Astoundingly, these same chuckleheads passed up the fantastic Sega Dreamcast as well. Unprecedented in the history of gaming, a superior piece of affordable hardware loaded with a solid library of instant-classic AAA games was beaten into the ground like a mouthy crack whore. It was like the black and white Gameboy beating the Lynx, pretending for a moment that the Lynx had more than half a game worth trying to remember the name of (Slime World, incidentally).

With next to no replayable titles in their library, Sony released an overpriced successor. Burdened with non-game related features and no memorable launch titles, the Playstation 2 was primed to finish off the under-beloved Dreamcast. Sony had however retained full backwards compatibility with the shoddy PS1 library, and done their best not to improve their controller in any way. They believed that gamers had come to expect that their buttons be named “triangle” and “hexagon” and “picture of a dog with a fruit basket on its head – no the other one where he's begging for a bacon strip”. They also seemed to believe that the once perfected d-pad could be substituted indefinitely with diagonal-free blister nubs of sadistic origins.

On top of this, they under-shipped at launch forcing most people to buy online at ramped up prices, and spawning a new age of console launch gray market profiteering. However: They included DVD playback. At the time few people had a DVD player. Never mind that it was a bad DVD player, it was still an affordable DVD player and it included a game system everyone could play their cherished collection of Madden 97-2001 on.

Sony again carried this momentum past two more superior consoles with better signal-to-noise game ratios. They had hoped to repeat this success with the exact same strategy for their creatively named Playstation 3 console. It was bigger, badder, more expensive and included a feature they wanted everyone to want, Blu-Ray movie playback. So it was with great joy that I watched them fall flat on their face -- The giant tripping over underdog Nintendo, and choking on Microsoft's ceaseless cash bukkake.

Well, I bought one.

What?

Let's be fair here (says the man who spent five paragraphs detailing baseless decade-old hate for all things Playstation): In spite of their blunders, Sony managed to do some things very right. I also appreciate that they have tried not to equate their business plan to robbing the customer while taking a steaming shit on his head*. In regards to the latter (and a sweet deal to get $100 of a PS3), I bought the PS3 mainly because I can use my X-Arcade joystick on it, no fuss. I am very much looking forward to an HD Street Fighter 4. Coupled with all the games I want that are not being released on the Wii, it was a no-brainer.

Now setting this thing up was more akin to getting a new PC than a game console. Update, install, download, hook up , configure, wonder what I got myself into... I don't think I did anything but watch 1080p progress bars for my first few sessions with it.  But with all that complexity comes some pretty nice surprises.

Nice surprise #1: USB Controllers?

When I stumbled on this, I was floored. I'd read you could use USB keyboards and hard drives with the thing, no problem. But for kicks, I plugged in an old Nyko AirFlo USB windows controller I had laying around. I had done the same thing with the Wii, hoping against hope that Nintendo was cool enough to support USB controllers for Virtual Console games (they weren't BTW).

Wow.

Not only does the controller function flawlessly, but all the buttons on it are mapped exactly as you would expect. I now have a free player 2 controller (so long as the game I'm playing doesn't need any analog trigger mischief or tilt sensing). Super Stardust HD co-op anyone? Kudos, Sony.

Nice surprise #2: Nice fucking DVD player yo!

I'd heard what a great upscaler the PS3 had, and to be honest didn't figure I'd even notice. That sort of thing is more important when you have an LCD set. But damn! We'd rented Jurrassic Park from Netflix for the sole purpose of listening to Michael J. Nelson and "Weird Al" Yankovic make fun of it, only to have our hopes dashed by a scratched-to-fuck DVD. I wanted to make sure it was the disk and not the Rifftrax player so I popped it into the PS3. All the scenes it was crapping out on played perfectly. So I popped it back in the computer to triple check against another DVD program on a 2nd DVD drive, and it skipped in the same spots as before. Must be that super duper blue laser beam in the PS3!  Pewpewpew!

What's more, the movie looked really freaking good. Not that a PC is much of an upscaling DVD player, but damn. When I notice a difference that says something, since I'm not good at things.

Nice surprise #3: Blu-Ray fucking won?

I have to admit, I was hoping HD-DVD would win out, but that was probably just pent up underdog rage from having to watch all the great consoles go down before their time. So owning a Blu-Ray player is actually pretty nice. 1080p movies look great, and I have the option of actually renting them.

Nice surprise #4: It's upgradable!

Unlike the 360, Sony let's you drop in any old laptop sized SATA hard drive you want. I bought the 40gb version and Sony details in the PS3 manual how I can drop in a 500gb hard drive if I feel the urge. Now this thing really feels like a computer.

Yeah, but...

The other side of the coin is the “Where's the games?” question. Well, I'm ok with that. Super Stardust HD is bad ass (As otherworldly as it is to see an Amiga franchise reinvented on a Playstation). I still bought the thing for $300 and I'm getting to play games I'd otherwise miss out on like Grand Theft Auto IV, Resident Evil 4, Soul Calibur 4 and of course Street Fighter 4. In the mean time, I've replaced my enormously shitty DVD player and have upgraded a bunch of titles in my Netflix queue to HD.

Sony, you got a lot of (well deserved) flak this time around, and hopefully learned some lessons. But I give credit where credit is due. I'm happily surprised at this system, and if you had to remove PS2 compatibility so I could afford it, well your strategy worked.

The real surprise here? I waited in line for 12 hours for a Wii. I was the guy evangelizing how it would rock the world to all the doubters before the release. I've argued Nintendo is the only console manufacturer still making games. I was laughing all the way through the PS3 launch.  Well, I've barely turned the Wii on since I got the PS3. I've sold a couple friends on the thing. It's official: I love my PS3. But then, I always did have a soft spot for the underdog.

*Microsoft and the Xbox 360 hookery: disallowing 3rd party controllers, charging $100 for wireless networking, charging $180 for a 120gb hard drive, pay-to-play online , 16% hardware failure rate, broken marketplace DRM, and forcing developers to charge for freebies.  But don't get me wrong, if/when they live up to their promise of making Live Marketplace the “Youtube of games” (and lowers the price by about $150) I'll be all over it.

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