Even though the PS3 could be used with my Current Logitech USB Headset or my Bluetooth Headset from my Mobile phone, the Bluetooth headset from Sony designed for the PS3 had a lot going for it compared to the other solutions. Whilst I agree that at this time I do not actually speak to anyone in-game via the PS3, I have already seen items I looked at before go up in price – so with this when I pasted by a store I had seen the price cheaper than the rest – I took the plunge, placed my hard earned cash on the desk and bought this device. The goal of this article is to go through the first 48 hours of owning the device and what to expect if you bought one.

What is it and what does it do?

The Sony Playstation 3 has Bluetooth and USB which means it has the ability to use most USB Type Headsets (wired) such as the Logitech Range and you can use just about any Bluetooth type headset if you have one handy from your mobile phone. The problem is that with the wired version, you need to get some extension cable going which can be annoying as it wraps around the chair and so forth and the Bluetooth headsets can be very bad sound quality, I know this from me pairing a G2 Bluetooth with a PC for Skype, the resulting sound quality was tinny to say the least.

This device has two modes, it can be used as a standard bluetooth type headset and it comes with a base to both charge the device and allow it to be used as a hands free microphone. The end goal is you are in a game and you can chat away with people, it is my understanding that there is no key on the PS3 to enable Push to talk but rather you mute the microphone between talking or keep really quiet.

Getting it ready to be used.

Inside the box was the Unit itself, the base, a very small USB Lead and finally a replacement rubber ring for the earpiece. I plugged it all into the PS3 and powered it on – at this stage there was no sign in any of the menu’s that it had picked up anything. I pulled out the manual and followed the guide as it said which was plugging the base unit into the USB and then the headset into the PS3 – but to no avail. Maybe it needed to be charged fully for it to work? I left it plugged in while I did some other stuff on the PS3.

Red Light stays on

The Mute button had a red light, this flashes Red when it is charging and for some reason it was on all the time after I had been charging the headset via the PS3 for about 2 hours. I could not power on the headset as described in the manual and I started to suspect at this point it was broken. I left it this way all night while I slept, my theory was it was loose power and the red light would go away. In the morning, before I went to work, I plugged the USB lead into my HTC Hero Mains charger and left it charging via the mains power supply (probably quicker) while I went to work – this was I would know it had a full charge.

Googling the answer

I now had a unit which at least now did power on (holding the power button for 3 seconds) and had a green light. Still no connecting or pairing to the PS3 though. Google turned out to be the way to go and what you do is in fact take the USB lead and plug it into the end of the headset and not the base and almost straight away the PS3 found the device and we were good to go. This now appeared in the menu to select and I could test it to make sure it worked as planned. I need to state here that Sony really needs to look at this, I wonder how many units were returned thinking it was broke?

Testing the Unit

I went into the settings and tried the voice changer function as this feeds back the audio as you speak and from that test alone let me know that the microphone was 100x better than the G2 Trek one I have and as good I would say as the USB Logitech. I am not sure if I have odd shaped ears but the ring you insert into your ears hurts a small amount, maybe this is why there is another rubber ring supplied in the pack for smaller ears? I will have to look into this. Update – this was the case – works fine now.

If you wave you head around wildly – the unit as with just about any Bluetooth headset will come off but it hangs in there better then some I have tried and why would you be waving your head around like you were at some heavy metal concert anyhow while playing a game?

Using it as a standalone microphone

One Feature the PS3 model has over the rest is you can dock the headset into the cradle and continue speaking to people. From various reviews that I have read you can get some good distance and still sound good. The main problem with buying a standard headset is once the battery runs out – thats you done, so this feature alone is worth the extra money.

Connecting to a PC

The most obvious question is, can you attached this to a computer and use it for skype. On Windows 7 64Bit which I have Bluetooth built in, I held the power button until it flashed Red and green and Windows picked this up but failed to find a driver. After some searching, I found THIS Driver which is a cab file (you can extract this). It should now appear as a device in your sound system and from here you can select it for Skype and such. I know I tested this and wondered why I could hear nothing, pressing up on the volume on the headset soon sorted this (he he).

Overall thought

Given I paid in the region of £22 for this and it was the proper headset for a PS3 – I am more than happy that it was worth the money I paid. I still feel that it is uncomfortable in my ear and you cannot blame sony for this. I Love the fact it plugs into a cradle and charges – I hate having yet more plugs for another device and I can if needed use any USB type charger I already own. I would say if you can find one cheap enough, then buy it.

The purpose of this post is to examine shopping (in this case for Playstation 3 games) either on-line or in a store and how in my eye’s the brick and mortar stores need to re-think how they operate if they want to keep selling items. If you are shopping for say a TV, then it is nice to walk into a store and see how they look but in the case of software, what you get in the store is the same as you get on-line. I would also love to hear what you do, only ever buy online, rent games, store or whatever.

Buying games – Visiting the Store method

In the world of games software, it seems that the prices can be as random as humanly possible. What is a given is any new title is normally full price and the same everywhere but once a title is considered old – the prices can go from full blown price all the way down to under £10. A good example is BioShock 2 – this was priced as £9.95 in Game while it was £9 in Tesco and in Toy-R-Us it was £24.99. Now unless you have a incredible memory of were you went, what game you seen and for what price, it is easy to walk past a bargain. I saw Kane & Lynch 2 for £9 in game, this was the Limited edition as well (extra items for Multiplayer) and by the time I got back to there, they had sold it.

Of course the plus side with visiting a store is you can pay for the item, take it home then and there and play it straight away, no waiting for delivery of the said item. The other aspect is sometimes they drop the price only in store and in this case you can indeed grab a bargain.

Buying Games – Online method

One of the great things about online is that you can search hundreds of stores in a matter of second to find the best prices and most that I have seen have free delivery. The only downside of this is having to wait a day or so while it gets delivered and the process you would have to go through if the media was faulty for example.

What is a store has both?

In the case of Game they have both physical stores and an on-line site and when I ask the store why there copy of a game is more then the on-line site they just reply back “we do not price match with on-line sites” – this is madness as the site (and company) is the same thing. They also deal in 2nd hand games, trade in’s as they call them. I quite often see a pre-owned game advertised as a higher or not much less then a new game. I understand that when they bought the game from someone – they paid them a price and have to make a profit while at the same time the new packaged game has gone down in price. I would be interested to see if someone actually buys these 2nd had games at the higher price over the new one – which is right next to it on the shelf.

How do I buy mine?

At the moment I am buying games mainly from the stores, I look for a certain price – around the £9 to the £15 mark. I bought Medal of Honor today at a store while grocery shopping for £21 which includes Medal of Honor Frontline – so two games for the price of one. I actually went to buy Litle big planet but forgot where I saw it for £12, they wanted £18, so I left it on the shelf in this case. I was going to buy Lost Planet 2 for £13 but put it back for now.

For every game out there, there is cheats such as Aimbots, Wallhacks and many others. They allow a person who is not as good as the rest to gain an un-fair advantage  In the example of Wallhacks for example (as the picture above shows) you can see who is were in the game allowing you to shoot them the second they come around that wall edge. Aimbots make the game basically play itself – the second a person is within shooting range, the aimbot takes over and does a headshot or even shooting person right across the map. The purpose of this post is to work out why people do this and why it effects everyone including the person cheating.

Why do people cheat?

A Rather simple answer to this one is to win the game, been seen as the best, ranking above the others and having the most kills. A rather handy feature of most games now is the KillCam and this allows me to see the person who just killed me a few seconds before and after. Using this method I can then spot that the person shot me the second I came out of a house or how I shot him yet made no damage to his health.

Good players get called cheaters?

Of course if you are good at the game, you might just be quick to shoot people or there might be some lag that means the person was not shooting you at all. I remember playing Medal of Honor (first one) on-line with my nephew who was on skype also and he could see a person in front of him, which he was shooting yet I saw him shooting a wall and the person had long gone. Another example is I might be new to the game and not know the maps (happens) and the person who keeps killing me is in fact a person who has been playing for months and knows every part of every map there is.

When it starts to get annoying

I play game {On-line} for enjoyment and fun but spawning, running across the map for a few seconds, getting shot and repeating this with me at the bottom of the ladder with 30 deaths and 1 kill is not what I would consider fun by any stretch. What I do not understand is why the newer games reward the player who keeps killing with yet more means to wipe out people, if you have ever played Call of Duty: United Offensive On-line and keep getting hit by the bombardment as soon as you spawn, you will know what I mean.

Much the same for newer games, Battlefield Bad Company 2 online seems to be impossible for me to score enough per match to actually rank up while the ‘seasoned’ players just keep getting higher and higher – maybe thats why people start to cheat?

A recent example

I am playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 via AlterIWNet and the Server I was just in, there was a guy who not only shoot everyone all the time without dying but when eventually next to him and unloading every single round I had in my magazine and he was still alive – this is when everyone on the server left as it was pretty obvious he was cheating, he even bragged about it claiming he could not be banned. A Quick search on YouTube throws up quite a few Aimbots, no recoil and so forth.

My Thoughts

While I am in game, I do not worry if I get killed all the time, if this happens a lot then I leave the server and try another and eventually go and do something else instead. I am not 100% Sure what enjoyment they get out of this as I myself have tried cheats for some free FPS – just to see what they did and my conclusion then was it took most of the game element out of it and all I was doing was pressing W,A,S,D in fact – the cheat did the rest for me.

What are your thoughts on cheating, do you see it a lot in games? Do you feel it is only the youngsters who cheat and what about console’s – do they stop cheating (as you cannot modify the game right).

While Console are considered the Gaming item of choice, it is agreed that PC’s are already a generation ahead of the consoles in terms of hard core numbers. If a desktop computer can run at a higher resolution, have more frames per second and look better, why it is that games are held back and also on the decline in the pc market? There is many reasons why this is the case and there is shouts of Piracy, sales, floor space and multi platform. If you look back over time, the tables have turned many times, first the PC was the gaming machine of choice and then there was a whole bunch of new consoles and finally the PC came back to fame – so what is holding the PC back?

Multiplatform

The first issue is the game makers, they have a team in-house and they need to write the latest blockbuster. This is not a 5 minute process and some games can take five year to get out of the door and onto the shelves. Quite often they write a core game and ‘port’ it across to every single console and of course the PC. What happens here is you end of with a game that is not fine tuned to say the PS3 and it will not get the full advantage of the PC hardware.

Piracy

This has been chucked about many times – if a game only sells a very small number due to everybody downloading the game then of course the publisher is not going to invest heavily in the next game and instead focus on what is bringing the money in. In most cases this is Console – this not only sells by the bucket load but also re-sell’s time and time again. I remember the death of the Dreamcast been put down to the sheer number of people that pirated the games instead of paying for them.

Hardware

Inside every single XBOX360 and PS3 is the same hardware as the next one, this means If you one set of goals to aim for and with this you can get every last drop out of the console as you know what your up against. Once we get to the PC, there is a whole range of different hardware out there and even software can cause a game not to run properly. To compare, when I shove a game into my PS3, it checks for any updates, puts them on my machine and I am good to go. On the PC, I have to normally find the update, apply it and repeat until up to date.

Floor Space

Any Store Selling games only has so much floor space, the two big guns (PS3 & XBOX) will get the most space along with a whole range of accessories such as Rock band 3 Guitars and whatever. The PC by comparison is a tiny corner of the shop and most titles get reduced quite quickly due to lack of people buying them. It makes business sense to stock what is making money and PC Gaming and especially peripherals do not sell much at all.

Cost of Hardware

To the average person on the street, let us compare and contrast. The console itself will cost about £200 ($199 USA I think) and this works out of the box, no OS to buy, no tweaking to do – it is off the shelf and ready to go. We need to add to this maybe the cost of some games, there is a Lot of cheap one’s out there (older titles) and you are now good to go. If you wanted to play ‘decent’ games on a PC, you need to make sure you bought one that could actually handle games along with a screen that has a good enough resolution and some decent speakers. I would estimate that the PC would cost 4x more and it will get obsolete after a few years.

Bottom Line

The people making the games do not care that your monster rig can run Crysis at 120FPS running at super high resolution, they will write the games for the console as this makes money. This is not the death of PC Gaming but it will slow it down a lot. Expect titles that only come out on Consoles – my view is buy a console for gaming and get a cheaper PC for the rest.

The best way to describe what Tunngle does is let you play games on-line with your mates but to the game it looks like the game is running from the LAN Interface. The other program that Springs to mind is Hamanchi - my memory of Hamanchi is you add people to a group, one create a server in the game and the rest join. Tunngle works by having rooms (organized by game name) and you join the room with people in, start the game and you will be presented with a list of servers people are running. I thought I would try this out and this is my very quick overview of how it works.

Getting the Software

The first thing you need to do is head off to the Tunngle site and sign up for a Free account. Download the respective client and I would suggest downloading the sidebar gadget if your running Vista or Windows 7. Once installed, you will need to reboot, run the program and sign in. Provided your Router allows uPnP and the windows firewall (and norton etc) do not get in the way – you should be presented with a screen as such:

Getting into the correct game

You have a couple of choice here, you can browse through the menu on the left (Network Explorer) of the game you want to play, for example Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare in in Shooter under Call of Duty 4. The other way is to use the Gadget you grabbed earlier to quickly locate the correct game.

Once in the room, you can start the game and in the case of Call of Duty, you need to join a server and look for Local (as in Local Area Network). If people are running servers – these should start to come up now, you can also start your own of course with whatever options you need. I need to state now that like any network game / connection – the speed of the host will determine if the game lags once too many people are in the game. It goes without saying as well that there might well be cheaters in the server also.

The battle was long, the research laborious and the choice was fraught with danger but finally I took the plunge and bought myself a shiny new  Playstation 3 Slim 160GB. How did I come to this conclusion and did I make the right choice? I worked out after watching so many different video’s and reading countless reviews that the console were equal – while one lacked something the other had, it flipped back and forth and at the end of the day – both can play games equally as well.

Split second choice

I had by all accounts been steered towards the XBOX360, I could go out and buy the new 250GB unit from Tors’R'Us for a sum of £187, I could drive there and pick it up and be home with the thing in about 10 minutes flat. I called Sainsburys and asked them if they had the PS3 in – they went off and checked and reported back that they had the 160GB Model for £199 while the 320GB model is £284. Once again I asked myself – Do I want the 160GB model (a saving of £50), do I go on-line and buy the 320GIG Model and get the the Move Stater Pack, Sports Champions and HDMI Cable for £285 or in fact do I just get the XBOX360.

I think what put me off the XBOX was the past (Red ring of death), the noise level I heard about, the fact I had to pay £35 a year for XBOX Live. For some strange and unknown reason, I have been steering towards the PS3 – I jumped in the car, handed over my credit card and soon was the proud owner (minus any games) of the 160GB Model – yeah !!

The Long Set up procedure

Looking inside the box and no HDMI Cable – could they not even bundle a cheap one just to get you going? I had one already from my WDTV – so once I got through the long set up providing every bit of data ever – I finally was ready to rock until it had detected an update – time to wait some more. As I had no games – my first task was to go and find some demo’s and this is were the Playstation network thing is a let down. Eventually I figured out how to get a couple of Demo’s downloaded, this been The Force Unleashed 2 and some small driving game (which claimed to be free but then had most of the game locked).

The Demos are really good

With the good fortune that I have the 50mbit internet, selecting and downloading demo’s went with great speed, it works by downloading the game, then it put an icon in the game menu and it installs the game – some install fast, some take forever. I have heard that when you first put a game disc in the drive, it copy’s the stuff across which means you might have to wait a while before playing a game.

As you select each game – the background changes to reflect the game, a nice touch indeed. 3rd person shooters I could manage to control but when I played what was essentially a 1st Person Shooter online, I was the worst player ever – could not control this game no matter what. I have been told that after a while it will become 2nd nature.

There is a cross between Buy online, demo and addons in the store, not every game has a demo which is a shame. A Demo even if short would allow me to try before I buy. I already have an idea of what Games I like and most will be cheap anyhow (as they are old) but still good, such as God of War and various others.

Online presence

I finally created an account named Mauldor70, it seems Mauldor or LiquidSilver had already gone, such a shame. In fact trying to pick a name was indeed very hard indeed with the thing saying “Already in Use” all the time. I know a few people at work who have the PS3 and if you play an Online game, it lists who you have been online with (so you can add them).

What about a headset?

Talking with people online of course needs some sort of Microphone and a camera – I already had a Logitech Headset (USB) and plugged this in – it came up straight away and was working. I am busy Charging my Bluetooth headset, as the PS3 has bluetooth, I can add this and use it to chat.

There is an option for the official PS3 Headset – this been a large Bluetooth headset in effect and the good thing is, you can plug it into the USB to charge. If I progress to chatting a lot, I may buy this but for now the Logitech (corded) will suit the bill.

How Much hard Drive space do you need?

The Drive reports 149GB and with 10 Game Demo’s (most large in size) installed, I have 113GB left. Remember that the PS3 can take any 2.5″ SATA Drive, so me buying the 160GB model is not a major issue. As mentioned also, all my stuff is on my NAS drive.

So far – So Good

I got asked why would I buy a console when I have various computers sitting here? It makes sense of course and why I have never even considered a console before. While my current graphics card (ATI 4670 Passive) just about copes with most of the game without too many bells and whistles switched on – to get the most out of the PC would require upgrading. The problem with upgrading is that a beefier Graphics card would set me back £180 and a decent power supply to run it would cost another £50. A Better way is to do what the ‘normal’ people do – buy a console.

What about the price of the games though? A Brand New PC Game would cost £34.99 which a console games attracts nearer the £50 mark. As it happens though, the not so new games (and still amazingly good) are much less than this and it means I can lie on my couch playing a game while chatting on the headset.

What seems like an age, I wrote about me wondering what system to get – Xbox360 or PS3 and am I sorry to tell you all that I have not bought either of them yet (arghhhh). What makes it even worse (in my eyes) was the varied systems to choose from, what bundle I want to get, do I need to Move or Kinect System and so forth and so on. I even sat through 12 long videos which compared these systems to death – the end result of this one was they come out equal – shoot.

The Online Battle

Having spoke to people at work who own one or the other, I worked out that while the XBOX Live service is £35 for 14 months, this allows me to have a constant name across all games (like Steam) and I can play my music in any game and chat to people across game so to speak. The Playstation network was free but much like PC gaming, it has no constant naming, not all game support me playing my own music and I cannot cross chat across game. They say go for the system that your friends are playing and by this then we would have to choose the XBOX then, I only know of Two people at work who have a Playststion 3.

Bundles

The Xbox is pretty clear cut here, ignore all the options apart from the 250GIG model, the only thing to worry about is the bundled games. What I have been advised is that unless you want them games, then the Base model will suit just fine. The Playstation though comes in Three models – 160, 250 and 320GIG and along with these models we have countless bundle deals which makes the whole choice sheer madness.

The Playststion 3 prices

In the UK and searching online for just the bare console, the prices I came out with are:

SONY PlayStation 3 Slim Game Console – 160GB – £227.99
SONY PlayStation 3 250GB Game Console + ModNation Racers – £259.97
SONY PlayStation 3 Slim Game Console – 320GB – £279.99

This compares with the XBOX360 250GIG and 14 Months Live subscription of £234.98

Add in the PSP Move and MS Kinect

My view on for example the Wii is that it was a family based game type system and while it would be great to have 4 people trying to play 10 pin Bowling or a fighting game, a sole person would loose a lot of that aspect. The other bad side of these systems is space, you need a lot of it and while I could maybe manage moving the table around and such – it is not something I can see lasting longer than a few nights to be honest.

I have read and saw the Kinect for the XBOX and personally neither the games or the fact it Lags made want to rush out and buy it. the PSP Move still needs a lot of room so I read and there is a sheer lack of games for the thing. The only pack which made me want to buy the Move system was the Playststion 3 320GIG plus Move starter pack plus Sports Champions for £285, thats £1 more then the 320GIG model on it’s own.

Do I need 320Gig Model?

The fact you can swap the hardrive on the playstation 3 for any 2.5″ SATA drive means it is not mega important that I get the 320GIG model. If you recall I have a couple of NAS Boxes that serve up my movies and music collection – so the space would only be used on Demo’s and such.

Why am I taking so long to pick a system

While some people are happy to buy the first thing they see, I like to make sure that what I buy will last me. £200+ is a good chunk of money to be splashing out on a console while I have a few computers here that play the games just fine. I can understand that if a person has ploughed a large amount of money into one system (imagine the console plus games plus add-ons) that they will only be too happy to tell you it’s the system of choice and the other one is just plain junk (aka fanboys).

My sensible side is telling me to buy the 160GIG PS3 and buy the games I want later on (such as Need for Speed Hot Pursuit), my other side is telling me that the right choice is the XBOX360 with 14 Months worth of live – of course Live is pointless if I do not have the same games as the people I know. It’s the odd little things that keep putting me off – just when I am happy to choose one system I read that people disconnect half way through a game (and the game ends as they ran the server).

Am I the only person on the planet who is struggling to make up there mind? Maybe deep down inside I know that gaming on the PC is better anyhow as I love FPS – stay tuned anyhow for the soon the be bought system

I recall way playing the first Medal of Honor game on the pc way back in 2002 and the on-line experience back then was brilliant, even to the point of me creating a clan and joining a league. Recently they have remade the game across all platforms including PC and I even played the on-line beta via Steam to test it out. I was interested in the Single player version for now, so installed and played – here are my thoughts..

Gameplay

There was a lot of movie sequences at the start and I am not a great fan of watching some long sequence, shoot a few people and then back to watching some more of the plot unfold. The people seems to take a lot of shots before they died and I could even see most of the parts were the people ran from the same place every time (Scripted). This reminds me of one of the Call of Duty games were you can shoot the other truck as much as you want, unless you shoot the correct person at the correct time, nothing happens.

Bugs started to appear

I got to one part in the single player where I had to shoot snipers (after the hanger) and once I had cleared all of the people from the rooftops – nothing happened. One of the men kept shouting “grenade” which would have took some arm muscles on the bad guy part to throw it that far in the first place but there was no way to go forward. I ran out, restarted the mission and the same thing. I checked for an update, only a multi-player patch was out. I think they should test these games better, was it rushed out to beat Call of Duty: Black Ops? Probably.

In my time I have owned a PS1, a Nintendo 64 (Complete with Doctor 64), Dreamcast and an XBOX and out of all of these, I still have the Dreamcast which works fine (It came from Hong Kong) but of course the years have not treated it well and the games look a bit ‘basic’ to say the least. Recently though I have been thinking and looking at the console on offer, I think what caught my eye was while in GameStation, I saw some ‘pre-owned’ XBOX360 Elite for £99. In the last few weeks then, I have been toying with the idea of buying a box, not sure why I would want one but lets go through some of my thought process anyhow and see how this pans out.

Cost of Console

The XBOX 360 with a game and Live Gold Subscription will set you back roughly £300, this compares with the PS3 Slim 320Gig plus game plus Move Starter kit. While it is possible to reduce the cost of the console by just buying the lowest, bare console – we are talking £230 for the PS3 120GIG and £200 for the XBOX360 250GIG.

The technical nature of each console

I would say the main reason for buying a XBOX would have to be the Live Subscription plus the games that are on offer. If we look at the PS3, the main parts are BluRay built in and free online services as wel as BlueTooth.

The price of the games

An important fact is how much its going to cost you to buy the add-ons you need as well the games, if we said a game costs £50 and you bought 10 of then – that’s £500, a good sum of money and on top of the console, we are looking at £1000 – a lot of money just to play games.

From a quick look on Game we can see that the games range from £35 to £40 for most of the games while the major titles are coming in at £45. I saw a lot of older titles for as little as £10. If we compare the price of PC Gaming – the latest titles are £34 Max and if you wait a few weeks, they often come down.

A quick example then – Battlefield Bad Company 2, the PC Version I bought for £15 while the XBOX / PS3 Version is £28, that’s double the price almost.

Playing the console

The most obvious choice here would be to plug the console into the 42″ TV via HDMI and get the full experience but there in lies the problem – my wife likes to watch TV and would not be too impressed with me taking over the TV to play games. This means I would have to plug the console into the Dell 23″ Monitor (it has a spare port for HDMI) and play it that way – am I not then doing the same thing as playing games on a PC?

Another factor which bothers me though, my type of game is FPS, this means I am at home controlling using the keyboard and aiming with the mouse. How does a game pad compare in this respect? have the games been dumbed down to compensate the slow speed of aiming using such a device?

Still not sure

I need to add here that I like the idea of buying a console and what it could do for me but on the flip side, I am not sure which to buy. I would love to hear some thoughts on this subject which may help sway me one way or the other.

If your looking for some new gear for the PC from the fine hardware people at Logitech, then good news people – they have brought out some new toys for you to buy. We have a wireless headset, a mouse and a keyboard. The Wireless Gaming Headset G930, the Wireless Gaming Mouse G700, and the Gaming Keyboard G510. All three products are currently up for purchase on Logitech’s website, but are also slated to hit retail shelves soon.

Wireless Gaming Headset G930

The Wireless Gaming Headset G930 features “gaming-grade” wireless technology designed specifically for two-way, uncompressed audio streaming. They also provide 7.1 Dolby surround sound support, three programmable G-keys for controlling music levels, voice morphing, and chat client volumes. Memory foam keeps the headband comfortable while plush ear pads ward off any outside noise.

Wireless Gaming Mouse G700

Logitech’s Wireless Gaming Mouse G700 was designed for MMOG players while keeping FPS fans in mind. Its ergonomic design keeps the hand comfortable while 13 “precisely placed” controls offer the user plenty of customization. A full-speed wireless connection–reporting 1000 times per second–reduces lag without crippling in-game performance.

Gaming Keyboard G510

The wired peripheral in the trio–the Gaming Keyboard G510–features 18 programmable G-keys with three mode states, providing up to 54 possible macro settings per game. The built-in GamePanel LCD display renders PC performance data and real-time game stats while the keyboard’s RBG backlighting (somewhat) illuminates the desktop day or night.

Prices

The Wireless Gaming Headset G930 carries a $159.99 pricetag, making it the most expensive in the bunch. The Gaming Keyboard G510 trails behind in second place, priced at $119.99. The Wireless Gaming Mouse G510 falls into third with a $99.99 pricetag.