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I finally got around to having a go on a PS3 this last weekend. Seems to me that reports of its demise may be somewhat premature.
Having said that, it looks like Nintendo is winning hands down if you consider the competition to be between the Wii, the 360 and the PS3. However, I don't think it's exactly the same market, even though there is considerable overlap. Even given that fact, Nintendo has played it smart and has a real winner on their hands. Having said that, it's not for me as I just don't like those sort of games. More power to the Nintendo fanboys though, as it is a great product.
The 360 and the PS3 are, however, in direct competition. Some folks have made a big deal of how far the PS3 is behind. Well, it is in the US, but not in Japan, and it isn't that far behind when you compare sales from launch date, as this ars technica article does.
All things considered, it bodes quite well for Sony. Sure, the PS3 is expensive, but that is mainly due to it having the blu ray drive, and that, I think is its greatest strength. The add ons to the 360 are not cheap, and so the price differential is not that great, but people have said that before and there is no point going over old ground.
The other factor is available games. There aren't that many PS3 games out there. Then again, this was true of the 360 when I bought mine last year, and there still aren't that many good games out for it (I have about 20).
There are minor differences between the consoles. For example, the PS3 cross media bar is a far better and cooler looking interface than the 360's blade UI. I liked the XMB on the PSP (which I own), but it is even better on the PS3. It's right up there with some of Apple's better UIs. Another minor difference is that the 360 in current versions is a technical disaster. I think it was Verto told me that his suffered the red ring of death. Mine hasn't, but I don't use it that much. This only counts as a minor disaster, since it seems pretty likely that the next 360 model will fix this problem, and MS is standing behind the ones they have already sold. One or the other may have better graphics and sound, depending on who you believe, but so far there is no clear advantage.
But the PS3 has two really big advantages, and the longer it can keep pace with the 360 worldwide, the more likely it will eventually overtake it and restore Sony's dominance.
The first is that the 360 really sucks balls as a media centre. Sure, the software works fine, and I can even stream stuff from my Mac with a cheap shareware app, and I can plug my iPod into it if I want to and have access to all its playlists. That's good, but the problem is that the 360 sounds like a jet engine when you do anything other than play a disc in it (a DVD or CD). This is unacceptable if you want to play anything other than death metal from the hard drive (and the UI for playlists sucks as well). It doesn't matter so much when you are playing games, but it sucks for everything else. I'd hoped to use mine for this, but it just doesn't work very well due to the noise. The PS3 is much quieter.
But the real difference is the optical drive. The one beef I have with a lot of 360 games is that they are simply too short. Gears of War is a fantastic game, but the solo campaigns are too short. Ghost Recon 2 is even better than GOW in my opinion, but again suffers from a short campaign (in other news GOW is coming to the Macintosh for some unknown reason!). There you have two great games that are hobbled by a lack of content.
That's all fine and dandy, but it is solely due to the DVD drive in the 360. There just isn't enough room on an ordinary DVD to allow a game with the graphics of GOW and a heap of content. I guess you could buy the add on HD DVD drive, but it still isn't as good as Blu ray because Blu Ray has a higher capacity (just under twice what HD DVD has).
Moreover, how many people are going to actually buy the HD DVD drive? Developers are going to face a tough choice between releasing 360 games on DVD (with a potential customer base of all users) and much better games on HD DVD (with a fraction of the user base as potential customers). If you are developing for the PS3, you know that everyone is going to have the big capacity drive, so that is not a problem.
I guess it isn't much of a difference now, since most games will be released for both platforms. But what about 3 years down the road, when games will take up more disk space than they do now? Unless Microsoft releases a Blu Ray drive for the 360, they will still be stuck with a lower capacity format. I know that a lot of people love console roleplaying games. Wouldn't you rather have a game with twice as much content?
I'm seriously thinking of picking up a PS3 in a few months time. It depends on how good Halo 3 is, and how much larger the PS3 game library is by the end of the year.
Having said that, it looks like Nintendo is winning hands down if you consider the competition to be between the Wii, the 360 and the PS3. However, I don't think it's exactly the same market, even though there is considerable overlap. Even given that fact, Nintendo has played it smart and has a real winner on their hands. Having said that, it's not for me as I just don't like those sort of games. More power to the Nintendo fanboys though, as it is a great product.
The 360 and the PS3 are, however, in direct competition. Some folks have made a big deal of how far the PS3 is behind. Well, it is in the US, but not in Japan, and it isn't that far behind when you compare sales from launch date, as this ars technica article does.
All things considered, it bodes quite well for Sony. Sure, the PS3 is expensive, but that is mainly due to it having the blu ray drive, and that, I think is its greatest strength. The add ons to the 360 are not cheap, and so the price differential is not that great, but people have said that before and there is no point going over old ground.
The other factor is available games. There aren't that many PS3 games out there. Then again, this was true of the 360 when I bought mine last year, and there still aren't that many good games out for it (I have about 20).
There are minor differences between the consoles. For example, the PS3 cross media bar is a far better and cooler looking interface than the 360's blade UI. I liked the XMB on the PSP (which I own), but it is even better on the PS3. It's right up there with some of Apple's better UIs. Another minor difference is that the 360 in current versions is a technical disaster. I think it was Verto told me that his suffered the red ring of death. Mine hasn't, but I don't use it that much. This only counts as a minor disaster, since it seems pretty likely that the next 360 model will fix this problem, and MS is standing behind the ones they have already sold. One or the other may have better graphics and sound, depending on who you believe, but so far there is no clear advantage.
But the PS3 has two really big advantages, and the longer it can keep pace with the 360 worldwide, the more likely it will eventually overtake it and restore Sony's dominance.
The first is that the 360 really sucks balls as a media centre. Sure, the software works fine, and I can even stream stuff from my Mac with a cheap shareware app, and I can plug my iPod into it if I want to and have access to all its playlists. That's good, but the problem is that the 360 sounds like a jet engine when you do anything other than play a disc in it (a DVD or CD). This is unacceptable if you want to play anything other than death metal from the hard drive (and the UI for playlists sucks as well). It doesn't matter so much when you are playing games, but it sucks for everything else. I'd hoped to use mine for this, but it just doesn't work very well due to the noise. The PS3 is much quieter.
But the real difference is the optical drive. The one beef I have with a lot of 360 games is that they are simply too short. Gears of War is a fantastic game, but the solo campaigns are too short. Ghost Recon 2 is even better than GOW in my opinion, but again suffers from a short campaign (in other news GOW is coming to the Macintosh for some unknown reason!). There you have two great games that are hobbled by a lack of content.
That's all fine and dandy, but it is solely due to the DVD drive in the 360. There just isn't enough room on an ordinary DVD to allow a game with the graphics of GOW and a heap of content. I guess you could buy the add on HD DVD drive, but it still isn't as good as Blu ray because Blu Ray has a higher capacity (just under twice what HD DVD has).
Moreover, how many people are going to actually buy the HD DVD drive? Developers are going to face a tough choice between releasing 360 games on DVD (with a potential customer base of all users) and much better games on HD DVD (with a fraction of the user base as potential customers). If you are developing for the PS3, you know that everyone is going to have the big capacity drive, so that is not a problem.
I guess it isn't much of a difference now, since most games will be released for both platforms. But what about 3 years down the road, when games will take up more disk space than they do now? Unless Microsoft releases a Blu Ray drive for the 360, they will still be stuck with a lower capacity format. I know that a lot of people love console roleplaying games. Wouldn't you rather have a game with twice as much content?
I'm seriously thinking of picking up a PS3 in a few months time. It depends on how good Halo 3 is, and how much larger the PS3 game library is by the end of the year.
The Squeezebox is the small device on the top. There's no hard drive and no fan, so its whisper quiet. It streams the music directly from your PC (your music collection or Internet Radio). There's a digital out, so you can use it as a transport only and hook it up to a fancy external DAC. 
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