Quote:
Originally Posted by 1stnewcar
And the 360 has a much better online system that is seamlessly integrated into the console - unlike the awful PS3 effort.
Wii - great for kids/parties
360 for online gaming
PS3 for Bluray / GT5 & any other games that are not on the 360.
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Let me apologize ahead of time for the lengthy response.
The PS3 at launch wasn't the best console out there, but now it easily surpasses the 360. Online still isn't where it needs to be, but I haven't had a problem at all finding people in the COD4, Warhawk, GT5, GTA4, or MGO servers. The setup of the GTA4 and COD4 online is exactly the same, so it's hard to argue that the online setup is better on the 360.
Perhaps you mean the 360's ingame access to the dashboard is better. You're right, but even that is changing. Just yesterday there was a post on the Playstation Blog stating in game Cross Media Bar access, instant messaging, mp3 access, and trophy system is coming out very soon. I would be surprised if it isn't out within a month's time. It was all supposed to come out in time for MGS4, but it needed further debugging. They also stated there are some online features coming out soon. I wouldn't be surprised if it was Sony's slated online movie and music service. XBL is $50 a year to play, PSN is free. Yes you can argue that XBL is better, but one can also argue that PSN is very quickly closing that gap.....and it's still free.
I'm surprised the RROD debate hasn't been brought up yet. Yes the 360 has better games currently, but what's the point if your console has been mailed in for repairs? Even if it's not, all my friends with the 360 have to pace themselves while they play so that the console doesn't overheat on them. On the PS3 last week I spent an 8hour marathon playing Metal Gear followed immediately with some BluRay play. The 360, despite Microsoft's $1.5billion recall program is still grossly unreliable. The problem was in design, not in construction. The GPU is located right below the DVD drive and it's hard for airflow to completely get rid of all the residual heat. This causes warping of the circuit board and solder to crack. Even then Microsoft has really dragged its heels in improving the design, and forced quality control upon the marketplace. In the 2.5 years the 360 has been on the marketplace, the chipset has only reduced in size once (90nm to 65nm). In the 1.5 years the PS3 has been on the market, it has reduced it's chipset twice (90nm to 65nm and now 45nm chipset in production) Smaller chipsets mean less energy is consumed, less heat is generated, and there is more breathing space to improve reliability.
Also, MS was so cheap in building the console they decided to remove rubber footings in the disc drive that cost mere pennies each. The end result? Don't even touch your console while a disc is in there or risk scratching the disc. MS is a great software company, but the hardware sucks. The 360 only highlights that fact. XBox 360 failure rates were well over 30 percent, new architectures have dropped it, but not to reasonable levels. PS3 failure rates are below 1%. With a life cycle of 5-7 years, (as opposed to the PS3's 10 year life cycle) the 360 is just about halfway through its lifespan in terms of 1st party and 3rd party support. Sony is a great hardware company but they're boneheaded about their intellectual properties. Just look at MiniDisc, SonicGate, and UMD. But when it came to spearheading DVD and BluRay they were bang-on the money. Even though VHS became the standard for home entertainment, in video production studios, the standard was BetaMax. It was after all the better technology.
Comparing GRiD to GT5 really is a pointless argument. If you've played both (GRiD and Prologue) you'd know. GT5 is a simulator, GRiD is a racer. If you look at the selection of cars and tracks in GRiD, you're pretty much getting ripped off. Yes GRiD has damage, but it's nowhere near the game GT5 will be in terms of depth and quality. Microsoft's response? Forza 3....400 cars, 100 tracks, but two DVDs. More and more games are coming out on the 360 on multiple discs. Even then, GT5 is rumored to have damge, and GTTV will mean having car-related tv shows streamed to the console through the game, including Top Gear.
As for EA sports games, yes EA completely dropped the ball on the PS3 version of Madden 08. 30 frames per second with that rate dropping quite freqently, as opposed to the 360's slick 60fps. EA promised that starting with FIFA08 every EA sports game for the PS3 would be running at 60fps, and so far they've been true to their word.
Comparing the consoles in November 2007, when the PS3 was launched, the 360 was the best console, after all it had a one year headstart on the competition to drum up third party support. The programming logic for the 360 is also the defacto standard, which makes it easier and cheaper to produce games for it. The only problem is that the major gains in that logic have already been used, what you see now with the 360 is as good as it's gonna get. Just look at Mass Effect....probably the best game on the 360. Great game, but everything had to be compressed to the nth degree to make it all fit on one 9gb disc. With the PS3, using parallel logic is a new way of thinking for game developers. Devs are still learning how to exploit the console, and there is still a lot of room for improvement. Yes the PS3 has a 256mb GPU as opposed to the 360's 512, but the 7 parallel Cells are there to offset that. If the Cells do all the heavy work, which is what devs are trying to learn, you don't need a big GPU. The problem with the PS3 at launch was that many developers were still comfortable with the programming logic for the 360, they developed games for the PS3 using only one or two of the 7 Cells along with the smaller GPU.
Now things have changed, Sony has been royally humbled in the past year but that also means they have changed their approach to developer support, sharing all of their know how with 3rd party devs to pave the way for better games on their console. And on top of it, you have the BluRay to boot. Yes it's another Sony proprietary format, but when Kojima figured the standard 25GB BluRay disc wasn't going to be enough, he opted for a 50GB dual layer. On top of that, IIRC Samsung has just released info that they've got 100GB and 200GB BluRay Discs working, and that the 100GB discs will work with any BluRay player currently on the market, including the PS3. The PS3 just has better hardware support. Sony just didn't box a console and ship it off. The constant firmware updates make sure it will stay relevant in the future. On launch, the PS3 couldn't support all the formats for uncompressed, lossless/HD audio. Now it can. The 360 can't. For home theatre junkies, this is big. DTS-HD Master and Dolby TrueHD are huge.
Then there's also the media server capabilities on top via DLNA. I can access all my videos, images, and MP3s off my PC via my PS3. All you have to do is set up a DLNA client on the PC which is built in Windows Media Player. For the 360? You have to have the Media Center edition of Windows. As for games, the 3rd party gap is just about closed. Look at first party development. Sony Computer Entertainment is the largest first party developer around.....it's bigger than that of Nintendo. It has a better range of exclusive titles than the 360.
I could go on, but I won't. I wasn't a Sony fanboy before.....when it comes to electronics I always look to the 3Ps first (Pioneer, Panasonic, and Philips) But when it came time to research my next gen console purchase I went in depth, got carried away, and surface on the other side with a PS3. Make that 4Ps.