What do I need to know about PS3 buying?

[Scottie]

Santa's letter has arrived from little Ted, which helps the Christmas shopping

Main present is a PS3 for his Mum's house, and MW3.

What do I need to buy?

1. There are 160 and 320 GB bundles, i take it these do not matter for him if he does not store music?
2. Do i need to buy a wireless network card?
3. If he wants to play live with his school friends what service does he hook up to?
4. What is this "movie pack" thing?
5. Is there anything I should make sure is in the bundle or not?

Cheers,
Scott.

P.S. At my house we already have an xbox 360.

[Rubix_Cube]

The PS3 has inbuilt Wifi and the online network is PSN. PSN is free to use unlike XBox Live.

Size depends on info being saved on it. TBH 160 will probably be ample.

No idea about other stuff.

[Drifter]

Not sure on the space, I'd need to check what mine is but I've never had a problem with space. PS3 is wireless built in and will conect to a wireless broadband router. It will connect to the PSN free of charge. Not sure about the movie pack. Pack wise I just bought the basic machine with an extra pad. The pad allows me to charge one while I use the other

[Pete C]

Yeah two pads are pretty essential with the PS3, either that or buy a longer USB charging lead because the one that comes with the console isn't really long enough to play + charge the pad simultaneously.

160Gb will be more than fine if it's only game data that's being stored on it, not music/video libraries etc.

[Stidi]

you can pre-load / cache data to the inbuilt hard drive to make games load quicker (and save wear / tear on the dvd/bluray drive as it won't be spun up as much.
it used to be that different size hard drives had different capabilities (some had the ability to play ps2 games) that's all been dropped afaik

As mentioned, no need for seperate network hardware, it's all built in PSN's not bad and though not quite as polished as live, it's free certainly does the job

might be worth looking into headsets if he's going to be playing with mates online?

[Monkey]

1. There are 160 and 320 GB bundles, i take it these do not matter for him if he does not store music?

Correct, but i have my 500gb HDD full fo films etc,

you can quite easliy upgrade ot a larger one later

2. Do i need to buy a wireless network card?

no, the PS3 has WiFi built in, but its crap IMPO, where possible i would hardwire it into your network. but you do not need any additional hardware

3. If he wants to play live with his school friends what service does he hook up to?

PSN (Playstation Network) when he switches on and trys to login to the "network" it will ask him to register

4. What is this "movie pack" thing?

its Movies you can download, waste of time and money

5. Is there anything I should make sure is in the bundle or not?

if he has a screen capable of receiving a HDMI cable, then you'll need to buy that as one does not come in the box, only Scart, and the pciture through scart is crap

[Scottie]

Excellent answers so far, thank you, yes he has a small freeview flatscreen that says HD so I guess a HDMI cable is also needed.

Hadn't thought of headset, on the 360 he uses Kinect to speak to his mates.

[Pete C]

Excellent answers so far, thank you, yes he has a small freeview flatscreen that says HD so I guess a HDMI cable is also needed.

A TV can be "HD" without having an HDMI port, older ones will have component in instead - red/green/blue/white/red; not to be confused with composite which is just yellow/white/red and is the cable you get in the box with a SCART adapter

[Monkey]

you get nothing with the PS3, so a headset would be best, you can go for a bluetooth "handfree w4nker on the highstreet" style for about £10 the official sony PS3 ones is supposed ot be the best.

or for something like Turtle Beach P11's which are proper cans with a mike for approx £30.

DO NOT BUY the 4Gamer PS3 official ones, they are crap, i had 2 sets before i bought the Turtle beach P11's

[Mark]

its definatly a 'movie' pack and not a 'move' pack?

[unipsycho]

Hadn't thought of headset, on the 360 he uses Kinect to speak to his mates.

I just use the PS eye that came with a Playstation Move pack to to talk online.

[Scottie]

its definatly a 'movie' pack and not a 'move' pack?

erm, not sure, better check that out!

[Monkey]

i would also look into getting him a Playstation Plus subscription.

the basics are:

4 free games each month 1 PSone game, 2 Minis (basically phone games) 1 PSN game (a download only PS3 game)

loads of other free stuff like themes, (wall papers for the PS3 home screen) Avatars (for your PSN ID)

as well as discounts on other games you can buy online

you also get 150mb of online storage for PS3 saves (this is a just incase your PS3 goes pop and you cant retreive them, you just "sync" the data and its back, as well as being able to download them round a mates house on to their PS3)

Automatic downloads of game updates, of games he's played on His PS3. none of what happend to so many people on here when GT5 Spec 2.0 got released and waiting for a couple of hours to get the download. the PS3 wakes it self up, checks for updates downloads and installs them, then switches it self off.

plus other stuff i forget.

its £40 for a year and worth it IMO

[Jonny]

Santa's letter has arrived from little Ted, which helps the Christmas shopping

Main present is a PS3 for his Mum's house, and MW3.

IIRC MW3 is 18 certificate so some of the imagery may be a bit graphic for a littl'un... You may be able to tone it down via parental controls, not sure.

[R3K1355]

It's the online play that you can't tone down, specifically the language used by the little pricks that play it.

[Bahnstormer]

They don't list MW3, but might be worth a look? http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.h...pf_rd_i=468294

[Asht_200]

IIRC MW3 is 18 certificate so some of the imagery may be a bit graphic for a littl'un... You may be able to tone it down via parental controls, not sure.

There's a reason games are 18 certificate - irresponsible for a parent to buy them for kids IMHO

[BigD]

If you havent bought one yet wait, and watch BestBuy.co.uk to see what deals they will have on their closing down sale.

it starts monday, you might get a bargain from it.

[itrhondaboy]

I've got a 320gb, and a 1tb ps3
If he wants mw3 it's down to you frankly I don't believe it matters about age certs in most cases after about the age of 12 you've seen pretty much everything bad there is to see on the net anyway! Obviously there are limits as you don't want a 5 year old kid telling his teachers to fcuk themselves because he heard it on team deathmatch lol