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I was watching “Equilibrium” with Christian Bale last night when something struck me. Imagine if a REAL actor like Christian Bale, who is by far one of the greatest actors in modern time, had played Neo in the “Matrix”-movies instead of Keanu “I have no facial expressions except the one that looks like a zoned out pothead and the one that looks like I’m taking a difficult dump, and I can’t act worth shit” Reeves?

The first film was an amazing movie despite Keanu’s abysmal performance and the two sequels have grown on me with time, but if Christian Bale had been given the opportunity to portray Neo, damn, the trilogy may have been one of the most epic ones ever, right up there with “The Godfather”, “Trilogy of the dead” and “Lord of the rings”. Now it’s just a runner up with some really cool science fiction ideas and an interesting philosophical spin.

Oh well, at least they didn’t give it to Will Smith as originally planned. That’s always something to be thankful for.

And this reminds me that I gotta get “The Prestige” on blu-ray real soon. Wolverine AND Batman in the same movie, how can it be anything but awesome? Trust me, it IS awesome

Yes, it’s true. Only a couple of month after my latest spewing of foul language over the PlayStation 3 I went and bought one for myself and you can view it in all it’s expensive glory to the right of these words.

So what made me change my mind? Well, a couple of things. First and most importantly, the games are finally starting to pop up. That has been my main problem with the PS3, the lack of good games. But now there’s plenty of games worthy of my cash out there; “Resistance: Fall of man”, “Uncharted: Drake’s fortune”, “Ratchet & Clank: Tools of destruction” and “Call of duty 4: Modern warfare” to name a few.

Secondly and also very important, there are even more awesome cames on the horizon. I’m speaking of upcoming masterpieces like “Dead space”, “Killzone 2″, “God of war 3″ (OK, it’s set for release in 2009, but it’s “God of war 3″ doggammit!!) and “Metal gear solid 4: Guns of the patriots”.

Also, it’s looking more and more like Blu-Ray is kicking HD-DVD in the ass and killing it slowly but steadily. So I decided that for my HD-needs, I’m taking my chances with Blu-Ray.

What finally tipped the scale completely was that I got quite a big lump of cash back on my tax returns so suddenly the high price of the PS3, which has been my second biggest complaint, was no longer a problem.

On top of that, I managed to procure one of the last remaining 60GB machines available in Europe. One of the many perks of working for a large retailer of music, movies and games I guess

I’ve only had my PS3 for about a day but I have no regrets what so ever. I’ve already played several hours of “Ratchet & Clank: Tools of destruction” and “Resistance: Fall of man”, downloaded movie trailers, game demos and such and am enjoying my new expensive toy very much.

Unfortunately I’m not having much of an HD-experience so far since it turns out that the single HDMI-port (which has never been used before) on my Samsung LCD-TV is broken! I still have a year to go on the warranty on the TV so it’s not a huge problem since I’ll get it fixed for free. But while it is being fixed I’ll be without a big-screen TV and have to settle for the 23″ LCD-TV in the bedroom (which actually has a functioning HDMI-port) for several days, maybe even a couple weeks, and that sucks a bit of ass.

But on the upside of things, until I get my big-screen TV off to the repair shop “Ratchet & Clank: Tools of destruction” kicks some serious ass in 576i too I can tell you!

If this article speaks the truth, the competition might stiffen even more for Sony and their unfortunate PS3. A “stronger” edition of the Xbox 360 is definitely a blow aimed straight at the jaw of Sony.

However, when examined a bit closer (and I don’t mind ‘cuz the Xbox 360 Elite looks totally sweet, and just made me sound like a surfer retard too…) it’s not that much of a PS3 killer when you think about. At least not at that price.

With the PS3 you get not only a high-end gaming console but a Blu-Ray player. Sure, there’s a pretty inexpensive HD-DVD player available for the 360 but it is not included in the machine out of the box. Not even in the Elite package, and this is important.

The 360 Elite has a harddrive twice the size of the PS3 Premium but everybody knows harddrives are relatively cheap hardware while a stand-alone Blu-Ray player will set you back somewhere around €700 (about $850) over here. And if I buy an Xbox 360 Elite and the HD-DVD player for it I’ve already spent a bit more than what a PS3 Premium would set me back.

Personally I don’t understand what they’re thinking at Microsoft by not including an HD-DVD player with this Elite edition or in upcoming Premium editions. That would really stick it to the competition, and would make myself seriously consider buying a 360. It really makes me wonder, just like someone commented on the article above – do they know something we don’t since they don’t seem to be taking HD-DVD seriously?