PS3/X-Box 360/Wii Debate

Griff0rd · 11-21-2006, 09:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by monsterdude79

i think resistance and nba 07 look good those are wat im gettin

NBA '07 looks terrible. The players look like they are made of plastic because of the shine issues, 360 has had some issues with that as well. Resistance also looks decent, but nothing much more than that. If you look at the gameplay it looks solid, but graphically it is comperable to Call of Duty 3. It will be at the very least a year before PS3 is worth half of what they are expecting people to pay for now. Plus I'm not all that convicnced that Blu Ray won't just phail all together.

Necro · 11-29-2006, 05:05 PM

Can the PS3 get any MORE bad press?

Quote:

Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your companyâ€™s new video game system just isnâ€™t that great.

Ever since Mr. Stringer took the helm last year at Sony, the struggling if still formidable electronics giant, the world has been hearing about how the coming PlayStation 3 would save the company, or at least revitalize it. Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun.

Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise.

Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the worldâ€™s most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the worldâ€™s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other.

The PS3, which was introduced in North America on Friday with a hefty $599 price tag for the top version, certainly delivers gorgeous graphics. But they are not discernibly prettier than the Xbox 360â€™s. More important, the whole PlayStation 3 system is surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online.

I have spent more than 30 hours using the PlayStation 3 over the last week or so and may have played more different games on the system â€” 13 â€” than probably anyone outside of Sony itself. Sony did not activate the PS3â€™s online service until just before the Friday debut. Over the weekend a clear sense of disappointment with the PlayStation 3 emerged from many gamers.

â€œWhatâ€™s weird is that the PS3 was originally supposed to come out in the spring, and here it came out in the fall, and it still doesnâ€™t feel finished,â€ Christopher Grant, managing editor of Joystiq, one of the worldâ€™s biggest video-game blogs, said on the telephone Saturday night. â€œItâ€™s really not the all-star showing they should have had at launch. Sony is playing catch-up in a lot of ways now, not just in terms of sales but in terms of the basic functionality and usability of the system.â€

Sadly for Sony, the best way to explain how the PlayStation 3 falls short is to explain how different it is to use than its main competition, Xbox 360. When I reviewed the 360 last year, I wrote: â€œTwelve minutes after opening the box, I had created my nickname, was in a game of Quake 4 and thought, â€˜This canâ€™t be this easy.â€™ â€

I never felt that way using the PlayStation 3. With the PS3, 12 minutes after opening the box I realized that Sony inexplicably does not include cables to connect the machine to a high-definition television. Keep in mind that one of Sonyâ€™s main selling points has been that the PS3 plays Blu-Ray high-definition movie discs. But high-definiton cables? Sold separately. The Xbox 360, by contrast, ships with one cable that can connect to either a standard or high-definition set.

Then, before you are even using the PS3, you have to connect the â€œwirelessâ€ controller to the base unit with a USB cable so they can recognize each other. If you bring your PS3 controller to a friendâ€™s house, youâ€™ll have to plug back in again. The 360â€™s wireless controllers are always just that, wireless.

If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things Iâ€™ve always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesnâ€™t seem too complicated, but the PS3 canâ€™t do it.

In that sense it often feels as if the PlayStation 3 canâ€™t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3â€™s online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, youâ€™ll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you canâ€™t download in the background while you go do something thatâ€™s more fun (like play a game). On the Xbox 360, not only are files downloaded seamlessly in the background, but you can also shut off the machine, turn it on later, and the download will resume automatically.

The PS3â€™s whole online experience feels tacked-on and unpolished. On the Xbox 360 each user has a single unified friends list, so you can track your friends and communicate with them easily, no matter what game you are in. On the PlayStation 3 most games have their own separate friends list and some have no friends function at all. There is a master list as well, but in order to communicate with anyone on it, you have to quit the game you are playing.

There are some high points. The multi-player battles in Resistance: Fall of Man are excellent. The arcade-style action in the downloadable Blast Factor is suitably frantic.

But the list of the PS3â€™s disappointments remains, from its undersupported voice chat to its maddening cellphone-like text messaging system. (In frustration I ended up plugging in a USB keyboard.) Overall, Sony seems to have put a lot of effort into cramming as much silicon horsepower under the hood as possible but to have forgotten that all the transistors in the world canâ€™t make someone smile.

And so it is a bit of a shock to realize that on the video game front Microsoft and Sony are moving in exactly the opposite directions one might expect given their roots. Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sonyâ€™s PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3â€™s deficiencies.) The thing is, if people want to use a computer, theyâ€™ll use a computer.

Through the decades of the Walkman and the Trinitron television, Sony was renowned as the global master of easy-to-use, seamlessly powerful consumer electronics. But recently Sony seems to have lost its way, first in digital music players, in which it ceded the ergonomic high ground to Appleâ€™s iPod, and now in home-game consoles. For now Sonyâ€™s technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun.

As a practical matter, given the limited quantities Sony has been able to manufacture, the PlayStation 3 will surely remain sold out throughout the holiday season. If you canâ€™t find one, donâ€™t fret. Sony still has a lot of work to do. As Mr. Grant of Joystiq put it: â€œMaybe in six months itâ€™ll be finished. Maybe by next fall Iâ€™ll be able to do all the cool stuff. Iâ€™m still kind of waiting.â€

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/ar...erland&emc=rss

God · 11-29-2006, 05:51 PM

anyone else think that guy works for Microsoft? All he did was complain about online play etc, who gives a fuck if it cant play your music, thats what a radio is for, its a games consol therefor for games.
on the wireless issue, nothing is wireless, it has to get plugged into the consol otherwise it doesnt work unless the range id two feet. if its a large rangew you could be fucking up a player next door because theirs nothing to plug in so it controls every thing in range. with the ps3, you plug it into the consol, it controls that consol only!
i hate when pricks ignore faults in their own systems.

Necro · 11-29-2006, 06:14 PM

Well I dont know the music thing is true, you've been able to play music on xbox since the first one...

Invictus · 11-29-2006, 06:21 PM

The 360 controller is wireless and has a range of about 15 feet with a clear line of sight. Obviously a wall will block the signal but the controller is completely wireless.

Griff0rd · 12-07-2006, 03:38 PM

not only that, but you hit a button on the console you want to connect your controller to and it makes it it's home until you do it again, so they are on different frequencies. As far as the guy talking in this article working for Microsoft I doubt it. Most articles I have read from neutral companies have all stated the exact same thing and Sony has done just what this guy has said... THey lie. They say it is 3 time as powerful... the single processor is a bit more than that of the 360, but the 360 runs off 3 processors making the output close to the same. Not to mention how they didn't announce the weak backwards compatability issues that they promised wouldn't exsist until the Japan launch date.

The truth is the more that gaming goes on line (which the importance is increasing every month) the more it plays in the court of 360 or even Wii. The online content is much more user friendly and proven with the 360 and customizable features are the same. With the Wii having it's games to download, its own weather channel, online games to come, and even it's own web browser... the wii is heading in a similar direction. The framerates of the PS3 thus far have also not been as good making for clunky gaming. But some of this is game to game basis. Also the lack of friends lists and being able to talk on the net features is disturbing. GD and I had issues and without this ability... well we would have been lost... not to mention how the gaming expirience will be weaker due to it.

Customization such as the music to me is important. I like being able to play what ever music I want in game in the background instead of playing the games music... this means music... not sound effects. I can play my music and still get all the sound effects I need in my first person shooters which is amazing and great for me. Not to mention the ease of LIVE marketplace and the customization ablilities within software and even the hardware itself. The more that these consoles tailor to solid gaming, customizing to the individual, and on line play, the more it plays into the courts of Microsoft, as well and Wii... Sony does have a lot of ground to make up.

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Who won the VP debate?	Miakal	General Discussion	15	10-06-2004 07:35 PM
Who won the debate?	Miakal	General Discussion	59	10-06-2004 10:26 AM
Who will win the first debate?	Miakal	General Discussion	5	09-29-2004 01:33 PM
Debate	Monkey	WWE Discussion	5	07-15-2003 01:09 PM

11-29-2006, 06:21 PM	#55 (permalink)
Invictus Platinum Member Status: Online Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 1,574 vBookie Cash: 500 Rep Power: 5 gXboxLive Leaderboard: 2^nd	The 360 controller is wireless and has a range of about 15 feet with a clear line of sight. Obviously a wall will block the signal but the controller is completely wireless.

PS3/X-Box 360/Wii Debate

Whether your system is PC, PS3, Wii, or X-Box 360 we have your online discussion here. Also discuss today's latest gizmos and gadgets like cell phones, mp3 players, and more.