PS3 Informer

New York Times: PS3 'isn't that great'

NYT writer Seth Schiesel spent more than 30 hours with the PlayStation 3, and wasn't overly impressed. Complaints include the lack of a centralized online buddy system, poor interface, and missing features.

It often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3’s online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, you’ll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you can’t download in the background while you go do something that’s more fun (like play a game).

Schiesel does praise the system's graphical prowess, claiming it is "certainly the world’s most powerful game console" and that it "delivers gorgeous graphics." However, in Schiesel's eyes, the good is overwhelmed by the bad, at least for now — although he does admit that future software updates could eliminate a lot of the console's early problems.

"For now Sony’s technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun."