Finally, a real use for the Playstation 3

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I’m not here to bash the PS3. Just that I cannot find even one game on the system that I want to play. It’s all the shooters and sports games, just like the Xbox 360 (another console that doesn’t seem to want to publish games for the non-twitch crowd).
Microsoft and Sony fight over the relatively small share of twitch gamers, while Nintendo makes games for the rest of us.
I’m a total Sony fan, but the very first game that, to me, is worth buying a PS3 for, is Rock Band, and if I am going to buy a console for just one game, I might as well buy the cheaper Xbox 360, or wait until 2008 when it comes out for the Wii.
But I just read (being behind the times) about how Sony encourages people to use their PS3 as a Linux box. I do a fair amount of parallel computing, and I was thinking of cheap ways to add more nodes to my network (currently I have three). Having access to several Cell processors could double or triple the power to solve complex problems.
The PS3 may not be much for games, but as a cheap supercomputer… yeah, that could work. And eventually I can play Rock Band on it, too 🙂
 

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7 thoughts on “Finally, a real use for the Playstation 3”

  1. The PS3 distributions I’ve seen so far haven’t been very impressive. In paritcular, I tried Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3 and it didn’t have drivers for the Wi-Fi built in to the 60GB PS3 SKU, and it could only see half the PS3’s memory (256MB). So, no, its still a $600 paperweight.
    But at least it plays Final Fantasy XII.

  2. Hi Tipa!
    We got a Wii and PS3 when they came out. At first, we played the Wii a lot – I did, at least. We haven’t touched it for at least 3-4 months, so it’s just collecting dust.
    The PS3, by far, has had 50x more play time…the ironic thing is that 90% of the time it’s a PS2 game that’s being played on it. 😛
    I’m still waiting for Assassin’s Creed. I think it’s been nearly a year since first hearing about it, when the projected release date was February 2007. 🙁 Tipa, I’m sure you’d fancy that game.
    – C

  3. Most of the time, we play our PS2. My son plays Madden, Red Dawn and those .hack games, I play Guitar Hero. When people come over, though, it’s Wii Sports that everyone wants to play (though I’ve gotten my sisters playing toy guitars). I’ve been playing a bit of Pokemon Battle Revolution, though — big screen Pokemon Stadium battles against friends and strangers over the Internet. It’s pretty amazing.
    Assassin’s Creed? I’ll look it up. Right now, though, I’m reluctant to buy a console for just one game — unless that game is Rock Band. And even then, I understand it’s coming out for the Wii next year.
    I have this drive to play games with other people. Single player games just don’t do it for me anymore.

  4. @Lars: That’s pretty disappointing. I am looking for the PS3 to be something that can run a couple dozen Erlang nodes, and Wifi access is pretty much required — my home network is entirely wireless. Ubuntu is out for it now, though, and that has decent wireless support on other platforms. And, Sony has put their support behind Linux on the PS3, something MS has not done for the Xbox (which doesn’t have all those juicy cores waiting for me to abuse, either).
    I’ll still probably get one, though. They’re lowering the price for the new 80Gb ones, and the European ones have even more HD space and also some extra stuff (like DVR) that, should it come here, would make it pretty much the only console that could do everything you could ever want… for only $500…
    I don’t buy things because of what they might do someday, though. I want them to be useful right now.

  5. Isn’t the PS3 getting some new RPGs pretty soon like Eternal Sonnata, Heavenly Sword, and the new Discea sequel?
    If I’m not playing an MMO I’m usually playing a strategy RTS or a console RPG. I just picked up Pokemon Diamond and have secretly been enjoying it though I feel very out of date since Pokemon Silver was the last one I had played.

  6. Sure, there’s games coming out, but the question always is (for me), is this game worth $680 (for PS3, extra controller, and game), plus another $700-$1500 for a HD TV? So, show me the game for the PS3 that I will play enough to justify an eventual payment of over $1500.
    And that’s why I have not bought one yet.

  7. I was just {looking for|attempting to find|trying to find} something {similar to|like} this last week!
    Oops! I {fouled up|made a booboo|committed a faux paux} and didn’t write my spam script correctly!

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