Yeah, I'm over the fanboys phase, there's pros and cons to both (which is why I wont state ps3 > xbox360). Like the controllers, the xbox ones always feel bulky to me but I have small hands so maybe that's why.
Similar thing happened to me, my ps2 didn't die. BUt I had just bought a 42 inch LCD, and wanted the blue ray player. Got it just to play like 2 games. Most of my gaming is on my PC.
$300-$500 doesn't seem like much to spend on something that will last you many years and give you hundreds of hours of entertainment. Not to mention that modern systems double as a dvd and/or blu-ray player. I have actually never bought a dvd player because of this. As for some of your other concerns: not all the systems charge for online play, and incredible deals can be found for games now more than ever.
Thanks all for your support, but it seems we celebrated too soon. I turned on my PS3 tonight and it died after 10 minutes. Now it won't turn on it all. Within 2 seconds I hear a couple beeps and it shuts down. To make matters worse I have a game disc in there that I can't get out now. Damnit!
I tried PC gaming for a couple years. Outside of BF2 I could never really get into any games. After my video card went out I went back to console gaming.
Have you tried holding the eject button while powering it on? I hear that will start a "fan test" on the 40GB model that may get your desk out as a side effect. I gotta say, as much as I may like PS3 better than 360... PS3 is awful when it breaks. There's no way to remove a disc that's stuck inside, and there's no way to recover your saves/data either. With 360 neither is an issue. 360 definitely wins the "lower impact on your life when it breaks" battle. But, when you consider that PS3 doesn't break nearly as much, has free online, and is a much better multimedia machine... I'd say that at least evens things out.
I'm kinda the same way, I greatly favor console gaming. No compatibility issues, no long/complicated installs, less expensive, and I get to sit on the couch! On the other hand, I gotta say, if you like Oblivion and/or Fallout 3 at all, they're that much better on PC. I played both on console, and then after the fact ended up with a beefier computer and then played them for PC... and man... there's a world of difference. The sheer number of game-changing mods just boggles the mind. There are so many mods I can't believe I did without. Mass Effect 1 is also much nicer to play on PC... no incessant pausing during combat necessary like on the 360.
Yeah I found a video that shows how to eject during the fan test and that worked perfectly. Thanks! I found someone on ebay that offers repair of the YLOD for $60, and they have quite a bit of positive feedback so I'm thinking of going that route. That would be a lot easier to swallow than paying $150 to Sony and waiting god knows how long to get it back. Unless anyone knows of a repair service here in town that is good?
I disagree. Sure building a gaming rig costs some money in the begining. But the prices of Console games are OUTRAGEOUS. $60 for a game? You kidding me? I live off Steam. They have great deals all the time, like Bad Company 2 was $39.99 a few days ago on Steam for PC. And it's $56 on Xbox / PS3. I've only bought 1 game on console in the last year, and it was red dead redemption....and I'm having buyers remorse for spending over $60 on a freaking game I never play. Also...keeping track of friends, VOIP (much better voice quality than the crap you get on consoles)....FREE online gaming (unless it's an RPG type game...) Mods...like you mentioned are a big part....and imo, some of the games and communities are much better. Valve kicks ass on PC. For the most part....you don't have to pay for add-ons like DLC's. (although a lot of games are moving towards that on PC now too).
I got Bad Company 2 for PS3 maybe within the first month of it coming out for $40 at Fry's. One thing I do miss about PC gaming is the moderated servers.
I don't know how the math works if you factor in the PC itself. But yeah, PC games are much cheaper than console games. With Steam and other services, I generally don't pay that much for games. It has gotten to the point that even the $40 for BC2 is way too much for me (though partly because I did see it for around that price before, as mentioned). $20-$25 or less is when I start paying attention. Actually gave in to play Left 4 Dead 2 since it was just $10 IIRC (I didn't care for it, which wasn't a surprise...but hey, just $10). I love both though. You guys are missing out if you just limit yourself to one or the other IMO. Though in terms of my backlog, I sometimes wished I did just that. I was making some progress, and then Steam had to throw in a Summer Sale.
They definitely are. I'm missing out on a lot of great games on the PS3 simply because I don't want to pay for them at full price. Good thing my PC plays about 99% of 360's games so I don't have to worry about missing out anything else. Anyone here have experience with GameFly?
One thing to remember about 3rd-party repairs is that if a component is truly dead and needs to be replaced, you've just lost both your $60 and your ability to send it in to Sony for $150 and receive a refurb of the same unit, since Sony will no longer take your unit as it has been "repaired by an unauthorized technician" (meaning non-Sony). So only go the 3rd-party route if you're not interested at all in the sending-it-to-Sony option. If I were you I'd just save yourself time and get a slim with a warranty. It's not worth the trouble to get that model repaired only to have it break again soon afterwards because of a faulty component. You can even sell your broken one for a few bucks on craigslist as potentially repairable. 1. I think the cost of maintaining a good gaming rig simply trumps the cost of console hardware by so much that it's easy to say PC is more expensive. 2. As far as prices of games go... well, big-name PC games tend to start at $50, while the same starts at $60 for PS360... so $10 price difference on average for new games from what I've seen. But then you have to calculate in the fact that for various reasons, the used market for PC games is generally very poor, mostly due to 1-time activation codes. So sure that PC game may cost $40 new while the console version costs $50 new... but often enough it's very easy for me to wait a month and then get that same game used for console... cheaper than the PC version. 3. PSN is free, I've never paid for Xbox Live myself. To me, it seems that if you don't pay for Xbox Live, and you don't buy games the day they come out constantly, console gaming is easily a cheaper habit than PC gaming. But hey, I do both. Every platform has advantages. And I understand that things get really cheap on Steam really quick, seeing as there's no physical media involved... I've just never used it and don't plan to anytime soon. I have issues with digital distribution in general, I prefer physical copies of things that are independent of a service like Steam. There are many reasons for that, but that's another story. So I'm sure that's making my PC game bill more expensive than it would be otherwise, but oh well.
