My input: I have a PS3 and I have never regretted it. Don't buy a 360. They break down way too easily. I know lots of people who are on their 14th or 15th returns on their 360 and are sick and tired of Microsoft's "I don't care" attitude that they're considering selling the 360 and getting PS3 instead.
Loving the exaggeration there. 14th or 15th? There was a thing on various sites recently about a guy who was on his like 9th 360, and that was a huge deal because of how crazy that was.
If you know "LOTS" of people who have gone through that many 360s then they need to get on the news because that's absurd and completely unreal.
Also, extending warranties to 3 years is definitely a sign of not caring.
Plus Wii's are nearly impossible to find right now, and even if you can, they're usually in those stupid over priced bundles.
Right, OK, that's why most stores don't bother with the bundles because the system sells like CRAZY either way. They don't bother with bundles because they don't keep the systems long enough anyway.
Well, at least, not a single local store was offering it in a bundle last weekend when all the stores got a huge stock of them. Just plain $250 consoles as they should be.
Unless you count Wii Sports as a "stupid over priced bundle", which is funny because you don't even get a game with PS3 or 360 by default.
And 360 barely has any exclusives either. About 95% of all games on 360 are also on PS3. As has been said, PS3 is getting lots of exclusives in the coming year, notably MGS4, FFXIII, FFVersusXIII, and so forth (don't have the PS3's Exclusive list by me at the moment).
I love it, in one breath you're like "360 has barely any exclusives!" and in the next you can hardly think of any PS3 exclusives coming up... and the TWO you name are the infamous MGS4 and FF13, which have long since been known as the Only Good Reasons To Own A PS3.
Also. On the subject of online play, PSN will be seeing a major overhaul in the coming year, so PS3 will be getting much better.
So you can have great online play now, which will probably get even better in the coming year, or you can get CRAP online play now which will hopefully stop sucking in the coming year.
Quite simply, if you want a stable system that won't break down every 2 weeks at least, 360 is not the way to go, with a whopping 33% failure rate. PS3 has a .01% failure rate. You do the math.
The failure rate of the 360 is just a little exaggerated, I seriously doubt it's above 20% though that is still excessively high.
There's no way PS3 has a .01% failure rate though. I've read plenty of accounts of peoples' PS3s failing for some reason or another - that thing burns hotter than most inner-ring planets and has a pretty mediocre ventilation system - enough that I can say PS3 has a perfectly average failure rate, about what you could've expected from other older systems.
If you get a PS3 you probably won't be entirely disappointed but it's definitely not on the level of 360 and Wii for entertainment value. It's far too much money for far too little. If you're getting it mainly to watch Blu-Ray movies then you're getting a good value (it's still the cheapest blu-ray player on the market) but its must-buy games are few and far between with the future looking pretty bleak - aside from the aforementioned MGS4 and FF13, many of PS3's slated exclusives have been vanishing from the release list, being announced for 360, or just plain end up falling flat on their faces and sucking.
edit: Let me put it another way. The market speaks. November's north american console sales according to the NPD research group:
Hardware Sales
PlayStation 2 -- 496,000
PlayStation 3 -- 466,000
PlayStation Portable -- 567,000
Xbox 360 -- 770,000
Wii -- 981,000
Nintendo DS -- 1,530,000
for reference, even PS2 has been outselling PS3 for the last several months.
