At Christmas I finally joined the next gen gaming crowd, by getting a Playstation 3.

Over the last few years my gaming has been largely PC-based, although I did get a Nintendo Wii when they were released, so this console’s been interesting to play around with properly.   The advantage of coming to the console fairly late on is that many of the big games are now available cheaply either on the Platinum range or second-hand, so I’ve been having a lot of fun playing Call of Duty World at War, Fallout 3 (previously played on my PC, but my PC struggled with it graphically and this is the Game of the Year edition with the extra content), Batman Arkham Asylum and others.

The graphics look stunning of course, even on my non-HD, non-flatscreen trustworthy 28″ CRT TV, although I will say I’ve noticed a problem whereby some text isn’t easily legible as its clearly meant to be read on a higher-resolution TV (the Playstation store is particularly guilty of this).

Outside of gaming, its been interesting to play with a console with online capabilities, and see how the line between PC and console gaming has blurred.  The dashboard which allows you to track your online friends is nice and sending messages back and forward is pretty painless.  Likewise getting online to play is a breeze as your Playstation ID is just used to manage things.  Of course, like PC gaming, the online option means that games can now have patches available. Its interesting to note that this isn’t necessarily a good thing.  On inserting a new game, if a new version is found you’ve then got to install the update.  Given some of them can be a couple of hundred MB that can mean that your console ends up tied up downloading content when you just wanted to try out your new game.  And on Christmas Day, when I was wanting to try out a bunch of new games I’d received, it could get old a bit quickly.

That said, the fact the online stuff also opens up new content for the games.  Downloadable content and micro-payments for games have become a big thing since being adopted by the console market, and while the micro-payments in particular may be controversial, I’m largely happy with things as long as it doesn’t feel like the user is being taken advantage of, and the downloadable content is genuinely extra material and not necessary to enjoy the game you’re already paid for.  I’ve picked up a few extras for the games I’ve got, most of which were free or only a couple of pounds, although so far I’ve found the £7.99 asking price for the Call of Duty map packs a bit too much.

The other aspect of the console that’s really grabbed me is its position as a media centre.  Now, amongst the people I know, most of them that have PS3s primarily bought them as a cheap Blueray player, so Sony targeting that market was a good move, however beyond that aspect of the console, it also supports various other media type stuff.

While I’ve not yet setup a proper media server, the ability, for example, to copy video files to a USB stick and play them on the big TV via the PS3 is a very welcome feature.  Of course, once I setup a media server on my main PC, the fact that I’ll be able to connect to it via the PS3 and stream all my videos to the big TV is great, but in the meantime using a USB stick is an easy temporary solution.  Likewise the (fairly recent) addition of the BBC iPlayer to the PS3 dashboard works well and delivers a great high-quality catchup service (very handy as I’m not on Virgin Media, who I know can get the iPlayer through their set-top boxes).  While I was pretty much expecting the games side of the console, the media centre functionality’s been a nice surprise, and a good bonus piece of functionality.

All in all, while I was originally quite critical of the PS3 launch, having used the console I have to say I’m extremely impressed by it.  The quality of the games I’ve got is very high, and the online and media centre capabilities of the console are well implemented.  Granted, I’ve never used the X-box 360, but I’m very happy with my PS3.