Love It or Hate It, Sony's Latest Stokes Passions

Day 91 was when Fleisher's PlayStation 2 died -- one day after the warranty expired. The company told him it would cost $150 and take four to six months to repair the device. Annoyed, Fleisher passed on the company's offer and sold the unit.

This was the beginning of what he calls the "Sony, you're on life support and I don't need you" phase of his relationship with the company.

Years later, when his four-year-old Xbox started failing him, he placed a call to Microsoft. Two days later, a new unit landed on his doorstep -- even though the old system's warranty had long since expired.

This sent him into the "Sony, you're dead to me" phase. He has avoided the company's products ever since.

I loaned the PS3 to Fleisher last month, curious to see if he'd have a change of heart. Would the thing bring a former Sony fan back into the fold, or would it give him more reason to dislike the consumer-electronics giant?

"I figured I was going to be in a conundrum, that I made this boycott," he said. "I was positive that I was going to have to eat my own words."

Somewhat to his relief, the system ended up giving him pretty much no temptation to reach for his wallet. The games were okay, he said, but nothing great. Compared with the Xbox 360, the online offerings for the PS3 are weak and confusing, he said. One of his favorite parts of the Xbox 360 experience is going online to play with friends, but the PS3 doesn't offer this as a prominent feature.

It's not hard to see why game fans might become partisans for the consoles they play on. You're a lot better off, fun-wise, if your friends buy the same system you get so you can all play online together. And with the high-end Xbox costing $400 and the high-end PS3 costing $600, it has become too expensive for most gaming fans to pick up both machines.

Here's the funny part, though: Xbox love doesn't translate to Microsoft love. That is to say, Xbox owners love their Xboxes but many would rather ignore the fact that the product comes from Microsoft, a company that has often had image problems among techies of the world.

Fleisher, for example, wishes that the company's game-console team ran Microsoft, not the other way around. Or that the Xbox team had nothing to do with the software company.

"I always say Xbox," he said, "because I don't like to associate it with Microsoft."