PS3

[fwoot]

I've never actually owned any onther console besides a nintendo console but that could change in the future. As time goes on more developers are becoming afraid of developing for pc and it is without a doubt that more and more games are becoming exclusive to consoles. Wonder how long Microsoft will keep fable 2 exclusive to Xbox? The PS3 isn't bad (considering one of it's 7 or 8 cores is dedicated to security while another is faulty so they stopped producing them in the PS3) but the titles on the system arn't as good as Xbox in my opnion. It is becoming more even but it is true that the playstation is the "safest blueray player" available today. Only a small minority of high end blueray players are firmware upgradable and some can't even be fixed to get some movies to work. Also most HD dvd players offered better up scaling quality for regular dvd's as well (too bad they're dead). So what does one do?

Stick with pc and hope for the future, buy a hunky game console with no spirit or heart or buy everything and have a sad looking bank account?

[George]

I own an Xbox 360, my housemate a PS3 and we also both have PC's capable of moderate gaming (not quite Crysis level  ).

It depends what type of gamer you are and how much you expect from your console. If all you want is to play the normal console games like racers, shoot-em-ups, rhythm games etc then the 360 serves well. The PS3, though potentially technically superior, is considerably harder to program for and so games on both platform run pretty much the same (infact some 360 games actually look better).

However the PS3 is a considerably better multimedia device. Its streaming capabilities work better and the blue ray drive does give it an advantage. It remains to be seen if the new 360 dashboard update will correct this but I wouldn't bet on it. Pretty much every big game is coming out cross platform now so its games catalogue is expanding fairly rapidly. Biggest downside as far as the PS3 is concerned is the price, which can only be justified if you are actually going to make use of those extra multimedia features.

As usual the PC is the best option for the "hardcore" gamer, especially with the "games for windows" initiative on Vista bringing the online experience and peripherals from the 360 where appropriate. Plus on the occasion when I actually have to get some work done its nice to have a PC with good specs so I can do silly things like run 5 virtual machines from memory simultaneously.

Overall I decided on a combo of Xbox 360 core system for "casual" gaming and a midrange PC (built myself, components circa £300) for strategy/fps and work. Doesn't cripple the finances and covers most if not all of the bases.

Just my 0.02p

[fwoot]

Yeah there are downfalls to each gaming platform and like you me and my friends cater for all consoles. It sounds padantic but the PS3 online feature for gaming is balls compared to the 360. Still deciding if i should build a new pc but i think ill just blow it on my 21st    although i would like to import and run fallout 3 well while sticking it to my government!  POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!!

[George]

I'm currently a little bit behind the computing trend with a E6320 C2D Cpu, 2GB of ram and a 7800GTX gfx card I knicked off a mate. Even so I can play most games that interest me.

If these new 4670 ATI cards come out and perform as expected I might get one of those, considerably lower power usage and probably a bit faster. Not sure a CPU/MB/Memory upgrade is worth it until Nehalem matures.

I don't tend to play online games, don't really have the competitive bug... but from what I've seen Xbox Live does seem to be a bit more mature. I'd probably use it more if it was free.