And so finally PS3 consoles touch down in the UK (plus, of course, elsewhere across Europe). If you’ve got yours already, have completed the unboxing ritual and are now putting it through its paces, let us know you initial thoughts.
Please share any tips and first reactions through commenting here. Any problems you’re encountering, also share them here, as you may get some quickfire solutions.
Why is there no Tekken on the German store? The biggest download game for the start (besides GT, okay), and it’s missing for us? Why?
Comment by Weblaus — Mar 23, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
Actually I have a problem. I bought a Blu Ray remote and it won’t pair. I’ve followed the instructions repeatedly and no luck. I’ve also changed the batteries to every pair I own and still no luck :S I think it may be ‘duff’
Comment by Ben Furneaux — Mar 23, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
I’m over the moon about my PS3!
I have submitted feedback and photos directly. I’ve had some problems connecting my PSP to the PS3 for remote play. The PSP is not able to find the access point (PS3) when scanning. In fact, my PC can’t see it either. Anyone have any ideas how to fix this? I thought maybe the access point in the PS3 is conflicting with my other access point. Maybe there’s something simpler to check first though?
Comment by reakt — Mar 23, 2007 @ 2:53 pm
im on my ps3 web browers right now typing this msg. im loving it so far, not sure about the you remote issue Ben, mine paired up fine. got motorstorm, genji and R:FOM.
My PSN: TheDirector
Comment by thedirector — Mar 23, 2007 @ 3:01 pm
i love this soo much. i got mine last night thanks to midnight launch.
Comment by mee — Mar 23, 2007 @ 3:10 pm
I just walked down to GAME and got a replacement that paired fine. If you have any problems pairing (i.e: it won’t) like I did then just take it back.
B
Comment by Ben Furneaux — Mar 23, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
I’m very happy, i thought it wouldn’t be a big deal since i have a 360 but i feel a difference.
So … how does one know for sure if they are one of the first 500,000 to register and get Casino Royale in the mail?
Comment by Spike_Kojima — Mar 23, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
I’m more than happy with mine
one disappointing thing - how come the hd movie trailers are in prologic not dolby digital … come on sony, surely you can manage 5.1
Comment by fid — Mar 23, 2007 @ 3:53 pm
If your using the standard AV cable that came with the PS3, the games look like crap.
I mean really bad.
I spent the night waiting for launch by playing my XBOX 360 games using an RGB SCART cable to pass the time. I got my PS3 and set it up using the bundled cable and I was shocked at how bad Resistance: FoM looked, the bad guys in the distance almost look like 2D sprites rather than rendered objects. You couldn’t compare the two games.
Sony really should have bundled a RGB SCART cable for people in the UK, or a S-VIDEO cable for all of Europe and a SCART adapter for the UK.
I picked up a RGB SCART from Game and will never go back to the AV and SCART block!!
The only other complain I have is the dead zone on the SIXAXIS. I have to move the analog sticks really far to get movement in game.
Other than that everything else is great and I am happy with my new gaming kit! I am really happy with how quiet the PS3 is too, it makes the 360 sound like a jet engine!
KillerDr3w
Comment by KillerDr3w — Mar 23, 2007 @ 3:54 pm
First thoughts when I got out the box:
How shiny
A few hours later and its turned into an impressive dust magnet
I’ve played Motorstorm and VF5 and the PS3 is proving itself capable (although in those games I don’t think its done anything the competition can’t)
Blu-ray movie functionality is good
My biggest concern at the moment is that I’ve yet to play an online game of Motorstorm where people talk which for me doesn’t make for a good online experience.
Maybe headsets are an after thought for most people. A cheap usb headset bundled with the machine in the future might be a good idea.
Liven things up on the network
Comment by Sean — Mar 23, 2007 @ 3:54 pm
I got mine at Game at midnight. they were great sorted out very quickly was out of the shop with ps3 in hand within about 2 mins past midnight.
First thoughts: wow, this is amazing. The Xmb interface is very user friendly and well designed.
I have been playing Resistance, Motorstom and Virtual Fighter 5. all very good but Motorstorm stands out, the graphics are gob smacking, far better than I had expected and way in exces of anyhing Ive seen on any other platfrom. its a fun game too.
Another nice feature is folding @home, everyone should be using this. Now we can play and feel good about it.
A few minor ciriticsms, the six axis controller seemes to resposnive too movement. i tried Motorstrom and it was a lot harder to stear using the motion control than the analog sticks.Is there a way to change its sensitivty?Also I would like to see a lot more in the PS store, there is no excuse for not having loads more game and movie trailers at least.
overall though ps3 is awesome, good job my girlfriend decided to go out of town this weekend.
Comment by phil — Mar 23, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
Got mine this morning thanks to TRU and City Link.
WOW, well worth the wait.
Had a quick blast on Motorstorm (single player) and won the first game. What a fantastic fun game! Graphics are excellent.
Only problem I have is with overscan when using HDMI at 1080i on my Philips 32PF9976 LCD TV. Also, X-men III Blu-Ray seems very grainy.
On the whole I find the PS3 a far better machine than the 360 - far quieter, and far better options with easier to navigate menus.
Comment by Zoidy — Mar 23, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
Love it, LOVE IT!
I’ve submitted my review to the ThreeSpeech folks this afternoon, just, WOW!
Motorstorm will be my life this weekend I’m sure!
Comment by Pete Cullen — Mar 23, 2007 @ 4:39 pm
I have my ps3 and Resistance in a bag next to me at Work.
Its at least another 2 hours before I go home and open the thing. But I’ve remained calm till now.
(Note: The box is actually quite heavy!!)
Comment by Ali — Mar 23, 2007 @ 4:41 pm
Great so far - I’ll be submitting my review later. One thing though… bloody hell the update is taking ages, and there isnt anywhere where you can download the standalone file from - anybody willing to put it up on their webspace for me to download…? PLEASE! =]
Comment by Tom Eccles — Mar 23, 2007 @ 4:51 pm
How do you get the new firmware download? i haven’t got network, and am on internet at library and can’t firnd the firmware download on UK website??
Comment by Simon — Mar 23, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
The biggest dissapointment: NO PlayStation Shop for POLAND! And i do not speak for myself! All the ppl i know who bought PS3 today said: WTF. Are we a country SONY happens to ignore? Please do no treat us, as we were a third grade country.
Comment by arabek — Mar 23, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
Anyone installed linux yet? Any ideas how? I’d like to get it set up so I can watch xvid avi files…
Comment by zsasz — Mar 23, 2007 @ 6:23 pm
Wow arabek, that really sucks. I hope they fix that soon!
Comment by bub — Mar 23, 2007 @ 6:38 pm
Tom Eccles Im not sure if you can find one like this but Sony has a place for US PS3 Owners to download the latest update and put it on a flash drive or cd and install it on the PS3 from that. Here is the link:
http://www.us.playstation.com/ps3/network/updates
Comment by Nick — Mar 23, 2007 @ 6:41 pm
Zsasz, here is a link on how to install Fedora Core 5.
http://ps3.qj.net/PS3-Linux-The-void-has-been-filled-Full-install-instructions-for-Fedora-Core-5-/pg/49/aid/73144
Comment by Nick — Mar 23, 2007 @ 6:43 pm
Arrrggghhh its driving me mad not being able to read and send text messages while in games i have to quit the game to read a message its silly. please sony fix it its just so anoying
Comment by mike — Mar 23, 2007 @ 7:11 pm
I got my PS3 last night at my local GAME and have been very happy with it. The first game I played was Ridge Racer 7 as I’m a bit of a RR fan. Looks stunning and actually is superior to the XBox 360 title, RR6 which I also enjoy. For a laugh I decided to play Ridge Racer on the PS3 as well. Yes that’s right, the original! Was amusing to see how things have changed in 12 years since the original was launched. Especially considering the PSOne was released at £399 back in the day. Kind of familiar price point…
I’ve done some videos of the machine which have been posted up on the front of the site. You can hear/see my views on them.
Comment by Kropotkin — Mar 23, 2007 @ 8:27 pm
im genuinely wondering how the PS3 is selling, as i am in the market for one myself ( my bro has the 360 so no need for me to “waste” my money) and just wanted to know if its doing good over there, as this week has been rough for Sony with DMC4 going multi and AC6 going 360 exclusive and FFXIII ‘in talks’ about being exclusive.
The games im waiting for are Heavenly Sword, Lair, Warhawk, GT5, Tekken, etc..
Comment by jojo29 — Mar 23, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
Got to say I was amazed at how many PS3’s were available over the counter in Solihull today…..
Most stores were certain they could “sort me out” and were confident they wouldn’t have sold out if I returned on Sunday….
IMO there’s a complete lack of demand for this unit, it’s too expensive for the average gamer and it’s the average gamer that’s kept Sony in front for the last 2 generations.
Obviously the Sony spin will be that it’s great to have “shipped” so many units at launch, but compared to how many have been “sold” I think we’re looking at a damp squib.
Jeez, they were even cutting prices in front of me in one store and offering extra accessories and games in another…..
I think the PS3 is a Playstation too far for most people.
Comment by Farrmark — Mar 23, 2007 @ 8:51 pm
Not sure if this is too late, Been far too busy with my new toy…..
Absolutely fantastic. Now I understand why the fanatical PS3 hate that goes on. Once this baby gets mainstream acceptance, there will be no stopping the PS3 in dominating this generation, Microsoft and the 360 can kiss their sorry unreliable @sses back where it belongs, making PC software..
Sony know the Gamer market, the PS3 shows this. It’s everything you could want, and then some, it’s quiet, it’s exceptional build quality, reliable, and everything it does, it does it slick.
Updated to 1.60 firmware mostly without fuss (downloaded it last night onto a USB key, stuck it in the PS3, and did “Update From Storage Media”, took about 5 minutes. When it rebooted the controller was unresponsive, but removing the USB key kicked everything back into life.
Queued up all the demos and the Casino Royal 1080p trailer let it download them, whilst I went and played Resistance, and Motorstorm. Background downloading works really well, but there are some rough edges, like game updates can’t be background downloaded.
Played Black Hawk Down on Blu-Ray, and it looked stunning on my Panasonic 42in Plasma, really could not fault the PS3 Blu-Ray playback at all. It started very quickly, and played the movie better than any standalone HD players I have seen (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray units included).
Threw a few of my favourite CD’s in, and imported them, so they are at hand. The media player is nice, with decent visualisations; it does CDDB so sucks all the track data from net. Copied aload of favourite pictures to the PS3, and really liked the slideshow, very stylish, Got favourable comments from people that saw that “wow, how did you do that..”..
All myPS2 games which aside from GT4 and SSX3 all worked well (Crazy Taxi, which was labelled as a 1* noticeable issues, was still very good, with slight graphical glitching, that’s it).
The downsides. Games (currently), although the dry spell is almost over, there are some cracking games in the next 3-6 months, so Motorstorm, and RFOM. That said however, consider these are launch titles, the EU launch line-up is perhaps the best console launch line-up of all time, I remember the 360,PS2 and PS1 launches, and the line-ups there were quite dodgy.
The other real problem is trying to not let the PS3 turn me into a couch potato, a very real problem, it’s simply THAT good.
Whilst people may moan about the price, if you want quality, you have to pay for it, and the PS3 is worth every penny, and then some.
Comment by Mark G — Mar 23, 2007 @ 8:55 pm
Beautiful.
Comment by Andronix — Mar 23, 2007 @ 9:13 pm
Thanks for the linux link Nick! Gonna give that a go at the weekend.
Another question - I’ve registered at http://www.ps3registration.com so will that mean I’ll automatically receive the free Casino Royale Blu-Ray disc? Do you get some sort of confirmation that you’ve qualified?
Comment by zsasz — Mar 23, 2007 @ 9:17 pm
Excellent first impression!!! After months of listening to anti-PS3 news on the web I was bracing myself for the worst, but frankly I think Sony have done a great job with the PS3!
As someone who is into A/V and home cinema as well as just gaming you really get the feel that the PS3 is a quality piece of A/V equipment not just a plastic kids console. It may be £425, but as my dad always says you get what you pay for and the important thing is the PS3 “feels” like a £425 piece of equipment.
The menus are very sleek and well arranged and (not to bash the 360) feel far more classy then the “Blades”. If you have a set that is HD Ready (or SD but can accept HD signals) the first thing you want to do is set it up via Component or HDMI, the picture on my non-HD plasma (that can receive 720p and 1080i signals) is stunning. The HD trailers off the PSN look great also!
The PSNetwork is functional and surprisingly quick to download and the background downloading (with in game prompts to tell you when it’s finished) is a god send! On to the games then, even though it’s quite limited at present the PSN has some great downloadable content, and the PSN games I’ve downloaded so far all have online scoreboards as standard, you can even see what your friends have been scoring. I’ve already used about 15GB, so I think I’ll be getting myself a bigger HDD soon!
As for retail games, Motorstorm is graphically superb, and a riot to play, especially with the tilt control (takes some getting used to!), not tried it online yet but it should be fun playing against “real” people. The other title I’ve got is R:FOM, graphically great and seems to control well, not had much time with it yet but it seems challenging and the Chimera seem to have strong AI. Also, I was expecting the worst in terms of load times given what I’ve read in the past, but they seem acceptable to me. In all cases the audio quality is suburb, anyone with a half decent surround system hooked up via Optical or HDMI should be very impressed.
As for the controller, I’m liking the triggers and the Sixaxis motion has potential, sloshing the water around in Blast Factor is particularly fun, it’s light but doesn’t feel any worse then the PS2 controller (in terms of build quality). I like how you can use the PS button to quit to the main menu without needing to restart. I don’t miss rumble, with one exception, Grand Turismo don’t know why, I didn’t notice in Motorstorm or Ridge Racer, but for some reason GT seemed hollow. Not tried the Logitech wheel yet, don’t know whether the force feedback still works with that, it seems to have options for the wheel in the menu.
Final thoughts then, it’s very very quiet, but doesn’t half blow out some hot air! Although most of the machine seems cool to touch so I guess hot air is a sign of an efficient cooling system!
Don’t believe the negative hype from the M$ sponsored stories and 360 trolls, the PS3 is an excellent piece of equipment that oozes quality. I’ve only just scratched the surface in terms of it’s capabilities, I’m yet to try blu-ray, photo album, mp3 playback, PS2 b/c (75% isn’t bad you know!) and Linux! If you’re on the fence, go out and buy one, unless you’re an ardent Xbox or Nintendo fanboy you won’t be disappointed, especially if you’re looking for a device that is more capable than just a simple games machine.
Well done Sony on the PS3, it’s just a same you couldn’t handle your PR better!!!!
Comment by Apnomis — Mar 23, 2007 @ 10:57 pm
I have been blown away by MotorStorm, especially online it is flawlesss. The total package is great - very slick - you feel like you’ve got a machine that is future proof. It might take some time, and maybe a price cut, but this thing is gonna take-off.
Comment by maikii — Mar 24, 2007 @ 12:44 am
My cousin is a friend of one of the London Lucky 100 - the plan is to return the PS3 sometime next week, and he is selling off the HDTV, cashing in, unlike the early adopters in the US who were trying to make a buck and got caught short with expensive kit they didn’t want in the first place. Until the price comes down the PS3 will not be a reality for many people.
Comment by Alastair — Mar 24, 2007 @ 3:41 am
Please sony sort out the inability to send and read messages from in game, it not practical to quit motorstorm to get a message off a mate saying he has setup a game of online motorstorm.. please fix ASAP
Comment by mike — Mar 24, 2007 @ 9:32 am
BIG QUESTION GUITAR HERO/DANCING STAGE ON PS3
First of I love my PS3 , its awesome. But there are two games from ps2 I want t play on it which Im curious about. Guitar Hero and Dance Stage, can I play these, if so where do I plug them in?
Comment by phil — Mar 25, 2007 @ 2:39 pm
I have had every consolde on Launch day since Playstation and PS3 is for the me the best and most jam packed. Is there anything it doesn’t have, the only problem is backward compatibilty. ProEvo6 doesn’t run well at all I guess I just have to keep my Plsystation 2 for a little longer.
All weekend I have heard people talking about PS3 and the main thing is the price, but if you take into account a 60GB harddrive, memory card reader, wireless out the box, plug and play pads and a HD format Disc player included then to get a 360 with all that is more expensive.
Plus free GT HD once your online.
An excellent launch Sony and well worth the wait (although I wish I hadn’t had to)
Comment by Rocky1982 — Mar 26, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
comment originally posted by Ben Furneaux
I’m over the moon about my PS3!
I have submitted feedback and photos directly. I’ve had some problems connecting my PSP to the PS3 for remote play. The PSP is not able to find the access point (PS3) when scanning. In fact, my PC can’t see it either. Anyone have any ideas how to fix this? I thought maybe the access point in the PS3 is conflicting with my other access point. Maybe there’s something simpler to check first though?
problem solve: on ps3 click remote play and a connection screen will come up make sure u have playstation 3 in connection list in connection sttings on psp and click on remote play on psp and it will connect
Comment by robert l11 — Mar 28, 2007 @ 9:01 pm
thanks rob, was stumped with that, but now got it working.
I fuckin love my ps3 - just have resistance & virtua fighter at the mo & a few blu ray movies.
Tried open season and it simply blew me away - absolutely awesome visuals, not tried any others yet.
Verdict up to now - A++++
Comment by chem — Apr 1, 2007 @ 11:52 pm
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