19 Games And Seven Reasons You Should Own a Playstation 3 – UPDATED!

by Brock
Playstation 3 detailImage via Wikipedia

I started this off as an e-mail to a few of my die hard Xbox fan boy friends to try to convince them the PS3 is really the way to go for gaming for the next 3-5 years or until MS tries to sneak the next version of the Xbox under the radar(and way earlier than their projected 10 year plan). It got to be such a good list that I thought I should share with every one.

  • First off you can create a PSN ID for free. Any one can and it comes with your own set of trophies and allows online game play on all games. That’s a savings of $40-$60 a year per user currently paying for an Xbox Live ID(you, your bro, whoever else). Plus people who wouldn’t pay to play before now will. Me and Elizabeth have a battle going for who has the most trophies and highest level. I don’t get to do that with her on the Xbox.
  • Netflix(a newer version than the xbox app) and in addition if you choose to pay you can get hulu plus for watching TV shows.
  • Better video codec support for copying movies/tv/videos to your PS3 and watching them on the TV. In fact there is a free media server app that runs on windows and streams from your PC to the PS3. Windows media center can kind of do that to the Xbox but only if your video is in one of the 2 exact formats the Xbox supports. The PS3 on the other hand plays darn near anything.
  • Trophies and Level work almost exactly the same as achievements and gamerscore on the Xbox.
  • Playstation Home, if its your bag. Imagine if they took the sims, turned all the sims in the game in to real people and gave them chat room functionality(it does voice too). It’s free and it’s kind of like that. Tons of mini games around the virtual environment. Stuff to collect for your avatar. Your avatar gets it’s own apartment to put all the stuff you collect in it. Fun and interesting.
  • Folding @ Home support. While you’re listening to music you can run Folding @ Home and help researchers solve problems like cancer and develop new drugs. Xbox just doesn’t do it.
  • Price of PSN games is in dollars not wonky quantities of MS points designed to leave you with odd amounts that beg you buy more to try to use the odd bit you had left.
  • The Playstation uses standard bluetooth peripherals. No need to drop dough on some expensive branded wireless headset. If you can live with out a mute button you can simply use a $15 Walmart cell phone headset. And its not just bluetooth you can even use certain printers with the PS3!

Here are some of the insanely awesome exclusives you only get on a Playstation. As awesome as Halo is it’s not enough to keep the Xbox ahead. Of special note are the Play, Create, Share titles that you just don’t even begin to see on the Xbox side.

Joe Danger, Cuboid, and Gravity Crash also allow user generated content. Apparently so will Mega Man Universe http://playstationlifestyle.net/2010/09/13/play-create-share-coming-to-mega-man-universe/
Throw in that almost all third party games now are cross platform and there are really very very few reasons to stick with the Xbox platform.

UPDATE – I forgot a few things people reminded me of after I posted this and I wanted to share them.

  • The PS3 features a user replaceable hard drive. Which means you don’t have to pay a Microsoft tax for some way over priced re-packaged Microsoft drive the way you do when you want an upgrade on an Xbox. Go out, find virtually any standard laptop sized SATA drive and pop it in.
  • On a similar note you can backup your entire PS3 to an external USB hard drive for safe keeping or to facilitate the afore mentioned upgrade process so you won’t have to waste time re-downloading all of your PSN games and DLC content.
  • PSP integration. Thats right there’s a mobile gaming system that runs along side your PS3. When conditions are right and you are on the road you can access your video, music and pictures remotely via the Playstation Portable. There are also a few PSP games that interact with their big brother counter parts to give you unlocks or enhance the play on the full console version of the game.