Poll: What console should I buy next?

[J Tyran]

If you really want a console I would say a PS3 if you are not to bothered about the latest shinys. The library is pretty big and the games are dirt cheap now, the God of War trilogy is only £18 for example and includes an upscaled HD God of War that looks pretty good even today.

The slim console is cheap too, you cannot even get a good graphics card for that kind of money (you can get a decent one just not high end).

Earlier this gen I was all Xbox console wise (PC gamer mainly) but Sony coaxed me around. Great services like PS+ which is cheaper than XBox Live Gold and you get free games to play, 60 minute demos of the games on the PSN store and you get discounts on games and movies/TV series on the PSN store. The media is actually cheaper than the Sky store and some other on demand services too.

If you have a couple of hundred quid to spend (or Dollars and whatever else) its a great pile of entertainment for the money.

 

[sammysoso]

You could probably get a current gen console for pretty cheap nowadays. It's really up to the exclusives as far as which one to buy. I have a higher opinion than most on Halo and Gears of War, look those up and if they tickle your fancy get a 360. PS3 has the Uncharted series, which is pretty great, as well as many other exclusives (most notably Journey). Also consider the controller, I vastly prefer the 360 pad, but you need to see what works for you.

As far as the next generation goes, I'd wait for Microsoft to make their official presentation before entering into the decision making progress.

Now, whether or not to upgrade your PC or get a next-gen console will depend on 1) Your budget and 2)exclusives. Gaming PCs are always going to out-muscle a console, but can get pricey quickly if you're trying to stay near the cutting edge. A console will run every game you put in it, now and throughout the console's life cycle, and costs less than the latest GPUs (not counting your CPU, RAM, hard drive, power supply, etc.) You won't have to worry about tweaking your settings to optimize the game. Also, if you really like some of the console exclusive titles (Halo, Uncharted, Gears, Killzone, etc.) then I would recommend a next-gen console.

I hope you consider your choice carefully, and have fun!

 

[The_Echo]

Obviously, because this is the Escapist, you'll see an overwhelming amount of "GO PC OR GO HOME" votes.

But if you're dead-set on a new console, get the PS3. You've already gotten the first two, and as one who walked that same path I can tell you that the PS3's library doesn't disappoint. There are a lot of great games in there, exclusive or otherwise.

Since you've already been doing the backlog-a-whole-generation thing, it seems silly to go and invest yourself in the next generation, especially since nobody knows if it'll even be any good yet.

 

[Doom972]

You can't go wrong with a PC. There are very few console-only games in this generation worth buying.
Also, there will be emulators eventually. If you are as patient as you seem, it'll probably be best to wait for those.

 

[Mrkillhappy]

You can't ever go wrong with the pc though if you don't have the money the ps3 is a good route to go.

 

[loc978]

For me, having a PS3 is worth it just for a few console-exclusive racing games and JRPGs... but my PC is absolutely necessary for everything else. If you have the cash and want a bunch of console exclusives, get a PS3 and keep an updated PC. If there is no game you want that doesn't work on your PC (personally, I'm just waiting until I can emulate a PS3), stick to the PC.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Go for the PS4. Given you have the earlier version of the console, I would say go for that one.

While I would like to be a PC gamer, I can't trust my computer to play WoW properly, so I stick with console gaming. But given that the PS4 will not have backwards compatibility but will allow you to download PS3 games, I would say the PS4 is the better option.

The PS3, while a great piece of hardware, is severely limited by its RAM, just like the Xbox 360. I have found, personally, that there is no real exclusives that jump out at me on the 360. Halo is becoming the 'Madden' of FPS games, Gears of War induces motion sickness with it's headbanging run camera, and the Fable games have been sliding in quality since Fable 2.

I do own a 360, but when I play games I have already played on my PS3 I do notice more pop-ins for objects on the Xbox.

At the end of the day, it is and always will be your call, but I say the PS4 would be a better option.

 

[Not Matt]

i suggest keep the PC close to heart. but, buy a ps3/4. there is something much more relaxing with being able to have just 12 buttons to tend to, a bigger screen and laid back in your couch with mates. than to sit crouched over a pc alone. sure it is better graphics and engine and......stuff in general on PC. but the PlayStation got it's charm and will be a loyal companion... just don't trust it with any credit cards. i won't say xbox isn't good. because it is. but i never really got in to it.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Here's an embarrassing confession. I never bought anything beyond a PS2.

Yep, me too. I have another confession, I still find plenty of fun in the PS2 games I have. I'm going to stick with my gaming pc and continue to buy consoles ten years after release. My reasoning is that I've never in the past seven years been so bored with my PC that I've felt at a loss for video game entertainment that I felt I needed to have more. I'll still get to play all the good console games, just years after they're hot and most likely at a stupid discount of 90% off. It's not like Silent Hill 2 became a bad game in the seven years it took for me to get around to it after I saw it in a bargain bin for $4.

The online component worries me though, even for this generation of consoles, it's going to stop at some point, and then will my games suck because I can't download patches for consoles without their servers? I might never buy the next gen if it's online only, it takes the benefit out of buying late.

Indeed I game on the PS2 and to lesser extent on the PC. I have a laptop though, which isn't the best option for PC gaming. I have a Core i3, 4GB of RAM and more than enough hard drive. OS Windows 7 (64 bits). My main problem has historically lied with graphics requirements, though I got Star Wars ToR to work fine a few months ago so maybe that's over with? I've suffered a lot of disappointments because of graphic requirements that needed video cards and such I never had and were too expensive for me to buy. So I've been more or less shock-conditioned to trust game consoles to play the games that get released on them, as opposed to spending weeks trying to get a game to work on the damn PC.

 

[Jazoni89]

Join the retro gaming master race, because you know, graphics are overrated anyway...especially on this site.

Any console would do, just avoid the CD-I, unless you enjoy a lot of 90's cheese, and edutainment titles. The games still look rather good on HDTV's if you have the right cables. Most retro gamers swear by VGA, so getting a VGA cable for certain consoles would be a good way to go.

I'm not trying to be ironic here, retro gaming, and collecting is a great hobby (not just a way of playing games), and you truly find some great stuff that you might of never played, or even heard of before. There's various website that would help you on your way, such as Racketboy, and Digital Press. You have a laptop anyway, so unless you like your new games to look the absolute best, then get a new PC, overwise just buy games off GOG (and low graphical required steam games), and just get yourself a cheap 360/PS3, and a few retro consoles.

Variety is the spice of life, or so they say. I would rather choose a variety of games, over just playing on one platform personally.

People like to downplay console gaming, but it's only because they only can afford one platform to play games on, so they stick by it. Me I play on everything, and it didn't cost me a fortune at all.

 

[Requia]

At this point I would not buy a console. They're still quite expensive and only the WiiU has a shelf life of more than a couple years (at which point the current consoles will be much cheaper if you want to catch up). As for the WiiU, still has a weak library, and I won't be terribly shocked if no third party games come out for it once the PS4 and Durango arrive (doesn't matter how much Nintendo kisses third party butt, the AAA publishers will want the systems with the best graphics hardware).

 

[Sir Christopher McFarlane]

Here's an embarrassing confession. I never bought anything beyond a PS2. Basically I've always stayed one generation behind, buying a PS1 when the PS2 came out, and buying a PS2 when the PS3 was released. Because of gild I guess. Also the PS2 has such an awesome game library that the urge to stay updated more or less died out (and I've yet to play through all the games I own for it).

Anyway, I think it's about time I move on. Now everybody's talking about the upcoming generation, but nobody's very sure about the PS4 and the Xbox Whatever. So I don't know what to do, do I buy into the current generation (PS3, Xbox 360) or skip it altogether and keep saving for the upcoming one?

I'm adding a poll but I would really appreciate if you took a minute of your time to illustrate your choice.

I was in the same situation that you are in some two years ago. Of course there was no PS4. I had never had a portable device yet. After looking up games for it and seeing that my favourite genres, the JRPGs and platformers were so scarce on the home console market, I decided to buy a Nintendo DS. I bought a DSi for some insane reason I still don't fully comprehend, but it was still worth it. I played some good Mario games, I played some great RPGs, such as the Dragon Quest DS offerings, and I still have a very rich library to choose from.
I think that because the games are cheaper to make on portables they became the place to go for genres that were once popular, but have become niche, and also for innovative games.
My opinion is you should get a 3DS. You should probably look for purchasing the new console generation later when the libraries are good enough.
If you don't like portable devices, you should look for Good Old Games and Steam accounts.

 

[Do4600]

Here's an embarrassing confession. I never bought anything beyond a PS2.

Yep, me too. I have another confession, I still find plenty of fun in the PS2 games I have. I'm going to stick with my gaming pc and continue to buy consoles ten years after release. My reasoning is that I've never in the past seven years been so bored with my PC that I've felt at a loss for video game entertainment that I felt I needed to have more. I'll still get to play all the good console games, just years after they're hot and most likely at a stupid discount of 90% off. It's not like Silent Hill 2 became a bad game in the seven years it took for me to get around to it after I saw it in a bargain bin for $4.

The online component worries me though, even for this generation of consoles, it's going to stop at some point, and then will my games suck because I can't download patches for consoles without their servers? I might never buy the next gen if it's online only, it takes the benefit out of buying late.

Indeed I game on the PS2 and to lesser extent on the PC. I have a laptop though, which isn't the best option for PC gaming. I have a Core i3, 4GB of RAM and more than enough hard drive. OS Windows 7 (64 bits). My main problem has historically lied with graphics requirements, though I got Star Wars ToR to work fine a few months ago so maybe that's over with? I've suffered a lot of disappointments because of graphic requirements that needed video cards and such I never had and were too expensive for me to buy. So I've been more or less shock-conditioned to trust game consoles to play the games that get released on them, as opposed to spending weeks trying to get a game to work on the damn PC.

Yes, the problem with laptops is that you can't really upgrade the video card so you'll be stuck in whatever generation you bought it in and to really upgrade your performance you need to buy a new laptop. It's sort of the console of the pc world. The CPU in my desktop is something like five years old, but I replaced the graphics card a year ago and now I'm playing brand new games on maximum. It's the video card that matters most, and if it can't be replaced you're stuck.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Here's an embarrassing confession. I never bought anything beyond a PS2.

Yep, me too. I have another confession, I still find plenty of fun in the PS2 games I have. I'm going to stick with my gaming pc and continue to buy consoles ten years after release. My reasoning is that I've never in the past seven years been so bored with my PC that I've felt at a loss for video game entertainment that I felt I needed to have more. I'll still get to play all the good console games, just years after they're hot and most likely at a stupid discount of 90% off. It's not like Silent Hill 2 became a bad game in the seven years it took for me to get around to it after I saw it in a bargain bin for $4.

The online component worries me though, even for this generation of consoles, it's going to stop at some point, and then will my games suck because I can't download patches for consoles without their servers? I might never buy the next gen if it's online only, it takes the benefit out of buying late.

Indeed I game on the PS2 and to lesser extent on the PC. I have a laptop though, which isn't the best option for PC gaming. I have a Core i3, 4GB of RAM and more than enough hard drive. OS Windows 7 (64 bits). My main problem has historically lied with graphics requirements, though I got Star Wars ToR to work fine a few months ago so maybe that's over with? I've suffered a lot of disappointments because of graphic requirements that needed video cards and such I never had and were too expensive for me to buy. So I've been more or less shock-conditioned to trust game consoles to play the games that get released on them, as opposed to spending weeks trying to get a game to work on the damn PC.

Yes, the problem with laptops is that you can't really upgrade the video card so you'll be stuck in whatever generation you bought it in and to really upgrade your performance you need to buy a new laptop. It's sort of the console of the pc world. The CPU in my desktop is something like five years old, but I replaced the graphics card a year ago and now I'm playing brand new games on maximum. It's the video card that matters most, and if it can't be replaced your stuck.

I made a thread in the Advice Forum about this but I wanted to ask you, with a Core i3 processor, 4GB of RAM and a crappy Intel HD Graphics Family video card, what would be the range of games I could play? Roughly? Like, will that run Gen. VII? Up to what year, more or less?

 

[Do4600]

Here's an embarrassing confession. I never bought anything beyond a PS2.

Yep, me too. I have another confession, I still find plenty of fun in the PS2 games I have. I'm going to stick with my gaming pc and continue to buy consoles ten years after release. My reasoning is that I've never in the past seven years been so bored with my PC that I've felt at a loss for video game entertainment that I felt I needed to have more. I'll still get to play all the good console games, just years after they're hot and most likely at a stupid discount of 90% off. It's not like Silent Hill 2 became a bad game in the seven years it took for me to get around to it after I saw it in a bargain bin for $4.

The online component worries me though, even for this generation of consoles, it's going to stop at some point, and then will my games suck because I can't download patches for consoles without their servers? I might never buy the next gen if it's online only, it takes the benefit out of buying late.

Indeed I game on the PS2 and to lesser extent on the PC. I have a laptop though, which isn't the best option for PC gaming. I have a Core i3, 4GB of RAM and more than enough hard drive. OS Windows 7 (64 bits). My main problem has historically lied with graphics requirements, though I got Star Wars ToR to work fine a few months ago so maybe that's over with? I've suffered a lot of disappointments because of graphic requirements that needed video cards and such I never had and were too expensive for me to buy. So I've been more or less shock-conditioned to trust game consoles to play the games that get released on them, as opposed to spending weeks trying to get a game to work on the damn PC.

Yes, the problem with laptops is that you can't really upgrade the video card so you'll be stuck in whatever generation you bought it in and to really upgrade your performance you need to buy a new laptop. It's sort of the console of the pc world. The CPU in my desktop is something like five years old, but I replaced the graphics card a year ago and now I'm playing brand new games on maximum. It's the video card that matters most, and if it can't be replaced your stuck.

I made a thread in the Advice Forum about this but I wanted to ask you, with a Core i3 processor, 4GB of RAM and a crappy Intel HD Graphics Family video card, what would be the range of games I could play? Roughly? Like, will that run Gen. VII? Up to what year, more or less?

It depends on the model of the graphics card, it's all important really, the difference between a Intel HD Graphics 2500 and an Intel HD Graphics 4000 is huge. Also it depends on how the graphics scale in a particular game. For instance, if you want to play Bioshock: Infinite without trying to change every config file you need a more powerful video card. However, anything made by Blizzard you shouldn't have a problem with, because they make the graphics so scaleable that you could literally play almost every game they have made on a machine made in 2005.

Check this site out: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-2500.69812.0.html

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Here's an embarrassing confession. I never bought anything beyond a PS2.

Yep, me too. I have another confession, I still find plenty of fun in the PS2 games I have. I'm going to stick with my gaming pc and continue to buy consoles ten years after release. My reasoning is that I've never in the past seven years been so bored with my PC that I've felt at a loss for video game entertainment that I felt I needed to have more. I'll still get to play all the good console games, just years after they're hot and most likely at a stupid discount of 90% off. It's not like Silent Hill 2 became a bad game in the seven years it took for me to get around to it after I saw it in a bargain bin for $4.

The online component worries me though, even for this generation of consoles, it's going to stop at some point, and then will my games suck because I can't download patches for consoles without their servers? I might never buy the next gen if it's online only, it takes the benefit out of buying late.

Indeed I game on the PS2 and to lesser extent on the PC. I have a laptop though, which isn't the best option for PC gaming. I have a Core i3, 4GB of RAM and more than enough hard drive. OS Windows 7 (64 bits). My main problem has historically lied with graphics requirements, though I got Star Wars ToR to work fine a few months ago so maybe that's over with? I've suffered a lot of disappointments because of graphic requirements that needed video cards and such I never had and were too expensive for me to buy. So I've been more or less shock-conditioned to trust game consoles to play the games that get released on them, as opposed to spending weeks trying to get a game to work on the damn PC.

Yes, the problem with laptops is that you can't really upgrade the video card so you'll be stuck in whatever generation you bought it in and to really upgrade your performance you need to buy a new laptop. It's sort of the console of the pc world. The CPU in my desktop is something like five years old, but I replaced the graphics card a year ago and now I'm playing brand new games on maximum. It's the video card that matters most, and if it can't be replaced your stuck.

I made a thread in the Advice Forum about this but I wanted to ask you, with a Core i3 processor, 4GB of RAM and a crappy Intel HD Graphics Family video card, what would be the range of games I could play? Roughly? Like, will that run Gen. VII? Up to what year, more or less?

It depends on the model of the graphics card, it's all important really, the difference between a Intel HD Graphics 2500 and an Intel HD Graphics 4000 is huge. Also it depends on how the graphics scale in a particular game. For instance, if you want to play Bioshock: Infinite without trying to change every config file you need a more powerful video card. However, anything made by Blizzard you shouldn't have a problem with, because they make the graphics so scaleable that you could literally play almost every game they have made on a machine made in 2005.

Check this site out: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-2500.69812.0.html

I've got Intel HD Graphics 3000. So far the most updated game I've played on the PC has been The Old Republic, which I think is from 2011. I'm not really expecting to play something released yesterday, a few Gen. VII games would be nice is all but I tire from fooling around with the settings and configs, I waste days at a time trying to get a single game working.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

Get a PS3 and get PS+ then download a bunch of free games. I honestly can't suggest the "720" or PS4 since they're not even real at the moment. Yeah, they're being made and will come out this year, but I'd rather not tell someone to get a system that's not even in stores yet.

 

[Sould1n]

According to the poll I'm going to be in the minority with my suggestion (though surprisingly not as much as those who voted Xbox 360) but I would suggest you purchase the WiiU. While at the moment its library of WiiU games is small as the latest Nintendo console it will continue having games made for it unlike the PS3 or Xbox 360 currently out that will, either soon or within a couple years of the release of Sony and Microsoft's newest consoles, stop getting releases.

The WiiU is a great system in my opinion with a lot of potential, and in future it should have a good roster of WiiU games as well as retro games through the Virtual Console. As of the moment though, I would also suggest it due to its backwards compatibility with the entire Wii game library. There are a lot of lovely games made for the Wii, including decent and unique third party games (Muramasa The Demon Blade, A Boy and His Blob, Sonic Colours, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and 3, Eledees) that didn't come out on the other consoles. Sure, quite a few decent titles came out for the PS3 and Xbox 360 that didn't come out for the Wii (I would have missed out on the BlazBlue series if I did not have three brothers) but there are also games that the Wii obtained that the other two did not. I would even claim that in some instances the Wii got the better games, I found Sonic Colours to be better than Sonic Generations and I found Tatsunoko vs. Capcom to be better than Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

Well, that's my opinion on it. Of course it would be best to compare the video game libraries of the consoles first, and see which ones appeal to you the most. I will say you should take note of how the WiiU will continue to have games developed for it as it competes with the PS4 and the next Xbox, but there may be games exclusive to either the PS3 or Xbox 360 that may sway your decision to either one of them. It's your choice but I suggest WiiU.