1) Parents buy consoles. Most times they don't know a headset is included. They give the console to their kids and they use the headset. This is why Xbox Live is filled with kids singing, yelling, swearing and being immature. Headsets should be rated Teen and not bundled.

2) If you want it, buy it. If you are a little kid chances are your parents won't buy you a headset. If they do, then at least they are aware of it. Buying separately allows people to chose which headset they want. View

Um. The Playstation 3 does this:

PS3

1)Lower Failure Rates
2)Internal power supply
3)Automatic loading
4)Blu-Ray Movies
5)Blu-Ray Games
6)Blu-Ray Storage capacity
7)Blu-Ray Scratch Resistant Discs
8)HDMI 1.3
9)Optical audio input
10)7.1 Surround Sound
11)7.1 High Definition Sound
12)3D Games
13)Motion Control (Sixaxis)
14)Bluetooth
15)Handheld Support
16)Wider Video File Compatability
17)MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online)
18)No headset standard (Why Xbox Live has too many kids)
19)Wider Hardrive selection
20)Replaceable harddrive
21)WiFi
22)Rechareable controllers
23)Free Online (This alone makes the PS3 cheaper)
24)High Quality Headset Support
25)Game Installs (Faster harddrives/better performance)
26)Internet Browser
27)Graphics
28)Custom XMB Themes
29)Dynamic XMB Themes
30)Less Advertising
31)Dedicated Online Servers
32)Full Size PSN Game Downloads

I'll just stop there. View

No game is perfect. How can it be? On what baseline can one rate a game? The answer is there is none. Yet these reveiwers are more concerned about perfection rather than it's greatness. At least greatness has a baseline that can relate to the gamer when seeing it's score. A perfect game doesn't mean a gamer will like it. So how can these reviewers be of any service to us?

How does lack of originality make a game any less great. Given the scarce availablity of really epic video games, one would assume that the ones that stand out would be rated higher.

Uncharted 2 is original. Why? The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts (It's called Synergy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... That means the reviewer looked at each part individually and claimed they were unoriginal. What he failed to note was that Uncharted 2 was the first game to combine these parts and make a unified whole. That in itself is something new. It changes the dynamics of the experience when you experience it all at once. But hey how many video games were original? Has Gears deserved a higher score for a cover system that was already done on a PS2 game called Killswitch ( http://www.gametrailers.com... ) Gametrailers won't mention that now will they? This is why reviewers are losing credibility with gamers. They somehow fail to connect with anyone who plays games. View

The original Xbox was indeed a better console. What ruined it for me was their notorious control of software. More specifically Xbox Live accounts and incompatability with CD-R disks.

CD-R music disks were readable and copyable on my 1st Xbox. I was able to play custom soundtrack music during gameplay. However, the Xbox turned out to use 3 different brands for their laser eye assemblies. It turns out Microsoft was randomly placing these inside Xboxes. The kicker was one (two?) of these manufacturers didn't recognize CD-Rs....making my music worthless when getting a 2nd Xbox replacement. Nice to know BEFORE purchasing 200.00 in music for the system. It would also be nice to change the model number when doing so.

So yes the original Xbox was a better console in terms of reliability and graphics. However, Microsoft's software control of Xbox Live, Harddrive (which was unreplaceable), and media restrictions had ruined the gaming experience for console gamers. Many PC gamers left Microsoft to get away with these DRM/software control restrictions only to have to deal with them again on consoles. Don't believe me? Research Microsoft's business on PC. View

Assassin Creed http://www.gametrailers.com...

Assassin Creed II http://www.gametrailers.com...

Madden NFL '08 http://www.gametrailers.com...

Madden NFL '07-'09 http://www.gametrailers.com...

And people wonder why the 360 was seen as having all the games...even selling more copies than the PS3. I challenge you guys to look at multiplatform games between 2006-2008 and see why the PS3 suffered the 1st couple of years. Mainly because no one knew the PS3 had games. View

Why are most "multiplatform" games on GameTrailers.com displayed with a "360" icon to make it appear as a 360 exclusive? Please note that these are extremely high selling titles.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare http://www.gametrailers.com... (It says 360,PS3,PC but the box is 360)

Grand Theft Auto 4 http://www.gametrailers.com... (Again 360 box)

It wasn't until very recently that Gametrailers started displaying "neutral" boxes.

Why are more PS3 games been scoring higher everytime the PS3 price drops? Maybe cause Sony is making a profit now? View

I've been watching this console generation entirely. It is true that the PS3 hate does indeed exist. It is also true that it is not just from fanboy editors. This game industry has gotten so big that other factors are now driving the bias today. In short, money and politics have entered in to factor in this mess.

Has it striked anyone odd that business sites/magazines have emerged to stick their two cents in about video games? I sure have. Since when does Examiner, Edge, and others feel the need to link business with video games. More specifically, why are they here?

A business magazine will talk about businesses. A finance magazine will talk about a businesses finances. There is bias on those fronts isn't there? So why not express their bias with the products they make? As far as I'm concerned sites like Edge are bashing PS3 games because the company behind them isn't on their favorites list. Or maybe Sony isn't evolving the market the way they want them to evolve. Maybe Sony is a Japanese company and Microsoft should be praised to help the recession. Who knows. One thing is clear. There is money, business, and politics tied to every opinion they make. God forbid if these sites are somehow owned by Microsoft or their subsidiaries. View

They will make it up in software. All consoles expect some sort of loss on hardware. View

Software control. In a nutshell developers are really pushing console makers to find a way to get rid of used retailers. These developers see a whole new market of profit. When they see used retailers selling used copies to new consumers they see another potential "new game" buyer lost. To these developers used game retailers are stealing from them. By taking away the ability to support past generation discs, it allows developers to resell the same game online as a digital download title.

This means that gamers will find it harder and harder to play PS2 titles because the hardware will be harder to come by. Instead, PS2 titles like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 will be sold online and will be easily accessible. Tell me this...Why are PS2 titles on PSN able to play on "non-backwards compatabile" PS3s? The reason is the PS3 is backwards compatible when Sony wants it to be. Looking at all the PS2 games available as a downloadable only title, it becomes clear that backwards compatability is already available, just not the way gamers want it to be.

The PS3 is backwards compatible through PSN's PS2 titles. Current disc owners will be left out in the cold unfortunately. Being an owner of 150 PS1 and 300 PS2 games, I feel that at the very least Sony should offer free downloads of PS2 titles for everyone who owns the disc version.

Sony has already offered this type of support for the PSP GO. They offered a free digital download of the game for anyone that has the UMD disc version of the game. It would be reasonable to offer the same support for PS2 game owners as well. It sounds doubtful though as I see PS2 game discs becoming obsolete while developers rake in the profits on digital download versions. This is software control..and in a nutshell is very bad for a gamer like me. View

This is what's really going on here. She is paying for the crimes for the people who got away with it. She is paying for the crimes and being publicly exposed as an advertisement to instill fear among the ones who haven't been caught yet.

In an essence, they have stolen her life just because she stole a song. A greater crime is fining someone who will never be worth that much in their lifetime. They just sold her to the music industry. View

All the consoles this generation besides Sony have dropped their prices to "mass market" appeal. If a console can't sell despite mass market pricing then it may signal that it's true value is either at it's maximum value or it's maximum potential.

What this means is the Wii has sold extremely well with a mass market price point of 249.99. The 360, to this day, hasn't exploded in sales despite it's cheaper 199.99 price point. At 50 dollars cheaper than the Wii, the 360 has failed to compete effectively against this console even at mass market pricing.

As a matter of fact, the 360 has failed to outsell the Playstation 3 when it was 100.00 less in 2008. In simplier terms the Playstation 3 at a reduced price can and should give Microsoft something to worry about. If we know the PS3 has selling power to compete at 100.00 more, without being at mass market pricing yet, then imagine when the Playstation 3 meets both of these guidelines:

1) A price point within 100.00 of the 360.
2) In a mass market price range.

I'm not saying the Playstation 3 will put the Wii away. I'm just saying that the Playstation 3 will do better than the 360 will. History has already shown the PS3 outsell the 360 and history already shown the 360's lack of mass market selling ability. View

Blu-Ray and digital downloads both agree on one thing...bigger space is needed. How they achieve that is where they part ways. The fact that both of these new formats are seen as the future proves the necessity of providing a storage medium larger than DVD.

It's been the same story since records. The media naturally evolved to the 8 track, then cassette, then CD, then Laserdisc, then DVD, then Blu-Ray. Digital downloads will probably be the last format as it's only limitation will be the size of your hard drive.

Blu-Ray has many uses as we shall discuss each one in it's entirety.

1) No Compression- Compression is commonly used in DVDs. Right from the start of the DVD generation it was already a format too small for storage needs. Therefore they created a compression software that made the data fit. The problem with that was most times there was a loss of quality when uncompressing the data. Blu-Ray was started so movies, games, etc. could put data on the disk without compressing it.

2) 7.1 Standard Sound- DVD standard sound is 5.1. Blu-Ray is 7.1. More channels.

3) 7.1 High Definition Sound- Beyond the standard 7.1 sound is high definition sound. If a 2 hour recording was compressed 50% then it would still take up 9GB of data. High definition sound takes up a lot of data. I'd say it would be about 18GB without any compression at all. Are they using it? Gran Turismo 5 anyone?

4) Scratch Resistant Coating- Every Blu-Ray disk has a thicker protection surface that prevents scratching the data underneath. This is one of the most overlooked features as it keeps it's value much higher.

5) 3D Gaming- I can only begin to guess the size of data required to fit on the disc. View

Stop Fixing What's Not Broken- Good Point. However, gaming has always been great but not perfect. There are so many ways to improve gaming today. For the last 30 years I played video games I've seen a trend of improvement in video games. The stories got better, gameplay got better, and the realism got better.

In my years many thing have been accomplished. I've seen Sony create a standard button layout during the PS1 and PS2 era. Games became more fun and addicting. Games were starting to add depth and break boundries on all fronts where they were limited before. Somewhere down the line though these companies seemed to give up on this evolution. They began another path instead of making games for people who wanted to live inside a character in another world. Instead they changed that concept to playing with friends and standardizing everything around a great video game.

They standardized online, motion control, trophies/achievements, and will soon be standardizing digital downloads. Is it me or is Sony the only gaming company this generation focusing only on making great games?

As a gamer I want to be immersed inside a fantasy world and live the story. I want to see characters move realistically, talk realistically, and control realistically. I want the interactivity to be so seamless that I would never have to see something and say "that's not real". This immersion got severed when they decided to go mass market. Generalize and standardize.

Now, I'm not saying that motion control sucks. It doesn't. But since when did a steering wheel be the prime peripheral to interact with every game made? That's my point here. Not only should motion control be implemented in certain games, it should not be beat to death just because it is a great idea. Why? It's there to enhance certain games. Not all the games. The same concept goes for online gaming. They beat the online concept to death by making it standard. In doing so, they ultimately raised the cost of video games this generation. Online games should be selective based on the relevence of the core game itself. Same goes for trophies and achievements. As for the core game, it had a future until these clowns decided that the future had nothing to do with games at all. In their eyes the future is always the highest dollar amount. One day they will realize that what they are doing will cause a collapse in the game industry. Why? Targeting the mass market doesn't even guarantee they will stick around to game. If gaming was a mass market hobby it would have caught on by now. If video games were good enough to begin with they wouldn't be replaced with all these social features like Facebook, Twitter, party chat, and Sony Connect. That's whats carrying the industry today and the real gamers, while in the minority, are getting sick and tired of being neglected. One day the core gamers will be gone and they will lose their ability to grasp the attention of the mass market and casual gamer. View

I can't believe how lopsided this generation is. People kept praising Microsoft for being secretive about their lineup. The fact is Microsoft released one notable game this year thus far. Before that was Fable II and Gears of War 2 and that was the end of 2008. Microsoft droughted gamers for nearly 8 months of 2009 just to scrape up a lineup for the end of the year. And people are questioning Sony?

The bottom line is Sony spreads out their gaming lineup. They have done this since the launch of the Playstation 3. If Sony used the same BS that Microsoft pulled then we'd see Infamous and Killzone 2 added to this holiday's lineup. I'm sorry but Sony didn't drought gamers and all these media sites only care about what Sony didn't do. View

I think the Wii would still have risen to the top. The Wii was released last and it didn't appear to matter what 360 and PS3 offered. I think the Playstation 3 would be in 2nd place today but not have the same lead.

The Playstation 3 was released too early the way it was. Sony already stated they rushed the PS3s release a tad early because HDTVs, Blu-Ray, optical and HDMI weren't even common knowledge yet. As a matter of fact the Playstation 3 was bashed because it was too far ahead of it's time and people refused to pay for something that they couldn't use. Blu-Ray was an uncertain format too.

I do think overall the Playstation would have benefitted a one year headstart though. It would have given developers that extra year to learn how to program for the Playstation 3. Blu-Ray would have been adopted a bit faster over HD-DVD and there may have not even been a format war started.

If the 360 came out one year later I think they would have been evenly matched in multiplatform versions. Sony would have always had the advantage of exclusives due to their inhouse developers doubling the size of Microsoft and Nintendo combined. That snowball effect would suck in 3rd party exclusivity because install base would be higher. The 360 would sell at a faster rate because they still would have the price advantage. Therefore I'd say the PS3 would be sitting around 29 million today and the 360 would be closing in at 25 million. View

Failing Hardware

Microsoft's struggles in this current console generation have been well documented. The company limped out of the gate with a defective 360 design still struggling to hit a model more reliable for consumers. Initially, Microsoft announced their failure rate as a manufacturing issue. After a class action lawsuit Microsoft decided to offer a band aid for the problem by extending a 3 year warranty while they continue to stall consumers every year. Now, here we are a few years later and the Xbox 360 is on it's third nickname. What started as Zephyr in 2006, Falcon in 2007, and Jasper in 2008 ended with the same false promises of a fix. In reality Microsoft was reducing costs to rake in more profits. They had no interest in fixing the issue. It was in their best interest to increase sales by announcing the next model as fixed. We'd be surprised to see Microsoft ever having interest in hardware even with Microsoft's much touted Xbox Live Service. And at some point as a company you have to consider cutting your losses. Perhaps it's just time for Microsoft to exit hardware, much like Sega, and go the route of a 3rd party service provider? They obviously show no interest in hardware anyway. Just look at Facebook, Xbox Live, Twitter, downloadable content, and Project Natal.

Software Failure

I think Microsoft's days in hardware could be numbered. Microsoft's strong points remain with providing an online service and buying 3rd party exclusives. Not in hardware. In the last generation, it was Nintendo on the ropes, but they were able to rebound with the Wii. I'm not sure that Microsoft has the same caliber of creative thinkers inside their organization to be able to create new IPs like Sony. Heck, Sony has a 15 year history of proven franchises and the most creative game lineup ever. I don't know if Microsoft thinks of themselves as a hardware company, a service provider or software company, but I bet Sony and Nintendo think of themselves as a games company. if you're competing in the games space and you need to rebound, then you're going to have to come up with something cool. I don't think it can just be faster, more powerful servers. As they move through the life cycle of the industry, there are always going to be players that come and go – it happens in publishing and development all the time. I don't see why it wouldn't happen with hardware manufacturers from time to time – it happened to Sega. I think Microsoft's getting hurt on two fronts as well; they're losing their 1 year headstart and on the handheld side, they have nothing to offer.

Please keep in mind, we're not saying this is necessarily going to happen, nor should this be viewed as “Microsoft bashing.” We happen to think the 360 is a fantastic machine with some great downloadable content and an increasingly solid online service. View

That's like saying the PS3 was doomed right after the 360 price drop. Then the PS3 drops their price and everyone shuts up.

The PS3 had a very limited offering of RPGs. It was about 2 months ago that the PS3 started making announcements on upcoming RPGs. The 360 may be considered the king of RPGs right now but don't forget that the 360 is one year older than the PS3. In the last two months, it appears the PS3 has announced enough RPGs to topple the offerings 360 ever had since launch. Here are current and upcoming PS3 RPGs.

Folklore
Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice
Valkyria Chronicles
Demon Souls
Free Realms
Last Rebellion
White Knight Chronicles
Cross Edge
Strength of the Sword
Uncharted Waters
Atelier Rorona
Dark Cloud 3
Final Fantasy Versus XIII
Final Fantasy XIV
Under Seige
Untold Legends
Topatoi
Secret Game from Data Fly http://www.data-fly.com/
"Project V" Working Title
Lightbox/Sony Exclusive Deal
Untitled game by Big Ant Studios
The 7th Seal
Enchanted Arms
Alpha Protocol
Last Remnant
Dragon Age: Origins
Trinity Universe
Trinity: Zill O’ll Zero
Tears of Tiara: Earth’s Wreath

Keep in mind this is only slated PS3 exclusive RPGs. View

That's great and all. Just be aware that digital downloads may not be a reliable form of ownership. Think of them as extended rentals. It's the price we pay for convienance. View

I forgot to mention above but I noticed many PS3 demos and PSN games have an expiration date listed under information on the file. Betas end when the date arrives and the demo for Genesis Ultimate collection sets a time limit for you to play and kicks you out afterwards. Already we can see the extent and precision of controlling the games if/when the time comes.

Already my computer PC runs slower than 3 years ago after all the so-called updates. The reality is these updates are for newer PCs not yours. So, in reality, updates are limited in their scope for improvements. Now, it becomes an issue of compatability and not speed performance. For example the internet browser I use is slower now because they use different programs to load a webpage. Now internet speed doesn't matter because now I have to wait for the programs embedded in the page too. The PC is a prime example of what will occur on consoles. Could we play PSN games movies or music if we bought a PS3 with a software OS at version 1.0? They drop servers all the time due to inactivity. I wonder if I could lose all my purchases just from that simple concept of not being able to update the PS3/360 firmware because they dropped the service next gen or beyond. Food for thought. View

Notice they want to go full digital instead of providing both? If one thinks about it there should always be a choice for a physical backup. Instead they say digital downloads are the future and omit the physical data altogether. Why? They don't want people to have a physical copy. They want everyone to go through their service. View