I’ve bought myself a Sony Playstation 3.

No, it wasn’t a very carefully thought decision. I’ve been playing with the idea to buy one for a while, but the timing wasn’t really right. It happened last saturday – I’ve been talking to a friend about maybe buying myself something out of frustration (I’ve been in the office the whole weekend) and we somehow ended up talking about the price of the PS3. The obvious choice was to check amazon and my G1 was quickly helping me to cross rubicon. Thing was, that amazon lowered the price for a while. Instead of something around 300 euro, they’ve been selling it for 238,99.

And as soon as I saw the price, it went like this: “Ah, crap, I’ll just buy it.” Click. Click. Click. Thank you for your order, bla bla.

My new gadget arrived yesterday and I was obviously spending all the free time I had with it. I had some sound issues, because my flat screen is a bit old and it’s HDMI is kind of crippled. It doesn’t support HDCP and LG wasn’t very helpful either. They’ve send me a response to my issue, that I’m still trying to comprehend. Pretty sure, that it wasn’t written by a German native speaker.

Anyway, the sound issue was resolved and I’ve started playing. I’ve bought myself Fallout 3 and Little Big Planet to start of my gaming experience. Oh, and I could secure some other games from the office, but they are pretty crappy.

Thing is, I was – in my early days – quite a gamer. I’ve been playing a lot of PC games, but I never had a video game console. No Nintendos, XBoxs or Playstations for me. Ok, I had a Sega, but it was integrated into my first PC. No, I’m not jerking you around. The Amstrad Mega PC didn’t only promise a lot with it’s name, it actually delivered too. It was also the first PC I’ve destroyed after trying to pimp it. It was ugly, two 386 SX died in the process.

Back to the issue me being a gamer. Or not any more. It’s been a while, that I was actually playing anything on a regular basis. Not counting the couple of month of my inglorious trips into the world of a quite famous MMORPG. So, it’s quite a game changer for me to have this opportunity and it’s a good feeling.

Buuuuut.

Yes, there is one. Well, a couple actually. First one is something I can get used to, I think. As already mentioned, my previous weapon of choice was my PC for gaming and that included mostly games that have been played with a keyboard and a mouse. The switch to a controller after a couple of years without playing anything meaningful at all is quite a dramatic one. I’m not used to be playing FPS like that. Well, either that or I’m really crappy at it. Still hoping, that I will grow into it. Maybe I just need to be playing more.

The second issue is something that I wasn’t thinking about before my good friend Eike didn’t start nagging me about. The thing is, a gaming console is a pretty closed environment. There isn’t much, that is more locked down by the manufacturers in the consumer business and that’s a bad thing. And it’s getting worse, since the PC isn’t the primary target for the gaming industry any longer. The PC games sales have been crumbling for a while now and most of the games are being developed primarily for a gaming console – the PC is only an addon. That’s bad, because that helps the manufacturers of the gaming console to spread more closed devices. That includes some heavy DRM, etc.

I’m not really sure what to do about that. A gaming console is, compared with a suitable gaming PC, a very cheap device. It’s obvious why I bought it and why other will do the same. A lot of people are fighting for openness on the PC and mobile devices. They’re succeeding too. Linux is a major force in the mobile industry, which will help to transform the PC market as well. But the access into the gaming console is still very restricted and it would be very, very bad if it stays that way.

No, I don’t have a solution and no, I won’t throw my PS3 out of the window right now. It’s a compromise for me – at least right now. But I wanted to address this issue, because it’s something that we should talk about.

P.S.: The Playstation 3 is the most expensive transaction from a mobile device (not counting notebooks) for me, yet. You would think, that spending 240 euro would be a lot – at least, I was thinking that for a while – but it isn’t. People are actually buying Lamborghini’s on their iPhone.