Sony Playstation3 Top Secret Info Down at the ‘R’ Zone

I had an interesting exchange with a manager in the video games section of my local Toys R Us tonight. As I entered the games department there was this man and his wife checking out the Xbox 360 aisle. Standing next to them was the games manager telling the husband that if he waits until 2007 he can buy the Sony Playstation 3 which is what he himself is planning on doing.

This conversation catches my attention so I stop next to the three of them and rudely listen in uninvited. The manager, now having an audience, proceeds to tell us how his Sony rep told him that two different variants of the PS3 will be out in 2007 – one costing $800, the other $1200.00. The higher priced unit has a hard drive and acts as a multimedia server. You can use it like a TiVo box as well as stream all your media to it.

The man then asks the manager if it will play all of the current PS2 and PS1 titles. The manager goes on to say that (pretty weird) in order to be backwards compatible you will need to buy a PS Bridge that will link the PS3 to an actual slim line PStwo (purchased previously). He explains that the Cell processor will be looking specifically for modded PS2 consoles to prevent them from getting online. He stresses that only the new smaller PStwo will be able to connect to PS3.

This offers the manager a nice opportunity to discuss with the couple how the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Gamecube Revolution (that’s what he called it) are both “closed” Internet gaming environments. He explains that the PS2 is a server and that you will be hosting games on your own box. Somehow this is much better than a huge state of the art backbone like Xbox Live?

The guy had a serious chip on his shoulder complaining that you had to connect to Xbox Live to get backwards compatibility patches. He kept referring to Bill Gates as if he is some guy he knows personally – “Bill wants to force us to connect to Live services when you may just want to play a game. They’re trying to force you to use Live”

I chime in at this point and tell the couple that I have been thoroughly enjoying my own Xbox 360 for about three weeks now and think it offers quite a lot right now. I explain that you can download the backwards compatibility patches from the Xbox website and burn them to disk which the manager has never heard of. I then tell the manager that I intend on also buying a PS3 when it does finally come out but who is sure when that will be.

The security tag alarm into the gaming section goes off – some holiday shopper walking out with a game – so the manager cuts the conversation short and leaves. The couple disperses more confused about their purchase than before. I stand there wondering why a PS3 would cost $1200 and how cluttered would my gaming area look with a PS3 connected to a PStwo. I wonder why in the hell you would even hook up the PStwo to a PS3 and not just connect it directly to your TV. It was time to leave the R-Zone.