that on the video game front Microsoft and Sony are moving in exactly the opposite directions one might expect given their roots. Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sony’s PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3’s deficiencies.) The thing is, if people want to use a computer, they’ll use a computer.

Through the decades of the Walkman and the Trinitron television, Sony was renowned as the global master of easy-to-use, seamlessly powerful consumer electronics. But recently Sony seems to have lost its way, first in digital music players, in which it ceded the ergonomic high ground to Apple’s iPod, and now in home-game consoles. For now Sony’s technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun.

As a practical matter, given the limited quantities Sony has been able to manufacture, the PlayStation 3 will surely remain sold out throughout the holiday season. If you can’t find one, don’t fret. Sony still has a lot of work to do. As Mr. Grant of Joystiq put it: “Maybe in six months it’ll be finished. Maybe by next fall I’ll be able to do all the cool stuff. I’m still kind of waiting.”

[Phobo]

tldr

[greymeister]

PS3, Xbox360, or Wii....

Hard decisions.

[tisl]

Wii60 son, Wii60.

[halomizer]

i know i'll end up with all of them. evern tho sony is for homo's.

[BigFroC]

I'm going to go search for a Wii tomorow. I doubt I'll find one with it being the biggest shopping day of the year.

Oh well, Fred Meyer's always has free doughnut holes and OJ day after Thanksgiving

[Hobbes874]

Dude, screw leaving your house on Black Friday.