And of course the damn thing uses lead solder, that’s mandatory for any circuit board not to have its chips pop off.

God, people will believe anything.

This is truly perplexing seeing as M$ has already written off a couple of billion dollars in order to create the extended warranty repair fund, and so this service shouldn’t really be impacted upon by the recession seeing as it’s not exposed to their operating capital. Speculation leads me to two possible causes:

a)They have already burnt through most of the repair fund, and so are penny pinching in an effort to prolong the available funds.

Or:

b)They intend to pilfer from this fund in order to avoid having to go through the capital raising process, and thus their repair department is having to make do with less.

http://consumerist.com/5163106/microsoft-tells-broken-xbox-owners-to-find-their-own-shipping-boxes

Oh an I’m just going to go out on a limb and say that one average the PS3 has nicer looking exclusives than the 360. Uncharted and Killzone come to mind.

@Lusipurr: I have no faults with the game on the 360, just the hardware itself. If its failure rate was at least a few digits around the PS3′s failure rate. I would buy one. Lost Odyssey was indeed fantastic!

@Ethos: Hopefully you got one of the good ones that won’t give you any problems.

@Siliconnoob: Upscaling makes only a small handful of PS2 games look slightly better, but not by much.

@Master Chief: Grandia FTW!

@Lee: Sup?

@Thea: Hope ya feel better.

@Evilpaul:Nippon Ichi are hit and miss with me. They may have interesting storys but most are not executed well.

:)

This was, however, a lesson I learned all the way back when the PS2 came out. I’d sold off my PS1 to get that last bit of money to pay out my PS2 reservation. A whole two months went by with nothing by my N64 and Dreamcast to keep me company. Then I got the call from Babbage’s (the was when they were still their own company) that my PS2 was ready for pickup. I got it, along with Eternal Ring and a DVD (Burn Up W!), and headed home. Anyway, some time later, I picked up Grandia for PS1, at a nice $19.99 price. The first disc was playable enough, even though there was a sound distortion during the after-battle music. Then I got to the second disc, and the game started freezing like crazy. Obviously, this was the PS2 not being nice to Grandia. So, I picked up a slim PS1, finished the game, and was back to being happy.

The moral of this story is that, while BC is a nice thing to have, it shouldn’t be relied upon. I’m no more likely to give up my PS2 than I am to give up my original Xbox (the 360′s backward compatibility is also bunk), because it’s the best way to play the games as they were meant to be played, at least until emulation for these systems is perfected the way we see with TurboGrafx, Genesis, SNES and PS1 now.

@Lusipurr Yes, I absolutely noticed, but I suppose having experience with editing makes it a bit easier to appreciate such things. Either way, it was hilarious.

@ the 360. Mine nor Pogo’s have died yet. Fingers crossed.

@Reetin: The statement that there are ‘no amazing-looking games’ on the PS3 is shocking. Whatever standard you are using to define ‘amazing-looking’, it certainly cannot be used to simultaneously *justify* the purchase of a 360.

Furthermore the ’360 dying problem’ is not fixed yet–rather, Microsoft has gotten better with their replacement and the overall quality has gone up–but fixed it is not. Three of my friends have had their new, replacement 360s break within the past six months, and several websites have also recently had new ‘Phoenix’ models go under, most notably Penny Arcade.

@Oyashiro: That said, the 360 hardware *is* more stable now and even if it fails, replacements are generally swift and relatively painless. There are some excellent games on the system, not least of which is Lost Odyssey, which I will endlessly remind people of as it is perhaps the best traditional JRPG since Final Fantasy VII.

@Ethos: Thank you for the compliment. I spent many hours (from when we stopped recording until 05:45 the following morning) editing this podcast with special attention to the outtakes. Glad someone noticed!

Favourite album for me Is Happiness Is Not A Fish You Can Catch.

@Lee Yes, she is a disgrace to our nation. We have such better artists like Barenaked Ladies, Matthew Good, and Our Lady Peace (Pre-Gravity)

@The whole cast of the cast: great one, guys. Loved the outtakes.

Now that I would like to suggest that even though all the games mentioned are interesting they still hold no weight for me to actually go out and buy one of those PS3s everyone is talking about. See while most of the games are alright, none of them are amazing looking to me Metal Gear Solid is an amazing game from what I am told however I feel they will release a xbox version in the future just like they did with MGS2 back in the day. Flower looks innovative but I would again have to agree with Lusi to say that it is not worth actually picking up a PS3 because of the fact it is only 6 hours long, and no matter how innovative or mind blowing a game is, if it is only 6 hours long I do not want to waste my time and money on it.

Weighing into the whole Xenogears vs Chrono Cross debate is not an easy proposition owing to the inconsistent quality of Xenogears. Chrono Cross is pretty good all the way through, the first disk of Xenogears on the other hand was far better than Chono Cross but the second was far worse. So does half an excellent game outweigh an entire decent one? I don’t know if I can answer that.

@Lusi- I couln’t agree with you more, the very notion that 50 cent is in a game offends me.

@Lee- Avril Lavine is utterly unforgivable.

@Oliver- Looks like Lusi did re-record the intro (I guess he does care after all).

Folklore
Ninja Gaiden Sigma
Metal Gear Solid 4
Heavenly Sword

And some PS2 games DO look very good with the PS3′s upscaling. FFXII, Devil May Cry 3, and God of War all come to mind. I think it’s a great feature, personally.

I slightly prefer the Xbox 360 due to a few exclusives, but I love my PS3. And honestly, in a few more years, I wonder if I’ll still place it 2nd.

Upscaling is nice, but frankly, the advantages don’t necessary outweigh the disadvantages; some games are buggy, and others practically don’t work at all (Chrono Cross (PS1) springs to mind, as it freezes whenever any elements are used in battle).

Your PS2 is sufficient for all of your backwards compatibility. Pick up one of the cheaper PS3s and use it as a Blu-Ray and PS3-game player. You’ll save money and be just as happy.

–I should point out that I have an original 60Gb PS3 with full backwards compatibility and all the bells and whistles, and the bugs I have encountered are not unique to me, but exist for all backwards compatible PS3s. This is one of the reasons BC was dropped–it’s easier to produce cheaper systems without it, and they never got it quite ‘right’.

While I am pissed if I buy an RPG and beat it in 15 hours I also don’t need to get my money’s worth through 80+ hours in a single play through.

I think it’s great that many of the games can now be found on both the 360 and the PS3. However, I think it is unfair to say there are “no reasons” to buy a PS3, just as it would be unfair of me to say there are “no reasons” to buy a 360 (I’m not a fan of the system, it crashed one too many times after many an hour of gameplay for me).

Ah well. I’m going to go crawl back under my rock until this terrible migrain goes away. Great show, guys! I really liked this one. :)

-Great Blu Ray player
-Flower
-Calling All Cars
-Killzone 2
-Built-in wireless internet
-Bluetooth support
-Uncharted
-Rachet and Clank.

Really need me to go on? If I had the money, I would have had a PS3 the moment I got my new TV. It is high on my list of next major purchases. Perhaps first on the list.