We headed over to the local Media Markt store for checking out the new Sony game console PlayStation3, it is currently my favorite topic with one of my teachers. I was shocked to see a big load of PS3s on one place and thought “Wow, maybe they don’t have such a big success as everyone expected”. But a quick talk with one of the employees proved me wrong. They have sold over a 100 consoles since its launch on March 23. That is a pretty impressive number if you consider the high price of 899.- Swiss Francs (740.-$ / 555.- €), the lack of games & HDTV in households and the small customer range. And with 900.- CHF you have no games (price range: 90.- to 100.- CHF), only 1 controller (no vibrataion, second controller is 77.- CHF). You spend at least a thousand bucks just to play it (and if you don’t have a “HD Ready” TV you better not think about it).
I’ve also found out, that you can hook up your Xbox360 HD-DVD drive on one of the PS3’s USB-ports and watch HD-DVD movies right on it, no need for installing any software, drivers or other operating systems. That is a little punch to the Xbox360. And the video quality is supposed to be much better because you have true high definition with it, not some sort of up scaling as the Xbox360 does because of a missing HDMI port. So for 1200.- Swiss Francs you get a player for both high-definition formats, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Maybe I really should start saving money for a PlayStation3 or find a nice sponsor (I would put stickers on it, put your company name on my car and on my laptop! Please mail me if you are interested :-)). That is also the reason why Media Markt sells HD-DVD movies in the same shelf as Blu-rays.
And to my readers who like to use mod chips: That will take a while (read: at least until Christmas). It is still a Cell CPU with up to eight SPEs. But what do you want, you can already install Linux on it and use it as a “workstation”, server or media center system (has anybody tried LinuxMCE on it?).