I've never done this

Although I draw the line at camping outside a video game store at midnight, you will often find that I always end up buying a new games console on the day of its release.

I’m certainly no Gamesmaster – my Xbox Live Gamerscore is laughably low and my presence on high-score tables has always been non-existent, but despite my lacklustre gaming skills I still love playing video games and I always look forward to having the latest games console sat underneath my television.

There was one exception…

Time has passed. Console prices have dropped and I recently found myself with a bit of hard-earned sales commission burning a hole in my empty pockets. On Friday the 22nd I took myself and my commission to the local branch of Zavvi and relieved them of a new Playstation 3.

Sony Playstation 3

I won’t bore you with technical specifications, you can find that elsewhere on the web, but I will tell you that the new PS3 retails for a more reasonable £299 and includes the new Dualshock 3™ game controller and a bigger 80 gigabyte hard drive. Unlike its £425 predecessor it does lack the Playstation 2 backwards compatibility (that has been, until recently, standard issue on the US versions).

The irony is that although my new PS3 has been sat under my television for four days, I have yet to actually play a game on it. It has nothing to do with the quality of the games themselves, just the fact that the media capabilities of the PS3 are so good I have had no time for games.

Playstation 3 XMB (XrossMediaBar)

What the sales blurb fails to tell you is that the PS3 is a very capable media centre. Using the PS3′s built-in wireless connection I have transferred several gigabytes of video from my PC to the PS3′s hard drive (which was easily upgraded by myself) giving me instant access to old episodes of Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica (yes, I am a geek). In the PS3 I also have a Blu-ray disc player and a very nice up scaling DVD player.

But this is my favourite thing:

I can access the content on my PS3 from anywhere in the world where there is a Wi-Fi connection. I can use the Wi-Fi connection on my PSP to log in to the PS3′s “server” and access the audio, video and game content just as if it was stored on the PSP itself. It was so cool to be able to use my PSP at a chum’s house and play the copy of Ridge Racer that was sat in the disc drive of my PS3 back home.

A year after I said no thank-you to the PS3 I now find myself glad that I have one. It still isn’t worth the £425 asking price of last March, but it is worth the £299 I paid. And that’s saying something considering I haven’t even played a proper PS3 game on it yet!

EDIT: Oh, I thought I’d seen this Playstation Media stuff somewhere before.