10 Reasons Why PS3 Will Win Next Generation

[1 REP MAX]

Long read but good.

Spoiler:

"Mar 27, 2007 : 10 Reasons Why PS3 Will Win This Console Generation

Insomniac Games Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings discusses why the PS3 is the console to beat

First of all, let me make it clear that Insomniac is a 100% independent development studio. Sony has neither endorsed nor authorized what I’m writing here.

When I started this blog post I was planning to write about Home and Little Big Planet from a developer’s perspective. But as I read some of the media and message board responses to Sony’s GDC presentation, I wanted to address an ongoing industry phenomenon. Specifically, the sheer volume of negative spin toward Sony from both the mainstream press and the internet community. Mere minutes after Sony announced a beautiful, ground breaking, free, community-enhancing online PS3 service, 100 internet posters were trying to argue that this was somehow a bad thing. Whether you love or hate Sony, if you’re trying to spin Home as a bad thing I can only conclude that you’re part of Microsoft’s $3.2 billion viral marketing campaign.

I’ll be the first to say that Sony has had a very rough road from last E3 up through this year’s GDC. Some of their wounds have been self-inflicted, but they’ve also had to face a conspicuously hostile media. Take the New York Times article “How the PS3 will kill your dog, steal your girlfriend, and infect you with Ebola.” And Time magazine’s piece “Global Warming: Is It The PS3?” And more recently, GameSpot’s “Ten Complaints We Thought Up While Everyone Else Was Watching Little Big Planet.”

For the last nine months it has been fashionable to bash the PS3. At first it was controversial, even titillating, to make sensational and dire predictions about the PS3’s future. You could watch it happen again and again – a rumor starts on a message board (“The PS3s all caught on fire at TGS!”, “Blu-Ray won’t have any Porn!”), then it gets picked up by a games industry website, and a few days later USA Today runs the story with the headline “Experts Say PS3 Doom3d!1!!” But the tide has changed so much now that it’s downright controversial to suggest that the PS3 may yet be a success. So, in the spirit of sensationalism and controversy, let me present to you 10 reasons why the PS3 will be the console market leader by 2010:

1. Home & Little Big Planet
One of my jobs at Insomniac is to try to come up with “the next big thing.” This is something everyone at Insomniac does, but as Chief Creative Officer it’s also part of my job description. For the last two years there have been two concepts that I have felt had the strongest potential to be the next big thing. At GDC, Sony came out of the blue and delivered fully-realized versions of both concepts.

The first concept is a realization of the ‘Metaverse’ from Neal Stephenson’s groundbreaking novel Snow Crash. For those who haven’t read it, it’s what inspired Second Life. Over the last couple years, many of us at Insomniac have come up with lots of different ideas on how to make such a system for consoles. So when Home came out, already nearly complete and looking beautiful, it was both amazing and humbling at the same time. In short, Home is exactly what the online console community needs. I’m not saying that because it’s on the PS3. I’m saying that because Home is a fully realized version of something I’ve been trying to figure out how to do for two years.

The other “next big thing” I had been thinking about is how to make a game that is primarily driven by player-generated content. So when Little Big Planet was announced I felt like Orville Wright tinkering on a bicycle-powered balsa wood plane as a learjet suddenly flew overhead. Not only does Little Big Planet have stunningly beautiful graphics, gorgeous animation, brilliant physics and intuitive controls, it’s also a cooperative four player online game! This alone makes it accessible to a much greater audience than player vs player games. And most important of all, it has an absolutely ingenuous system for creating and sharing your own levels. This is HUGE. This is something that’s never been done on consoles and now it’s being introduced not as a half-baked add-on to another game, but as an absolutely brilliant, fully realized, breathtaking experience. You can bet that dozens of developers will create their own Little Big Planet levels as soon as it comes out. Many future game designers will get their start by designing Little Big Planet levels. Gamers who previously had no way to get their foot in the door as a game designer will have developers calling them in the middle of the night if they make a top-rated LBP level. I say again, Little Big Planet is HUGE.

It’s humbling to know that other developers had not only thought of these two concepts, but brought them to fruition in such stunning fashion. Mostly, though, it’s very encouraging to see Sony taking more of a lead in online innovation. While some people were accusing them of merely copying the competition, Sony has been quietly working on two of the most innovative ideas of this generation. “Mii too?” Give me a break.

2. Free Online
Among all the talk about the price of Sony’s console, I almost never see anyone mention the significance of Sony’s free online service. Xbox Live Gold costs $70 to sign up for 1 year, or $20 for three months. You can renew your membership for $50 a year. So if the Xbox 360 stays around for five years, you’ll be paying 70 + 50 + 50 + 50 + 50 = $270 to access features that Sony gives you for free.

I agree, Xbox Live is overall offering a better online service right now. But $270 better? And Sony is steadily narrowing the gap in online features. With improvements to the messaging system and support for background downloading, Sony is rapidly catching up with many of the key advantages that Live has enjoyed. Add to that the fact that Sony is offering virtually lag-free dedicated servers at no cost, while on Xbox Live you are paying for a more laggy peer-to-peer service. Furthermore, one of the biggest advertised features of Xbox Live is matchmaking, yet the implementation of this feature has been inconsistent since it is left up to the developer. The matchmaking service on Resistance: FOM, meanwhile, has been one of its biggest successes, proving that even at this early stage the PS3’s online capabilities are very competitive. And free. As the PS3 community continues to grow with new features and player-generated content from Home and Little Big Planet, Sony’s online service is looking better and better. And, again, they’re not charging you $270 for it.

3. 50 GB games
If you ever hear someone say “Blu-Ray isn’t needed for this generation,” rest assured they don’t make games for a living. At Insomniac, we were filling up DVDs on the PS2, as were most of the developers in the industry. We compressed the level data, we compressed the mpeg movies, we compressed the audio, and it was still a struggle to get it to fit in 6 gigs. Now we’ve got 16 times as much system RAM, so the level data is 16 times bigger. And the average disc space of games only gets bigger over a console’s lifespan. As games get bigger, more advanced and more complex, they necessarily take up more space. If developers were filling up DVDs last generation, there are clearly going to be some sacrifices made to fit current generation games in the same amount of space.

Granted, some really great Xbox 360 games have squeezed onto a DVD9. Gears of War is a beautiful game and shows off the highest resolution textures of anything yet released, partly because of the Unreal Engine’s ability to stream textures. This means that you can have much higher resolution textures than you could normally fit in your 512 MB of RAM. It also means that you’re going to chew up more disc space for each level. With streamed textures, streamed geometry and streamed audio, even with compression, you can quickly approach 1 GB of data per level. That inherently limits you to a maximum of about 7 levels, and that’s without multiplayer levels or mpeg cutscenes.

Sometimes people ask us, “If Resistance takes 14 gigabytes, why doesn’t it look better than Gears?” Well, for one, Resistance didn’t support texture streaming, so we had to make choices about where we spent our high-res textures. Resistance also had 30 single-player chapters, six multiplayer maps, uncompressed audio streaming, and high-definition mpegs. That all added up to a lot of space on the disc. Starting with Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction we are supporting texture streaming, which will make the worlds look even better, and will also consume even more space on disc.

There’s no question that you can always cut more levels, compress the audio more, compress the textures more, down-res the mpeg movies, and eventually get any game to fit on a DVD. But you paid for a high-def experience, right? You want the highest resolution, best audio, most cinematic experience a developer can offer, right? That’s why Blu-Ray is important for games, and why it will become more important each year of this hardware cycle.

4. Casino Royale
Casino Royale is the first high definition title to crack the top 10 on Amazon’s DVD charts, rising up to number seven shortly after being released. This is significant because it dispels the myth that high definition discs are merely a niche and will never take off with the mainstream.

A lot of people have been waiting on the fence to see whether Blu-Ray or HD-DVD would emerge as the winner of the format war. Well, at this point the war is as good as over. Blu-Ray has won a TKO. It always had superior technical specs and much wider studio support, but there was the question of whether HD-DVD’s earlier release and initially lower price would capture enough of the market to make it the winner. But Blu-Ray has already surpassed HD-DVD in overall discs sold, and is currently outselling HD-DVD discs at about a 3:1 rate. Many neutral observers in the A/V community have called the war in favor of Blu-Ray. If you want minute-to-minute updates, you can follow what’s left of the format war at various locations on the internet:
http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/
http://www.hdgamedb.com/amazon/versus.aspx
These sites mainly compare Amazon sales data, but the Nielsen sales data shows the same thing: Blu-Ray discs are outselling HD-DVD by a steadily increasing margin.

Many of Disney, Fox and Sony’s biggest box office movies will release exclusively on Blu-Ray in the next three months, likely pushing the sales separation between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD to a margin where many retailers will begin phasing out HD-DVD. Retailers hate a format war even more than consumers, and I suspect they’ll take the initiative to end it as quickly as possible.

5. HDMI
A lot has been said about Sony’s choice to ship with composite cables. I won’t say I agree with that decision, but I think too little has been said of the fact that even the cheaper PS3 SKU supports HDMI 1.3. The PS3 was the first consumer device to support it, and this is a very important future-proofing step. When you go to buy higher-end TVs, the PS3 will support the highest possible audio and video input the TV and receiver can accept. If and when high-def movies start requiring an Image Constraint Token, the PS3 will still be able play them in high definition.

Right now, HDMI seems primarily to be a selling point to the hardcore audio and videophiles of the world. But HDTVs are getting cheaper and more popular all the time, and consumer sophistication and knowledge of high definition audio and video is growing. In a couple years, HDMI devices will be the standard. Graphics and audio in games will also continue to improve, and more and more consumers will want HDMI in order to get the best results on their home theater setups. As this happens, Microsoft has a difficult choice – do they stick with “last gen” video output, or do they release a premium version of the Xbox 360 that includes HDMI but effectively forces early adopters to re-buy the system to get the best results? Sony ultimately made their console more expensive by including HDMI, but over the next couple years it’s likely to play out as the right choice.

6. Standard HDD
When we were developing for PS2, I was jealous of Xbox’s standard hard drive. There are so many things this allowed you to consider as a developer – virtually unlimited save data, improved load times, custom music, downloadable content and user-created content just to name a few. But since hard drives, no matter what the size, never get cheaper than about $50, Microsoft lost money trying to compete with the PS2’s price. That may be the reason they left it out of the cheaper Xbox 360 SKU, thinking that Sony would again leave out the hard drive on the PS3. Instead, Sony made the hard drive standard for both SKUs. This added to the cost of the PS3, but it also let developers use the HDD in games.

The problem with including a hard drive in one version of the 360 and not in the other is that developers can’t use it for the games. Or, at least, they can’t use it for any required features. When you are guaranteed to have at least a 20 GB hard drive in the console, you can write your load caching routines around it, or use it for your application’s storage needs. To a developer, an optional hard drive is roughly equivalent to no hard drive at all.

Another advantage of the PS3 is that it will let you put in any third party hard drive you want. From a developer’s standpoint, this is good news because the market will gradually be able to support larger downloadable games over the course of the PS3’s life. As downloadable content gets larger and more sophisticated, PS3 owners can choose to buy larger hard drives at the best market price. The more this happens, the more developers will be encouraged to create better and better downloadable games.

7. The Wii Fad Will Fade
OK, this one’s going to be controversial, but I have to say it. I like Nintendo a lot. I think Nintendo has innovated far more than any other company in the industry. And I think the Wii is really, really fun. But… let me relate to you a story that may sound familiar:

Your friend Reggie invites you over for a Wii Party. It’s awesome. You and your friends partake in whatever beverages are legally appropriate for your age group. The next day everyone who went to the party rushes out and buys a Wii.

A week later Reggie hosts another Wii Party. This time only half the group comes. It’s still fun, but there isn’t quite as much shoving to get at the Wiimote.

The next week Reggie hosts another Wii Party. You tell him you have bird flu.

Obviously I’m exaggerating, but the Wii does have many characteristics of popular mainstream fads. It’s instantaneously accessible, it’s unlike anything you’ve tried before, and it’s great fun to share with friends. In short, it’s everything Nintendo said it would be and it has captured the world’s imagination. The only downside is that the world is easily distracted. Tickle Me Elmo captured the world’s attention at one point, as did Furbies. They were both instantly accessible, were unlike anything people had seen before, and were fun to share with friends. But a year later, after everyone had seen them and tried them out, their popularity waned.

The Wii is currently riding on a massive wave of mainstream attention and has been purchased by lots of people who don’t normally play games. But how many of those people who are hooked on Wii Sports will also buy Wii Need For Speed? Mainstream fads usually run their course within a year. As the honeymoon period fades, the Wii will be going up against more and more graphically impressive games on the PS3 and Xbox 360. More people will be buying HD televisions and looking for the most immersive and stunning experiences available. For these reasons, I think the Wii will be more successful than the GameCube or N64 but in the long run will still be outsold by the PS3.

8. PS3 Has a Major CPU Advantage
The GPUs on the Xbox 360 and PS3 are roughly equivalent, with the Xbox 360 arguably having a slight edge. The difference in CPU power, however, is far greater with the PS3 enjoying the advantage. The PS3’s eight parallel CPUs (one primary “PPU” and seven Cell processors) give it potentially far more computing power than the three parallel CPUs in the Xbox 360. Just about any tech programmer will tell you that the PS3’s CPUs are significantly more powerful. The problem is that it has been challenging thus far to take advantage of the Cell’s parallel architecture.

With the PS2, Sony got away with making a fairly developer-unfriendly system, and its success allowed their hardware designers to ignore developer’s complaints as they made the PS3. People high up at Sony have realized that approach simply won’t work anymore and are trying to fix the problem. Sony is actively improving their libraries, tools and developer support in order to make PS3 development easier. They are giving first party developed techniques and code to third-party developers so that multi-platform games should start looking better on PS3.

Games developed from the ground up on PS3 are the ones that will really show off the PS3’s CPU advantage. The complexity of the distributed processing architecture means that PS3 engines won’t fully blossom until a little later in the lifecycle than the PS2. This has put the PS3 at a disadvantage early in its lifecycle, but within two years you will see games that surpass what is possible on the Xbox 360.



To Microsoft’s credit, they are doing a good job of catching up. The acquisition of Rare and the development of Viva Pinata have helped to broaden their spectrum. But it takes time to build a franchise, and Sony has been building their suite of titles for over a decade. Consider the breadth, success and critical acclaim of some of their exclusive properties: The Getaway, God of War, Gran Turismo, Hot Shots Golf, Jak and Daxter, Killzone, Ratchet & Clank, Shadow of the Colossus, Singstar, Sly Cooper, SOCOM, and Twisted Metal. These are all million-plus sellers worldwide that are either already announced or likely to appear on PS3. Add to this Sony’s new line up of first-party titles, including Heavenly Sword, Lair, Motorstorm, Resistance: Fall of Man, Uncharted and White Knight Story, and they have an even deeper and stronger line-up than what they had on PS2.

A lot of industry watchers and even a handful of publishers have been quick to write Sony off this generation, and I think that’s near-sighted. Sony has made a lot of decisions with the PS3 that may have slowed them down in the short run, but should give them a big advantage in the long run. The high price, hardware complexity, and the uncertainty of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war have contributed to the PS3’s slow start out of the gate. But as the price drops, developers master the hardware, and Blu-Ray becomes the new DVD standard, Sony’s early disadvantages turn to advantages. As downloadable games become more common, the 60 GB hard-drive will be a big advantage to developers and consumers. As games get bigger and more sophisticated, Blu-Ray storage will increasingly become a major advantage. And as more and more of Sony’s exclusive first-party titles get released, the PS3 will begin to outsell the competition on a monthly basis. Those publishers who have shifted resources away from PS3 development will find themselves behind the curve and losing money as the market center gradually shifts toward the PS3 over the next two years.

http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/1010.html

[beansontoast]

As an outsider & non-owner I think that was a good read.

2. I would expect ms to drop or lower their online price if sony are giving theirs away, that's just a guess.
3. Makes sense to me, and ms can't introduce hd-dvd games because that would split their market & that is comercial suicide
4. Casino Royale, surely this is only high in the charts because it was given away?

p.s. I know it's not your opinion mate I'm just reading it as an outsider. tbh I will be buying a 360 because I know a few people who have one & are online (plus the hardware fix )

[BBK]

Its certainly an interesting read, and some of his comments may prove to be valid. But ...

1; Home and Little Big Planet. IMO (well documented here!) these are both fads in the same way as Wii Sports is, and have no long term sustainability, certainly to proper gamers. I read a recent article about Second Life, where they believe there may be as few as 15,000 real users, not the 2 million that may have registered, taken a look, and never gone back. Its a heck of a risky business model to build your console around, and it seems to me that Sony are backing this "Game 3.0" model and forgetting that there are gamers here who want to play games.

2. Free online. Only one response to this - VT3. The central online model that Xbox offers means that the game developers almost have to include proper online facilities for their games, whereas the decentralised model Sony are employing means they have a choice - and the early indication is they may choose not to include it. To some extent I do agree with what MsDG said the other day - I am not a huge online gamer - but I think its going to be a critical market. Also, the PC users can pay £9.99 a MONTH for some games, and there's no central model there is there!!!

3. 50gb games. This could be really interesting, you would imagine the FF games could make huge advantage of this, and as time goes by this could be a winner.

4. Absolutely no point to this one at all. It proves nothing.

5. Cant comment

6. Again an interesting point, but lets be honest, PC gamers are used to having to upgrade their console to play the latest games, and I see no reason at all why a developer wont just say "you need an HD to play this". Personally I don't know many 360 owners, but all of them have the HD.

7. Don't think anyone will disagree with this point!

8. Someone posted something the other day where they said on Top Gear they put three supercars against one another, and the least powered ended up winning. Power doesn't mean anything unless its utilised properly, and from what I understand most developers are saying the PS3 is much harder to develop for. There will no doubt be a game that comes out on the PS3 that makes everyone go "WOW", but 2 years down the line will be too late.

[{{909}}]

1. Home & Little Big Planet
these 2 things alone arnt going to appeal to the market in the same way as say wii sports, which is what i think Sony are trying to do, sure they're 2 area where its very different from the usual tom clancy shooter, but not everyone whats to sit making some evolving environment, Home and LBC have alot of potential, but they could both fall flat on their face and theyre not going to be someting that will help them recover the gamers they have already lost to M$.

2. Free Online
Something which is virtually non existant should be free.

3. 50 GB games
Great for developers who dont have to press different disks with different language files, but for the consumer, pointless in my opinion. 90% of last gen games never made it to the second layer of a dual layer disk, many were under 3gig, all of a sudden they have 50gig to play with, doesnt mean they will, or even can utilise it and if they did it will be nothing more than FMV.

4. Casino Royale
get the fuck out of here!

5. HDMI
get the fuck out of here!

6. Standard HDD
This is about the only thing the PS3 has that i would call a major advantage, optical drives for large HD files are too slow, 360 games suffer from far too long loading times and having a dvd drive spinning at 16x is not only noisy but generates heat and is very bad for the disk itself. Loading to the HDD first will be a godsend and will also enable some gameplay elements that are impossible when you are streaming from dvd.

7. The Wii Fad Will Fade
He hopes. I wouldnt bet against the Wii at this point in time

8. PS3 Has a Major CPU Advantage
where? on a piece of paper? The xbox had a massive CPU/GPU advantage. Very few games truely showed it.

9. PS2 still outselling 360
not everywhere it isn't, and its also available well under £100. The PS2 is/was Sony at their strongest, which is sadly very different to the position theyre in right now. Everything sony are doing at the moment is being done better elsewhere. Online, motion sensing, price, vibration etc.

10. Something For Everyone
I think he is right here too, this is one of their strongest points, or atleast its where the 360 fails so much. Sony has a massive range of different developers which make games in every genre and they also make good games in those genres. The 360 seems to gain nothing but FPS developers and any other genre is either a poor version of something thats on the playstation or the general 360 gamer just doesnt buy it (ie Viva Pinata). Its just bad for him that those developers are all looking towards the Wii due to its user base which is growing so incredibly fast.

overall mr hastings, you fail, must try harder

[CzarJunkie]

Whoever gets the online experience right will win. This is where the battle will be fought in coming generations of hardware and software. Microsoft have much more to offer in this department and have done a great job with Xbox Live.

Even if you don't regulary play online, the future online experience will change the way everyone uses consoles. Buying games from a High Street/online store and having possession of the physical media will become a thing of the past and you'll simply download all content and pay for it either via subscription or per title. Microsoft are ideally positioned to drive this forward and I really can't see past them when it comes to this area of the market.

[Gavin M]

who cares, iv got both consoles and they both have good and bad points, they come out as being exactly the same, 360 has no hd drive, ps3 has bluray, 360 has shit loads of games, ps3 doesnt, pro's and cons, who cares what wins....seriously tho, when dreamcast lost did anyone give a toss...no, people still play the DC now cause it had some kick arse games, no one cared it lost tho..all consoles are a fad untill the next one, so theyv all kinda lost all ready cause 5years time they'l all be shite

[BBK]

so theyv all kinda lost all ready cause 5years time they'l all be shite

I understand the point you are trying to make, but there's billions to be made in the next 5 years, so whoever gets the biggest portion of that has to be the winner. Sony have said that they think the PS3 has 10 year life span, but I can almost guarantee that we will see the next Xbox announced within 3 years, and on the shelves 18 months after that. If Sony then take another 2-3 years to come out with their next one ..... could be interesting. Of course, the ideal situation is to own both, and I suspect many of the gamers here, being in that over 30 bracket, will get both IF the games warrant it. At the moment there's nothing on the PS3 I want, and the majority of the exclusive titles are games that don't interest me (MGS4, GT). When Gods Of War 3 comes out then I might have an expensive decision to make

[CzarJunkie]

who cares, iv got both consoles and they both have good and bad points, they come out as being exactly the same, 360 has no hd drive, ps3 has bluray, 360 has shit loads of games, ps3 doesnt, pro's and cons, who cares what wins....seriously tho, when dreamcast lost did anyone give a toss...no, people still play the DC now cause it had some kick arse games, no one cared it lost tho..all consoles are a fad untill the next one, so theyv all kinda lost all ready cause 5years time they'l all be shite

Only one thing wrong with that argument, very few will buy more than 1 console. So it is crucial that MS, Sony or Nintendo grab as much of the market share as possible.

Everyone knows the hardware/software develops, giving existing consoles a limited lifespan. But, as I see it, this is about forcing users into making a choice of content provider rather than platform. The games console is so much more than it used to be and MS has recognised this and positioned the 360 and xbox live accordingly.

[{{909}}]

who cares, iv got both consoles and they both have good and bad points, they come out as being exactly the same, 360 has no hd drive, ps3 has bluray, 360 has shit loads of games, ps3 doesnt, pro's and cons, who cares what wins....seriously tho, when dreamcast lost did anyone give a toss...no, people still play the DC now cause it had some kick arse games, no one cared it lost tho..all consoles are a fad untill the next one, so theyv all kinda lost all ready cause 5years time they'l all be shite

of course people gave a toss, the people who spent money on the dreamcast for it to become a useless paperweight wernt too happy. If in 2 years the PS3 is dead and your forced to buy the closest competitor you wont be exactly singing from the rooftops will you?

The console that appeals to the largest % of the market is going to win this war and previously sony could do no wrong. Times are very different with the PS3.
I think sony and M$ are trying too hard to muscle in on the PC gaming market and forgetting why people bought consoles in the first place. Cheap, easy to set up, easily accessable by all and fun. Not expensive, unreliable and complicated. If i wanted to play PC games, mess about with resolutions, fsaa and all that crap i buy a PC. Sony and especially M$ seem to think the average gamer knows/cares what all that means, but they dont.
People didnt buy the PS1 as a cheap way to play PC games, they bought then to play ridge racer, tekken and tombraider, which at the time you didnt get on the PC. People didnt care that it didnt have the power of a high end PC, they wants cheap, simple and fun gaming something theyre not offering with the PS3.

[Chubbs]

There are winners and losers with every hardware battle.

However "the man who dies with the most toys in his possession is king"!

Personally I'd always go for all the gen hardware (being a greedy bastard) but I always like the console over PC - I'd rather a develper shoe horn the game into a box (or three) rather than insist I spend 300 sheets on a graphics card to play the latest PC titles.

[ak7000]

All are valid points in on way or another but the main factor right now in the Uk is the ps3 is 400 quid while a 360 core can be had for as little as 150 thats a big diff and goes against it as does the fact that so called gimicky console the ' wii' continues to outsell itself.
Its not that cut and dried... had sony took major losses ? on the ps3 and priced it at 300 it wud have been very interesting to how it would have done.
Its just too damm expensive for alot of people at the moment, esp parents buying for thier kids etc....

[Phreakster]

Bring out the PS3 Loader Disc and I don't mind paying 400 notes for a PS3

[lithho]

i agree with a lot of what writen there, the changble hard drive is a very good idea, wasnt blue ray bond given away free?. i dont think the hd dvd/blue ray war is over at all. any one remember beta max, was the better player but never took off, what about mini disk, how many people got one of those?. im not interested in home at all, tryed second life for about 20 mins, got bored and uninstalled it. i still say its too dear, at £399 in some shops now is far to much, yes you pay for xbox live, but i personally am far from inpressed with online gameing on the ps3. Wont be cashing my 360 just yet, does of course help there are a few exploits for the 360 lol

[fevernova]

1 - yes they will be good for a while then get boring
2-end ..... no there all crap and lame reasons

[rIKmAN]

I think this battle battle is going to won in the games and the online implementations.
I remember the PS1 days when I bought it just to play Gran Turismo, Tomb Raider, Resi Evil etc....then I bought a Saturn for Panza Dragoon, Athlete Kings, Virta Fighter....

The only reason I have been going around buyin consoles all these years is because there is something on it that I want to play and can`t do on any other piece of hardware - so that justifies the purchase.

I have a 360 and Ps3, but would`n`t have the PS3 right now if the gf had`nt got it without me knowing - simply because there is nothing there I want to play yet, except MotorStorm - and all the other games I`ve played on the 360 already.
I will play all multiformat games on the 360 - due to the GamerScore, and the only things I will use the PS3 for is PS3 Exclusive games and BlueRay films - otherwise it`ll be used by the gf to play on.

The online stuff is becoming more and more important now, and MS have this area pretty much tied up.
Live is great, easy to access, it works, it`s quick (compared to PS3 online imo), but you have to pay for it. I see this as a good thing, for the following reasons:

1) It eliminates some of the tossers who find it fun to ruin online games (not all )
What I mnean is it kinda sets a limit of the age of gamer - it`s not free so an adult must at least pay for the child to play, they can`t just login, whack a load of false details in and play.

2) It means devs are kinda pressured into making the online good, as if it is shit, either in-game or from hardware side, then you have a right to complain about it because you are paying for that service. If Sony`s servers are laggy or whatever, sure they may fix the issue, but they also may not - and it`s free - what right do you have to complain?

3) Online is a revenue stream for MS, which means it will be constantly updated and tweaked, filled with the latest content to attract more Gold members and keep the existing ones renewing. With Sony, the revenue is the actual content downloads (or a percentage of withthe devs) so its not much of an incentive to have a team of say 30 guys working on online, when there is other stuff to be doing that would earn more money for the company - and at the end of the day it`s all about business models.

4) The PS3 is ridiculously expensive for what is available for it right now, valu wise.
The 360 Premium + a year subscription to Live will still be cheaper that a basic PS3.
The guy who did the sums above, Live is £40 a year, not 70/50 you were quoting (unless that was $?) so a few years Gold membership and a 360 that can be hacked saving loads of £££ on games is ultimately more attractive that a PS3 that can play £50 games you can get for free on a 360 (or a £5 depending how you get em) and plays BlueRay films.

5) The 360 is hacked. PS3 isn`t.
That is a big thing for a lot of owners, especially in larger cities where the money is`t so affluent. Is a mum on a council estate gonna get a 360 or a PS3 for her 4 kids, factoring in that her lad Tony can get 360 games 3 for £10 form "Dodgy Al" round the corner, and PS3 games have to be bought @ £50 a pop.

This could change of course, when the PS3 is hacked, but for now it`s still a factor.

[crazyal]

I have a fair bit of disposable income very month so I'm lucky in as much as I have all 3 of the latest consoles so am totally unbiased as to which is best etc., so I just wanted to add my 10p...

I wouldn't exactly rule Sony out at this point it is far too early to tell. 360 is ahead by 12 months but I'm betting that PS3 will bouce back with some great software in the next 12 months.

The cost of Live isn't realy an issue as you could get Xbox packs with a 12 month sub for about £20 (PGR2 & Halo2).

I also agree with the comment about programmers not able to take advantage of the 360 HDD - at least with PS3, developers could write games to take advantage of the standard HDD.

I love my 360 for titles like GRAW2 & GOW and Live Arcade, but anyone who thinks Sony has entered this race too late is, I believe, throwing their hand in early.
Sony has, and always will be, in it for the long haul.

As for hacking, yes it is a factor but I believe not as big as some make it out to be.
It appears big because a lot of us that frequent forums like this see hacking and modding all around us.

I have a mate that has a modded 360, played a copy of Rainbow6 and loved it so much that he went out and bought the original. He said he wants to support the software developers. He thinks certain games are that good that he wants to buy the original. Is he mad? Some would say so, but that's his choice.

As for the Wii? Who cares - I've got Zelda, Tennis and Bowling. That's all I need right now, lol!

[silentbob10]

Its all about the games. The only game that I want to play on the PS3 at the moment is Motorstorm (it does look great).. but there will be more to come later. The hardware differences between the PS3 and 360 mean nothing to me, I really dont care which one is more "powerful" from a technical point, its all about how that power is used. The PS3 is apparantly more difficult than the 360 when developing games, but I dont think it really will be a problem (though multi-platform games might be developed initially for the 360). Online capability is a big thing too, which MS has the lead on but I expect Sony will soon get this sorted (and I think Home looks pretty cool..)

Another thing that isnt really talked about much is the possibilty of upgrades. Probably unlike previous consoles, both the PS3 and 360 are upgradable in terms of both hardware and software - it would be interesting to see what happens with this.

I wanted a 360 for Gears of War. I wanted a Wii for WarioWare (and if I didnt get one for that, I would have certainly bought it for Nights). If I had enough disposable money, a PS3 would be sitting under my telly. There's not enough decent games to warrant it yet, but there will be soon.