Expert: Joseph - 1/19/2009

Question
We’d like to buy a game console. We have narrowed the choice to two: Xbox 360 (maybe 60 gigs?) and PlayStation 3.

Here is a summary of what we were told:

Xbox: more game choices, good customer service, often problems with overheating which causes “3 ring of death” (and machine dies, if not under warantee you have a big problem), and this problem occurs often and so there is a high rate of return of the product to the store

PS3: less games, plays blu-ray (not important to us- we want to play games), bad customer service

If the purpose of buying a consol is to play many games (not films) and we want a consol that will last a long time, what would you suggest? Are we missing any information that we should consider?

Answer
You've pretty much got it summed up.  If all you care about are games, go with the 360.  The big selling point of a PS3 is the blu-ray drive, but that makes the system more expensive.  360 is cheaper, has more exclusive titles, has lots of older games that are generally much cheaper than PS3 games, and has a much better online service (xbox live is awesome, I highly recommend signing up for it).  The overheating thing can easily be avoided, you just have to take good care of your system (which you should be doing anyway :P).  I've had a 360 since the day they came out and I've never had a problem with it.  You just have to keep it in a well ventilated area and not keep it on 24/7.