Ps3 vs Xbox360

So this is one I've changed my mind many times, but I feel I've finally come to a conclusion on this. First of all I own neither of the two consoles, I do own a slim Ps2 I bought just a few years ago.

The PS3!

Now in my country when the PS2 was riding high Playstation had become a synonym for consoles, So although we had grown up in a Commodore 64 household, I still thought of consoles as playstations when I was in my early teens. But I was never really a fan of the actual Playstation consoles, already back then I was more of a PC gamer. But it looked impressive for it's time, although often games on the PS2 will try and impress you with prerendered or just unchangeable animations *cough* Final Fantasy *cough* Eventually later in my days I had my own apartment, TV, and I thought, would be nice to have something for casual and social gaming, and my brother had let me try God Of War and Burnout 3 on his Ps2 slim, and I was sold. I still have the console, and I do enjoy Burnout, and even God of war 2 once in a while, but the sad thing is, they are pretty much the only games I enjoy, I bought Prince of Persia because of the good reviews it has gotten, only to in my mind compare it to God of War and find it lacking of pace. But that's just my gaming experience, the Ps2 is nice, the controllers are shit though.. We all have to agree on this, when I'm an ancient greek godkiller and I'm flying around to kill as much as possible in 2 hours, a comfortable controller would have been nice, but what I ended up with was two hooks once called hands, or when I play burnout and I've been holding down a button for a while, again the lack of comfort in the ps controllers just isn't there, so that's a huge complaint I have about Sony's approach, they've been using the same design from the very first Playstation, it wasn't comfortable back then and it isn't now.

Now, the reason I went into the fact that I own a PS2 was to basically complain about the controller and make a point about games for consoles. It was really disappointing to see they decided to try and cripple our fingers again with the sixaxis, I guess they want the controller to be the trademark for Playstation, which just brings to mind a company welcoming it's employees with the picture of a whip. and to me the trademark of the Playstation has never been the controller, it's been two things, the ps sign that you can spin around on all Playstations(I'm not sure about PS1), and the signs on the controller, triangle, circle, square and X.

Now I've been talking a lot about other stuff so now I will direct my attention to the PS3, what is my feelings and judgement about it? Well when the PS3 first came out, I was all tingly in my stomach, it looked perfect, except for the controller obviously, but it was fast, it had blu-ray, and they showed on youtube many functions it had like media sharing so you could use your PSP and show pictures simply by letting the PS3 act as a server, but then came a realisation.. This isn't a console, it's a wannabe MediaCenter, a job better suited for PC's. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually all for having a browser on my TV, I know a lot of people are against that, but when I'm sitting after a hard day of 13 hours of work, and I decide I want to just relax in my nice chair, I don't want to move around on a laptop, or walk over to my desktop PC, I would much rather pick up a controller and check some random stuff on the internet, that said that's all I want, I don't want to be able to share and use my console as a server, it's way to limited and well too powerhungry in my taste, my own server I have running at home I've made sure consume as little power as humanly possible, and one of the ways to assure that is to put in a low power crappy video card, that's not really the choice with the PS3, and even if it was.. Why would you buy a console for doing the task that any cheap PC can do better? The whole media thing with blu ray I have mixed feelings about, in one hand it makes sense, I used my PS2 as a DVD player and I was perfectly happy with it, on the other hand, it's blu-ray, DVD was an innovation because it was cheaper to build, and the quality was a lot better than VHS, there was nothing but benifits really, What's the benifit of Blu-ray? There's the obvious better resolution, but what's the price? Well there's a cartel holding up the price on blu-ray licensing, that's normal but also annoying, and there's the production issue, remember at one point the PS3 delays were attributed to the fact that they had trouble producing the Blu-ray diodes, so I don't really see any reason to go up in arms over blu-ray, especially not when we have internet getting fast enough for HD, making the internet in my mind the next step for movies, either that or some kind of read only memory card since in my eyes it's time we get past moving objects, seeing it like this: VHS Many movable objects in both media and player, DVD no moving objects in media, few moving objects in player.

And why would you buy a PS3? could it possibly be to play games on your TV and somewhat more socially when having friends over? that was my reasoning for getting a PS2, so why not just focus on making a console?

So in the end, PS3, Full of features, should focus more on it being a console.

Now the Xbox 360!

Well since I complained a whole lot about the Playstation controller, you can probably guess how I feel about the Xbox 360 controller. I love it! I bought one for my PC because I wanted to play a game called geometry wars, and it was just more fun with a controller, and I knew the Xbox 360 controller was compatible, but yeah I quickly thought: Why don't my PS2 or the PS3 have a controller this comfortable? Some complain it's too big or clumsy, but as long as it can be held in one hand, and it's small enough to lie on an arm rest on a chair, I'm fine with it. I can't really come up with any complaints about it because to be honest it's the best controller out there in my mind.

Now I know it looks like a Xbox 360 lovefest, but although that might be true, I have complained about the Xbox 360 in the past, the whole RROD problem was just inexcusable, I know they wanted to be first but that won't make you known for quality, I can promise you the next Xbox won't be reciewed well before people feel sure there won't be the same kind of issues. And obviously there's the whole paying for internet, thing.. While it's not enirely bad, it does ensure users that they have a better market with the XBLA, and according to friends of mine, better servers than i.e. Sony. But I would like it if I could atleast access internet without paying for it, and then paying for playing online and such, but ok, as I've already established I use a console for relaxed sofa playing with a friend or two.. Now I noticed a point came up here, the 360 can only have 4 controllers connected while you can connect 8 to the PS3, I will however say if I have more than three friends over it would start to feel crowded, and it never got to me that the PS2 can only have two controllers connected.

One last thing, Microsoft needs to get a new powersupply, I mean come on! it's the same as the one for the old extremely power hungry Xbox 360's, it has been through revisions and uses a lot less power right now, so it's ok Microsoft, let's cut it back a little and make it just a little smaller! I do like the fact that the newest PS2 slim and the PS3 has internal powersupplies, it just makes things easier.

Now how about the Xbox as a media player? well first of all my experience with Xbox is limited, even more limited than my experience with PS3, so maybe once I get to inspect it I will start ranting, but from what I've read and been told it's a pretty decent DVD player, and the fact that you can stream Nettflix on it is a huge turn on for me who thinks internet is our future in media. But yeah it only has Nettflix for HD, or local storage, so if you already have a collection of blu ray movies, you can get a blu-ray drive for you computer and ask yourself to do something that will make the blu-ray cartel cry.

So in the end Xbox 360, a console, and while it has other features it always seem to be focusing on games, like you would expect.

Now obviously ask me what I would go for, Xbox 360 almost all the way, if it's for a let's say youthgroup or whatever the 8 controller feature of the PS3 is pretty nice, what have pushed me to the Xbox is comfort, games and price, because if there's one thing Microsoft did right it was pushing down the price like they have on the Xbox, I could buy a Xbox 360 Elite today and I wouldn't be hurt financially by it. Now there's tho whole thing of wich one has better graphics, and honestly from the pictures I've seen it looks like the Xbox has better graphics, but the difference is so little I honestly wouldn't care if it was the other way around.

As for games, the only thing that makes me a little sad about choosing the side I have is that I won't be able to try God Of War 3 since I have completed the first two, but then again, playing the first two and you will notice how much the same they are. Now to be completely honest they have so many games in common that it was probably the thing that convinced me the least of the three I mentioned, but there are some titles for Xbox 360 that looks interesting to me.

So I think Microsoft made a console, and Sony tried and failed to make a mediacenter.

Kim Leo

Out and over...

My first entry!

You might wonder about the name of this blog? Well I've always had a fascination with the "fights" between tech companies, and today is probably the time we see some of the most interesting "fights" ever, We have Microsoft, Apple, and the mighty Google fighting over the phone market, with 3 different approaches(Well ok MS and Apple's are somewhat the same)

Now I am a little biased towards google, my friends are quick to point that out, but even from an objective standpoint, the Android platform? Genius!

First of all, Although I don't really like the Microsoft CEO, he was pretty spot on when he was on the stage yelling developers, that is the "Food" that will make these phones succesful.

When you hear iPhone, you think, funky programs, like the one that turns your voice into a techno sounding voice, or the program that can recognice buildings through the camera and gives you information about it, Apple didn't make these, developers did. Probably the best example of this evarr is Windows.

Back at school we had a teacher that called Windows for Wintendo, And I like Linux, I try it sometimes, sometimes I feel it's really fast and better than Windows, but then I feel like playing a game, and although you can play games, it will never be as easy or as good as it is on Windows, Now games isn't the only thing Windows has working for it, the whole easy to manage and install part is a big part of it as well.

And now we see Apple moving in and starting to show some powers in the Smart Phone market, everytime I see someone talking about this they point to the App store, wich as I already pointed out what will make a phone like the iPhone succesful.

Now Microsoft is coming out with Windows Phone 7, now Microsoft did something smart, Had they called this the Windows Phone Vista, yeah I guess you can already feel the disgust going through you, never ever would you touch that. So yay for marketing, And they scrapped the old Windows Mobile platform, or any connection to it with this phone, wich again was a right thing to do in my mind, having owned a few Windows Mobile phones and PDA's Yeah it was never good, it's about time we accept that. So let's hope this new platform will be worth something, and they are making sure as many kind of developers can work on this platform, Games with XNA for Visual studio, and you can already make all other kinds of applications in Visual Studio, so they are set for development as well, and yeah I can almost hear Steve Balmer Yell developers..

Now What about Google? well the really interesting thing Google did was to not build a phone, and it's true, Google never built one single phone, Even the Nexus One you can order from Googles website(If you're American!) is built by HTC. All google did was to make a platform that would be used on the phones, much like Symbian, unlike Symbian however, Googles platform is Open Source from the beginning(Symbian did go open source not to long ago). So what does this mean? Well basically, no restrictions for developers, Recently Apple removed most apps containing sexual material, And apparently Apple is very strict when it comes to developing apps for their platform, You won't have this problem with Android, you might not find it at the Google "App store" but there's nothing stopping you from installing it if you can find it. Now it's a golden rule that Porn somewhat controls what will succeed, (Betamax vs VHS anyone?), So yeah when something becomes popular, you can damn well bet there will be some kind of porn for it, TV, Internet, Comics, Magazines, and Cave-drawings(heh), and to push that away, Well as my friend George Carlin would have said: You are JWF and SOL, meaning you are pretty much on your own, I'm no porn guru, and I don't think it would be popular to overflow the App Store with Porn, But that wasn't what was going on. Now you can read a lot of details about the news, and choose yourself what you want to believe.

So with that going for Android, I would say they are definitely set for winning the mobile wars. The other great thing about Googles choice of just making the platform is, if you're a nerd like me, you will want something with the best specs, like the Nexus One or the HTC Desire, both are phones with better screens, better processors and more memory than the standard Android based phone, they are also of course more expensive, And currently if you want like the HTC Hero, you get roughly the same specs as the iPhone.

Now don't get me wrong, I might be biased but I'm not blind, a certain fact is there will be a lot of useless annoying applications cluttering up the market for Android, however time will hopefully sort them out., and I saw a company pronounced Hawaii(Spelled different, didn't care enough to google it) are about to make an Android Based phone, and my only experience with that company is one of the cheapest phones I've ever handled.. And it broke after like a week of normal use. So the "quality" control that Google might have had if they build their own isn't there. That said, I do think that obviously the worst will be sortet out, But of course it will never be perfect.

Now I haven't talked that much about the Windows Phone 7, and it's a little because of the small details there are out on it, Specs looks nice, the thing about Microsofts approach is, they aren't Open Source, but they did do like Android and just make a platform, one of the benifits about the androids approach is it's possible for companies like HTC and others to make a budget Android phone, according to what I can find about Windows Phone 7 that won't be possible, they have very specific requirements, so the benifit seems to be a little gone, to me it looks like they tried to take the best from two worlds and instead ended up with the worst, A closed platform on a phone wich price will be held up by the requirements, and no quality control(It's possible to put good hardware on crappy boards). But we shall see of course, my guess is that the Windows Phone 7 will feel almost awkwardly like an iPhone.

Now I'm actually more of a computer nerd, so this isn't my strongest field, and I have to admit I was very wrong on the iPhone when it came out, I didn't see it as a success and it undeniably have been, my reasons back then was that it had been tried before, i had the Motorola A925, you will see this is pretty much like that, and yeah it was fun for the first week or so, but eventually you got tired of the touchscreen as it wasn't very precise, and being lefthanded it had problems reading my text, when I drew it, but I did try and fiddle a little with an iPhone and that was surely not the problem. So yeah I believe I've learned from some of my past mistakes.

So if you came to me and asked what phone to buy? Well as I do with computers, I make sure to let you know the good and the bad about everything, obviously I would say that I'm more attracted to the Android platform, and would go after some kind of HTC phone with that, but if the possible app quality problem frightens you, you should take a look at the iPhone, the new Windows phone 7 however? Meh, maybe if it's cheaper than the iPhone.

One last thing, I do in fact like the fact that Apple will pressure movie studios and such to lower their prices if they want to sell on iTunes, I'm all for that, but I also like my platforms open.

I hoped you liked this post, I plan to do more, probably a bit more computer oriented, I have a ton to write about AMD and Intel if that should be of interest.

*UPDATE*

I found this article at The Inquirer, I kind of implied that the quality of apps for iPhone would somehow be better, but it seems there isn't that much control at the App Store. Atleast not when it comes to the prices of the apps. Interesting article.

-Kim Leo

Anything