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[Ozymandias]

Japan.

April 2007.

DS - 847,000
Wii - 358,000
PSP - 123,000
PS2 - 52,000
PS3 - 49,000
360 - 12,000
GBA - 4,400
GCN - 1,000

Wii sold three times the PS2, PS3, and 360 combined. The gap between sales is just constantly widening, the PS3 down 50K from last month, the Wii up 60K.

I really want to see NPD numbers. Japan is terrifyingly dominated by Nintendo these days, but it's never surprising. US is where it counts.

[0bsessions]

According to the last figures I saw (Which are a couple months old), the Wii will probably surpass the 360 by the time it's six full months old. A couple months ago, the consoles were at 10 mill (360), 6 mill(Wii) and 3 mill (PS3). The 360'll continue to sell, but I think the PS3 is going to continue to drop off and eventually pretty much completely bottom out by the end of 2008. It's simply too costly to produce for them to make it fiscally reasonable to put it out at an even vaguely competitive price point before it's too late for them to make its release anything but an utter fiasco.

[Storm Rider]

Actually Japan was firmly Sony territory last gen (just like everywhere else), so Nintendo surpassing them is pretty significant.

For some reason Europe has always had a pretty huge hard-on for Sony products, but yes, the US is the most significant console market by far. The question at this point is: Can Sony recover from their horrendous missteps at launch and cut back on the 360's head start? And will the current Wii craze die off, or will hardcore gamers split between the 360 and PS3 and all use the Wii as their secondary system, putting Nintendo in the lead? Or will the Wii really finally do what people have been trying for years and appeal to both casual and traditional gamers? Nobody really knows. I'll most likely eventually ending up all 3 consoles this generation, so it really doesn't matter. Console wars are for marketing executives and 15-year-old forum kids. There's plenty of room for all of the companies to do business and make money and the sort of bizarre, cult-like loyalty video game consoles seem to foster is frankly baffling.

[Scytale]

How many people game on a PC compared to a console? Is it even relevant or is it a different demographic? It would be interesting to see the comparison. I'm a pretty casual gamer these days, as I have uni and a full time job, which takes up a lot of my time. Back in the 90's when I was a high school student, I was pretty fanatical about games. I've always preferred using a PC to the consoles,

The perception amongst my friends and I were that consoles were kind of for the "weeny" gamers, people who couldn't afford a pc, the games on a console were never as good and the hardware was always outdated. Nowadays something curious has happened. It seems to have changed, the hardware in consoles are getting really good (especially the PS 3) and there seems to be a lot more games for them now then there was back in the mega drive/ snes days.

I'm seriously considering buying a PS 3, the hardware in it seems amazing, the cell processor has definitely got me intrigued and not having to worry about patches, drivers, disk space etc seems like a really nice convenience. Also the ability to be able to tinker with it by Installing Linux on it really appeals to the geek in me.

I guess what I'm asking is for someone who is at the moment a very casual gamer (I'll buy maybe 6 new games a year) is it worth buying a console? Or should I spend the money on upgrading my PC? Or even is the ps3 really the best console if I were to buy one. If someone wants to give me a brief run down on the state of gaming at the moment I'd appreciate it.

[0bsessions]

Actually, that's not a recent trend. Consoles, at launch period (The first year or two of its lifetime) have always outperformed PC games. Compare early era games on a given console to games that were coming out for PC at the same time, usually the console game surpasses the PC game.

Plus, in order to get the bleeding edge graphics that surpass any given gen of consoles, one has to drop an absolute mint. It's not so much a matter of not being able to afford as proper money management. In order to keep up with anything even encroaching upon the graphical limitations of the 360 and PS3, one would have to drop close to a grand on upgrades (High end processor, plenty of RAM, high end graphics card, good cooling system, nice monitor, in some cases a new motherboard to run SLI and a newer processor). Why do that when you can get an Xbox 360 for $400?

PC gaming is the absolute, far and away worst place for the casual gamer. It's a landscape pretty much dominated by MMOs and FPS and they really don't wander far out of that pair of genres. The selection of even viable PC games is few and far between, much less a variety of them. Pretty much everything available for PC ends up on consoles these days as the console market is exponentially larger.

Judging by your perception, you sound like a slowly recovering "PC elitist." That breed's swiftly dying out in this day and age. Preferring is one thing, but considering console gamers the "weeny" variety is a bit snobbish. The games on console versus PC is debateable in terms of actually gameplay and fun (Which to most console gamers are the real factors that matter). I could name more games for any single console (Even short-lived ones like the Dreamcast) that I enjoyed than games exclusively for the PC I enjoyed.

If you want top hardware and graphics "possibilities", the Playstation 3 is the way to go. If you want to actually get any mileage out of it, though, I'd vehemntly recommend against it. The reason I quote the word possibilities is that I honestly don't think the PS3 will ever reach its potential or even surpass the 360 in terms of actualized graphics.

The system with the best hardware hasn't been the best received since the Super Nintendo. N64 and Xbox were the most powerful consoles in the last two generations and neither performed well in terms of sales. The problem arises that the more powerful and complicated the console is, the harder to design for it is. The Wii, the weakest hardware wise, is said to be the easiest by far to program for, and thus more attractive to programmers. The PS3 is so complex in its architecture that most developers are wary to work with it (Dev kits weren't even finalized and released until scant months before release) and even fewer are willing to try to explore its full potential due to the enormous cost.

Power is one thing, but it's software selection that makes or breaks a console and PS3 simply doesn't have it. We live in a wasteful society and a $600 price tag isn't going to drive consumers away from a good product. The reason the PS3 is sitting on shelves isn't the price, it's the piss-poor support it's getting. Nintendo is a company that can survive on its own properties (Your Marios, Zeldas, Metroids, etc), Sony is not. Sony has a scant handful of marketable first party games and they tend to jump around on them too much (They seem to have all but given up on Jak and Daxter, for example). Meanwhile, Microsoft is gobbling up all of Sony's third party support. They're not pulling exclusive games over to the 360 exclusively themselves, but getting the games on their console as well is enough. If you've got a choice between spending $400 and $600 to play GTA 4, which are you gonna do? ESPECIALLY when the graphical difference is negligible? Sony has, officially, lost exclusive rights to just about every major third party game in development (Devil May Cry, GTA, Resident Evil, etc) and even mainstays like Square Enix are jumping ship (While not announced for 360, FF XIII is not a Sony exclusive and will probably end up there). Considering MGS II came out for Xbox, I doubt the new installment will stay exclusive to Sony much longer with all these developers going with the more likely sale on the 360. Also, Sony's arrogance has been getting the best of them, too. One good example would be with the Unreal 3 engine. Sony had an exclusive agreement to have the next Unreal Tournament on PS3 instead of 360. Along came Gears of War for 360 and Sony shit-talked said game to try and make the competition look bad. This ended up pissing off the Unreal dev team and they yanked the exclusivity.

That's not even touching on the Wii, the console with the current fastest rate of sale. At the clip it's going, it might be the fastest console ever to ten million by the time the demand starts to die down a little (They're still allegedly difficult to find, even with six million units shipped).

[alongwaltz]

This is awesome.  I've never been a fan of Playtsation.

I've owned, in my young life, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Playstation, Playstation 2, and Gamecube.  And had many friends with N64 when it first came out.

I actually sold my PS2 to get my Gamecube because the only thing I ever played on it were old Playstation 1 wrestling, Crash Bandicoot, and Final Fantasy games.

Nintendo just makes more fun games.  They care about their games being entertaining, not how much the characters in them look like real-life characters.  I guess Playstation's fine if the only thing you're interested in is sports and shooting people.  But Nintendo's just more fun.

[ScrambledGregs]

The really shocking thing is that the DS continues to sell like a motherfucker in Japan and the U.S. I kind of assumed that everyone who wanted one of those had one by now, but it seems not.

As for the consoles...I'm not surprised, considering it's a full 5-6 months since launch and you still can't walk into a random store and get a Wii. I can't remember the last time a console was so hard to find, but maybe that's because I was never actively following the availability of the PS2 and 360 when they launched and were highly prized.

[mberan42]

What's the point of owning a PS3 if you don't own a 1080p HDTV?

I'll most likely buy a 360 in the next few months. With GTA IV and FFXIII not being exclusive to Sony, my reasons for owning a PS3 have gone from few to none. (Although FFXIII hasn't been announce for 360, what other platform is there for it? Wii couldn't handle the graphics, so the 360 is the only logical choice.)

[Dimmukane]

What's the point of owning a PS3 if you don't own a 1080p HDTV?

I'll most likely buy a 360 in the next few months. With GTA IV and FFXIII not being exclusive to Sony, my reasons for owning a PS3 have gone from few to none. (Although FFXIII hasn't been announce for 360, what other platform is there for it? Wii couldn't handle the graphics, so the 360 is the only logical choice.)

Yeah, truth be told, the only reason I still want a PS3 is LittleBigPlanet.  And even that's getting hard to justify...I was gonna go with the 500$ SKU but now they've discontinued it.  Dear god, let there be a price drop in the next 12 months.

[Scytale]

Long reply

Thanks for that, that was exactly the kind of thing I was after, I guess it is fair enough to call me a PC elitist, I work wih computers and spend maybe 12+ hours a day in front of a computer so yeah makes sense. The main computer I own now is fairly high end, I need it to be for some of the work I do, it's an AMD X2 4400, 2 gb ram, only thing it doesn't have is a good graphics card (I have a Geforce 6600 ), so if I was going to make a purchase it would only be a better card.

I guess I'm pretty torn between the PS3 and the Xbox, I absolutely loathe Microsoft so I'm reluctant to get the Xbox, on the other hand it sound like it has some really great games I'll be missing out on. The Wii looks ok too but I dunno one of my friends has one and I've never really liked playing on it, could just be he's choice in games though, the conotrller does seem pretty nifty but I'd still need to buy a new HD/Blu Ray player ifI bought one.

I think I'll just wait until Christmas where the price will drop for all of them, might be more games out for each by then.

[Johnny C]

Storm Rider is right in that "console wars" are for marketers and YouTube users. Beyond that I don't have a lot to say, except that I bought a Wii a couple of weeks ago and can affirm that they are difficult to find. My brother had to wait in line outside of Best Buy on the day it was shipped with like twenty other people.

By the way, the Wii has sold about 2.3 million units in North America as of April 7th and around six million units worldwide. Wikipedia says there's been four million Xbox 360s sold in North America from the system's launch in 2005 to Christmas of 2006, but nothing more recent; as of that same time period, Microsoft claims they sold ten million worldwide. I guess you can see where I'm going with this. In a year, Microsoft managed to sell ten million units, but if Nintendo's sales keep going at the same rate then in the same time frame the Wii will have sold eighteen million.

The PS3 has sold 1.2 million units in North America thus far, and three million units worldwide.


When I get enough money I'll have all three. Yammer about your hi-def TVs all you want but frankly I just want the games, and I'll get the TV later.

[0bsessions]

I'd still need to buy a new HD/Blu Ray player ifI bought one.

Why? For one, no one knows if either one is going to catch on, much less which one will win the format war. Buying an HD DVD/Blu Ray player in the next year or two will have about a 50% chance of being a waste of $400+ dollars. DVD was such a technological leap over VHS that it was a foregone conclusion. It could be years before there's a clear victor between HD and Blu Ray. I'd heavily recommend against sinking your cash into it.

I think I'll just wait until Christmas where the price will drop for all of them, might be more games out for each by then.

I wouldn't count on it just yet. It took the PS2 almost two years before it dropped below the debut price of $300. Sony and Microsoft are already taking heavy losses at their current price points and Sony has already discontinued the $500 model due to the fact it was a fiscal black hole. It'll likely be a few years before either one drops under $300.

[mberan42]

re: HD/Blu-Ray wars - check this, or this, and especially this.

And to rehash my old question, what's the point of owning a PS3, a blu-ray or HDDVD player if you don't have a 1080p television? I don't have the $4k to spend on a good plasma HD television, but I can fork up the $600 for a 360 and a game or two. If a machine was purposfully built for high-end televisions, then the buyer isn't getting what they paid for if they don't have the proper television.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that if I bought a PS3, I'd also have to buy a 1080p HD television (and probably a 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound system) to get my money's worth. Why play a PS3 on a dinky blurry cathode-ray tube television?

[Ozymandias]

Actually, there's little reason to own a 1080p TV in the first place. The human eye can't even process that much information unless you have an unreasonably huge TV or sit unreasonably close to it.

I'm often described as a Nintendo fanboy, but the 360 is, IMO, the most solid gaming platform of this generation. XBox Live is without peer in the console world or the PC world and the games are simply better than anyone else is offering right now.

[Storm Rider]

The ultimate fact of the matter is that Nintendo and Microsoft just realized what they needed to accomplish this generation better than Sony did. Nintendo realized that people do care about online gaming, and that they don't have the massive resources of gigantic multinationals like Sony and Microsoft and therefore can't really go head-to-head with them in terms of blockbuster titles and hardware specs. Microsoft realized they needed to play to their strengths (namely, X-Box Live), but also that they needed to take a page out of Sony's book and license some guys to make really compelling software. They did that by making X-Box Live an even more compelling service with things like XBL Marketplace and XBL Arcade, and then laying out the publishing dollars to the top gamemakers in the industry (Can you say 'Mass Effect'?).

Sony became so obsessed with the 'only entertainment machine you'll ever need' image that they shoved a lot of things into the Playstation 3 that a gaming machine simply doesn't need, most notably the Cell processor and the Blu-ray player. From what I've read, the PS3 is unusually difficult to program for because the Cell is so different from any previous gaming hardware (which has all been either PCs or consoles with mostly PC-based hardware), and ultimately the graphics capacities of the 360 and PS3 are nearly identical. So Sony spent all those investment dollars creating a supercomputer component that ultimately gets them squat. And as far as next-gen DVDs go, most new DVD players can upscan ordinary DVDs to high definition to the point where they look nearly identical to both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. So spending exorbitant sums on next-gen media players is essentially useless, especially since HD-DVDs and BDs cost about 10 dollars more apiece than their DVD counterparts.

Also, in reference to Matt's comment earlier, it doesn't even matter if you DO have a 1080p capable TV, because the 360 supports 1080p now as well. The only difference between the two systems as far as resolution goes is the difference between scaling the picture and rendering it natively, which is as far as anyone can tell undetectable by the human eye. Unless you're the most massive videophile in the entire world, it's basically a wash there too.

So really, I don't want to take sides in this 'war', because it's stupid, but if you're thinking about which console to buy and you want one of the two higher-end ones, get a 360. At least for right now.

And guys, I hate to be the wet blanket here but I honestly can't see why suddenly LittleBigPlanet is the coolest thing ever. I mean, it looks great and all, but it's essentially a platform with a level editor. That's not exactly revolutionary.

[mberan42]

Nintendo certainly got it right after the relative failure of the GameCube. The innovativeness of the Wii and the DS, along with the right price and software, is kicking the crap out of Microsoft and Sony.

I read something in either EGM or Wired recently about the PS3 and it got me thinking: the PS3 will be the greatest machine five years from now. Right now it's too advanced. It's a pain in the ass to design for. There's too much in it right now. Give it five years and it'll be incredible.

[0bsessions]

The problem with that is that in the five years it'll take for the PS3 to be of any value, Microsoft will be close to ready to debut their next console. Aside from that, no electronics product can survive five years of mediocrity. If they don't get it together, their video gaming division is gonna be pretty fucked.

[Johnny C]

Sony posted a two billion dollar drop in profit thanks in no small part to the Playstation 3. If the games division keeps operating like this it might not even see five years.

[ScrambledGregs]

I agree with the "PS3 is too advanced and has too much shit in it" argument. I don't have HD capability, and I don't plan on buying a HD compatible TV anytime soon because they're still too expensive for my budget. Game mags and journalists always talk about how games look like shit unless you play them on a HDTV, but I think they've lost perspective with what the common gamer has in their home.

[Storm Rider]

I'm planning on getting a HDTV later this year, but it won't be a top-of-the-line model by any means. Again, as far as anyone can tell right now, the graphics capacity of the two consoles is more or less identical.

[Catfish_Man]

From a purely technical point of view the PS3 is the latest in a long long series of bets on compilers (and programmers) being smarter than they actually are.

[Johnny C]

It's the latest in a long series of denials that game development teams are overworked and underappreciated, man. When EA buys your company and is breathing down your neck about the latest release of one of their shitty licensed games and you're already working fifty hours a week you don't have a lot of time to figure out the fucking maths puzzle Sony encased in plastic and sold to consumers.

[The extra letter]

PC gaming is the absolute, far and away worst place for the casual gamer. It's a landscape pretty much dominated by MMOs and FPS and they really don't wander far out of that pair of genres. The selection of even viable PC games is few and far between, much less a variety of them. Pretty much everything available for PC ends up on consoles these days as the console market is exponentially larger.

You forgot the one genre that a PC absolutely owns entirely. RTS.

I don't think I've come across a decent RTS on a console.

[0bsessions]

RTS has been kind of buried in the overabundance of MMO and FPS, lately, though. When was the last, big RTS, really?

[B!shop]

Command And Conquer 3?

[schimmy]

Supreme Commander?
Company of Heroes?
Medieval II?

[0bsessions]

I am apparently even less versed in the presence of RTS games than I thought.

[Storm Rider]

Command and Conquer 3 has a 360 counterpart that according to every review I've read works nearly as well as the PC version. Hell, they had a N64 port of Starcraft. RTS's can be done on consoles, it just seems that most of the time development teams are too lazy to do it right.

[Oli]

What I am looking forward to is the changes Microsoft are going to have to make with regards to X-box Live. The online features on the Wii and the PS3 are free (or so I hear at least) so I'm thinking that the £40 a year for live is going to be dropped soon. Which is cool because I will be buying a 360 in the near future and not paying for live would make that much better.

Also with the release of a browser for the 360 they're going to have to make it USB mouse compatible so it stands to reason that they'll make the games mouse compatible aswell. That means there is absolutely no advantage of playing an RTS on a PC over playing one on a 360.

[schimmy]

I don't know. I find that I've always preferred the PC for pretty much all game types. I find with consoles, you are inevitably further away from the screen than you would be if you were playing on the PC, and with games that require precision, such as RTSs, and FPSs, it is irritating not being able to see the smaller objects on the screen easily. If you are going to sit really close to the screen, and use a mouse (and thus a table) then why on earth would you be playing a 360 instead of a PC?
On the topic of the £40 fee for live: Every single person I know that has 360 or the original XBOX has paid for live, and they all agree that the fee is worth it, considering it is a small, effectively one off, fee that provides great online service that I understand is better than what the rival systems have to offer. Basically, you get what you pay for when it comes to online gaming on consoles.

[Dimmukane]

I don't know. I find that I've always preferred the PC for pretty much all game types. I find with consoles, you are inevitably further away from the screen than you would be if you were playing on the PC, and with games that require precision, such as RTSs, and FPSs, it is irritating not being able to see the smaller objects on the screen easily. If you are going to sit really close to the screen, and use a mouse (and thus a table) then why on earth would you be playing a 360 instead of a PC?
On the topic of the £40 fee for live: Every single person I know that has 360 or the original XBOX has paid for live, and they all agree that the fee is worth it, considering it is a small, effectively one off, fee that provides great online service that I understand is better than what the rival systems have to offer. Basically, you get what you pay for when it comes to online gaming on consoles.

Well, you can't hook up your computer to a 63" plasma without buying an adapter that is going to fuck with the signal in some way.  Unless of course, you shilled out a few thousand for a projector and a bedsheet. 

Now, to burst Oli's bubble, they're not going to magically add mouse support, I wouldn't get your hopes up if I were you.  They still haven't even said anything about a browser, either.  They're not going to drop the Live fee, on top of that.  Why do that when they've already got a few million people already paying for it, who are willing to keep paying for it?  They don't have to make any changes to Xbox Live when people are basically paying them not to.

[schimmy]

I'm interested to know where you have found a 63" plasma for less than a few thousand? That sounds like an amazing deal to me.
You don't need a huge monitor for PC games. My monitor is less than half the size of the wide screen TV that I play the 360 on. I still find it vastly easier to see details on my monitor than on the TV.
I think your argument would be more solid if you pointed out that TVs aren't just used for gaming, they're made for watching programs as well, and as such, investing in a good television makes more sense than getting a good monitor for your PC. But then, when you take into account the PCs ability to watch television programs, the advantage of a TV/console, as far as I'm concerned, disappear.
In the next couple of gaming generations, what I think will happen is the differences between consoles and PCs will pretty much go, the only difference will be continual upgrading vs. occasional replacement of your gaming rig.

[Ozymandias]

On the topic of the £40 fee for live: Every single person I know that has 360 or the original XBOX has paid for live, and they all agree that the fee is worth it, considering it is a small, effectively one off, fee that provides great online service that I understand is better than what the rival systems have to offer. Basically, you get what you pay for when it comes to online gaming on consoles.

I'd go one further and say it's better than any online service even on PCs. It's just all around an excellent service and well worht the price, though you do still get a lot of the benefits of the service for free anyway. I really wish Nintendo had modeled Connect 24/7 closer to it.

Also, if anyone cares, here's the sales numbers for Japan + US:

DS: 1,318K
Wii: 718K
PSP: 306K
PS2: 246K
360: 186K
PS3: 131K
GBA: 88K

If you do the math, you'll notice that the GBA outsold the PS3 in the US. The GBA. Ouch.

[epifreak]

Funny, I've pretty much given up on anything Nintendo will ever put out from the GC era on. Then again, I might be a tad bit biased, since at the last console launch, my brother and I were debating what console to get. My reasoning was PS2 all the way. It has RPGs which are close to the only genre I play. His reasoning was GC has Rogue Squadron!!1! Rogue Squadron has shiny graphics. Somehow my parents got us the GC for Christmas. Within about a year and a half, the GC had been sold, as the games consisted of Nintendo releases and nothing else. Once again, I wanted a PS2. Somehow we got an XBOX. At least the Halo games were good. Anyway, as of GC, Nintendo was without redeeming qualities. The company deserved to die and will never receive another cent of my money. Consequently, I am determined to hate the Wii and refuse to play it. Luckily, I pretty much fall into that PC gamer category, which means I don't have to give a damn about this console war.

(Hopefully what I typed made sense; I'm drunk. I attempted to fix any typos, but at this moment sensibility-based proofreading is beyond my capabilities.)

[Johnny C]

Nintendo's getting really good third-party support again with the Wii Don't shrug the console off because developers were fellating the PS2 last generation.

[Storm Rider]

Well, Sony paid a lot of smaller developers to make their games exclusive, and people didn't know better at the time. Now most people have wised up and realized that the money they'll make from multiplatform sales far outstrips the vast majority of the exclusive deals Sony gave them. The fact of the matter is, the Wii has sold well enough already that third parties are snapping at the bit to make games for it. They'll show up very shortly, I guarantee it.

[Dimmukane]

In the next couple of gaming generations, what I think will happen is the differences between consoles and PCs will pretty much go, the only difference will be continual upgrading vs. occasional replacement of your gaming rig.

That statement was made just to start a fight.  It failed miserably.  To be honest, I'm trying to buy a monitor/hdtv in the size range of 24-27 inches to hook up all my stuff to at the same time.

As for the underlined statement, what kind of differences are disappearing?  The controls will never be as easy on a PC as they are on consoles (13 buttons>105, yes I know you don't use all of them, and yes I know you can hook up controllers, but present this to someone who's never done it before and they're immediately daunted by the amount of keys and are too cheap to buy a controller).  Also, there are far too many good games that are only on consoles for me to ignore them, I doubt that's going to change much either.

[Storm Rider]

The fact of the matter is, PC gaming is now a marginal niche. I'm not going to say it's dying or anything crazy like that, but if you look at the numbers: Last year, console software and hardware generated 12.5 billion dollars, while PC software didn't even crack 1 billion. Publishers are following the money and therefore there are just more games on consoles that PC owners don't get. If you're a huge MMO or RTS guy or a FPS elitist, then yes, you'll want a PC, but most people aren't that discriminative of what games they want.

[ackblom12]

Don't try telling that to a PC Elitist. Last time i said that while chatting, I swear I felt the attempt to kill me through the internet.

[Narr]

I consider myself a PC gamer now.  Good games for the PC tend to be better made than the best games for the consoles.  Reasons being that the best games for consoles tend to be incredibly short and lack online supply or a control scheme that's acceptable.

Am I an elitist?  Hell fucking no.  I just don't have any desire to own a Wii, X360, or PS3 at the given time.  There is literally dick for games I want, nothing I'd turn to again in 5 years and still enjoy playing.

Once Super Smash Bro.s Brawl comes out, however, I will be getting a Wii.

[ScrambledGregs]

I would buy a Wii if I could find the damn thing anywhere. I'm hoping that I luck into one of those situations like I had with the DS Lite, where they were impossible to find for awhile, but I randomly stopped into a GameStop one day while bored and they had just gotten some in.

[Catfish_Man]

The rise of consoles makes me rather sad

a) I don't watch TV, so if I got one it would just be for playing games
b) I carry my laptop most places, so I much prefer to be able to play on it.

[Johnny C]

I would buy a Wii if I could find the damn thing anywhere.

What we did, and this sounds like a far more painful process than it actually is, was just phone Best Buy and ask "When do you guys get your Wii shipment in?" They told us every second Friday was when the consoles got sold. My brother just went and waited outside Best Buy, where he was handed a little ticket that entitled him to a Wii and that he had to use within an hour. He just got the system and got out because it's not like Wii games are hard to come by.

It sounds like a pain in the ass, but even if it actually was it'd be worth it.

[0bsessions]

My recommendation: everyone should make nice with one person at your local retailer. That is, guaranteed, the only reason I got a Wii on launch day. My old roommate's worked at a Gamestop for the past year or two and I gave him the reserve money and he put it down in my name the split second reserves became available. Reserves ended up selling through within a couple hours at his store. Given, this doesn't work when the console you're looking for is put out by a company that routinely overestimates their initial shipments *coughSony*, but it worked out well for me. Johnny C's method is really your best bet for getting one right now. A lot of retailers release them on Sundays, as it's flyer day and if they put it in there, they want to have some on hand so they can at least say "We had them, but they sold out."

[Dissy]

I was lucky getting my Wii.  The wal-mart nearby accidentally put them out on a thursday morning.  I was there looking fer  some supplies, and there half a dozen of them were.  Ran home, grabbed my jar of stashed money, and bought it.

Still ned to get LOZ:TP fer it...

[Johnny C]

Nothing accidental about that, it's just what Wal-Mart does.

[evilkillerwhale]

I'm interested to know where you have found a 63" plasma for less than a few thousand? That sounds like an amazing deal to me.
You don't need a huge monitor for PC games. My monitor is less than half the size of the wide screen TV that I play the 360 on. I still find it vastly easier to see details on my monitor than on the TV.
I think your argument would be more solid if you pointed out that TVs aren't just used for gaming, they're made for watching programs as well, and as such, investing in a good television makes more sense than getting a good monitor for your PC. But then, when you take into account the PCs ability to watch television programs, the advantage of a TV/console, as far as I'm concerned, disappear.
In the next couple of gaming generations, what I think will happen is the differences between consoles and PCs will pretty much go, the only difference will be continual upgrading vs. occasional replacement of your gaming rig.

I have a 22" high def monitor that my 360 and computer are hooked to. The 360 used to be hooked to my 27" tube based tv. The only reason I don't move it back is because I can my level on the monitor, and laziness. The tv has HORRIBLE picture, and is still e^100 times better that the hi def 720p monitor with high def 360 input... compared the 480 for the tv with composite inputs. PC games are ALWAYS slower than console games without MUCH better hardware. It's pretty basic. If you run windows, and you don't have a firewall running, you're ridiculous, unless you have Vista, and then you can't get your games to run. Believe me, other than star craft, I can get very few games to run as well. I have a GeForce 7950 GT with a Pentium 4 with HT and 4 gig of RAM. games are still not as fluid and not as impressive as my 360. Lessay I used the mac. Okay... now I can play 4 games... as least some of them are made by bungie... so... I can shell out 2500 for a mac, or the 900 for the pc with the 600 for the monitor, or I can buy a 400 dollar xbox 360 with a 200 dollar tv. um... you're kidding, right?

consoles win by default. And yes, I love my pc. It's just not a good gaming platform.

[Dimmukane]

You created a profile just to say that?  Umm...okay.

[mberan42]

I thought we decided that consoles were superior to PCs as gaming machines like 42 threads back...

[Johnny C]

We have to re-decide it every thread.