PlayStation 3



"It only does everything."

The third son of the PlayStation family had a rough start in life; being quite expensive at first, and very difficult to code for, it remained in a distant third place for a while. Yet it swiftly recovered later, due to the very strong support from Japanese developers who would not touch the filthy gaijin dog machine Xbox 360. So each system has rather different sets of exclusives, which you should weigh (see: 360 vs PS3) before choosing one.

Backwards compatibility was part of the reason for the cost: early models did it by including part of the PS2 hardware. Later models cut that entirely. All models are compatible with games for the original PlayStation, as it was possible to emulate it fully in software.

The PS3 also functions as a Blu-Ray player (PS3 games are on blu-ray). The system has extremely robust multimedia capabilities. Music, Photo and Video playback are great. The visualizer for the music player looks very nice and Spotify still runs. You can run files locally or via a media server, locally is faster but media server means access to MKV playback. If you want to play modern video files mainly .mkv files, you'll need to convert them. There's also Plex support. You can rip CDs directly to the system. If you have a Playstation Eye you can capture photos directly from the system, you can also print from the PS3. All of these features the system extremely robust for non-gaming purposes. I have one I use as a Juke Box and Photobooth for example.


 * Name in Italics means the game is not on Xbox 360
 * PS Move compatible.png Playstation Move compatible
 * PS Move required.png Playstation Move required
 * PSN trophy icon.png PSN Trophies are available