I think the extent of this will be seen when the next generation of consoles arrives. I've got a PS3 and I'm not going to sell it and get a 360 because of this. BUT it may have impact on the decision when the PS3 has reached the end of it's lifespan! @IndianaPwns39: Sony definitely seems to have a lot to answer for, as reports indicate that software they were using didn't have all the necessary patches installed! Which means any n00b can use existing known (and already fixed) exploits. The other idea that pops up is that becuase Sony thought the PS3 was unhackable, they didn't really put much effort into secure communications. Remember that BEFORE the whole Anonymous thing there were already reports that when signing in, the PS3 sent the cc number UNENCRYPTED over the network! I just hope they've learned a lot from this! But I doubt it...

@gerhardtscriven "If consumers really boycott those games where it obvious that the honest user is being screwed over, it will quickly be the end of this ridiculous crap. Wish everyone would see it this way :-)" Erm... no. If a game doesn't sell that well, it's blamed on piracy. It's never the publishers fault, so it's never blamed on DRM (or the fact the game itself is just crap). (which is also partially true, because the general user doesn't know what kind of DRM crap is installed on his system). Also the piracy stability issue: a single check at first install isn't intrusive and doesn't affect stability. But that's also not what people complain about! Rootkits being installed and tons of resident programs (which DO slow down the general PC performance as each version installs it's own resident program) are what is causing performance and stability issues! Also, I know that in the past I used cracks to just get around having to put the disc in the drive every time I wanted to play a game! So even though I have the original game, I'd still prefer to use a crack!

I think thearticle should have included Windows Media Player. It does a decent job, it just fails on my ps3 when trying to get a list of MP3's. Also, Nero MediaHome that came as part of Nero 7 (it's now a separate package!) worked okay, just transcoding was strange as it first wanted to transcode the whole file before starting to stream it...

@chemeleon_789: "You can actually get roughly equivalent performance to XP if you disable unnecessary ones" I don't agree. The XP benchmarks were done without much tweaking. So in that case you should benchmark against a XP with all unnecessary processes disabled. But I think it's shocking that MS promotes their "Games for Windows" brand, pushing people to switch to Vista while it isn't nearly as good as XP for playing games. Hmm... would they REALLY be only after my money then??? ;)

@InFaMoUsInTeNsE: So what do you expect? "Thank you Sony, I'll gladly pay 599 euro's for a machine which somehow is cheaper to produce but costs more than during launch 3 months ago"? For me, this isn't about BC. It's about paying a higher price for a machine that's cheaper to produce, well over 3 months after launch. I hate Microsoft. I was really hoping Sony would come through. But they didn't. Personally, there's nothing for the PS3 that I want. For comparison... there's nothing on the Wii that I want and more than a year after launch there are a few 360 games I want. Quote from you: Originaly posted by forum member: "Whats funny is that they didn't even review the guy who does the playstation newsletters for gamespot. Surely his opinion would have been in support for Sony and thats probaly why the didn't get his opinion." They've got the top ranked people. They don't ask the 360 people. They don't ask the Wii people. They've asked editors and senior editors. So why ask the PlayStation guy? Makes absolutely NO SENSE unless you ask ALL WRITERS to give their view. And those things are what give people a rank of "Fanboy". Because they focus on something and declare it's all a fraud without thinking about it... There's also a distinct difference between the first and second page. The americans on the second page state that they hope the new version comes to the US so prices will hopefully drop. Okay. Read the above again and think about it. They hope the new, cheaper to produce version will come to their shores so prices will drop. BUT WE PAY MORE FOR IT! I'm not going to buy a Blue-Ray player because I don't need it and it's to expensive. And I'm not going to byy a game console that doesn't have games I like. What's so difficult to understand in that! I can make a guaranteed reservation for a PS3 even today (well, everything's closed, so tomorrow). Why's that do you think... because everybody wants a PS3? NO, because we're being ripped off and it's too expensive! And about "there's not really much to get worked up about now". They're mostly x-platform games. So why would I want to play that on an expensive PS3 instead of my PC? Rainbow 6? Played it. With mouse and keyboard. No auto-aim or whatever! "Yeah, but the PS3 version looks better". Yeah right, Like I'm going to stand still and admire the scenery. The high price of the PS3 and the long wait mean the PS3 has to be better than the 360. Like 33% better to justify it's price tag. And it's going to take some months before we know if it can outshine the 360. I guess GTA4 will be a good measuring device. Coming on all platforms. On the other hand... if you decide to remove a probably reasonably cheap chip... you don't have a lot of faith in your product! I mean, Sony should expect to sell a lot of consoles and then a lot of games (and micro transactions, movies, music, etc) to cover the costs. But obviously they don't really believe all that much that they have a winner... so they already start cutting costs. Which, to me, is a VERY BAD SIGN. And that's not fanboyism... that's logic thinking from a business point of view. They had to do a total redesign. Means new prints, new firmware, etc. To get rid of what. A $20 chip? Seems unlikely... so I wouldn't be surprised if they'd cut some more corners. But still, everybody will just have to wait and see till after x-mas 07 to see how the PS3 does... But they'd better do it fast, or I'm off to buy a 360...

@Andrew_ribbons: "The coding in Vista is very sound, i've noticed very few bugs" In other words: crap as usual! If you've found bugs in a few days, then what are the months of testing for? I can understand Vista looks better... but I doubt if it's more "user friendly", since I guess they tried to increase the "validity checking" bit to ridiculous heights! Or what about an upgrade that can only be done from an activated XP installation. So if something goes wrong (and I am very confident Vista has enough dodgy code that something WILL go wrong) I first need to install XP again, activate it and upgrade to Vista again. That's about as user UNfriendly as you can get! If I'd do a Vista install, plug-in the XP disc, type in the code that should be sufficient. But this single point is enough for me to see if I can switch to an illegal copy of Vista (and I currently have 3 PC's running legal copies of XP!). As with DRM and other copy protections, it's legitimate users that get trouble with it! I think it's time Micro$oft starts to listen to what the users want.

@Yodlin The problem is that on one side you have hardcore gamers who want everything to look fantastic. And spend loads of money on their system. On the other side people with moderate PC's who just want to play a game once in a while. Even from the replies you can get that "it looks great on an average system". it just depends on how much of a sucker for eye-candy you are. Oblivion runs okay on my system. You're just tweaking to get a good middle between performance and visuals (which also depends on your own preferences).

I think everybody can stop moaning. It's like SPAM: if DLC gets them more than it costs, it will not go away. So if it cost $20 to make and 25 people buy it... I think you get the idea... And as with ring tones... if a LOT of people buy it... they will just increase the prices! And will remove more and more content from the games...

@Bored1ed "You would know that the DS has come out with A LOT More entertaining games than the PSP." That's just a matter of taste. Ever since the early days, I just didn't like those "typical Nintendo" games. Mario, Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, another Mario, even clones like Sonic. So Nintendo fanboys will obviously find Nintendo stuff more entertaining. I basically bought the PSP to kill 9-hour flights and boring hotel nights. Just because it visually is a lot better than the DS. And for the few times I use it, there are more than enough games out that I like (I've got 8 games, 1 of which came free with the PSP!). And on top of that, I use it as an MP3 player :) (and I don't use it for video...)