PlayStation 3

I picked up a PlayStation 3. I wasn't really even considering it a few months ago, but things have happened since then. Prices came down, and the future seems brighter now. I think the PS3 is starting to find its voice.



My first reaction to the PS3 was that I wasn't interested in paying $600 for a game system. No matter how good the graphics are, it's just beyond the amount I want to spend for entertainment. I bought a Wii instead, both for price and for the Nintendo games.

The Wii is fantastic. Mario, Zelda, and Metroid are some of the most enjoyable, subtly beautiful games I've ever played. They will not run on PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 for any amount of money. But the opposite is also true — there are games for PlayStation 3 and/or Xbox 360 that aren't published for the Wii.

So far, this hasn't mattered to me much because the biggest-name games for the other systems didn't really interest me. Slowly, though, a new life is breaking through the surface of the PS3.

Games
    
There's one game in particular I got the PS3 for, but I'll talk about that another time. There are a few titles already out that look interesting, and a few that are just now coming into view.

1. Little Big Planet

This looks like something very different — a lot of emphasis on environment and creativity instead of a rigid set of tasks to complete.



It's not obvious from the YouTube video, but the visuals are gorgeous. An interesting mix of stylized models and photorealistic texture renderings. Also check out this trailer of the level creation engine. Something truly special, and I can't wait to try it out.

2. Rock Band

There's no need to post a video of Rock Band because it's taken over popular culture, at least in North America. It's coming to the Wii at some point, but there's no release date. I may want to play it before then.

3. Gran Turismo 5: Prologue

Gran Turismo is a bit of an unknown. I'm not interested in the simulation aspect of racing, but the production values are so good that I'm hoping I can enjoy the game without having to deal with the minutiae.





Prologue is not the full Gran Turismo 5, but will feature 60 cars and 5 tracks with up to 16 simultaneous online players. It's clearly more than a demo and will apparently cost about $40.



4. Downloadable Games

For the first time in video game history, high-quality independent games are available on consoles. For the moment, Xbox 360 seems to have a deeper library of these titles and they recently announced the intention to open up development to the general community. So we'll see what happens.

But back to PS3. I'm intensely interested in the concept of Flower:



This game is by the same folks who did the amazing flOw, which was inspiration for the NanoLife sample app (well, maybe that and some Electroplankton). The PS3 version of flOw is fantastic and can be downloaded from the PlayStation Store, but you can also play the Flash version on the website.

5. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus

The PlayStation 2 version of Ico is one of the most outstanding, hauntingly beautiful video games I've ever seen. It's the kind of game that sticks with you forever (this video is from the PS2 game, not the PS3 version):



I remember seeing a write-up which described it as "an impressionist painting in motion," or something to that effect. I was positively glued to Ico for at least a couple of weeks. It's the type of scenario I love — a huge, carefully detailed world with little or no explanations. You only get hints about the current moment. The mystery is deepened by the fact that the girl speaks in an unknown language without subtitles. An Ico game for PS3 is in development, but no details have been released yet.

Shadow of the Colossus was developed by Team ICO as well, and apparently exists in the same universe. I didn't get to play much of this game as I was already well into GameCube at the time, but I hope to see a version for PS3.

6. PlayStation Home

Home is something a bit different than what we've seen on consoles before — sort of a cross between Second Life and The Sims. Although there are other social MMOs, this is the first I've seen which is designed for a family room, and probably the first with PS3-quality graphics.



You can create a character in Mii style, though the tools are far more intricate and the results are photorealistic instead of cartoony. Sony will offer clothes and items for download from the PlayStation Store — some for free, some not free. Each user is also given an apartment to decorate to their liking, though it's not clear to me if each apartment is actually in a spatially different location in the Home world.

Home is partially a social networking environment — text, voice chat, and so on — and partially a front-end to online games and other media. As with all basic PlayStation 3 online services, Home will be free of monthly charges.

So this looks like an interesting experiment. Open-ended social interaction is something Nintendo hasn't shown interest in yet, and Xbox Live appears to skip the "3D world" aspect, so kudos to Sony for going their own way. I'm just curious to see how they've gone about designing all of this, and the only way to do that is to play around with it when it comes out.

User Interface

It's striking how different the PS3 environment is from iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, Wii, and Nintendo DS. Sony has released a consumer product that with design decisions that most Apple users most associate with "Pro" products like Xsan, Mac Pro and Aperture.

Black design elements are used liberally in the hardware and user interface, the text and icons are relatively small, the sound cues are very subtle. Selected text often glows white on a dark background. The Wii's UI is much closer to earlier versions of Mac OS X's Aqua — bright colors, bold effects, and much larger controls.

The primary UI model for PlayStation 3 is the "cross media bar" or "XMB". It's sort of like a flat source list, where the items in each category appear vertically as you scroll horizontally:



The appearance of the XMB changes with the time of day and months of the year. The Wikipedia XMB article has a description of this along with the complete color palette. Whether this is your thing or not, kudos again to Sony for doing something just because they wanted to do it.

The PS3 gives the impression of wanting to convey a "desktop OS" vibe — more than any other game system I've seen. It happily expose all sorts of bits and pieces that probably aren't immediately necessary for most consumers. There's actually a item in Settings for a printer configuration, as well as an option to install another OS.

The Wii user interface exposes some desktop-like functionality, but only when absolutely necessary. Nintendo has a game device that happens to do some other things. It looks like Sony wants its own computing platform.

I'm sure some part of this is that Sony sees business opportunities in multi-function devices and online services, but it also seems to be the Sony culture to build an ecosystem.

Hardware

The PS3 currently comes in two models: 40GB for $399 and 80GB for $499. The larger model has four USB ports instead of two, memory card slots, and PS2 compatibility. It also comes with the MotorStorm game versus the Spider-Man 3 Blu-Ray movie. Both models have wireless networking built in.

The main thing to consider here is that PS3 games often want to install before you can run them. In an extreme example, some titles like Devil May Cry 4 and Lost Planet require 5GB of space on the hard drive. A larger hard drive will means you can have more game options at any one time.

The standard input device is a two-handed wireless, rechargeable, motion-sensitive controller which feels very much like the PS2 controller. Games can use the tilt functionality of the controller for scenarios like steering aircraft. Recharging is as simple as plugging the controller into the USB port. I assume you can plug in a standard USB keyboard or mouse, but I haven't tried this yet.

The PS3 is, famously, designed for HDTV. I watch very little broadcast programming, so I still had a standard definition TV. After a few hours on PS3 in this environment, I started to feel like I was somehow missing the point. Text was somewhat hard to read and the on-screen elements just weren't very clear — unlike Wii on the same TV. So I actually got an HDTV.

I didn't just do this for PS3 — I also wanted to get rid of the gigantic tube in the middle of the room — but it definitely moved up the timetable. The PS3 also, of course, supports Blu-Ray as well, which was part of the reason for getting a new display.

Online Services

Sony's online services are still evolving, but there's no monthly fee for online game play. As far as I can tell, there is an ongoing charge for online game play for Xbox 360 (though you can use a prepaid card). PS3 includes a web browser which seems to render standards-compliant content very well. There's no question it's far more awkward to read this sort of thing on a TV, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do.

The PlayStation Store has a similar structure to the iTunes Store. You browse different kinds of content — downloadable games, game demos, movie trailers, game trailers, expansion packs (such as additional songs for Rock Band) — and then either download them for free or pay for them.

Video content can either stream live or download in the background. After the item is downloaded, you can get to it from the cross-media bar.

Overall

This is a great system. There's no particular downside to the PS3 other than the price and the recommendation for HDTV. Outside of that, choosing between a PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii basically comes down to games. The PS3, of course, also has a built-in Blu-Ray player, which sweetens the deal considerably. If you don't have an HDTV, though, you'll probably be happier with a Wii for now.

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