buyer's remorse?

as you know, i bit the bullet yesterday and purchased myself a PS3. while i don't regret the decision - and if i don't yet, i don't think i will - as with any large purchase, i mull over it long after i've made it.

today brings reports of even cheaper PS3s that might be coming out at the end of the year. again however, it's not clear whether or not these new machines will have the emotion engine inside them - the 80GB will not, but now there is talk of a 40GB PS3 to replace the 20GB that is now sold out.

also today i got into work and found that my work had just purchased a 60GB PS3 over the weekend as i did - of course they purchased it at a local store, so we had it to play with today.

my initial impressions? not so hot.

- it comes with 1 SIXAXIS controller and 1 USB recharge cable. you can plug the controller into your PS3 while its on and recharge the batteries in the controller - HOWEVER, the USB recharge cable provided is really, really short. also i learned that any new SIXAXIS controller you buy does NOT come with another USB recharge cable. lame.

- it does NOT come with an HDMI cable. so the PS3, this blu-ray powerhouse of a machine, doesn't come with the appropriate cable with which to hook it up to your TV to see the picture quality in all its glory?!? unbelievable. a component cable? nope. an S-Video cable?!? nope. it comes with a puny composite cable. wow.

- i'm buying the PS3 in part to play PS2 and PS1 games on it, but in order for my PS3 to read the save files from games i've played previously that are saved on memory cards i have to buy a $15 peripheral... again, wow.

- while i like the sleek look of the menu system inside the PS3, i have to say that what i saw of the PSNetwork and the PSStore is pretty pathetic compared to Xbox Live. now i know that Sony's new to the online community space, so i'll give them some time to catch up, but wow it's lame.

- time it takes from out-of-box to actually getting online and being able to download games and demos is atrocious. there's at least 2 system updates that take a little while, and then the steps you have to go through to create a PSNetwork account... well there are a lot of 'em. and they're annoying.

- number of PSNetwork "Arcade" games (i don't know what they're called really) is pretty small considering that the system has been out for 9 months now. Xbox Live Arcade puts out 1-2 games a week on average... PSN looks like maybe 1 every 3 weeks.

- PSN games don't all have demos. in fact, only a few of them do. Xbox Live Arcade games all have demos. pretty lame.

- downloading a 1GB demo took longer than on the 360... i'd say almost twice as long. but maybe the connection was slower today, who knows.

- after downloading a game or demo, you have to then take the next step of installing it. this hasn't been a huge deal so far, as the install time is less than 30 seconds, but it's just an extra step that the 360 doesn't have.

what AM i happy with? wifi out of the box (Xbox 360 you have to pay for a $100 add-on to get wifi) and the SIXAXIS controller is pretty light and neat (though i'm not sure about the raised L2 and R2 buttons). also, as i said, i like the sleek menu system within the PS3 itself.

as i said, i don't regret anything. and despite my bitching above, i don't believe i will.

- kawitchate