Rey's A Point

What’s Better: PS3 or 360?

There is a certain (skewed) comfort in knowing that most of your writing maintains a sense of undistinguished obscurity. Odd, I know, but it allows a level of freedom not found in the Shakespeare’s of the internet. As such a person of my diminished caliber can stop, look over the landscape and unashamedly open up old internet debates while knowing it won’t turn into a flame war. So, which is the better system: Sony’s PS3 or Microsoft’s Xbox 360?


Up front, I can’t afford buying either of these so don’t hold that against me. I spend most of my money on my kids, my books and my pc so the fact that I haven’t committed to purchasing a system is beside the point since research is free.

I’ve enjoyed different games on both systems, played the same games on different systems and have even gotten to see the systems on proper televisions (something with HDMI and at least 720p) and I can honestly say they both look good.

Do The Math: The CPU
Both machines have a nice processor (that’s the brain of the system that does a lot of the math that goes into gaming) with the 360 sporting 3 Power-PC’s processors at 3.2 ghz. That’s flipping awesome but when you compare it to Sony’s Cell chip you realize how much PS3 packs: it’s the equivalent of 8 processors sporting 234 million transistors. To give you a sense of scale the dual core Intel Chip on your mac runs 200 million transistors (and the 360 is at 165 million transistors). That’s some serious rendering power. Winner: PS3

You Spin Me Round: Media.
360 does sport HD-DVD which seems well on its way to winning the format wars since it’s the same size of a regular dvd and cheaper to mass produce than blu-ray (which consists of a lot of old hardware overhaul). It’s a shame because the blu-ray disc is a better format sporting more space for higher audio and graphic information but its just not looking like the final victor. Winner: 360.

Closet Space: Hard Drive Storage.
PS3 comes with a hard drive standard while the 360 doesn’t include a standard HD until higher models and then only up to a comparably small amount of space. Both systems use the harddrives for some basic stuff (360’s 20 gigs for downloading patches or older games) but the nice thing with the PS3 60 or 80 gig hard drive is that its big enough to take a partition and install Linux. Clear Winner: PS3.

LCDability: Maximum HD Resolution.
Considering a new tv, the PS3 wins on the range of units it can be comfortably enjoyed on: 1080p is standard on it. But admittedly there aren’t many games that are 1080p so the 1080i of the 360 and the PS3 are probably where most of us would be shopping anyway. I’ll give this winner to PS3 even though it technically doesn’t matter.

It’s Nice To Share: Media Sharing and Interconnectivity.
Probably one of the best features that the 360 sports is its interconnectivity with other windows products like Vista Media Center and the Microsoft Zune. You can effectively download movies to your pc, watch them on your tv with your 360 and then take them on the road with your Zune: that’s some serious media power. PS3 only really integrates with the PSP (which is still nice) and might have some backward compatibility with the some older systems if they ever really finalize that. Winner: 360.

Group Gaming: Playing Online.
On the 360 you’ll have to pay to be part of the Microsoft Live network but it’s with games that are pretty much exclusively on the 360. PS3 you can play for free on the games that have online access but the fact is that not many of their games are pandering to a huge online community (of course I’m ignoring the big ones that hit every system like COD4 but honestly, does anyone want to play Golf online?). Winner: 360 with a big downer of paid playing–grow up Microsoft.

Games.
Honestly, games is where you really start splitting hairs. If you want games X, Y, Z you’ll choose one system over the other since in the end, the specs will speak against or for many of our decisions.

Winner: PS3 based on Specs. 360 based on community. Up to you based on games.

Rey

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13 responses to “What’s Better: PS3 or 360?”

  1. HD-DVD is dead :( the nails are in the coffin. I have one and I even see the curtain falling. But M$ has hinted at supporting a BluRay player :)

    Live is the best online experience for a console. Hands down.

    If you like Halo or Gears of War you need a 360 ;)

    $50 for a year of live is well worth it (pennies a day). You also have access to TV shows, Movies in standard and High Def, voice and video chat, live arcade with new and classic games, the list goes on…

  2. oh, and text chat with integrated MSN messenger as well as access from the web to all of your friends, achievements, games played, etc…

  3. I personally think both formats are dead since digital media is the way the industry is moving which would necessitate bigger harddrives than newer players, but that’s neither here nor there for me. If Msoft is planning to go BluRay that’s some pretty crazy stuff–that’ll be interesting to see what it does to the industry for a year or two.

    Gears of War is also on the PS3 and PC, both with free online play so I can’t see that being the main draw to the 360 but you’re right with Halo since its specifically an Xbox game.

    I think the charged online access is a rip considering that you’re already paying for broadband. They’re basically making you pay for stats. You take a PS3, download and install Linux and boom, you have Messenger, the internet and the ability to do everything you can do on a computer. The PS3 even makes it easy. Heck, its probably even possible to install OSX up to Panther!

    But even so, the community is still better for 360 mostly because the exclusive games are geared toward that type of play which 360ites are paying to play.

  4. Toshiba to halt HD-DVD production. It looks like Blu-Ray has won. Does this mean all my regular DVDs are now useless? And what happens when Netflix stops carrying DVDs and I can’t watch movies on my computer, DVD player, or PS2? The format war is over, and now we deal with the casualties…

  5. Crazy that HD-DVD is thus written off: I had an expired-by time stamp set for December next year on both formats. I mean, iTunes has digital rentals, Netflix has digital viewing as part of their dvd plan, Amazon has digital rentals: the list goes on. Digital is here and the formats will have to go the way of the Dodo to allow better home-media integration. Alot of what the Xbox does with other units in the home is what’s going to need to happen and Apple addressed that with their Apple Airport2 and iTV.

    You will, then, watch movies on your computer–you just won’t be carrying the disk with you to work or someone’s house. It may mean you might have to get a portable media player with wireless access point to access your Netflix account anywhere in the world to watch the movies when you want and where you want.

  6. I like having a disk that I can put on a shelf and get when I want it. Hard drives fail and files get deleted. Then you have no movie :( We are entering an age where you pay full price but don’t get anything in the palm of your hand :(

    File sizes for HD are HUGE and fill up drive space quickly.

  7. Even though HD sizes are increasing (1 TB are cheap and attainable) I don’t think these services will make us rely solely on personal storage. We’re likely to pay for digital “bookshelves” where our account holds the moves we “own” in virtual holding for instant replay or redownload.

    Everything becomes intangible.

    The only good thing is what this can all spell out for the medical industry.

  10. I can’t say anything about the PS3, I’ve never even seen one in demo mode. I can say, though, that we got a 360 for Christmas and we LOVE it. The games are great, the media access is even better. You can, for instance, put five or six DIVX movies on one DVD-R and watch them on your 360 … and DIVX looks great. Or, you can just stream them from your PC’s hard drive. And the sound is great, too. Splinter Cell in 5.1 is an amazing experience. For the money, I think that the 360 Pro is a great buy.

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