While on the toilet? If so me also.

None. PC gamer all the way. :D

I'll buy all three. In fact I may even buy multiple units. Why? Well for starters the price of a console isn't that much when you consider what kind of investment you are making. If you get it right away at likely a $299 price tag, you're investing something that will last you like 5 years at least as far as it being current and even longer after the next generation after it. Even if you get all three systems at launch, you'll probably be at around $800 investment for the next 5 to 6 years. A PC costs more than all three systems and doesn't last as long. By having all three systems, I simply decide what I want to play when games get released not waiting for a release on my system while the other system gets some big game. I simply play the games, not the consoles which has been my motto from day 1 as a gamer. Why multiples? To possibly play imports that never come out here. Out of the 60+ consoles I own, about a third of them are imports. I have duplicates for either the purpose of importing or simply collecting purposes. For example, I have an original Japanese PS2 which doesn't have a hard drive bay but has an external HDD. That I refuse to mod since its hard to find compared to a normal PS2. So I kept that clean. I also have an original PlayStation 1 which has the s-video port on the back. That I won't mod either. Come this spring, I'll be heading off to Japan to pick up a PS3 most likely. My rational is, either there will be a method to play games from all territories on it, or there will be some back door or something in it that will get fixed in most of the systems(Like my 1.0 PSP), or I will simply need to have one because there is no other way to play imports. Granted my import buying has decreased considerably this last generation, but there is always some hidden gem over there.

Of course the worth of that investment varies from person to person with how much time the spend playing games.

$800 isn't bad for someone like you given it sounds like you game a lot. For someone like me that games no more than 5 hours a week and even has lots of weeks where I don't touch a game, it's a lot.

Thus I'll probably only pick up one console next gen, and won't pay more than $200 for it.

I'm leaning toward the Revolution, mainly due to being able to download all the old nintendo games. At least I can be sure on it there will be lots of games I want to play, as I still play my SNES a lot, but I'm sick of dealing with dead batteries in carts.

I like a lot of what you had to say, but to be fair the xbox 360 has effectively cut the console life cycle to 4 years, and MS has not made a secret they think it should be even less for consoles to be "effective". Something to consider in the big picture.

Interesting how you compare the investment to a PC, I never thought of it like that. Though, a PC can do a lot more then just games.

Well MS has cut their lifespan to 4 years, which I hope doesn't become a trend. I think the market leader sets the trend so as long as Sony is in charge, the market will really shift about 5 to 6 years. It's in a console manufacturer's best interest to lengthen the lifespan of a system to as long as they can. I think the reason we see MS doing this is they entered late and now they need to get a jump on Sony if they expect to compete.

I know the comparison to the PC is apples and oranges given what you use each of them for, but it was just an example of dropping a chunk of change in something that will last you only a couple years.

The thing is there is quite a difference between a high end gamer pc and what you need to use email, office, and surf the web (or even home jukebox). The first might be $800-1500, the other you can probably buy second hand for $100-300 or even get someones hand me down.

I don't think MS has necessarily cut the lifespan to 4 years, its really just a result of the late arrival of the xbox and trying to beat the ps3 release this time around.

Any question of doing that has been put to rest indefinitely. I was just given a complete working NES yesterday (I fried mine over a decade ago) and I will spend the time and money that might have gone to a new system revisiting the joy of the NES.