Which Next-Gen Console(s) Will You Be Buying?

[TM2-Megatron]

I've seen a poll for this up on various other board I frequent, so I'm curious as to what the results will be with the UltimateDisney crowd.

So... which next-gen console(s) will you be buying?

Personally, I'm getting a Wii a couple months after its launch; and perhaps a PS3... but not for a long, long ways down the road after a few price drops and a redesign. So for now, I'm going with the Wii only option. In any case, by the time I do buy a PS3, the PS4 will probably be coming out shortly or already out. I did the same with the PSOne, and I'll eventually get a PS2 probably around Christmas (mostly for my collection of videogame stuff).

[Evil Genie Jafar]

I've always only had Nintendo consoles. However, Nindtendo has disappointed me since the N64 and because of that I've always limited the games I could play.

So, not this time. I'm going to get a Wii AND a PS3.


I was thinking on a 360 but since it came out it hasn't impressed me... and overall I'd like to try the Japanese catalog and variety of the Playstation.


Still, because the Wii is going to be cheapest of them all... that will be the one to get first.

[2099net]

I have a 360, which I'm very happy with (although I will admit none of the real next-gen games have been released on it yet). Even though I don't have much loyalty or support for Sony, realistically I'll get a PS3 at some stage too (although, given the price, it could be more than a couple of years)

[MickeyMousePal]

I know for sure I'm getting PlayStation 3 because it has Blu-Ray not to mention I could play Kingdom of Hearts, Kingdom of Hearts 2, Marvel games, DC games, TMNT, Capcom vs Marvel series and other arcade games.

While Nintendo Wii might depend on the price and since it has downloads to old NES, SNES and N64 games it's a possiblity. I could just buy SNES and N64 on e-bay for cheaper with the Game Genie and Game Shark codes!!! I remember playing GoldenEye on N64 with the cheat codes I finally beat the whole game. I remember just shooting and throwing knifes at my enemies...and living forever or should I say Staying Alive.

[Zoltack]

Just a PS3 only because I seriously don't like the other consoles. That and I already have a PS2 and it's never steered me wrong but they better have some good games or I'll be waving my fist real hard.

[TheSequelOfDisney]

None for me. I don't have any money, except what I have to buy Disney DVDs. I'd like the PS3, even though I have a PS2, which I got for Christmas.

[DarthPrime]

A Wii for sure, and maybe a 360.

[TM2-Megatron]

I know for sure I'm getting PlayStation 3 because it has Blu-Ray not to mention I could play Kingdom of Hearts, Kingdom of Hearts 2, Marvel games, DC games, TMNT, Capcom vs Marvel series and other arcade games.

You can also play arcade games in arcades, lol. Plus for the price of a PS3 and game, you could probably buy a couple arcade games, cabinets and all.... that'd definatly be more fun, and have more novelty.

While I do applaud Sony for including Blu-Ray, that feature will only be useful if Blu-Ray takes off. I'd certainly rather it did than HD-DVD, but it's a possibility that neither of them will gain much ground for a few years to come (and by that time, we'll have HVD to it won't matter)... look at SACD and DVD-A; nobody wants to risk their money investing in formats that are still in competition... not to mention regular Audio CDs are enough for most people. It may just be that regular DVDs will be good enough for the majority of people for another few years, at least. My local video store recently got in a number of HD-DVD titles, and so far they've barely been rented (I asked the staff).

Also, until a few hardware revisions (not total redesigns like the slim PS2 or PSOne) the PS3's BD-ROM drive will be 1st generation... which basically means it'll probably have crap compatibility (if any) with BD-R and BD-RE discs, as those are released.

[The Little Merman]

I voted for both PS3 and Wii. I'm most likely pick up just one, but I'm not quite sure which just yet.

*tlm

[Loomis]

I keep saying that I'll get a 360, and maybe a Wii, but when all is said and done, I know I'm getting None.

Consoles are too damned expensive - especially when I already have a half-decent PC - and games are just priced out of my league. I could buy at least 4 or 5 new DVDs for the same price as one 360 game here. (Based on average RRP of a new 360 title at $119.95 AU and most new DVDs costing around the $20-$30 AU mark).

So, realistically - count me out. I'm going to Disneyland.

[Timon/Pumbaa fan]

Just PlayStation 3 for me.

X-Box may have prettier graphics, but with the exception of Halo, I can't think of any games made specifically for that system. I'm sure there are others, but I'm also sure I wouldn't be interested.

Nintendo just gets pointless and more pointless. They rarely release any new franchises for their games, heck they rarely release new games in general, and they don't improve much at all with the quality like graphics.

Sony however, is getting better quality(with Blue-Ray) with their systems and better games. Though of course, too bad Blue-Ray is making it worth like $600.

I'll wait until the price drops!

[Robin Hood]

Nothing for me.

[TM2-Megatron]

Nintendo just gets pointless and more pointless. They rarely release any new franchises for their games, heck they rarely release new games in general, and they don't improve much at all with the quality like graphics.

Popular opinion seems to be that Nintendo is the one to beat this generation. Both MS and Sony have recommended the Wii as a secondary console to their own (though Sony only did it 'cuz MS did it first). If every buying of a 360 and PS3 took that advice, the Wii would probably sell at least twice as many as either of the others (not that such a thing is likely, but it would be nice if the ridiculous posturing from MS and Sony backfired on them)... and that isn't even counting the people who will only buy a Wii. And if it's any indication, I think Nintendo might be headed in the right direction in terms of attracting people who didn't have more than a passing interesting in gaming before. My parents are actually interested in this thing and will probably buy one themselves, mostly 'cuz of the virtual console feature (both of them loved playing NES games back when I was a kid; my mom liked Duck Hunt particularly).

IMO Sony is becoming the most pointless in the coming generation (at least based on what we've seen so far). To be blunt, graphics and raw power can only get you so far... personally I was quite satisfied with the Gamecube's graphics; and since the Wii is an improvement on that, I don't really care if it's up to the PS3 standard. And I've never found Sony's exclusive franchises to be quite as fun as Nintendo's; and neither of them come out with very many new ones each generation, but that's besides the point.

Also, somewhat significantly, the lack of an HDMI output on the core PS3 (and even this one is only marginally affordable) makes the Blu-Ray feature totally irrelevant... at least if you want to play an HD movie. I'm not certain whether or not you can get HD-quality out of other ouputs or not, so perhaps you'll still be able to play games in HD; but the DRM methods on Blu-Ray prevent HD from being sent through anything other than HDMI... so good luck on that. And in an annoying move, I read an interview with someone from Sony (either on IGN or Gamespot) hinting that future PS3's may have the dual HDMI output that most people expected them to have at launch. Personally, I can't understand how Sony could be so oblivious. That news will either make alot of people hold out on even buying a PS3, or piss the hell out of alot of early adopters when the thing is finally released. At least M$ seems able to make up their mind as the the hardware of their console before releasing it.

While I wouldn't buy an XBox, I can see more reasons to buy it than a PS3 if what you're concerned about is graphics and HD. The 360's graphics are much better than the Wii's and the odds are most people would rarely be able to tell the difference between the improvement between the 360 and PS3; and the 360 is much less $$$.

And then there's the Wii... nowhere near as powerful as either of the others, but definately more innovative; and I'm pretty sure its graphics are good enough for regular people that aren't psycho-gamers or morons who are out to satisfy their ego by acquiring the best tech on the market. Between the remote, the virtual console service and the games we've seen so far at E3 interest in a Nintendo console seems to be at a higher point than it's been since the SNES.

Also, though it's kind of unrelated, I came across this on another board and thought it was pretty funny:

Sony's E-3 Coverage Sumarized in 1 Minute

[Pasta67]

If anything, I'll be picking up a Wii, even though that's one of the crappiest names in the history of video game consoles. I also want the PS3, but I'm definately going to wait until it gets a price reduction, since I don't feel like paying $600 for anything at the moment.

[Timon/Pumbaa fan]

While I wouldn't buy an XBox, I can see more reasons to buy it than a PS3 if what you're concerned about is graphics and HD. The 360's graphics are much better than the Wii's and the odds are most people would rarely be able to tell the difference between the improvement between the 360 and PS3; and the 360 is much less $$$.

Well, honestly, I'm not all that concerned about graphics and HD. Personally, I think the games themselves are the only real reason to buy video games(duh) and are the only part of video-game systems I really care about and Sony definetely has a more variety and better selection games than either M$(:lol:) and Nintendo, at least, imo.

I just mentioned graphics and HD because everybody else is mentioning them. The graphics are better than Nintendo, but probably not as good as M$. But frankly, I don't care about graphics. I still love to occasionally play a "Super-Nintendo" at my cousin's house, and look at those graphics! I personally don't care if the grapics. I just think if we are going to use them against other systems though, I would chose them over Nintendo, but probably not over M$, but as you can see, I think M$ sucks for various reasons. And HD, well, I don't ever play DVDs on my PS2, so I doubt anything would change there.

As for Nintendo's new crontrolls, personally, they look a bit hard to adapt to. I'd rather they just did something like the used to.

[Pasta67]

As for Nintendo's new crontrolls, personally, they look a bit hard to adapt to. I'd rather they just did something like the used to.

Actually, from the reports I've been hearing from E3, the Wii controller is a lot easier to get used to than it looks.

[2099net]

It all depends on what you want. On paper, regardless of the hype coming from Sony, the PS3 and 360 are very similar. Sony likes to throw big numbers about, but numbers aren't everything.

Did you know the PS2 was over twice as capable as the Xbox's? No? Because you couldn't tell. The Xbox has a less capable processor, but it still performed better because it had better support chips - especially for audio/visual processing.

There's a lot of argument about the PS3 and 360, but the general assessment is the two are near-as-dammit the same. Technically, the PS3 if performing at peak can number-crunch more. But actually programming the system to reach that theoretical maximum is going to be hard. Especially with the cell cores needed to be run in parallel and in perfect synchronisation to achieve this maximum (but the same could also be said about the three cores on the 360 and the two threads each is able to run. Incidently, most early 360 games are running off one core only for this very reason - it's a hard and time-consuming job programming to take full advantage of the multi-processor environment). In addition, the PS3's RAM is fixed... certain parts can only be used for certain taskes. The 360's RAM is unified, and this less likely to cause bottlenecks and/or be restrained.

Then we come to the support chips. On paper Sony loves to spout the numbers for their GPU, but it does things the old fashioned way. The 360 GPU takes a number of short-cuts and have multi-purpose pipelines meaning a direct numerical comparison is worthless. Several developers have gone on record as saying the 360 does have more graphical potential than the PS3, and even those who don't commit say the results between the two will be similar.

So in conclusion the PS3 may have a slight advantage on pure mathamatics (which are used for A.I., physics calculations etc) while the 360 may be a little better graphically. Considering the PS2 was over twice as fast as the Xbox, all Xbox games were perfectly capable of running the same physics code. So a small theoretical difference between the PS2 and the 360 doesn't bother me.

As for BD-ROM and each disc holding a potential 50Gb of game code, it will never happen. Not in a month of Sundays. Do you know how many actual game assets that would be? Oblivion on the 360 has in total over 35 square miles to explore. But it takes up just 4Gb - the map, the graphics, the speech and the game logic (don't forget there's over 150 seperate, individual quests in Oblivion too, most of which are split into multiple waypoints).

Do you really think a game company will have the time and manpower to create the required assets? Hi-Def textures don't even make a difference either because the new consoles can compress the data better. In fact, games like Tomb Raider Legend actually take up more space on the normal Xbox disc than on the 360 version, even though it has lower res textures, thanks to compression. Also, PC games have been created to run in similar resolutions for the past couple of years or so, and none of those (to my knowledge) has taken up more than 1 DVD9.

The only way a PS3 game would need more than 9Gb of storage is if it was filled with pointless FMV cut-scenes. But being as Sony insist their graphics are so good, no PS3 game will need FMV will it? But even then, there's nothing actually wrong with swapping discs - it didn't harm the reputation or sales of the Final Fantasy games on the PSOne did it?

BD media has been chosen by Sony for their PS3 for one reason only. To make sure they get as many drives out their as possible. They're making you pay a premium so they can win the upcoming format war.

I know people like MMOne and TM2 will say graphics aren't everything, and I do agree. But the PS3 and the 360 are about more than graphics, its just people focus on the graphics more.

Oblivion is a stunning game - it has 35 square miles filled with thousands of objects. Each object can be moved, knocked over, taken... and it remembers. Not just for 10 minutes, or 2 hours. For the lifetime of that game. Also each object has realistic physical properties. For a laugh, stand at the top of a hill and drop your items and watch them tumble down the hill, or if you're feeling really daring, drag a dead body up and toss it over... Ahhh, hours of pointless fun. Not that I'm that sad, honest. I've only thrown two dead bodies down a hill (and a wolf).

LucasArts' upcoming Indiana Jones game is the same. It uses the processing power of the machines to not only create A.I. but also physical properties and reactions for every object in the virtual environment - animate or inanimate.

Yes, out of all the games at E3, Nintendo had the ones that actually looked the most fun. But at the same time, the PS3 and the 360 had the ones that looked like they would have the most depth (I can't see the Wii ever doing an Oblivion-type game for example). And hey, the bigger consoles can do fun too! It's just for now, most developers are getting carried away by the possibilities available to them and are going for realism more than fun.

[MadonnasManOne]

I don't really care what other people are getting. All the Nintendo haters can go fly a kite, for all I care. While they are spending more money than is necessary on their PS3's and XBOX 360's, I'll be playing Nintendo Wii, with a LOT of great games, and actually having fun, rather than worrying if the game I'm playing has the best graphics.

Seriously, people can downplay Nintendo all they want. Nintendo doesn't just do the same game over and over again, as Timon/Pumbaa fan believes. How could you know that, if you don't even play them? What is Sony and Microsoft doing?! They are making sequels to their franchises, and that's fine. Same as Nintendo. As long as the sequel actually improves on the previous one, bring them on. In fact, EVERY single Mario game that Nintendo has ever created has been an improvement, mostly in the way the game is played.

All in all, Nintendo has got my vote. In fact, as TM2-Megatron pointed out, a majority of the press coming out from E3 is that Nintendo won the show, hands down, and that Wii is the system to beat.

[magicalwands]

PS3 when the price comes way down after 1-2 years. I'm cheap.

[TM2-Megatron]

I know people like MMOne and TM2 will say graphics aren't everything, and I do agree. But the PS3 and the 360 are about more than graphics, its just people focus on the graphics more.

Oblivion is a stunning game - it has 35 square miles filled with thousands of objects. Each object can be moved, knocked over, taken... and it remembers. Not just for 10 minutes, or 2 hours. For the lifetime of that game. Also each object has realistic physical properties. For a laugh, stand at the top of a hill and drop your items and watch them tumble down the hill, or if you're feeling really daring, drag a dead body up and toss it over... Ahhh, hours of pointless fun. Not that I'm that sad, honest. I've only thrown two dead bodies down a hill (and a wolf).

LucasArts' upcoming Indiana Jones game is the same. It uses the processing power of the machines to not only create A.I. but also physical properties and reactions for every object in the virtual environment - animate or inanimate.

Obviously there are great games for these systems (like Oblivion), although technically this one is also available for the PC. Personally, that's always been a major factor keeping my from getting an XBox... most of its best exclusive games are also available for the PC. And if that upcoming Indiana Jones game is anything like the last few games released based on that franchise, it'll be available for the PC as well.

Yes, out of all the games at E3, Nintendo had the ones that actually looked the most fun. But at the same time, the PS3 and the 360 had the ones that looked like they would have the most depth (I can't see the Wii ever doing an Oblivion-type game for example). And hey, the bigger consoles can do fun too! It's just for now, most developers are getting carried away by the possibilities available to them and are going for realism more than fun.

Sure, they could do fun, but I've rarely seen it... they both seem to focus on the more realistic games, and usually more violent ones as well (although Gamecube had its fair share of T and M games). As I said before, many of these more typically realistic games (or similar ones) are available for the PC... and that's what I mainly expect of my PC gaming. For me, however, I expect console gaming to be different from run-of-the-mill computer games (which, with a few exceptions, are what XBox and Playstation offer)... and Nintendo has almost always offered that with each of their systems.