PS - Why?

Sadly, not EVERYTHING comes in the box for $600.

Like I said, I was in Toronto for New Year's Eve and stayed with old friends Jules and Carm, and their four kids - along with Mike & Christine and their two kids, and Chuck and Anne Marie and their newborn. Maybe there were others but it's kinda blurry now.

Jules is a gadget freak. He's got just about every kind of techno wizardry under the sun, but I was disappointed that all he had was the XBox 360 and no Playstation 3. I told him the same. "Oh no, I've got the PS3," he replied. Where was it? Still in the box because Carm had placed a prohibition on the PS3. "Too many toys and too much money," was the reason. "Do you want it?"

I've got the PS2. But I didn't buy it until it had been out for nearly two years and you could readily buy it anywhere. When the PS3 was released in November 2006, it was nearly impossible to get. I figured I'd wait for another year before buying one. But this was a tempting offer, so I took it.

Now that I've had the PS3 for nearly a week, I wonder why? Why did I buy this thing? Was it to be hip and cool? Was it to pick up chicks? Was it because I have a penchant for gaming?

The only person who noticed the PS3 was the bellhop/doorman/bartender/cook named Felix from the Hotel Gault. Not exactly a chick magnet this PS3.

I don't play video games much anymore. Wastes too much time. Why bother playing basketball or football on the PS3 if it only makes me plumpier? Doesn't make sense. I need to hit the treadmill instead of the L3 button.

None of my friends that know I have the PS3 treat me with any more respect.

I brought it home, plugged it in and then realized that this High Definition PS3 doesn't come with High Definition cables. No HDMI or component cables. In fact, component cables aren't even available yet. What kind of rubbish is this???

Then there's the games. Of which there are almost none. Sure, it's backwards compatible with the billions of PS1 and PS2 games but I want the awesome, God-like, Octo-Uber-Super power of the PS3, not some over-priced PS2 simulator.

When it comes to gaming, I prefer something simple and easy. I don't want to battle on the racecar circuit winning prize money so I can hot rod some Yugo that I must start out with. I want to jump into the Koenigsegg CCR or Ferrari 430 and just floor it for a few hours. Or, I want to hit the streets with a devastating arsenal of automatic weapons and lay seige to the poor, hapless citizenry. After a long day of work, I want mindless gaming to ensue with lots of brigandage and car crashes to while away the evening.

So I started with Ridge Racer 7 and hated it almost immediately. It's absolute rubbish for a car driving game. All you do is drive some hypothetical vehicles around a course where the driving is completely unrealistic. Seems that you can't crash the vehicles and each turn is some sort of scene from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Utter rubbish.

My cousin in Vegas has XBox 360 and when I wasn't hitting the craps tables or having a meal at KJ Kitchen, I was racing on the streets of Vegas through Project Gotham Racing. It's serious. It's realistic. It's the kind of driving video game that I want for PS3. But there's nothing like that currently on the market. They say Gran Turismo 4 is going to be "The Bomb" but it won't be out for months.

The Seed likes to state that the PS3 is the "cheapest Blu-Ray Disc player on the market" and it even includes a copy of Talladega Nights but what does that matter when the PS3 doesn't come with HDMI cables and HD component cables aren't on the market yet?

So far, I've got a six hundred dollar DVD player that looks cool.

And not a chick to share the second controller with...