the ps3 is quite simply, the better system.

for convience sake, i will be using my own nations currency for pricing, i imagine the cosst are relative in the rest of the world... well, aside from the uk anyway, they are getting royally screwed by the ps3 cost.

 now for some pricing:

Ps3 (60gig): $549 CAD.

needed accesories for the average gamer: HDMI cord. $49

total cost with 14% tax is $626, no games.

xbox 360 (20 gig pro): $499

NAFTAG: 1 year online, 1 rechargable battery pack: $59, $15

total cost with 14% tax is $653, no games.

 What are you paying for?

Well, for one a greatly inferior hardrive. i've owned my ps3 for a week and i've already filled 20gigs with free store content alone. how on earth the 360 users organize there files is beyond me, perhaps they simply delete and redownload as needed, perhaps the 360 is external HDD compatable, i don't know. what i do know is that 20gigs isn't very much. which is probably why they came out with a 120gig replacement harddrive for pro users. unfortunately, that little beauty costs a not so insignificant sum of $209. all the while ps3 users can swap out there hardrives for almost any 2.5" laptop drive. for the same price as the xbox 120 gig, a playstation user can easily grab a 160gig. having trouble installing it? the in-box instruction manuel gives you a step by step tutorial on how to swap out your harddrive.

 What about HD content? well, alot of people still haven't adopted an HDTV that can truly abuse the ps3's 1080p, i personally have, but I'm not the average consumer. is hd the future? yes. thats just progress, as HDTV's get cheaper manufactures will continue to push them as superior products in one big game of oneupmanship, that's just how things work. is bluray the future? probably. partly because of the ps3, bluray has been outselling it's enemy format HDDVD. further, bluray is a familiar brand from a reliable manufacturer, HDDVD is unfortunately more obscure. 

 Will bluray effect your games? what about the cell is it truly all that?

Yes and i think so. although the power of blurays extra content capacity probably won't truly make itself known till around late 08, already games are starting to abuse the extra space... and the devs like. look no further then the upcoming lair, the first game to fill a single layer bluray disk. Meanwhile on the other side of the fence, xbox's DVD's (it is a popular myth that xbox uses HDDVD disks for there games) are already reaching limits. the recent smash hit gears of war clocked in at 6.7 gigs. which won't mean much until you realize that the xbox's media, the dvd disks, are limited to an 8gig capacity. xbox hasn't quite reached the limit yet, but it won't be long before devs begin to feel the heat and expansive game content becomes limited to the growth in compression technology. A wall ps3 devs won't reach for a long time. heck, killzone 2's first level clocks in at 2 gigs. why? because it can.

As for the cell, can it beat the 3 xbox cores? well, yes. those of us who watched e3 and caught the fracture demo/interview heard the interesting fact that fracture, a shared system game, was maxing out the xbox's processing power. to use a messy quote, "they were in the red". did the ps3 experience similar problems? none were mentioned.

 Further, the ps3 just won't fail on you. it's one of the beenfitsof buying from a company experienced in hardware manufacture, both the ps3 and the wii have near non existant failure rate while the 360 has a disgustingly high 33%. literally 1 in 3 xbox's will die on you. luckily for the owners, microsoft bit the bullet and extended the warrant to three years, a move that has cost there gaming division another billion. all in all, the xbox 360 has cost microsoft roughly 5 billion dollars. (old reuters article on microsoft sales + the 1 billion warranty). That's 5 billion dollars microsoft has to make back on software sales. that's a hobbling factor that will hold up valuable time and funding that could otherwise have gone into accessories and software. 

 what about online? well ill admit, for the next few months xbox live utterly destroys the pplaystation network, as it should considering your paying for the thing. Then however, home will come out, giving ps3 users a sims style chat room, a free feature capable of (IMO) matching the interactivity of the currently superior microsoft online product. The same goes with games, devs are still struggling with the new ps3 hardware and are shying away of exclusives in favour of ports, relyng on sonys inhouse studio to provide the playstation experience. things are already changing though, the new deal with epic includes a playstation specific version of the unreal engine first made famous with gears of war. Further deals with NCsoft will up the MMORPG experience and although sluggish, ps3 exclusives are still impressive. look no further then killzone 2, the temp exclusive unreal tournament 3, warhawk, lair, heavenly sword and motorstorm.

 how are the sales? looking up, the 60gig "firesale" kept ps3 on the top of amazon for over a week, 60gig stocks are excepted to sell out before the year is out, getting an estimated 6 million units in home. further, the firesale may not even exist as sony has not truly committed itself to phasing the 60gig in favour of the 80gig, as they say the situation will be reassessed when stocks deplete. there are also rumblings that a 80gig price cut to match the 60gig's current price is in the works. it's believable when you realize that 80gig 2.5" HDD's are cheaper to produce since they are more standard, the lack of EE in favour of slightly more inefficient emulation and the inbox game.

 You may be thinking that 6 million users don't truly compare the the xbox's 11 million? well i have an interesting fact for you. the 360 has not sold 11million units, they have shipped 11 million units. currently the only shelf phantoms in the xbox camp is the elite, which is still low in numbers. my own personal estimate of in house 360s would be closer to 8 million, however you should note that this is not based on any reputable statistics or sources, it is my personal opinion and should not bias your decisions.

 You will note that i have conspisiously avoided mention of the wii. this was a conscious act as it is my opinion that the wii targets a seperate market, while the 360/ps3 both target the hd gaming market, the wii is more family/party friendly. 

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Posted by Jeff Lee Unregistered

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