Unboxing a PlayStation 3 40GB, and putting it back in

After quite a bit of consideration, I finally decided to order myself a PlayStation 3, the 40GB model. Unfortunately I had to send it back for replacement or repairs, as the unit I received was obviously faulty. Interestingly, I am not the only European customer that has bought a faulty PS3 40GB unit. Read on to learn more about it, and my first impressions on the king of consoles.

I bought my device from Germany, as there seemed to be the best deals avaiable for us Europeans. The German starter pack came with two wireless controllers, and two games: Uncharted - Drake’s Fortune and Need For Speed: Pro Street. Overall a very nice pack to get you going.

Out-of-the-box readiness

I think Sony could improve the first impression their product makes. First of all, there is no HDMI cable included (as it has been complained from the beginning), which is absolutely stupid for a HD device. The wireless controllers are charged with a USB cable, but the cable provided with the device is about 1 meter long - not exactly long enough to reach the sofa, when you want to get your hands on with the device! After the connections were made there were some configurations to do, wireless setup, user account creation and so on.

When I got the wireless Internet up and running, the device let me know that there was a firmware update available. It was a procedure of downloading, accepting the EULA, flashing and rebooting. Now finally I was able to slip in the NFS: Pro Street game and start playing - or, maybe not. NFS Pro Street told me that the game was about to be updated, and the download was a mighty 722 megabytes! Luckily I am on a 8mbit cable, so it was only a matter of 15-20minutes, but at the same time I wondered how would the 512kbs or 1Mbit cable owners like waiting a few hours before they can start playing. So with all the hassle, I beleive it took around one hour until I had my first game going.

First impressions: The good

I have owned all previous PlayStations, so this was an upgrade from PS2. While the PS2 was just a gaming machine, the PS3 impresses with it’s functionality. It has upscaling DVD playback, which looked good and most importantly with the additional Blu-ray remote control, the DVD playback usability is now as good as with any DVD player. I watched some HDTV content I downloaded from the net and burned to DVD’s, and they worked very nicely indeed. I had only two games to go with, but the Uncharted - Drake’s fortune really impressed. Amazing visuals, enjoyable game play and an entertaining cinematic experience. I was also very pleased with the nice amount of playable demo versions of games that were available for a free download. A demo of the upcoming Gran Turismo 5 raised great expectations for the game.

First impressions: The bad

While Uncharted and some of the demo games were great, apparantly all titles do not yet fully utilize the next generation hardware. The NFS: Pro Street was actually a very bad experience, especially after playing around with the GT5 demo. Graphics were bad and looked more like PS2 than PS3, playability was terrible and in every way the game was much worse that earlier releases of the NFS series on PS2 and other platforms.

And as I hinted in the first paragraph, I ran into immediate problems with the device. The PS3 will primarily serve as a media center, and gaming will be the secondary function of the device. I had read from the reviews that PS3 is very quiet device, and heard it myself with friend’s consoles, but my unit was damn noisy. After just few minutes of gaming, or 15 minutes of DVD playback the PS3 fan started blowing like a vacuum cleaner - literally! The noise was unbearable, and made my PS3 totally useless as a media center, and it was very annoying while playing too. Quick check around with the Google, and I found out that many Europeans that have bought the 40GB edition are experiencing the same - and the difference to a unit with a normal noise level is really huge. So pay attention to the noise level of the PS3 fan if you are about to buy one!

A quick call to Sony representative, the PlayStation back to original packaging, to the post office and this first impression review session was over. I get back to in two weeks when I get the device back.