It's none of these. For me it's immersion. I want a game to take me to another place and make me believe I'm there. You know you are playing an awesome game when you look over at the clock, and realize that you should have gone to bed hours ago.

Immersion is acomplished with graphics, sound, story, and gameplay. Good gameplay means you aren't fighting the controls...you think something, and you do it. The sound and graphics make you believe you are there. And a good story...I hope everyone has read a good book that you've got completely lost in. So a good story can do it all by it self.

But in general, I think games suck at story telling. When it comes to stories, for me it's books > movies > games.

My first system was the SNES. I skipped the PS1 and N64 years while I was in college. After graduating, I eventually bought an xbox, gamecube, and PS2.

I got an xbox 360 about 6 months after launch for Oblivion. I didn't want to try PC gaming because I wanted to play on my couch with the bigscreen. I didn't like the idea of the keyboard and mouse, and I thought PC gaming was too much trouble and too expensive.

About 4 months ago, I finally built a gaming PC for Crysis and STALKER. Over the last 4 months I've been catching up on all the PC games I've missed. Saturday I played Call Duty 4 on the PC. I'd already played the **** out of it on the 360, it's one of my favorite games of all time. I thought it looked awesome on the PC, but I remember thinking it was awesome on the 360 too. For kicks I fired it up again on the 360. Oh ****.

1. I can't believe how bad it looks now on the 360. There's no detail.

2. I can't believe how hard it is to control with the two thumbsticks. I've only been playing keyboard and mouse for 4 months. Relatively speaking, I **** at it. I've been playing games with 2 thumbsticks for over 4 years. But compared with the keyboad + mouse, the thumbsticks are so clumsy. It completely destroyes the imersion in the game.

I don't know if I can tolerate consoles anymore. Remember how you always thought TV looked fine until you saw HDTV? Now everytime you see regular TV it just looks like crap? It's like that.

my Rig:

Q6600 at 3.3ghz, 8800 GTS OC'd, 2 gigs ram

You can build my rig for ~$700 now (Cost me ~$800 4 months ago). It will play most games on the highest settings.

1. RE4. I don't hate the game, but I thought the controls were horrible. I quit playing it 3 different times, but I did eventually beat it. It does a lot of things well, so I see why others love it. But the controls are so bad.

2. All Final Fantasy games. They don't suck...it's obvious that a lot of work goes into them, the CGI is well done, the music is fantastic, but the repetative menu fighting is just insufferable for me.

3. Half Life 2 series. Half Life 2 is not bad, but to me, it's just another shooter. I don't see anything special about it. I don't understand the high ratings.

4. All GTA games. They're fun for about 3 hrs. Break the law, run from the cops, fight the cops. The missions and story are borring. Granted I've never beaten a GTA game so maybe all the good stuff is saved for the very end.

5. All Mario Games. I've never beaten a Mario game. Makes me really feel inadaquit to be honest. I just don't like platformers though.

I want to play it, but I won't spend $400 + $60 to play it. So I'll wait until:
1. It comes to the 360 and/or PC. I'm confident this will happen in 2009, as Konomi said something to the effect of only being able to play it on the PS3 in 2008.

2. The PS3 gets a price slash.

I've got a love/hate thing with MGS. MGS 3 was the best one IMO. But I've always been amazed how a game can be so good in some areas, and so bad in others.

STALKER: Clear Skies

Come on man....

Hitman series always had great sound tracks. It's my favorite. I'd leave the games on just to hear the sound track.

Can't leave out the Grand Tourismo series. MGS3 was also very good. I don't like the Final Fantasy series, but the music is absolutely top notch.

But the winner is Super Mario Brothers. It's probably the most recognized video game music on earth.

If I had to pick one, I'd say the PS3 looks slightly better. But there's no way I could tell which was which without the x360/PS3 labels.

The Good:
It seems the days of the PS3 getting inferior multiplats are over. The devs are figuring out the PS3. This is good for gamers.

The Bad:
The X360 is a whole year older than the PS3. Dev's have had almost 2 years to optimize for the PS3, and yet PS3 games do not look better than 360 games. There should be a world of difference between tech that's separated by a whole year. PS3 is marketed as some super computer/gaming machine. "Play Beyond." Unfortunately Sony has yet to deliver the "beyond" yet. They have finally delivered the "play" though. With Blu Ray and MSG IV... maybe "Watch Beyond" would be a better slogan.

LOL at all the idiots. Nice joke TC. Create a chart of sales over a small period, and watch the idiots stampede.

Fanboys sure love charts. Funny they have no clue how to read them. You guys need to read more, think more, and post a whole lot less.

OMG, PS3 sucks! ://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=Wii®1=All&cons2=PS3®2=All&cons3=X360®3=All&weeks=1

OMG, PS3 is killing 360!

http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=Wii®1=All&cons2=PS3®2=All&cons3=X360®3=All&weeks=80

OMG, PS3 is crushing the 360 and the Wii!

http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=Wii®1=All&cons2=PS3®2=All&cons3=X360®3=All&start=39089&end=39166

LOL

I think they'll get a lot better. Look at God of War versus God of War II on the PS2. Or Splinter Cell versus Splinter Cell Chaos Theory on the xbox. Both of the original games were thought to look amazing when they came out. The sequals blew the originals away in terms of graphics. I don't think it's so much about "tapping hidden power" as it is about developing new game engines that deliever more while using less power.

But most console games are at 1280x720 (720p, if they even get there). PC games can be played at much higher resolutions. Higher resolutions really look at lot better.