With the PS4 on the way, I've been thinking about what motivated me to buy the PS3. I didn't expect to buy all three consoles this generation, but I think it was around the 6th time my 360 died, just before GTAIV came out at the end of April, 2008, that I started to get fed up with the XBox. I played this shit out of GTA, but honestly don't blame it for the fact that 360 #6 had the shortest turnaround of any, dying less than a month later.

At the time, I was playing Halo 3 a lot, so I wanted some other multiplayer game while I waited for my broken XBox to return. Whenever my 360 was in the shop, I would go back to playing games on the PS2. Going back to San Andreas and Virtua Fighter 4 was like visiting old friends, but before the 360, my go-to online multiplayer game was Metal Gear Online. That game had since been shut down server-side. With Metal Gear Solid 4 on the way, 2 weeks away from #6's death, I decided to spend my first paycheck at my new job on a PS3.

My first memory of it wasn't a good one. I saved $100 getting a PS3 that couldn't play PS2 games, and still regret that decision. I bought it in the afternoon, went to work, got home late, and set it up, hoping to get right into playing. I spent an hour updating the system, only to wait another 15 minutes to update the game I'd just bought. I only ended up playing for 15 minutes before retiring to bed at 3am. If there's one thing I'm sore about regarding the PS3, it's the constant updates in their war against hackers. Playing on 2 different PS3s at the same time now, whenever there's a system update, it sucks, and we have to sit through it twice. PS Plus's auto download has fixed this, but it really shouldn't be a premium feature.

For the first 2 years of owning it, the 360 was still my main system. I had more games for the thing, and would choose to buy multiplatform games on it over the PS3. The fact that about 20 of the guys I was working with had PS3s meant that if I did choose to buy my games for that system, I'd be able to lend out games and have others lent to me. I'd arrange to buy, say, Batman: Arkham Asylum, with the expectation that someone else would swap Heavy Rain with me for a week. I got to play even more games that way.

When Modern Warfare 2 game out, those 20ish guys I worked with all got it at the same time. I followed. It was one of the best multiplayer experiences I'll ever have. We all worked the same terrible hours, so we all booted up our PS3s and joined custom games together after work every night. That's when I started favoring the PS3. The 360 became my RockBand box. I didn't realize I'd stopped buying games for it till I picked up Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for PS3 despite having the others on the Xbox. Soon after that, I started dating Kyla, and spending more and more time at her place. She had a PS3, so buying a PS3 game meant I got to play it no matter where I was.

I was always wary of buying an XBox 360. I didn't want to support Microsoft, vowing to only buy used (I broke down soon after) and I knew about the red ring, but thought it'd never happen to me. I've only ever had to pay for my replacement twice, once refunded, but the next time it dies, I'd have to buy another, and I'm not sure I will. While Gears of War was once my favourite multiplayer game, the people I played that with never got into Gears 2 or 3. The people I played Halo 3 multiplayer with have since sold their XBoxes, or never bothered repairing them. I subscribed to XBox Live for 2 more years when Halo Reach came out, and only played on the service for about 3 months consistently. The service is so filled with ads now, it's a wonder that they still charge for the Live service, especially when PlayStation Plus lets me play so many games for less than the price of one per year. I really want to say I'll only get two of these Next Gen systems this time out, and I'm already leaning toward PlayStation. The PS3 may have had a slow start, but it's never let me down.