Mine is a Feb '06 unit mfg in Jan '06 ... it freezes up on me randomly in the dashboard, during live arcade, and specifically during GRAW2. I called ms support, they had me perform the clear cache trick and told me to go play the box while they held and come back and report when it froze again. I played for 20 minutes and it didn't freeze, and of course no one was on the line when i came back to report it. next time i played it froze 3 times. This is totally crappy customer support. I don't want a game console where if i forget to X, X, LB, RB, X, X to get it to work its going to freeze. Now I have to call back again, going to have to fight to have them have me send it back.

My nephew (recovering from brain cancer) really wants an Elite, despite me telling him about the failure rate, so I got one for him for his graduation along with the $80 2 year replacement plan from BB. At least for 2 years he'll just be able to bring it back to the store if it breaks.

hitting weak points on giant enemy crabs ? sounds like Lost Planet to me.

Well seeing that NBC/Universal is exclusively HD-DVD I may have to get one if Battlestar Galactica will only come out on HD-DVD.

You don't have to buy the $100 overpriced crap cables from Monster. You can find quality hdmi cables for $35 or less. The price on Monster products is pure margin, with any extra costs going to marketing as opposed to quality and quality control. With the PS3 you're not stuck into having to buy hdmi cables from Sony or Monster or anyone else. And your PS2 component out works with the PS3 as well. Not as good as including component out in the box but not bad either.

um the ads show actual ps3 games running how is that peddling potentials

17, I would think that parents want to limit their children's exposure to sexual themes they're not yet ready to handle in general, not just homosexual. That's where the bigotry lies. As is, the ad was placed in a gay magazine targeted towards gay adults so no harm no foul on Sony's part.

Whether the ad is effective in reaching the target audience is another argument altogether.... obviously the ad is not to be taken too seriously its a bunch of steamy singing firemen for Pete's sake and does convey a sense of "party fun" that the game is supposed to deliver. So lighten up yall.

My tinfoil pointy hat theory is that if Microsoft perceives the console business as one that threatens either of its monopolies that its using the Xbox to poison the well of profitability of the games business to weaken its competitors and thus the threat to Windows/Office. Hence, the sucking up of game development resources into a money losing pit. However, to counter this theory, MS has made strides to make the hardware itself profitable (or at least lose less money) this generation around and basically dumped original Xbox production / support / development which were never going to be profitable. So for the industry's sake, I hope that Xbox is profitable by FY 2008 at the latest and that MS demonstrates its committment to the gaming audience.

The video game market is a profitable expanding market so its natural that it is constantly attracting new players.

Microsoft is in it, at least partially, to protect their 2 monopolies, Windows and Office. If people can use game consoles to surf the internet and email friends and manage photos and mp3s and play games then why do they need Windows. PS3 and Wii both run Linux. A PS3 is basically a $2000 spec PC for $500-$600 (plus cost of mouse/keyboard not included). Its not a huge threat, businesses aren't going to be installing PS3s, and IBM/Sony/Toshiba would welcome a Cell version of Windows. I've noticed that Sony dropped the low end RB series from their VAIO desktop line, much to my disappointment as I would recommend that system to friends. But it looks like the PS3 is filling in that space. Within the 1st year we will be seeing full linux distributions running on PS3 with office productivity suites -- multi PS3 households will soon develop to be used for both entertainment and productivity needs. This would be the worst outcome for Microsoft, I don't know if this is what Sony intends but technically its possible.

My God, its full of SingStars!

its amazing to read all these "expert" opinions on what can fit on a DVD9 disk. Procedural Synthesis is like magic, you dont even need a disk any more 'cause it can do procedural synthesis. The whole game can be done with 1m HD textures and Procedural Synthesis and voice files that only take up 256k each. Why, its amazing that they didn't stick with a CD drive!

Truth is that none of you know what you're really talking about technically, if you did you'd be too busy working 100 hour weeks actually programming / developing games. Maybe some of you looked some stuff up on wikipedia, but mostly the talk here is all a bunch of talking points that don't really say anything, no matter whats your platform of choice.