Confessions of a Sony Hater

I’m currently celebrating my 17th year of not buying any SONY products, with the notable exception of the PS3.

As previously blogged, I didn’t want to buy a PS3, but I did want' a blu-ray player. The PS3 was the only logical choice. It was among the cheapest blu-ray players, plus its a gaming system. No brainer. Today, you can get a blu-ray player for $100 less than a PS3, but that still seems cost ineffective to me. (Unless, of course, you have 0 interest in gaming or any of the other features of the PS3)

My primary gaming system has continued to be the XBOX 360. But, lately I’ve had a lot of opportunity to use my PS3: Resistance, Resistance 2, Uncharted, and the trial of BIG LITTLE PLANET (or something like that).

As a SONY hater, I’ve had to come to terms with certain facts.

#1: I’m not afraid of the PS3. Every time I turn on the XBOX, I hold my breath and hope for the best. With the PS3, I just turn it on.

#2: No matter how you look at it, things just look better on the PS3. This one isn’t really a fair comparison, though. The PS3 is hooked up to my computer monitor via HDMI. The XBOX is on a 7 year old 61 inch Toshiba with a component connection. We’re not comparing apples to apples here, but even that considered, I think the PS3 just looks better

#3: This is the latest realization that prompted this blog entry. I had been saying that the PS3 is a better machine, but I thought the software for the XBOX was better. Last night I hooked up the PS3 to my router and downloaded all of the updates. I gotta say, its a very nice interface. Its crisp and professional looking. Maybe I like it because its different, but I think I like it because its very good.

The core problem here is that I love Microsoft and I hate Sony. I work with Microsoft products every day, and I am a die-hard fan. Despite that, the PS3 appears to be the better machine on all fronts. Maybe it doesn’t have as many good games, but the games it has are gorgeous. I downloaded the 1gig demo of LITTLE BIG PLANET yesterday, and was blown away by it after just a couple minutes. (I haven’t actually played it much yet, but the presentation exceptional.) The visuals on UNCHARTED are completely gorgeous, and I’ve been told that UNCHARTED 2 is even better. I didn’t care for MGS4, but I thought that was the best looking game I had played until that point.

People who know me well know how I feel about SONY. My position hasn’t changed. My problem isn’t with their products, it with how they support them. Well, at least, how they supported them 17 years ago. Now you can return anything to the retailer and not worry about it, but when I had the VCR incident, such conveniences had not yet been established. I was just a wee lad with nay a dollar in my satchel, and they robbed me of it.

So, will my grudge against SONY ever end? Sure. If they send me a check for $400 to compensate for the piece of crap VCR they sold me in 1992, then I can move on. Until then, my association is limited to this neat little thing called the PS3

Incidentally, my so-called “devoted wife” has recently demonstrated a decreased commitment to my clearly established ethical guidelines pertaining to SONY and SONY products. She bought a PSP because, apparently, we had too much empty space in our nightstand. Intense therapy got us past that. More recently, she bought a SONY digital card reader. Really? Ok, the PSP is a unique device. If you want to buy a PSP that you’re never going to use, then you don’t have a choice but to buy the SONY version since that’s the only version there is. But a card reader? There are so many to choose from… why choose that? It hurts.