sabinh

@Esposch

No, in both of those cases the dealership and bank have control over the product because they haven't sold it to you. I own my PS3. I own the software that I purchase for it. I own the bandwidth that I use to download those patches. I pay for those things with my money.

To carry your bad analogy even further, it would be as if the car dealer changed the lock on your car every week or so if you didn't agree to any new terms that he thought would put him in a better position financially.

Or the bank locking up your house and demanding a higher interest rate from you because your neighbor defaulted on his home mortgage. Oh, sorry, that last one already happened.

@Ducman69

Don't you get it? It has a Playstation logo. It was MADE for the PS3! This is an expensive analogue to "Gamer Grub"

SHE would put the phone in a torn stocking and whip it around as an improvised deadly weapon: none of the cliched "she is trained to kill with her hair"; this agent would be trained to kill with her *Touch*.

Sony marketed the PS3 as an all-purpose computer from the beginning. For years up to its launch, Sony made sure that the PS3 could serve as your personal computer, home automation center and multimedia, livingroom game machine.

How can Sony, who advertised this as a computer remove a key component of its functionality? This is distinctly different from removing an interesting feature from the PS3. This is equivalent to HP selling the MediaSmart touch PC, and then years later, limit its functions to buying stuff on the HP site and playing Netflix. Sony has a particularly difficult road ahead because of its marketing campaign.

Wikipedia lists this link to the original gamespot.com article that references this in the Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3 manual:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6162316.html?tag=result;title;0

Anyone out there have any other "PS3 is a computer" quotes?

I myeself have installed both Fedora and YDL on my PS3 and purchased a larger hard drive for it. It didn't die because of lack of interest, but because the PS3 linux was based off of the powerpc architechture, which piggybacked off of Mac development. Lack of updates for things such as browsers, flash, and other multimedia platforms made me switch back to my desktop, but I was always hoping that support for flash and updated browsers would trickle down from the xmb side of things to the otheros.

This was a dumb move, Sony. Its as dumb as your "you can back up your videos, but you can't use them if you change your hard drive" move. I don't buy movies from the PSN for that reason.

@copa

No doubt. I did trade in both Fallout 3 and MGS4 before the games go any good. I've also not finished Lost Odyssey, FF12, or FFX-2. On the other hand, I've finished FF9 twice, am on my second round of ME2, and am awaiting DA:Awakenings with baited breath. I have no patience for games that don't "get in" the characters and story within a reasonable amount of time.

I bought Cooking Mama "World Tour" or something from Majesco for the Wii, thinking it'd be something fun to do with the family and learn some interesting new recipies. Am I totally missing the point? I thought the game was miserable mess. The sound quality was abysmal, the cooking sequences (mini games) were confusing and pointless, and I would have preferred the Japanese with english subtitles to the terribly butchered shouts of praise or cries of dissapointment from "Mama". Perhaps it is only decent as a DS game? Does anyone else think that the cooking mama franchise is a terrible (this is from those who might be interested in those games. If you're not inclined anyway, don't bother to comment)? Did I just get unlucky and purchase the absolutely worst iteration of an otherwise wonderful franchise? If the game I bought is any indication of the quality of Majesco's flagship offerings, I think I'll pass.

Long term the problem will fix itself. Supply will meet demand, labor will equalize with capital, etc.

The problem is how long will the people living now do without their usual standard of living to solve a problem that will finally solve itself years from now?

Short term "fixes" are by definition made to help people today.

The United States has a serious temporary cash flow. Who's going to float a nation of billionaires the money? For a couple of quarters? We're totally good for it.

Please let me win the earbuds.

I'd show it sealed and pristine to my 7yr old son; he has been promised a DSi if he can manage stay off of orange alert (think Homeland Security warning colors) at school.

No doubt. I used to work tech support for one of those large customer service mills. It was never about me wanting to get paid *extra* time, it was about the company being anal about my work time. See, they got paid by the call, so they wanted every minute I was at the office to include call time. That meant, if my work started at 3pm, I was to be at work at 2:45 to set up my workstation. See, I'd be doing work, but I'd only get paid *starting at 3*. Now I didn't leave my job because of it, but it wasn't as if they were sticklers for punctuality, they certainly didn't have any problem with me staying over an extra 15 minutes to shut down my workstation . . . so you see, they got an extra half hour of work out of me every day without compensation. The only solution to that, of course was to find a better job and quit that one. So yeah- it's not as outlandish as Engadget makes it out to be. People shouldn't have to do *any* work without being paid for it. And if they do, it should be their decision, not the company's.

I, like most gamers own all three. I also owned all three of last gen's consoles.

Wii:I don't play Wii games much, but I like it because I can play my old GCN games on it, no problem. My two boys enjoy it and I don't have to worry about paying for new games. I like popping in Ocarina of Time for it myself.

PS3: I have the least interest in this console. I like it because it seems to support most of my video formats: I prefer it because I can play my DVDs on it without it sounding like I'm launching a scramjet (I'm looking at you, noisy 360). I can't say I'm too impressed with the games. the non-exclusives- I'll most likely purchase on the PS3 to save myself from listening to the loud 360. As it stands, I purchased the 40G at 399 (I actually traded in frequent flyer miles for both the Wii and the PS3) and I like it fine. Just not compelling enough right now to turn it on all the time.

Xbox360: I used to use it for movies. No longer. I can't stand the noise. PS3 is my DVD player of choice (as I mentioned above). Exclusives are great. Gears, Halo, Mass Effect, I'm looking at you. The fact that PS3 is playing "also-ran" in games like Bioshock doesn't sit well with me--. I play RockBand all the time on the 360 so do my boys and my wife (my wife hates video games and isn't too impressed with the wii). Can't beat it for social interaction. Live is great and to me- well worth the 50 bucks a year. Add on top of that the Netflix this fall, and it could return to be my movie watching platform of choice.

For me, 360 wins this gen. I've already purchased more games for it, I use it more, and I find its exclusives more compelling. I was actually considering selling my PS3 after E3 came out with no real reason to keep playing it. Could finance an Iphone . . .