Done and Done
Sep 14, 2009 · psu · 3 minute readGames
I’ve been playing Madden a lot since it came out. Almost two full seasons worth. I play Madden on the PS3 to avoid the overwhelming jet-engine like drone of my Xbox. The other day I noted that Madden seemed to be running the PS3 hotter than it used to… kicking the fan up to a new level. This worried me a bit, and then I tossed a 80 yard screen pass to Randy Moss and forgot about it. Then one night Madden got stuck.
It was late and I was sleepy, so I turned off the machine and went to bed. Then the next morning it happened again. Right in the middle of the game the little robot players just stopped doing their thing and stood on the field shivering in the cold. I restarted the game again. But it would not restart. I did a few little arcane dances and got Madden back, and thought my troubles were over.
Tonight I was feeling overloaded on football, so I decided to be Batman for a while. Then Batman got stuck. Then the Batman game would not load, preferring instead to just show me a blank black screen.
The conclusion is clear. The Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 is dead. This is an apt way for the console to die, because it was the drive for the useless Blu-Ray player [destroyed Sony’s stranglehold on the game console market](http://tleaves.com/2007/02/26/how-to-own-the-universe-and-then-give- it-away/) in the first place. Still, I liked my Playstation 3 because it played Blu-Ray movies and because it played video games without sounding like a god damned jet engine the way my Xbox does. I have been hoping for almost a year for my Xbox to die so I can get a new quiet one. Now the PS3 has done me a favor by making that unecessary. Let me explain.
The PS3 is out of warrantee. Thus it will cost a ludicrous amount of money to fix. So, rather than fix it, the rational choice is to get one of the new slim PS3s which will be smaller, quieter and more reliable, right? Hah! Fat chance.
The rational move is to put up slightly more than it will cost to fix the machine and get a new quiet Xbox. Then the next rational move is to throw the PS3 in the fucking dumpster. It’s pretty clear that with even Square having jumped ship the Playstation 3 as a gaming platform has evolved from bad, sad, and lonely to merely pointless. There is literally nothing on the platform that is deserving of your attention and dollars that you can’t have delivered to you in some other way that will be more enjoyable. They let the PS2 die. The PSP is being crushed by the DS and the iPhone. And the PS3 was essentially stillborn so that Sony could “win” a movie format war that doesn’t matter anymore.
Therefore, the plan is:
1. The PS3 goes out the window. I will feel a small pang of sadness for not getting to play MLB: The Show anymore. But I didn’t even play the ‘09 game anyway.
2. Buy a quiet Xbox and put it in the Xbox slot. Maybe get Netflix now that I can hear the dialog over the console’s drone.
3. Get a cheap standalone Blu-Ray player for watching The Matrix once in a while. Maybe one that has a normal remote instead of this stupid Bluetooth piece of crap that doesn’t work with the Harmony.
4. Keep my old PS2 games just in case I ever haul out that cute little slim box again. I wonder where the memory cards are.
5. While I’m at it, no more Sony TVs either.
Done, and done.