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Review: OnLive

Just what is OnLive?

After over a year of forcing North Americans to do the guinea pig work for us, OnLive has finally granted Great Britain access to its ambitious cloud gaming service. The platform could, in theory at least, pave the way for how we consume and play videogames in the future.

The firm says its on-demand service is now more robust thanks to the work of the good old US of A, but can it really compete with the likes of PS3 and Xbox 360? More importantly, can the UK's broadband architecture cope with OnLive's lofty demands?

OnLive works rather differently to a traditional games console stuffed full of various high-end components and screeching heat fans, streaming all of the actual computing involved in your game of, say, Splinter Cell to one of the company's faraway servers, which it says it upgrades every month with the latest graphics cards and RAM sticks.

Basically, you're playing a game remotely via the internet. When you aim your silenced pistol at a nasty henchman's bonce and pull the trigger, the command is sent over to OnLive's server den, which does all the computer work and then sends back the result of your gunshot via images down your broadband pipe.

The advantage of farming out the hardware bit is that you can run OnLive's library of titles on a number of different devices that would normally never be able to the cope with that calibre of game without 300 quid's worth of heatsink strapped to their sides.

PCs, Android tablets and iPads all support the OnLive platform, with the latter even supporting custom touch interfaces for some games, such as Ubisoft's excellent god sim From Dust. There's also a dedicated Games System, which you can buy to play the service on your TV.

Check out our Hands on: OnLive video to see what we think about the service:

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The Games System hardware

Inside the shoebox-sized starter pack, which costs around £69, is a tiny Game System, Xbox 360-style Wireless Controller, all the power adaptors you need to get it going, plus USB, Ethernet and HDMI leads.

Setup is straightforward and guided by a minimalist, Apple-style leaflet inside the box. Plug the box into your television via HDMI, connect it to the power mains, attach an Ethernet cable from your router – unfortunately there's no Wi-FI, but you can set up a bridge – and OnLive will be ready to put pretty pictures on your TV screen.

It only takes about five minutes to set up your free account and get started, and then you're left to navigate the platform's main Dashboard to purchase games, spectate other players' activities or watch Brag Clips (more on those later).

The Wireless Controller feels sturdy and includes every button and trigger you could possibly need for today's top games, although it's perhaps not quite as comfortable as the similar Xbox 360 joypad.

Face buttons carry the same naming convention as Microsoft's controller (A, B, X and Y), and the pad also boasts a pair of triggers, left and right bumpers and a D-pad on the bottom left of the controller.

Unlike Microsoft's controller, though, the OnLive peripheral houses a number of inputs along the bottom for controlling video, including buttons to play, stop and fast forward.

Does it work?

Now, so far you're probably thinking this all sounds like a nice idea, but will it actually work on your old BT Broadband connection? The answer is: probably. On a 50Mb Virgin connection, the OnLive technology really is impressive – we played various online sessions of first-person shooter Homefront and almost forgot we weren't holding a PlayStation 3 controller.

On the right connection, games start up quicker than you'd be able to walk to the television and fiddle with a DVD, and OnLive really starts to feel like the future of gaming.

However, on the less speedy 3Mb connections that most of the country has to make do with, the 2011 on-demand gaming scene can be a completely different experience (if your old pipe's good enough to connect in the first place, that is).

Those lower down the broadband chain might find that while less reaction-speed-reliant games such as Lego Batman work fine, titles in the vein of Assassin's Creed that require quick movements of the analogue sticks to keep the camera pointing in the right direction feel sluggish. It's a bit like playing when you haven't activated Game Mode on your brand new 400Hz OLED TV.

Outside of lightning-quick connections, there's also a noticeable – but not huge – drop in picture quality compared to the lush visuals outputted by the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

At times, graphics don't look as crisp as their console counterparts, and some distortion can also be apparent when your broadband throws a wobbly, especially on HD televisions. Lower-resolution PC monitors seem to hide this better.

The good news if you have to make do with a single-figure connection is that OnLive includes a five-minute drop-out feature that means you've still got a chance of rescuing your game if your connection drops.

With such a pioneering platform, it's probably acceptable that not everyone's going to get perfect service from the off, and it's certainly likely to improve along with Britain's internet infrastructure.

If you're worried your connection might not be up for the job of efficiently streaming a 16-man Unreal deathmatch from 100 miles away, the beauty is it won't cost you a thing to try. OnLive is free to sign up for and you can easily jump on and have a go on a few game trials on your PC or Mac.

Social gaming

The thing that really impresses us about OnLive most is not its ability to magically put Prince Of Persia on our iPads, but its exciting interface and platform, which includes some features that the big console manufacturers could really do with nicking – if they have the technology to even implement them.

The first is simple but incredibly impressive: when you start up your little box, a flashy boot-up screen will illuminate your telly, depicting a giant globe built entirely out of little video screens, eventually settling on the same gameplay windows that make up the backdrop of OnLive's menus.

Those squares of video aren't just placeholders – they're real-world users playing away in real time. The Arena is the showcase for this baffling and brilliant innovation, enabling you to browse a wall of live gaming, picking any box you like to stretch the video to full screen and watch another OnLive user playing a game live from their living room.

It's very, very impressive stuff and from here you can leave your spy victim a thumbs up message, add them as a friend, or simply enjoy their half-pipe skills in Skate.

The Arena has more practical benefits for the game-playing experience too. If you're considering handing over your hard-earned cash for a title you're perhaps not too sure about, you can highlight the Arena tab and bring up every user with open privacy options who's playing that game right now. (You can also trial the title for 30 full minutes, as is possible with almost all OnLive games.)

You don't have to own the title as you would on an Xbox or PlayStation in order to spectate, of course – the hardware doing all the work is in some warehouse God knows how far away.

Another head-spinning feature comes via those video input buttons on the bottom of the Wireless Controller. Press the tiny record button on your pad and OnLive will instantly record your last 10 seconds of gameplay, attach it to your profile and upload it to the service's YouTube equivalent, Brag Clips.

That means the next time you pull off a mental Virtua Tennis shot or expose a game-breaking glitch in Batman: Arkham Asylum, you can record it on video and share it with the world.

The Brag Clips interface looks identical to the Arena – basically, a giant wall of video all playing at once, like the end scene from The Matrix Reloaded. From here, you can arrange the clips by highest rated, most viewed or most recent.

It's no surprise that at the moment a lot of the popular Brag Clips are saucy scenes from Duke Nukem Forever, but there are some hilarious Homefront kills and Red Faction glitches to be discovered.

The games

Around 120 games are available on the service at the time of writing, the newest including big hitters such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution and DiRT 3. The most popular games at the moment appear to be sandbox titles such as Just Cause 2 and Saints Row, and these work well with both varying internet connections and the comedy Brag Clips you'll be keen to stick in your user profile.

At the moment, OnLive is running a promotion that means UK users can purchase their first game for just £1, after which you'll have to shell out as much as £35 for some games. That's disappointing considering how much you can pick up their boxed equivalents for.

Renting options, however, are far more tempting, with three-day (£3.49) and five-day (£4.99) passes available – you could easily finish Warhammer 40k: Space Marine in that kind of time.

There's also a PlayPack Bundle, which gives you access to 100-plus games for less than a tenner a month at £6.99. While the newest titles aren't included, there's plenty to give you your money's worth.

As a whole, there are undoubtedly some quality titles on the service at the moment, but there are also glaring holes in the portfolio that need to be addressed over time (and we suspect they will be).

For the UK market, there's no football game on the platform right now, and a lot of the big titles gamers will be searching for this Christmas – Call Of Duty, Battlefield 3 and Skyrim – will only be available on the traditional home consoles.

That said, we imagine OnLive's business model is extremely attractive to games publishers, so it's probably only a matter of time before the gaps in its service are aptly filled up.

OnLive gaming also needs to progress. Shooters such as Homefront, as we mentioned previously, cope very well with the doubled network task of streaming both game and shooting-your-mate-in-the-face data. Other types of game, such racing and sports, suffer from reduced picture quality and lag at times.

The service as a whole isn't exactly bursting with online players either, but then again there aren't many titles available yet that offer multiplayer. Once again, we suspect this is something that will be fixed over time.

Verdict

It's clear that the cloud is going to be a big feature in all of our lives, and that includes our virtual worlds as well, and as connections get faster and more robust things will get better and better.

OnLive is impressive enough to convince us that cloud gaming will play a part in how we consume videogames in future – but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll take over from the traditional method of sticking a disc in a box in front of the telly just yet.

We liked

It's a remarkable system to witness in action and the social features that make up its flashy interface are very exciting indeed.

The user interface is well designed, and it is clear that this has been built with a community in mind, and our cynicism over the latency issue has been greatly reduced as we spent time trying out the games.

For older games and those less reliant on super speedy reactions, the lag simply isn't a major factor, unless your connection is truly ponderous, prone to dropping out, or your ISP decides that OnLive is actually a P2P connection and throttles the speed.

Once the games library starts to fill up – especially with OnLive exclusive titles taking advantage of its superior hardware and iPad options – we can see the platform really taking off as an alternative to traditional out-of-the-box thumb waggling.

We didn't like

There's a part of us that's left feeling that it's not the gamers – the ones who'll care about the slight reduction in image quality and miniscule response lag – but the mainstream populous who OnLive should be aiming at.

The newer games are currently run on 'optimum' settings, which can mean that the super-high end graphics you are used to from your computer are simply not even attempted.

At the moment, there are parts of England that don't quite have the broadband connections to run every game at its top-notch capabilities. That said, we do urge those curious to give OnLive a go for free on their PCs before dismissing it entirely.

Verdict

OnLive is an impressive glimpse into the future of gaming. It's not perfect, but it is far from the laggy-monster we feared. For casual gamers this is a very real option.

 

Review: PS Vita Starter Kit

If you've already dropped something in the region of £200 on Sony's PS Vita, it might make sense to consider spending a few units more on some accessories.

The PS Vita Starter Kit includes a wrist strap, a cleaning cloth, a soft carry pouch, a travel case, a memory card case and a protective screen cover. This is the kind of stuff that you would probably have liked to see include with the console, but at £15 we reckon it's pretty good value.

This is a mobile device after all, and so it's going to be rattling around in a bag… a lot. So protecting the screen from scratches and the body from the rough and tumble of travel can be the difference between your Vita ageing very quickly and eternal youth.

Not one but two cases for the console itself are included in this pack. The soft slip-on sheath adds lightweight protection if you just want to toss it in your bag.

The travel case is more clever in that it's designed to stay attached at all times and even folds into a stand. It's not immediately obvious how this stand attaches to the Vita, but you soon work it out and it reveals itself to be a worthwhile travel companion.

It's not designed to offer drop protection though – we suspect that if you dropped your Vita while in this case, you could still do a fair bit of damage if it landed on the wrong edge or corner.

The card case allows you to transport both PS Vita memory cards and game cartridges so you never have to be without any of your Vita content.

The screen protector was a bit fiddly to fit but it does come with a useful guide which fits over the unit's controls to make sure it lines up nicely with the screen. We'd advise any Vita gamer to protect the screen as a matter of priority – it's not the most scratchproof mobile screen around, after all and that OLED panel is too gorgeous to spoil.

We'd advise any owner of a PS Vita to think about investing in this kit. Many travel cases cost upwards of £15 anyway, but in this case you get more than just a case. So it's a perfect birthday present or impulse buy, then.

Review: PlayStation Move

Sony PlayStation Move: Overview

It's surprising to think that the Wii has been on sale for nearly four years, and we're only now seeing true competition from Nintendo's rivals. Of course, considering the half-hearted motion controls of the Sixaxis, it's probably wise for Sony to have been cooking PlayStation Move slowly since its introduction 15 months ago.

The PlayStation's motion controller sticks much closer to the Wii's mould than Microsoft's Kinect, with E3's Move tagline being "This changes everything". Hyperbole aside, Sony is aiming to take the technological high road, as it does with all things PS3, and beat the Wii on precision and movement accuracy.

The technology used is actually pretty similar to Nintendo's, but on steroids. The Wii's sensor bar sits by the TV and gives out infrared lights that a camera in the remote picks up in order for the pointer to function.

Move flips this around, with a camera next to the TV picking up the glowing ball on the end of the controller. The PS3 can then measure distance from the controller using the size of the ball as a reference.

The Move controller also has all the movement sensing bells and whistles of the Wii remote and MotionPlus attachment, demonstrating that Sony's thinking was obviously that they weren't attempting to reinvent the wheel so much as make it a little rounder.

Move controllers are available alone for £35, or with the PlayStation Eye camera for £50. The Navigation controller (the equivalent to the Wii's nunchuck) is £25, though we haven't included it in our testing it here.

Sony PlayStation Move: Design

The most noticeable thing about Move's primary controller is the glowing ball on top, unsurprisingly. When the controller is off, the orb is white and softly translucent, and looks remarkably like a ping-pong ball (it's about the same size as one, too).

When the controller's in full use, the ball lights up in a range of colours, so it can be tracked by the PlayStation Eye camera. While the ball might seem to be a weak point should the controller ever make contact with your wall/lamp/friend's skull, it's actually squishy, and just pops back into shape after an impact.

The rest of the controller has a more organic look than the Wii remote. It's round, and becomes slightly thinner in the middle, presumably to be more ergonomic.

On the front, you have the four familiar PlayStation face buttons, though the fact that they're arranged in a square, rather than a diamond, makes it a little hard to remember which one is where for a while.

Between those is the Move button, a thumb-sized new addition, clearly meant as Move's version of the Wii remote's big A button.

Beneath those is the PS button, which serves the same function is it does on the DualShock 3 or SixAxis controller of bringing up the XMB. It sits in a concave, which avoids accidental presses neatly.

The underside of the controller is mostly clear, but features a trigger, known as the T button. This is analogue – like R2/L2 on the DualShock 3 or the left and right triggers on the Xbox 360 controller – in contrast to the crisp, clicking B button on the Wii.

The left-hand side features the Select button, which is quite hard to hit, but is rarely needed.

On the right side, you find the Start button, which can be pressed accidentally depending on you hold the controller, though it only happened once or twice.

At the base of the move is a micro-USB port for charging, a slot for the provided wrist straps, and two mystery connectors that could be used for accessories in the future.

At first, the Move controller feels a little more comfortable than the Wii remote. It's not that Nintendo's controller was uncomfortable, but the roundness of Move goes some way toward helping it sit neatly in the hand.

That said, we found that we started to feel the effects of prolonged use faster with Move, and we think it's to do with the shape. The tapered middle means you're often gripping harder than you would have to with the Wii's controller, especially when playing something with hard swings, like Table Tennis on Sports Champions. Discomfort in the wrist crept in earlier than it did during an equivalent session of Wii Sports Resort.

Let's be clear, though: We're not saying Move is painful, uncomfortable, bad for you, or anything like that (assuming you have no joint problems to begin with). After all, we were playing for quite long periods during our review time, though not unusually long for a committed gamer.

We're not even saying it's definitely less comfortable than the Wii remote – as we said, it's actually a bit nicer just to hold – but we do think that the shape isn't ideal for long periods of the more wrist-bending games.

There are a few other things about the Move's design that seem a little odd to us. Why add a new button with the Move logo (which is, let's remember, just a squiggly line, and so doesn't jump out at you on-screen), when Sony could have just used X or Circle?

Of course, the most contentious design decision will always be that orb. We don't deny that accuracy that it brings (more on that later), but it really does look silly. We're not going to make the laboured sex-toy joke, because all of your friends who see it will. Seriously, it's not just a meme – it's the first thing that people who've never even heard of Move say.

The light is also quite distracting. If you're trying to do something else in the room while someone's playing a game with two controllers, your eye is constantly drawn. The Wii remote was designed to be inconspicuous – the shape fits in with your TV remotes, and it almost disappears into your hand when you hold it – but this can be borderline gaudy.

That said, motion-controlled gaming always has and always will make you look a bit weird. It's not like the wild flailing was dignified before the glowing ball was added, so maybe we should just be happy with the extra accuracy and possibilities it offers.

Sony PlayStation Move: Performance

In the games Sony provided us to test with, we were able to get a feel for much of what's possible with Move, but we also became aware that these tests are somewhat limited by the way the games are programmed.

This has always been one of the Wii's biggest caveats, and the worry is always that games will use motion sensing in a way that really should have just been achieved with buttons.

With that in mind, we can safely say that we came away hugely impressed with what Move can do, but it still needs a careful, measured implementation.

The controller's ball certainly seems to offer an accuracy of pointer movement that goes beyond what the Wii remote is capable of. The idea that it could be as accurate as a mouse is probably a bit ambitious, but it's good enough that we could see it giving real-time strategy games, and a few other genres that do better on PCs, a new lease of life on consoles.

When you navigate the XMB with the Move controller, you point it at the screen, hold trigger, and then point it up, down, left or right to move in that direction in the menu.

Interestingly, the ball stays dark during this time, so it seems to be using only the motion sensing capabilities, but it's so fluid and accurate that you wouldn't know the difference.

When the ball is being used as a pointer, we found that it often only operated in a very narrow field compared to the Wii, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it makes navigating some menus a little more fiddly than we're used to. On the other hand, it works perfectly at much further distances than the Wii remote is capable of.

There are several games where the orb needs to be visible to the camera, even when you'd think the control would be all motion-sensing based.

With the Wii, you could walk into another room and bowl if you wanted, but that's rarely the case here. In fact, leaving the camera's field of view with the active controller seems to stop all functions from working – including the buttons.

While one of the criticisms of Kinect that's going around is the space needed to use it, this is actually also an occasional problem for Move. Sports Champions demands that you stand eight feet (2.5 meters) away from your TV, and then it still expects you to be able to step backwards, and swing your arms all around.

For some people, this won't be a problem, but in our case it meant shifting a sofa back a couple of feet every time we wanted to play (not to mention getting rid of the coffee table). Yes, we always needed to make some space when playing on the Wii, but nowhere near as much as this.

Of course, we're just talking about living rooms here. These space restrictions will just about rule out Sports Champions for bedrooms.

Why is this an issue for Move when it isn't for the Wii (some of the most energetic Wii games be played sitting on your sofa or standing up without too much of a penalty)? It's the restriction of the ball and camera system. You need to be able to swing your arm well out occasionally, and still be on camera.

This restriction follows through into some of the multiplayer games. We only tried with two people, which was fine once we'd made enough space, but if you were playing four-player Volleyball, where everyone has to be on camera at once, it would be absolute carnage.

Annoyingly, Sport Champions wasn't the only game that caused us a distance problem. Our sofa was too close to the TV for us to be able to play that game, but when we popped in Start the Party!, we were too far back!

Start the Party! uses the camera and Move controller for augmented reality (AR) WarioWare-esque party games, so each active player needs to be quite close to the camera to be the right size on-screen. This distance inconsistency is another sacrifice for the accuracy on offer, but it's simply a problem that the Wii doesn't have.

The AR in Start the Party! is very impressive though (and it actually makes an occasional appearance in Sports Champions too). Giant foam hands stick like glue to the end of your controller, wobbling convincingly with the momentum of your swings. Tennis rackets twist in your hand, meaning that you have to careful to hit with the strings, and not the rim.

Win one round in particular and the controller becomes a pencil, enabling you to deface your opponent's image – all with incredible accuracy, though the fact that you're seeing yourself from the other way makes it a little confusing when you're rotating things, or moving them to and from the camera.

Naturally, there's a horror story too. Kung Fu Rider – a kind of Tony Hawk's meets Pain, with a Crazy Taxi heart – is a classic early-Wii case of unnecessary waggle. Thrust the controller up to jump, but to accelerate you have to shake it up and down, resulting in numerous accidental jumps. And yet, when you actually want to jump, it's frequently unresponsive.

It's a perfect example that the Move technology can only be as good as the software harnessing it.

Sony PlayStation Move: Head-to-head

With Sports Champions sitting happily alongside Wii Sports Resort on our shelf, the obvious test for Move was to put it up against Nintendo's offering. There are several like-for-like games here, so how do they compare?

Table Tennis

A tricky one. The Wii version offered a huge amount of control over the spin on your ball, but you still had control over your Mii's movement, and the accuracy of your swing didn't matter as long as the timing was right.

Move couldn't be more different. By stepping left, right, forwards and backwards, your character will do the same, enabling you to get in close for smashes, or to get back for a powerful top spin return.

You also need to think about the height of the ball, because it's quite possible to just swing at air underneath it.

Serving on Sports Champions is a nightmare, though. Not a single one of the people we got to play could get the hang of it.

Of course, adding elaborate physics to a sports game just means it can go wrong. Attempts to put slice on the ball can result in it pinging off at ridiculous angles for no discernible reason, probably in part due to the precision the game demands from you and Move. Precision that is there, but is hard to master.

Wii Sports Resort is the arcade version, wanting you to put crazy spin on the ball, but this Sports Champions is all simulation. If you want to put tonnes of side spin on, you'd better get some damn practice in.

Winner: Sports Champions

Disc Golf

Though there's no proper golf on Sports Champtions, which is a bit of a shame (though perhaps not unexpected, with Tiger Woods 11 already out), we do have a good ol' Frisbee to toss about.

There's barely anything between these two, in terms of the control system. Sports Champions seems to be a tad more forgiving in that it's slightly easier to throw the disc straight in front of you, but both games have totally convincing curves and wind effects in flight.

Winner: Draw

Bowling/Bocce

Okay, so this isn't exactly like for like in terms of the games, but the control scheme is the same for the pair, so it's a good comparison.

In Sports Champions, how much momentum you get on the Bocce balls from a throw can occasionally be a bit inconsistent. Throw the pallino hard and low on the S-shaped course and it occasionally only travels about 10 metres, while other times it rockets round the course, though you're sure you threw it pretty much the same.

It's also hard to really get the hang of left and right spin on the Move game, especially compared to Wii Sports Resort's bowling. We've always found that the Wii bowling game produces exactly the same slight left spin that we have in real life, and that adding a different spin is a just a matter of subtle wrist action.

Winner: Wii Sports Resort

Archery

To keep this fair, we compared the Wii remote-and-Nunchuck Archery game to using two motion controllers at once on Sports Champions.

The Wii version was always one of the most impressive MotionPlus demos, with every twitch and sag of the your arm translated to the screen. At first, Move really disappointed us. Control was laggy and accuracy was very tough.

However, it was then pointed out to us that, while we had made some effort to adopt a correct archery pose, we weren't doing it properly. So we turned fully 90 degrees from the TV, outstretched our arm all the way and tried again.

Suddenly, movement was perfect. Going from target to target is smooth (though you get more of an aiming aid from Sports Champions than from Resort), and using the second controller to bring arrows into the bow yourself gives you a great Robin Hood feeling.

The only thing we missed from the Wii version is a way to readjust where the centre of your aiming is (for example, you can aim slightly below the TV as your centre, so you're arm doesn't get in the way). This would be even more welcome on Move, due to the distraction of the glowing orb.

Yes, it's less realistic, but real archers don't have lights on their bows. However, this doesn't take away from the accuracy of the controls.

Winner: Draw

Swordplay/Gladiator Duel

The addition of shields in Gladiator Duel makes Sports Champions offering a little more elaborate than Resort's, but it's still swords.

Alas, the Swordplay game on the Wii was always a bit of a disappointment, because the actual hits tended to be restricted to vertical vs horizontal swipes and blocks. Despite the appearance of attacks at different angles, it pretty much boils down to those gestures, wasting the accuracy of MotionPlus.

Gladiator Duel makes good on these promises, especially with two controllers (for the sword and shield respectively). Attacks do more damage if you hit harder, but there's still the classic situation where a casual swing suddenly deals a huge amount of damage and you're not sure why.

To be honest, the swing strength detection is kind of inconsequential because everyone always swings hard anyway. The trick here is in careful use of your shield and timing and angle of attacks. In this, it's hugely impressive, and Move's accuracy enables truly tactical bouts.

Winner: Sports Champions

Sony PlayStation Move: Verdict

The biggest takeaway from our time with Move is its incredible accuracy. Augmented reality instruments move perfectly with the controller, Frisbees fly with the gentle curve you give them and you can select things with superb precision.

As we said, the controller is comfortable, but not for really long sessions of hard-swinging games. The glowing ball is undoubtedly ridiculous, but is the price you pay for accuracy. You'll get used to having it there, even if anyone who sees it for the first time will raise an eyebrow.

Move has advantages and disadvantages over the Wii remote. The orb enables a higher level of accuracy than the Wii can manage even with MotionPlus in some cases, but also seems to occasionally restrict Sony's controller.

Being able to operate only within strict confines of the camera is fine for one or two people, but when there are more of you, it's handy not to have to worry about such things. We suspect future game programmers can avoid an over-reliance on the camera (and the plethora of motion sensors should be able to compensate for this).

Similarly, while the accurate detection of depth that Move has is fantastic for some games, the inconsistency of sitting four feet away for Start the Party! and standing eight feet away for Sports Champions is irritating.

In fact, our single biggest concern is the space required to really go at the games. It won't be an issue for games like MAG and SOCOM, but it could be the difference between whether this or a Wii is more appropriate for your space.

Somewhere, in the gap between the Wii remote with MotionPlus and Move, is an ideal motion controller. But what we have is mightily impressive, even with its flaws. It's not a revolution of motion control, but a refocus from being unassuming and family-friendly to being all about precision and adding options.

However, it's not cheap. The starter pack containing one Move controller and the PlayStation Eye camera is £49.99. We think Sony would have been wise to include a game with that – Wii Play made buying a second controller far more palatable for millions of Wii owners.

At £35 each, the controllers alone aren't that expensive, but they're all /extra/ cost on top of what you've got already.

As a piece of technology, we heartily recommend Move to PlayStation 3 owners. The motion gaming bandwagon is growing and growing, and isn't going to disappear any time soon. Move won't be for everyone, if only because of its steep price as an optional extra, but those that do invest will find an excellent piece of gaming technology.

Sony PS3

Overview

The Sony PS3 Slim is the latest incarnation of Sony's opinion-dividing PlayStation 3 games console.

It's essentially the same console as before, but with slimmed down components and a new, smaller chassis. The key improvements in the new PS3 are the 120GB hard drive, up from 40GB and 60GB in previous UK versions, and it's also 36 per cent lighter, 33 per cent smaller and it consumes at least 34 per cent less power (it's probably even more efficient than that).

So why is this such a big deal for Sony?

The answer is that the PS3 Slim represents a new age for Sony's gaming arm – one that could well herald the start of a new profit-making era.

The vast majority of PS3 consoles sold to date (Sony has shipped over 24 million of them so far) have been sold at a loss - even the original 60GB version which retailed at £425 made a thumping loss per unit.

However, new manufacturing procedures have changed this recently, and a redesigned 45nm Cell processor along with other similarly small and power efficient components have reduced Sony's manufacturing costs significantly.

IN THE BOX: You get the console, a DualShock 3 controller, power cable, AV cable and USB cable - but no HDMI cable

So coupled with the fact that the PS3 Slim is selling for £250 in the UK – only marginally cheaper than the bigger, fatter PS3 original – you can see that Sony can finally expect to start making a return on its investment. And it's about time.

But really, the questions are: should you care about that? And should you buy the new PS3 Slim?

Continue reading our PS3 Slim review to find out.

Design

The first thing to note about the PS3 Slim is undoubtedly the design. It's split opinions in the office so far, and although this reviewer thinks the design is an abomination, others think it's actually nicer than the original.

The differences are: the design is very similar, but one third smaller. So it actually looks like something of a smaller brother to the original PS3.

Instead of a nice glossy finish, what we have here is a dull matte, flimsy plastic casing that neither feels classy nor sturdy.

Gone, too, is the sexy chrome trimming, with the silver 'PlayStation 3' writing being replaced by a lacklustre 'PS3' logo embossed on the top of the case.

The on/off and disc-eject touch-sensitive buttons are also conspicuous by their absence, and they've been replaced by real buttons that give way when you push them. How boring is that?

You've still got two USB ports round the front, and round the pack there's the usual HDMI, AV multi-out, optical-out and ethernet ports. The kettle power cable has been replaced by a slimmer two-pin cable.

The problem with the PS3 Slim is that it looks so cheap. Sony has taken the opportunity to strip out all of the cool, aesthetic design features from the original, in what can only be a cost-cutting measure.

We're not totally against this, although we'd have liked some more of these savings to be passed on to us - the PS3 Slim is still £50 more expensive than the newly-priced £199 Xbox 360 Elite.

Consider also that the PlayStation 2 spent the vast majority of its life selling for $199 in the US and £199 in the UK. Nearly three years into its life, the PS3 still costs £250 – that's a lot of money in the scheme of things.

Performance

Once you get over the new-look design, and despite the slimmer, more power-efficient innards, the PS3 is still essentially the same beast.

Once you've turned it on, the differences end. The interface is the same. The controller is the same – although you do get a DualShock 3 controller instead of standard SIXAXIS – and the user experience is the same.

We did some very basic real-world benching and found that the PS3 Slim does actually boot a couple of seconds slower than our original 60GB PS3, although in practise that makes zero difference. The time it takes to load games and play DVDs are exactly the same.

Fan

One of the main gains you'd expect from a more power efficient PS3 would be that it would operate a lot more quietly. After all, with less energy being wasted as heat, the fan doesn't need to work so hard and thus pumps out less irritating white noise.

While we didn't measure the exact volume of the PS3 Slim's 17-blade fan, 95mm fan, it did seem to our trained ears to be slightly quieter when playing games. However – the PS3 has always been pretty quiet. Compared to the Xbox 360, the PS3 can be considered an extremely stealthy console.

The main noise actually comes from the disc drive. When you're watching a DVD, the spinning disc makes a lot more noise than the cooling fan. And this hasn't changed much – if at all. It's still loud enough to be annoying during those quieter scenes.

Home cinema

Of course, as before, the PS3's major trump card is its built-in Blu-ray drive which gives you the power to play back Blu-ray movies in glorious full HD 1080p.

The major new home cinema feature inside the PS3 Slim's new components, though, is its ability to bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio to a receiver over HDMI. This will seriously please the audiophiles, but for the rest of us it'll make almost no difference at all.

One slight disappointment with the PS3 Slim is its performance as a CD player. The original was a pretty decent CD and DVD spinner – but the Slim's thinner Blu-ray drive has proven to be a bit of a let-down.

Our colleagues at Home Cinema Choice actually measured the audio jitter of the slim – which returned a figure of over 460ps – a world apart from the original PS3's 138ps.

The audio in DVD playback was also disappointing from a perfectionist's point of view – with a measured high frequency response of -6.14dB. Will you notice this if you haven't got a top of the range hi-fi set up and a perfect set of ears? Probably not.

Still, though, the PS3's ability to upscale DVDs remains. The console uses its Cell processor to upscale DVDs to 1080p high definition, so even your DVD movies will look fantastic on an HD display. The Cell's enormous processing power can also be used to clean up fuzzy, blocky or grainy parts in DVDs or downloaded movie files.

Media and gaming

The PS3 is also compatible with a wide array of file formats which means you can play almost any media file – picture, video or music – without a problem. Popular DivX and Xvid video formats are supported out of the box so playing your digital movie collection is pretty straight forward.

And you can do that in two ways - you can copy them to a USB storage device and plug it in, or you can stream them from your PC over your home network either wirelessly or via Ethernet.

All media can be accessed in this way, which means if you've got a lot of photos, music and videos on your computer, you can view them on your PS3 as though they were stored locally.

Gaming

As a gaming device, the PS3 is arguably slightly more powerful than the Xbox 360. So technically, in terms of graphical fidelity, the PS3 is as good as they come.

However, three year's into its life cycle, the PS3 still lags far behind the Xbox 360 as a gaming device, and that's because of the games available.

The Xbox 360 launched over a year before the PS3, and so was able to build up a large catalogue of games before the PS3 even made it into one living room. And even since then, the Xbox 360 platform has seen more games launched.

And that's before we even mention the differences between Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network (PSN). Comparing the two services is like comparing a fine wine to a bottle of Lambrini. For multiplayer gaming then, the 360 has it.

But the PSN on the PS3 is catching up, with big updates expected very soon.

The PlayStation 3 does, of course, have plenty of gaming exclusives of its own. Series' such as Metal Gear Solid will only ever be available on PlayStation consoles, and then the much-mooted Gran Turismo 5 will be launched on PS3 this Christmas.

Back compatibility

You also need to remember that other than the original 60GB model, no PS3 is compatible with PS2 games. So beware if you're thinking of ditching your PS2 and upgrading - you'll need to hang on to your old console if you still want to play all your existing games.

So if gaming is your main consideration when buying a console – and it seems likely that it is – your best bet is just to look at the games available for each platform and make a decision from there. Who knows, maybe you'll realise that what you've wanted all along is actually a Nintendo Wii?

Verdict

The jury is out on whether you should buy the new PS3 Slim. If you've already got a PS3 in either its 40GB, 60GB or 80GB flavours, it's almost definitely not worth upgrading to this slimmer 120GB version.

Unless you're desperate for more storage, there's not much here to justify spending another £250 on the newer model.

However, as a games console and media device, the PS3 is an unbelievably powerful contraption. It's an unrivalled living room media machine, and a powerful games console.

We do have serious concerns about the price, though - £250 is a lot to spend these days, especially when you can get the 120GB Xbox 360 Elite for less than £200.

We liked

Even though we don't like the aesthetics of the design, the smaller size is great – at last, here's a PS3 console that isn't so big that it dominates any room you put it in.

Other than that, it's business as usual. We loved the PS3 before the PS3 Slim came out, and we still love it. The Blu-ray drive is great as ever, but what we really love is the ability to stream almost any media file format from your PC or memory stick.

We also like the fact that you can use almost any Bluetooth device with the PS3. You can use any Bluetooth headset to chat with your friends. And you can use Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to navigate the built-in web browser.

We disliked

Yeah, we think the design is ugly. But hey, you might like it – some do, some don't. But even if you do like the look of it, it's impossible to appreciate the general cheapness of its build. The original PS3 felt bullet proof. The new one feels like it might break if a moth landed on it.

Considering the reduced manufacturing costs associated with the PS3 Slim, and the horrible, cheap plastic it's encased in, we'd have expected a price closer to £200 – so cost is another big drawback.

Conclusion

Over all, the PS3 Slim is a phenomenal piece of kit. It's amazing that something so small can do so much. And so if you've just bought a new telly, that extra £50 you'd have to spend over the cost of an Xbox 360 Elite will be worth it just for the Blu-ray player.

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