I’ve always been a game lover. It started all the way back in the old Apple and PC’s. I grew up with Scott and Ryan Hui back in the day. Scott had the original Nintendo and everything up to now. That’s probably how I got started with game consoles. In college I bought my first game console, the Nintendo N64.
This was a fun thing. I started playing Madden on this puppy. I can’t even remember the cover of the Madden for the copy I bought with this machine. It was fun. I think I bought it for this phenomenal game Rogue Squadron:
For better graphics it required an expansion pak. I guess it was sharper. But this came the Playstation 2:
I got this after I left Colorado. Nonetheless it was the console to get. Some of my fraternity brothers managed to get one of these – it was certainly the hotness. Another brother got the Sega Dreamcast – he actually lived across from the guy with the PS2 – but the Cast wasn’t nearly as cool. It was a ‘high res’ console with a dvd player. At the time DVD player were $$$. This was 2 awesome birds in one stone, uh, console. I never really used the DVD player, just gamed the crap out of it. I played it continually from when I got to San Francisco for art school (I remember the long nights of my roommate and myself rocking out the Max Payne and the GTA till dawn). This was probably my first experience with online gaming (Madden) and talking trash with your opponent.
I used it up till last year when I decidedly felt it was ‘of age’. But there was a conundrum: Xbox or PS3. Sony sat on their golden egg too long – the development of Blu-Ray cost them the #1 seat. Xbox 360 made it with good graphics and great connectivity (all with the help of Microsoft products). With the XBox out a year earlier and the PS2 supports eagerly awaiting the PS3, news of the Wii were appearing here and there. Weird controllers were certainly my first thoughts. But as the executives of Nintendo would say, ‘We’re concentrating on game play, not graphics’, I wasn’t convince. But how would a believer say, ‘I told you so’.
The Wii and the PS3 came out around the same time. The Wii stole the hearts of an eager audience. New game play – no more sitting around, you actually apply your movements to the game play. What Wii did for game play is what the iPhone did for haptic input (touch input). On the other side, there were reports of faulty Blu-Ray assemblies, PS3 suffered production delays. Then finally it arrived but with few titles. XBox had taken the lead by coming out a year early stealing most of the game developing from PS3. And the initial price – forget about it.
Before I bought the PS3 I had played the XBox and the Wii. Thanks to Don Cruz I fell in love with Guitar Hero and Skate. I was certain I would love the XBox. Thankfully Don offered me the caveats of the XBox. He suffered early adoption problems. One the biggest ‘The Ring of Fire’ or ‘The circle of death’. Though I’ve know about these problems I’ve never read about so many in a production product that didn’t call for a full recall. Anything from faulty disc loaders to over heating CPUs it was a slew ‘maybe nots’.
PS3 had it share of problems too. Jammed slot loaders being one of them. I thought long and hard for this one. XBox offered connectivity and awesome game play. But and there are a few buts kept me aback. Back in SF, my roommate and best friend Mike owned a the original XBox. Another friend, Todd owned the Nintendo Gamecube and I owned the PS2. Three gaming consoles within 200 yards of each other. I hated the original XBox controller - It was designed for large fat American hand (trying not to sound to derisive). I heard later down the line while they’d begun selling to Japan and other Asian countries that the controller got redesigned for small Asian hands. Hmm. The other thing was the positioning of the left analog stick. With the N64 controller it was lower like the PS2 and PS3. Both the PS2 and PS3’s analogs are on equal planes. The XBox 360s left is higher than the rights. Preference? Maybe. But what about the experience?
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray started their battle campaigns well before I even considered buying anything. Obviously Blu-Ray won though you can still buy a HD-DVD player for XBox 360 for a steal. I decided on the PS3 because of Blu-Ray. I – like many of you perhaps have way too many DVD’s. They’re just so cheap in HK now. I love movies. I love the cinema. So I needed something that would open my eyes up to new home cinematic experiences. I still love the controller and plus its wireless.
The thing that really got me going is the media it can read. I had a whole bunch of video files I never rendered and plugged them into the PS3 via hard drive. Bingo, it worked fine. The great thing like all consoles now is it updates if there are updates to, uh, update.
So I’m here to tell you I use a PS3 and I’m proud of it.
