I'm a converted Xbox user, and I'm stoked to get into all the games I've missed. Infamous 2, Heavy Rain, MGS, Last of Us, etc. I think the collection of exclusives is peerless - Sony definitely delivered.

THAT BEING SAID...

I totally understand why people have a love/hate relationship with the PS3.

The super slim version that I got looks and feels awful - far more cheap than I ever imagined. The tradeoff for the 500gb harddrive at $300 I'm sure. I also got the whole box home and open before realizing I needed to go and get an HDMI cable. Not a huge deal, but it does seem a little crazy at this stage in the game.

The controller continues to suck, but I remain beyond psyched for the new dual shock. The fast charge, low weight and long battery life are great, but the triggers feel hilariously bad, and it carries over the somewhat cheap feeling of the console itself.

The interface and speed of the ecosystem are also troubled - things you take for granted with Xbox. Downloading in background has been giving me problems, everything seems hitchy and slow and generally just bothersome to navigate. But PS+ is a vastly better value than XBL and its very satisfying to throw free things onto your harddrive with abandon.

All things considered, I can see why Microsoft was able to gain ground this last generation and why Sony had to do a bit of an apology tour to set the table for the PS4. It's a fine gameplaying machine, but I do see a massive difference in style, flow and feel between the aging PS3 and the Vita. I think it's a sign Sony is heading in the right direction for the coming generation. I would be curious to see what kind of a corporate culture change there has been since the PS3 design.

All in all, very glad I bought it and I feel like I got a good value - but I do see the flaws and where Sony can easily improve. What a difference a generation makes (hopefully)

You didn`t even post a picture of all the xbox stuff you traded into gamestop :(

Congrats I guess, but at this point I would wait to get a PS4 and just see if any of the PS3 exclusives will be on their streaming service.

I did actually trade in my 360 and controllers for the Vita.

I was originally on that line of thought, but Sony has been so non committal about what will be offered and when. Plus I legitimately want to experience the Last of Us and GTA5 regardless of platform.

Around 2008 when I still had a Xbox, the battery casing on the controller fell apart and I had to fix it in place with duct tape. At that point I swore not to buy anything that uses disposable batteries ever again.

I don't really get why people don't like the XMB, I think it's vastly superior to the Xbox 360 UI. Easy to find stuff and very fast. But yeah downloads suck

I dunno, the XMB has always made much more sense to me than whatever you call the Xbox interface.

That said, the store fucking sucks. It's a real shame, because before the update the store was super fast and easy to navigate. Now it's slow as molasses and actually gives you less information at-a-glance than before.

Have fun though, you have a plethora of amazing exclusives to play through before Consolemageddon happens.

Yeah - word about the XMB. Always found it easy and fast. Download times are the real bitch.

@mercutio123: it takes about an hour to load up other peoples trophies in game. thats the biggest example i can think of but its very slow overall, especially in game

XMB is awful when playing games. It sucks up a lot of resources and runs like shit when you're playing a game that is making the PS3 work overtime (like Last of Us). I like it as a home menu but not as something to use in game, it needs something different for in-game use like the way the 360 does.

This is actually really insightful about the changes that have happened in Sony.

There is a thread about it here.

@sdharrison: re: the controllers

There are plenty of relatively cheap X-box like controllers available for the PS3. I got one from Target about a year or so ago for about twenty bucks.

but yeah the PS3 has some definite flaws.

I think the controllers for both current-gen consoles are something of an acquired taste. I used to prefer the 360 controller back when I was playing most of my multi-platform titles on 360, but as developers got a better handle on PS3 and started releasing superior PS3 ports, I started spending more time playing games on the PS3 and now I don't really prefer one controller over the other. They're just different. I like the way the 360 controller feels in my hand, but the d-pad is total crap (though the "transformer" controllers improve on it a bit). Once I got used to playing shooters on my PS3 using L1/R1 instead of the triggers, I actually started to prefer the lower amount of travel on the PS3 controllers; it makes shooting feel much more responsive than on the 360, just because your fingers have to move much less to zoom/fire.

The PS3 interface is far, far quicker than the Xbox 360 dash in any of its incarnations. Absolutely no idea what you are talking about there.

They ruined the PS Store with that god awful update and the amount of system updates the PS3 seems to get is quite ridiculous too.

edit: and the in-game XMB, while quite poor, still isn't much worse speed wise than the guide on the 360 while in-game.

God damn in Cerny didn't just make me a fanboy. He's like a real human being who somehow rose to corporate power. I definitely want to experience his vision for a gaming console. Great video.

And to those saying they prefer the interface - I'm not saying its broken or unusable. But all I can speak to is my first few hours using it and downloading things from the store. I experienced a lot of hitching, failed downloads, inability to download in the background, etc. I have no clue if these are recent issues or longstanding.

@mercutio123: I suppose it's pretty easy to navigate once you've been exposed to it a bit, but for a more casual, non--tech individual, the PS3 interface is kind of disjointed. If you don't realize that you have to scroll over to a certain category before scrolling up or down, it can be confusing.

I think it is much more intuitive to have a screen with multiple boxes that rotates through a few thumbnails to give the user an idea of what they need to click on. The new PS4 interface is far superior than what we are currently used to on PS3.

I don't know if I agree with this. I switch between the 360 and the PS3 pretty frequently and I always feel like I'm waiting for the XMB to do things. The top-level menus in the XMB are fast, but the any time you actually tell it to do something, it takes forever to load. You can tell that the store on the PS3 is a totally separate application that needs to load, whereas the store on the 360 just feels like it's part of the dash and ready to go.

I don't use the in-game XMB much, but when I have, it's orders of magnitude slower than the 360 equivalent. Checking your achievements for the current game on the 360 only takes a few seconds, but checking trophies on the XMB requires you to load the XMB, wait for the icons to load, wait for trophies to sync (ugh), and then for the trophies to load. This usually takes so long, I end up getting up for a drink or taking a pee break while my PS3 chugs along.

I think this is basically a result of the split memory pool on the PS3 (256MB/256MB CPU/GPU) and the PS3 OS having to operate with very low amounts of memory while games are running, so hopefully it won't be an issue on the PS4.

Damn, does the super slim really feel that cheap? Guess if my Fat ever dies I will try looking for a regular slim. I think it's the best iteration. The new super slims look terrible and that sucks to hear about the cheapness.

But yeah, I do kind of find the XMB to have way too many options. The list for the options is insanely long or something, and then there's lists in those. While it is fluid when browsing the different options, when you actually select an option things chug. Maybe I'm just more used to the 360 dashboard but I can get things done a lot quicker on it than the XMB. One thing that I cannot STAND about XMB is how slow it is when you're playing a games (when you press PS while a game is on). Syncing trophies, saving, and basically doing anything related to profiles takes so long to load around every corner.

Also, fuck the Store. It's a nightmare of choppy menus and insane loading times.

Yeah the XMB and PSN store felt really terrible to me when i went back to the ps3 for the first time in a few years to play TLOU.

He isn't exactly a normal human being though. He finished high school at 15 then started studying physics at Berkley. I think it is pretty safe to say the man is a genius.

I've never had it take as long as an hour, but it does hitch up from time to time. Longest I've ever had to wait couldn't have been more than a minute, assuming it doesn't freeze. That sucks, dude.

Ohhhh man I remember getting my PS3 super late this gen and it was awesome. So many friggin' great games.....

@schreiberty: I wonder what happened to the trophies. Mine takes forever to load too, and this is the second ps3 I am on (last one was a launch that probably would have lasted forever--another good thing about the PS3 over the 360 is that the hardware is more dependable--if I didn't get a disc stuck and took the whole thing apart beyond the drive out of curiosity. I probably broke the seal on the conductive paste on the chip). They used to only take maybe up to 30 seconds, Now I never ever bother checking out my trophies or people profiles.

With the new system offering a better controller, a (hopefully) snappier interface, and a platform that's easier to develop for, all they need to do is get their online stuff going to Xbox Live's level. Quicker downloads, etc. Then I'll be able to go several years before getting the Xbox One for its exclusives.