I finally caved today and got a PS3. I had been waiting for the price drop, and then I was looking for an excuse. I finally stopped looking, and with Kat’s suggestion, pulled the trigger. I am heading on a small vacation next week and wanted a small digital camera for the event (my digital camera broke a few months ago and I never bothered to replace it) so it was one of those weird “Hey, while we’re at Best Buy, why not finally pick up a PS3” kind of things. Kat’s cool like that. I never did anything to celebrate the new job, so this was a cool way to do that.
I didn’t buy any games; I was more interested in the downloadable stuff (and the store didn’t have Buzz in stock). Unfortunately, the PlayStation Store didn’t like my credit card info — the same card I used to buy the PS3, mind you — so I couldn’t buy anything at all. Seems like other people have had this billing problem and it might be something I can fix later. Or maybe not. So…damn. But Sleeping Beauty on Blu-ray — which I had never seen, despite being a Disney fan — looks very nice at 1080p.
So here’s where the the tinfoil hat kicks in. This evening I turned on my 360 (to make sure the memory unit with my Gamertag on it that accidentally went through the wash was still okay), downloaded a firmware update and…poof. The video just died; it’s like the red ring of death in that heat causes it and many of the same components are involved, but it costs $100 to repair. This was an Elite console, so it wasn’t Jasper, it was Falcon — but it wasn’t a launch unit either. I don’t see the point in repairing it, so I will go back to using my launch console. It has a picky DVD drive (it won’t play Halo 3, Guitar Hero III, or Lips), but it works most of the time. I think an Arcade unit is in my future.
So…the day the PS3 comes into the house, my 360 dies. Coincidence or conspiracy?