I own all three games consoles and have done since launch of each one. There are a few things which you should consider before you choose which one to buy.
If you are buying it purely as a games system then there is no doubt in my mind that you should go for Xbox 360 - the breadth of titles available along with a far superior controller and multiplayer service mean that it is currently unbeaten in the console world.
If you intend to use the console for media (movie playback especially) then PS3 is the route to go down. The console is much more flexible - you can copy movies directly to the hard drive over WiFi from a computer or from any USB drive. It really is unmatched in this respect. The downside is that you have to put up with a pretty crappy controller for gameplay and many games require installation. GTA IV needs over 3GB of the hard drive just to play, Gran Turismo 5 requires 6GB and Metal Gear Solid 4 needs 4.6GB. You cannot play many of the games without letting them eat up a chunk of your hard drive.
While some of the games on the PlayStation Store are unique, there are so few of them at the moment. This is in stark contrast with Xbox 360's Live Arcade, which features over 100 downloadable games across all genres. There are plenty of absolutely awesome games on there (Marble Blast Ultra and Boom Boom Rocket being two of my favourites) and I do believe it's possible to buy an Xbox 360 and not buy any retail boxed games and still have a good time for a long time.
The reality is that Xbox 360 is going to be the number 3 console around the world by the time this generation is over. PS3 and Wii are outselling it in almost every market at the moment and the strength of the PlayStation brand is going to propel the PS3 to great sales figures. However, developing games for PS3 is more difficult and you'll find that many games are using Xbox 360 as the "lead" platform with the PS3 version basically being a simple port job.
I also believe unreservedly that the exclusive games on Xbox 360 are a million times superior to those on PS3. Forza Motorsport 2 is a better game than Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and PS3 also doesn't have any answers to Halo, Gears of War or Project Gotham Racing.
So in short:
Games only = go for Xbox 360
Games + movies = go for PS3
this isn't true. I have a release version 60gb or the UK and this has the full backward compatibility with the emotion chip and doesnt use the software emulation the the later models use.
You're wrong. The UK never saw a fully backwards-compatible PS3 released. The original 60GB model which Sony introduced here did NOT include the emotion engine chip and while the number of titles the console supported was vast, not every one worked and many had problems. The current PS3 on sale in the UK is not compatible with any PS2 games.
