@ Computer Exchange!

Now i know they definitely have 2 in display cases running playable demo' s, but i' m also hearing that they have units to sell. I just tried calling but there was no answer. They close in 2 hours too and it' d take me over and hour to get there. I' d have to pay over the phone and pick it up tomorrow... If i can' t get through them i' m going to Rotherham tomorrow to the import shop where i got my Japanese PSP 2 days after it launched.

The website say they have them but can' t sell them because Sony would sue their asses

They do say that they have playable machines at their stores throughout the UK. There should be playable PS3' s here:

London and the South-East of England

* Brighton
* Bromley
* Croydon
* Harrow
* Hemel Hempstead
* Hounslow
* Kingston
* London (Games)
* London (PC)
* Watford

North of England

* Bradford
* Leeds
* Liverpool
* Manchester
* Newcastle
* Sheffield

The Midlands

* Birmingham
* Coventry
* Leicester
* Northampton
* Nottingham
* Solihull
* Stoke-on-Trent
* Wolverhampton

South-West of England

* Bristol
* Southampton

Wales

* Cardiff

Scotland

* Edinburgh

Northern Ireland

* Ballymena
* Belfast
* Lisburn

Awhaaa?? Hehe, yea I could go and have a quick look see. CEX is like 10 mins away.

I' d imagine Sony would be pretty harsh on them though if they ever found out they were selling them though. They' d shut them down as quick as they did Lik Sang! [:' (]

They have in Croydon? Great, i might have to go there and try it out, nice post majik

So yea they had a Japanese PS3 there to try, but it wasn' t at all the ideal setup to show it off. A 26" widescreen SDTV, a composite connection and only a wired DualShock2!

They had a Sixaxis which they kept locked away for fear of stealage. Although they did let me have a feel of it, and tbh it didn' t feel ' PS1' light at all. In fact it felt just as weighty as the ds2 (which is already a light controller), but not as nicely weighted as the 360 pad. I definitely missed the rumble!! But the new L2/R2 triggers are well implemented. Didn' t get to try the motion sensing unfortunately...

I think people overestimate the size of the PS3 too, it' s as long as the 360 but just fatter! Definitely looks expensive though and soo shiny! The thing runs HOT, but at least that' ll prevent too many finger prints! Can' t comment on how noisy it was, as the shop was noisy. I like the PSP styled front end, which was very smooth and sleek but took its time to load. And I liked the BluRay cases too!


For games they had Riiidge ehem Ridge Racer 7 and Resistance to play.

Can' t really comment on the graphics obviously, but the way it was Resistance kinda looked like Black on PS2! I' m just guessing here, but it didn' t seem like at 720p or 1080p either game would look any better than 360s launch titles. Gears on my friend' s composite SDTV did look better.

As games, neither one was particulary exciting either. Umm, if I had anything positive to say it may be that the games ran very smoothly, texture filtering was sharp (texture filtering is a gripe of mine on some 360 games), overall detail was good and varied, and the sound seemed nice and punchy - despite the setup. Resistance had some nice fire and nice glass breaking effects, shooting different areas of a window would have almost the exact effect you would expect.

Resistance took forever to load however (as did RR7 actually but not as long as Resi) and you couldn' t skip any of the cutscenes, which meant waiting at least 5-6 full minutes before actually shooting anything. RR7, well, just think RR6!


Overall impression? Despite taking the less than ideal setup into account, I still wouldn' t pick one up at launch in March over here for what £400-500? (I don' t care about BluRay movies.) Perhaps there' ll be something special about the PS3 later into its life (pending developer support), but I' m just not seeing it at the moment.

Overall rating - Meh.

I think people overestimate the size of the PS3 too, it' s as long as the 360 but just fatter!

If one takes in mind that the big mutha brick of an adapter that the 360 has is built in the Ps3, then it' s actually smaller. I' m O.K with the size, as long as it isn' t as big as the original box.

Well that' s good news for you European folks. I was up at some ungodly hour (read as 5:30) to accompany my brother on a trip to Wal-Mart for pendrives (1 gig for $9.99 they called us). Yeah, I know, remind me in my other thread.

But I had another chance to mess around with the PS3. It was stashed away in a little corner of the electronics section, everybody was oogling over the " GREAT DEALS!" pfft, like the 26" 768p TV' s for $1100.
No I' m not joking.

So anyways, I hit the extended power button on the kiosk, & the thing booted up. It wasn' t near as slow as the last time I' d played with one at a friends house. Let one thing be known though, they were running Motorstorm & NBA Live ' 07 on an LCD HDTV in 480i. Freaking component cables made the whole thing look like trash. Sorry, I' m better now.

and only a wired DualShock2!

You can play PS3 titles on Dualshock? Bizzare.

Resistance took forever to load however (as did RR7 actually but not as long as Resi) and you couldn' t skip any of the cutscenes,

Aggghhhh! I hate that! It' s one of the reasons I don' t like CoD:3. Nobody wants to learn the plot in a demo!

Northern Ireland but No Republic units?

hmmmm...