The New Road

Green Wii

Not only is the Wii more fun to play than the PS3 and the XBOX 360, it's also greener. Turns out the Wii draws about a tenth of the power of the PS3 and the 360. Even when you are playing games it's only drawing about 30 watts. And when it's idle it goes down to 13 watts. Amazing.

On the video game note, Eric brought over his PS3 on the weekend. Megan and Lori were up with Pam, Yvonne and Josephine, so I was able to see a little of the consoles marquee title, "Resistance: Fall of Man". It was indeed technically impressive. Vastly superior to anything I'd seen on the XBOX 360. And the use of the big screen through HDMI, and the sound system over the fiber channel, is enough to give any hardcore gamer a serious case of the drools.

But is it fun? Certainly I don't think PS3 is the family console of choice. The Wii games are just a lot more fun for the family. And the controllers get you up and moving around. Frankly, we haven't stopped playing Wii Sports since the day I got it. And we still like it. The Wii has far and away recovered it's cost in just the few months we have owned it.

For a serious single gamer who wants long involved games that suck his (or her) life away for very long periods of time, and who have a killer TV and sound system, PS3 is the way to go. It feels far more polished to me than the 360. The graphics are better. The Blu-Ray DVD playback will knock your damn socks off. And the titles, while extremely limited in number, seem solid. Plus they compete on the network level by providing downloads and all the yadda yadda yadda rest.

If Sony drops the price substantially I might actually think about getting one to replace the DVD player. The Blu-Ray DVD output is just so jaw-droppingly insanely sweet that it's almost a shame to not have it hooked onto the TV.