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PS3 ImpressionsDecember 12th, 2006 |
This arrived yesterday. And as a result, I didn’t get to sleep until 1am. But not because I was playing games.
So there’s the box. I open it. No power brick, good. Plain old video cable. Not great. One controller with an absurdly short USB cable for charging.
The next challenge is getting anywhere for it to fit. It’s too tall to sit on its end the way they do in all the pictures. Taller than a shelf. Since I have to fit it next to the PS2 (because I won’t give up Guitar Hero, and the guitar controllers do not work on the PS3), the Xbox 360, the Wii, the Dreamcast, the cable box, the component switcher, and the XBox I also cannot give up because 1/4 of my games for it do not work on the 360, I have a lot of juggling to do.
Yes, I am annoyed that with three backwards compatible consoles, I still have to leave all the old ones hooked up. 
I did punt on the Gamecube, but the kids aren’t happy about losing their GameBoy Player…
Anyway, so I rearrange. After I rearrange, I have to try to get a picture.
Hmm, the whole reason to buy a component switcher was so that I could avoid having to flip through inputs on the TV. But with the PS3 on regular composite video (so much for 1080p!), I have to flip through three: component, S-Video, and A/V 1. Argh.
Plus, I hav zero software for the damn thing. Time to hit a store. It’s now 8:54pm. I figure, I’ll try to find a nunchuk while there, and maybe also grab something other than Wii Sports to play on the Wii.
Off I got to Circuit City, closest big box store. None of their PS3 or Wii stuff is in the aisles. You have to ask for it at the counter. OK, so I ask for the component video cable for PS3. They have them — but only ones with digital audio. Urgh. The component switcher does handle digital audio. But my old stereo only has one digital audio input, and we use it for DVDs. So I pass on the cable.
I try to find a PS3 game that looks good. Resistance: Fall Of Man looks good, but it’s in the mail separately. I settle on Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom because it’s literally the only other game they have that supports more than one player and isn’t a sports game. And a little bt of supporting the old team.
I get a second controller. It does not come with a ridiculously short USB cable. it comes with no USB cable at all.
I ask for the memory card adapter. They don’t have it.
I ask for a nunchuk. They don’t have it.
I grab Excite Truck for the Wii, (because again, there are a few games on order already, so I have to pick from what’s not already on order and that is multiplayer to keep the kids from fighting).
Then I go across the street to the GameStop. They have piles and piles of Memory Card Adaptors. So I pay the $15 for this one-time use device that you use to copy save files from the PS1 and PS2 memory cards to the PS3 hard drive and then never use again.
I get home and attempt to get a picture. All the cables are too short. I am out of power plugs. No, you can’t unplug the cable box/DVR because something is taping! Argh.
I check the Internet for component cables. The closest physically available component cable for PS3 that has standard audio outputs is located 15 miles away, and they have one in stock. All Internet order sites are out of stock, Some bizzarely list it as not yet available. I notice that there are no Sony-branded ones even listed anywhere. Hmm. I ponder the HDMI option, but again, I want all video games to run through the switcher. I notice that the prices on the component cables vary from $5 if you order them from China, to $90. Good God.
Finally I notice that the PS2 cable (which is an S-Video cable) uses the same jack on the console side. Hurray! I swap cables. and settle for having low-end video for just Guitar Hero. There was comedy of errors making sure everything worked. One cable or another kept popping out. We discovered the archaeological remains of the VCR’s cables.
Finally, at 12am, I get the picture working. The interface that was cozy on the PSP is kind of vague and spacey on a 50″ screen. Hmm.
No network. I find the option for wireless and turn it on. It goes to try to acquire an IP. It fails. We try multiple times, it still fails. it’s after midnight. I don’t care.
I set the controller to charging. I look at copying memory cards over, but the adapter does not come with a USB cable either. I could dig for another one in a drawer, or I could stop charging the controller. I decide against copying memory cards, and give up on charging the other controller either. USB to mini-USB cables in our house live in specific places from which they are not to be moved: hooked to the computers where we download pictures from our cameras, one in my laptop, and the rest in a vicinity located midway between Davy Jones’ Locker and the Bermuda Triangle.
So, finally, I put in Dark Kingdom. At S-Video resolution (hey, at least I found the option to change the settings to widescreen!).
At this resolution, well, it looks like a PS2 game. ANY game would, without component. It plays fine — straightforward hack n slash, just like the other ones (I wrote a fair amount of dialogue and story text for the first one). But I’m not getting the next gen experience, in large part because I can see the pixels quite clearly on my 50″ HDTV.
It’s 1am. I go to check email. DNS is down for all cable Internet in our area.
Bedtime.
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[...] [...]
[...] Original post by Raph [...]
[...] Read his painfully hilarious blow-by-blow tale of personal PS3 woe here and here. His smart and chatty blog is extremely popular with game industry folks, so a lot of his fellow developers already have. (You have to think his observations will have a subterranean influence on them, when they wonder if their studio should create a PS3 version of their latest game.) [...]