Son of Son of Playstation
The Playstation 3 launched here in Australia today for AU$1000, which is a crapload of money. EB Games have a deal where if you trade in a working PS2 and 20 PS2 games, you can get a PS3 for $700, which is also a crapload of money. My buddy Cam has also offered to bring me one back from the States for the equivalent of $743 Australian, which is also a crapload of money. I'm sure I could fly to Europe and get a PS3 there for a crapload of money, but well... you get the idea. There were limited lines and crowds at the midnight launches around Australia and Europe, including about 125 people at the main Virgin Megastore in London who all scored a free 46 inch Bravia LCD each just for queueing up. It's hard to fault that kind of generosity, although it does reinforce the point that to really get the best out of the console, you really need a nice big HD-TV, which is another few thousand.
Of all the PS3 launch titles, I'm only really interested in is Virtua Fighter 5, and only if Scott and Gobie moved to Sydney to play it with me, bringing with them some kind of dual wireless arcade controller and a jumbo bag of Reece's peanut butter cups. There will be great games for the platform eventually, but for now there's very little that's compelling. Quite a few older PS2 games have issues too, including the one I'm playing through right now, Final Fantasy XII. You may have heard of it, and it's only rated "Should play on PLAYSTATION3 with some minor issues". I wonder what that means?
About the only really interesting PS3 news recently was their wacky Second Life-esque 3D community system, Home. This service is free, and allows your to wander around Home's virtual space using your own customizable avatar. The main Home area looks like this:
There you can chat with other users, view movies, show off game trophies and launch co-op games. You can even customize your own private Home apartment, adding objects downloaded, purchased via micropayments or awarded through games. It's the closest thing I've seen to Snow Crash's Metaverse, although much more locked down (no giant talking penii here) and much, much more commercialized. Home seems to have ads projected onto every available surface too, which kinda sucks. There seems to be a facility to go to game-, developer- or publisher-themed locations, where the intensity of the ads seems to go up several notches, which kinda sucks a lot. Still, if enough people use it (it's free, after all) and there are ways to avoid the advertising, it might be an interesting way to communicate with your friends. Note that I use the word interesting here, not awesome or cool. Teilo pointed me to a decent video of the GDC PS3 demo on Gamespot that shows off many of the features of home, although that advertising is bloody everywhere.
To summarize, the PS3 right now is really expensive, has no games I want to play and might become interesting in a year or so. To be honest I'm not really interested in a Wii or a 360 either right now, although I'll admit those two new consoles are more compelling than the PS3. Not as compelling as WoW and a new set of couches, though.