What are you playing at the moment?

[Streeteh]

Or component cable last i read, it'll be composite only.

If i'm honest i think MS have made a poor decision, they should have just dropped the elite from the lineup. What has made the 360 so popular in the past is that you could pick up a console with all the parts you needed to play games for just over half what a PS3 cost. Now they've dropped what i would say was by far the most appealing model, the pro, in favour of a unit that lacks a key component (the hard drive) and a unit that is only £30 less than a PS3 yet lacks features in comparison to its now only marginally more expensive competitor.

Consumers love buzz words, like wireless and bluray, they're new, they're 'modern', simple and easy to use. But they like money more, when the 360 was half the price they would obviously opt for that, but now, for a measly £30 more they could have some extra buzz words in their console. It will be interesting to see how the sales of the elite fare against the PS3 slim.

Originally Posted by Davey_Pitch

Co-op? Real ninja's don't need help Seriously though, that could be a very interesting addition. Consider my interest piqued.

I've been reading a little about it and i'm pleased to say it doesn't involve the single player campaign from the 360 release; i want to experience that as it was meant, not with potentially game breaking co-op. What they've done is design 30 co-op challenges from the ground up with enemy AI geared towards being able to deal with two players at once. On top of this there's two more playable characters in the single player storyline, but like the original Sigma you won't use these guys in the original levels, but in new levels put in to pad out the storyline a bit. It really sounds like they've added really solid elements to the game, built from the ground up. I was just expecting a few more challenges and a couple of extra playable characters but they seem to be going the whole hog.

Fingers crossed for the framerate though!

[Daz]

Originally Posted by Streeteh

Or component cable last i read, it'll be composite only.

If that's true then that really sucks. If you didnt have a HD telly, you'd probably fall into the casual gamer category, and the Arcade would suit you better.

You might be jumping the gun worrying about the price though. The RRP of the Slim is £250, and you can get some good bundles, and of course some people are selling it cheaper ShopTo's £230 (which I guess is where you got £30 from - are they the only ones?). It'll certainly be £250 on the high street. ShopTo might offer the Elite for £180 for all we know at this stage

[Streeteh]

Just done some reading around, as of tomorrow the best bargain you can get for an elite is £189.99 which isn't bad tbh, £40 price difference is probably less than MS would like though, especially considering only a month ago it was £120 between the PS3 and the pro. More interestingly in the US the prices are now exactly the same ($299) so MS have released a bundle that includes the wireless adapter in reply, it looks like Sony might finally be giving Microsoft a run for their money in the pricing department, about time too.

The lack of component cable has been confirmed on major nelson, it's composite only with the elite now. I'm not fussed though, got a 2m, gold plated, shielded HDMI cable for £3.85 to go with my pro, the only issue is user ignorance, i've seen people with PS3s hooked up to 40" HDTVs with the supplied composite cable, while watching a bluray no less! The look on his face when i brought over my HDMI cable to show him the difference was amusing.

[Daz]

Oh indeed. I still think HD viewing is a little too complicated for Joe Consumer. You bought a DVD player, you plugged it into your scart socket on the back of the telly, job done. To view something in HD, you need a HD telly, a HD source, and an appropriate HD cable. There are different 'versions of HD' as someone put it to me once (720p, 1080i, 1080p), and on some telly's, even the ports do things differently (HDMI2 on most Samsung TV's do 1:1 pixel mapping, the others dont). Too complicated for mass adoption.

[Aboobie]

I've nothing against MS dropping the Component cable but for christs sake... both them and Sony should be including a HDMI one this day and age.

[NokkonWud]

It's infuriatingly ignorant for them to do that. Personally I think they should have kept the Component Cable in and charged £210 if that's what it took.

As for Streeteh's argument about the price in the US, people are saying PS3 will get a foothold... I don't think so, it may start selling more, but it's already miles behind the Xbox360 over there and the Americans are very much like the Japanese. Racist . At least to the point of intentionally picking goods made by that country over foreign machines, this is the case with consoles, TV's, Cars etc...

I've said it before, put an Xbox360 and a PS3 in a shop infront of me at the same price and I'd still take the Xbox360 every time. Simple research online shows people are happier with Xbox360's in the majority and that the PS3 still isn't delivering on the promises made 3 years ago.

[Streeteh]

I never stated that i felt Sony would get a foothold in the US, i simply said that their prices are finally competitive. This can only be a good thing which is being displayed by the fact that Microsoft have bundles a wireless adapter into their elite package in the US at the last minute in order to make their package seem more appealing when compared against the identically priced PS3. Competition is only ever a good thing for the consumer and the price drop of the PS3 has finally brought it close enough to the 360 in terms of pricing to make Microsoft think more carefully about their pricing.

As for the last part, put the 360 up against a PS3 at the same price and i'd walk away with the PS3. It's all down to preference. Have you got any sources for that research? I've never seen a survey measuring customer satisfaction with any consoles and it's be an interesting read.

[Davey_Pitch]

Last night I decided to play Ninja Gaiden Sigma to see how it held up on the PS3. So far I'm impressed with it, I thought using a different controller would be weird but I do like the Dual Shock controllers and it felt pretty natural playing using it. Only did the first 5 levels as I only played it for a little over an hour, but it did give me a chance to do one of Rachel's new levels and it was fun, if a little short. She's a little slow for my liking but it's different so I'm happy enough with it. I can tell I've not played a NG game for a long time though, was pretty rusty and struggled a little with enemies I would usually destroy without getting touched. Still finding Normal difficulty too easy generally though, will blow through it quickly and see how Hard difficulty fares against the Xbox version.

Also had a very very quick go of inFamous last night. Interesting start to it and even though my guy (Cole is it?) has very basic powers I can see this could develop very nicely. Hopefully I'll be able to spend a good few hours on it this weekend as I feel this could definitely be my type of game.

[Haly]

Originally Posted by NokkonWud

I've said it before, put an Xbox360 and a PS3 in a shop infront of me at the same price and I'd still take the Xbox360 every time. Simple research online shows people are happier with Xbox360's in the majority and that the PS3 still isn't delivering on the promises made 3 years ago.

You're an informed consumer who's played games for years. The average consumer may well think differently certainly when for someone who just wants a games console can look at the PS3 and see it offers blu-ray, wireless connectivity, basically everything out of the box instead of having to pick up bits and pieces.

That's not to say I'm saying the PS3 is superior (I hate those debates and tbh I'm equally happy with my two consoles) but I can appreciate that we all are a relative minority and the sales figures really come from the sort of person I just described above.

[Streeteh]

I agree Haly, as i said above it's all about the buzz words and at present the PS3 has more of them.