imdaly said:
It would only be comparable if everybody NEEDED all those accessories...and even still you underappreciate the value of choice.
What they need and don't need doesn't really matter as much, the two things that people care about from these systems is that they both play games, and can go online. Microsoft says you have choice, yes, but people are not buying the core unit at all, so they've made their choice about which features they want.
It's not as if you can just say you want online: you have to buy the hard drive, which is 100 dollars, and the mechandise that really matters is all dependent on you having online (Headset for instance), and the rest seems to be useless status items (like a wireless controller or charger).
You have a single choice: between a system without online and a system with online. For the 360. You have to pay a yearly fee for that online on top of the 100 dollar hard drive (which equalizes the price between the Core and Premium anyway) so it's important to consider that in a choice.
The only thing Microsoft has given the consumers a choice over is a lower priced unit that no one wants to buy, and a higher priced one that does everything everybody wants anyway. The Low End PS3 (at least in the short 5-6 years term) will do everything everyone wants to do with it beyond playing the games and going online, and output in that 1080 resolution for high definition movies.
If you want to play the Xbox 360 system online (which the majority of people seem to) then you're getting a Premium 360. Then you also have to pay a yearly fee, which adds up, that you don't have to pay with the PS3.
Hence, despite the higher entry price of the PS3, they are comparable way more then I think a lot of people consider them to be.
They (Microsoft) offer you more options, yes, but they are all leading to the same thing, and when the hard drive for the 360 packs in all of the features that come with the premium version and makes the two units cost the same, that's not much choice at all. You can not pick and choose, truely, just between a crippled model and a great model.