Description
- Bundle also includes a Garnet Red DualShock 3 controller and Limited Edition Garnet Red PlayStation3 system featuring a massive 500GB hard drive which holds up to 3750 games, 297 movies, 198,437 songs, and 80,000 photos
- Experience Kratos’s epic journey from Spartan soldier to the God of War in this complete six game bundle. Bundle includes for the first time ever, a Garnet Red PlayStation3 with a massive 500GB hard drive.
- Vengeance is born in the fires of betrayal in this prequel to the best-selling God of War franchise – God of War Ascension, featuring, for the first time ever, epic God of War multiplayer online with brutal 8-player objective-based combat.
Ammy_Evaluator –
Unfortunately, my aging PS3 finally bit the YLOD dust – which is what happens to early generation PS3 units that tend to overheat easily. My PS3 gamely held out through long recent sessions of Far Cry 3 and Skyrim, but finally chose to cash in its chips
Fortunately, it did so the weekend before the GoW4 Acension bundle was released.
That’s how I found myself ripping open my new console’s packaging, earlier this afternoon. (Thank you, Amazon, for guaranteed launch day delivery!)
Of course, after 7 years as one of the best all round multimedia hubs/gaming consoles of all time, it is hard to say much more about the PS3.
Yes, I was impressed by the compactness of this super-slim version.
Yes, I actually like the red color – which isn’t as pink as the photos suggested.
Yes, I love the quieter fan and its cool operating temperature.
Yes, I hate the new spring loaded disk tray*
*Although: this loading style is a lot safer when things go wrong. I had a scare when my old PS3 died with my rental game still in it. Luckily it lived long enough to eject the disk.
With that out of the way, let me focus on the question that I struggled with while making this purchase decision:
Should I wait for the PS4 or buy this PS3 bundle? Or even better – should I wait for a price drop on the PS3?
Here’s how I answered this for myself. Hopefully this will aid your own decision (even should you come to a different conclusion than I did.)
I chose to buy this PS3 500GB bundle at this time, because:
#1. The PS4 will likely not be widely/easily available until June of 2014.
Remember that the PS3 followed a similar tortuous path from announcement to availability. And, note that not even a box was actually displayed at the PS4’s announcement.
Updated June 12: Well, I have my preorder in for a PS4. Fingers crossed on whether I’ll get mine on launch day. PS3s were going for absurdly high prices for a while after launch. Hopefully, Sony has planned ahead this time 🙂
#2. The PS4 will possibly launch with an absurdly high price and debatable quality.
The PS3’s launch price was around twice that of the PS2’s (though Sony sold them at a loss), and initial versions also had questionable quality (e.g., heat issues.) The PS4 with its stock PC-style architecture might keep prices lower, but it likely won’t be cheap, and likely will be plagued by early adopter woes. It might even be June 2015 before things stabilize.
Updated June 12: The launch price is much lower than I’d feared. Thank you, Sony!
#3. The PS3 platform has a few more years of life left
Early on, the PS4 will be limited by available content and might even lack backwards compatibility. In the meantime, the PS3 is an excellent bluray player, a highly capable streaming media platform, and I can imagine at least another couple of years worth of gameplay out of my current stockpile. Not to mention that new PS3 hardware (super slim models, rad colors, and Hard disk sizes), and big name games (GoW Ascension, AC4, new Skyrim DLC, etc.) are still being launched for this platform.
#4. This particular bundle is actually not bad
While not a killer deal, this bundle is nothing to sneeze at. We are talking about a brand new game from a major franchise, a rather nice limited edition color with matching controller (a decent red rather than a vague pink), 5 additional games, and a 500GB hard drive.
#5. When you gotta go, you gotta go!
The price of the 500GB PS3 will dip in the coming 8 months, possibly landing near 2012 Black Friday prices.
However: My PS3 is dead. Neither the price cuts on the PS3, nor the PS4, are here. I need to watch Blurays and play games today.
In conclusion, I must say that it was hard to come to this decision. If the PS4 is released next month and is dirt cheap, or if the price of this bundle is halved, then I’ll kick myself.
But, for now, I’m enjoying this bundle!
As for *GoW Ascension* – the graphics are simply amazing, and the sound quality is awesome. The game is unabashedly about its gorgeous combat, and does not even make a feeble attempt at dredging up a story. My wait for any hint of a story is eased by simply enjoying this game as a spectacle.
As others have stated – none of the games come with cases or printed game material. And the DLC download coupon expires on Mar 31.
Sorry, gotta run – I have to continue my date with Kratos and the Furies.
Happy Gaming!
Makron –
As a hardcore gamer I consider this, if you want to give a true opinion of what console has the best offering the best is the you have all, if you money allows this of course, but thanks to god and my job I can do this, so I bough this edition of PS3 with the complete collection of God of War to really test the Sony console capabilities and today after almost 4 years I’m really glad with this PS3 is fast, solid, and the exclusives are great. The negative in this console is the limited space drive 500 GB and the inability to add an external drive to save and play your games, other thing that I recently read is the ne price for PSN membership, the free games catalog vs. the free games catalog en Xbox Live and a little thing on the graphics is that always the games appears to have a layer that make the games a little darker, I test this in many TV and the results are the same, on the other hand Xbox graphics are more illuminated and in some cases I can see more definition on it. Besides of that the console is very good, ohhhh I almost forget the first God of War game is sooooooooooooooooooooo hard take a entirely week to finish it, anybody has the same problem…???
I have this console and my old Xbox 360 fat as my primary consoles today and of course I’m still testing the Xbox One and PS4 in the launch version, recently I acquired the Xbox One S and the PS4 Pro so I will tell you my experience on every console in the moment I have a real opinion.