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...