regua
03-24-2008, 02:24 PM
by regua (http://sarcasticgamer.com/forums/../wp/index.php/author/regua/)
http://sarcasticgamer.com/forums/../wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/sg-consoles.png
*Regua is a forum moderator and contributor to Sarcasticgamer.com. He is the author of Sarcastic Gamer’s Wikipedia page that can be found right here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcastic_Gamer).
Choosing a next generation video gaming console system is one of the most difficult choices a gamer has to make. Most of us has already chosen one of the three - some may already regret their decision, others have turned into uber fanboys. If you’re still not sure, get comfy, because I’m going to take you on a little journey into console land. I’m going to attempt to thoroughly describe and compare Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and the Wii in an unbiased way. Not intentionally biased, at least.
Before getting into the technical details, you have to ask yourself: what do you exactly want from a gaming console?
Suiting your preferences
Wii, despite selling better than its rivals, is more of a toy than a gaming console. Although many people call it the “real next-gen” and say that “this is what real gaming should look like,” the only people whom Wii may attract are:
children
the ’social gamers’ (”why don’t you come round tonight, we’ll play some Wii”)
the first-time gamers
the Nintendo fans
the ElderlyXbox 360 and PlayStation 3, on the other hand, may appeal both to the hardcore gamers as well as the casual ones. Both the 360 and PS3 have many things to offer to the “Casual Gamer,” including many casual gamer-friendly retail games and a vast collection of mini-games to download via Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network.
If you’re a long-time gamer, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are the most powerful systems with many interesting games to buy.
Other things you have to consider are the games that are available for each platform. The Wii mostly offers you different games with the same main characters by Nintendo, with no more than a few games developed by third-party producers. The 360 and PS3 have a huge amount of games, suiting the preferences of both the “how do you hold this controller thingy?” gamers and the “I’ll pwn u in 3 secs” players.
Also, the versatility of PlayStation 3 is a great advantage of the system. Not only is it a great gaming platform, but it’ll allow you to watch high definition Blu-ray movies, wirelessly connect to the Internet and use their web browser, exchange hard drives with any standard 2.5? SATA hard drive from your PC, plug in your keyboard and use it, basically making it more of a Blu-ray playing PC, than a gaming console. Both PS3 and 360 can be used to watch movies, play music, browse photos, etc., although PlayStation will do a much better job considering the number of media-related features it offers.
http://sarcasticgamer.com/forums/../wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/sg-consoles-2.png
Performance
Comparing the consoles’ hardware is a really tough job. PlayStation 3’s Cell processor is said to be outperforming 360’s Xenon right now, although some specialists tend to have completely different opinions. They are both clocked at 3.2 GHz, but PS3 has 7 single-threaded cores, and the Xbox’s processor is equipped with 3 dual-threaded cores. The CPUs, unfortunately, aren’t directly comparable, so the time when we’ll know the real power of both consoles will come no sooner than in three, maybe four years.
Wii, on the other hand, has a 729 MHz CPU… honestly, my cell phone’s not much worse than this.
The amount of RAM available for the consoles is also similar; Xbox 360 has 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM (at 700 MHz), although it’s shared between the CPU and GPU. PlayStation 3’s system RAM has 256 megabytes (XDR, at 3.2 GHz) to take advantage of and 256 MB GDDR3 (clocked at 700 MHz) of GPU RAM. Wii’s memory of 64 MB GDDR3 for the CPU and 24 MB GDDR3 for the graphics processor once again leaves the console behind its two rivals.
Okay, let’s now leave the stuff nobody would understand anyway. Comparing the elements that would be really important to a typical gamer is both easier for me and more interesting to you.
The thing you’ll need the most is the hard drive. The tons of games, trailers, DLC available for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as well as the movies downloadable from the Xbox Live Video Marketplace consume a lot of hard drive space, and it - unfortunately - is limited.
PlayStation 3 is available in three SKUs - with 40, 60 (discontinued) or 80-gigabyte drive. This is more than enough for everyday use, but - as I’ve mentioned before - if you suddenly run out of spare bytes to save games on, you can always get a 500 GB 2.5? HDD and use it.
Xbox 360’s drive capacity depends on the model you choose. The “Premium” (recently referred to as just “Xbox 360?) features a 20-gigabyte HDD, the Elite SKU offers a 120 GB drive, and the Arcade model has no hard drive at all (it uses memory cards to save the most important data on).
Wii, however, beats both of the consoles with its outrageously spacious 512 MB flash memory! Yeah, that’s right - it’s five hundred and twelve megabytes.
http://sarcasticgamer.com/forums/../wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/sg-consoles-3.png
Xbox 360 features a 12x DVD drive, PlayStation 3 has a 2x Blu-ray drive, and Wii supports only the Nintendo’s DVD-like format, that doesn’t even allow you to watch your standard DVD’s on it. PlayStation may load the games for a little bit longer than Xbox 360 because of the slow-speed optical drive, but it compensates for this with the 50-gigabyte capacity of Blu-ray discs.
Connecting your console to the Internet is probably the first thing you’ll do after buying it, so let’s talk about what the consoles have to offer. PlayStation 3 and Wii both have a built-in WiFi adapter, whereas you’d have to spend $100 to get one for the 360. Ethernet port built in every console would seem to be pretty obvious, but strangely Wii… doesn’t have one. Again, you’ll have to pay to allow your Wii to connect to the Internet in the good ol’ wired way.
As you can see, the consoles have a lot of power. What would they use it for, though? That brings us to the next section…
Entertainment
Nowadays, a “gaming console” isn’t just a device you play your games on; most people use it as media players as well, and in this section I’ll cover what the current generation of consoles has to offer you in this matter.
First of all, let’s make it clear: if you want to use your gaming console as a movie/music player and an entertainment system (perhaps integrated with your PC), you do NOT want a Wii. It’s designed only to play games.
PlayStation 3 will do a better job working as a part of your home cinema system. By supporting the Blu-ray format, not only did Sony make it easier for it to win the format war, but also it made Playstation the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market appealing to the people who don’t even use their PS3’s for gaming. It supports more audio/video formats than 360, adopts the industry standards and even allows you to install Linux on it. Another advantage on the PS3’s side is the DVD upscaling - if you have a gargantuan HDTV, PlayStation will scale your films’ resolution to match the TV’s. Nice, eh?
Xbox 360, on the other hand, has the Xbox Live Marketplace. Provided that you live in North America, you can access a giant collection of movies to rent as well as trailers and demos to download. If you, however, live in Europe, the only films downloadable from the XBLM are the ones you’ve seen a billion times on the TV. (wanna watch The Fugitive again?) Some changes in the European Marketplace have been promised, but thus far I don’t see anything being altered.
Once again, there is no clear winner here. The XBLM is quite enjoyable, although it can only be an addition to another movie player, whereas PlayStation 3 can work as a full-time player, and what’s more - it can do it amazingly well.
http://sarcasticgamer.com/forums/../wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/sg-consoles-4.png
Connecting to the world
Playing online has become a vital part in a gamer’s life. All three next-gen consoles offer the ability to play online; each one of them does it differently, but is it possible to say which one does the best out of the three?
Xbox Live, often considered as the best online gaming platform, is unfortunately a paid service. You’ll have to spend fifty bucks a year to be able to play with other people using XBL (note: the messaging functions of XBL are available even if you don’t buy the subscription, although you wouldn’t be able to play games online and the access to XBLM would be limited), but you surely won’t regret the money you’d spend. Although Live has had some issues recently, and has it’s share trash talking fools, one of the greatest online communities, many (and by “many” I mean “really many”) game demos and Arcade games available, an easy and accessible messaging and find a friend system, fine matchmaking capabilities (which some games seem not to take advantage of, strangely) and - probably the most unique thing making XBL distinguish from other online networks - Gamerscore and achievements.
If you haven’t heard about the Gamerscore system yet, basically it’s the points you get for unlocking in-game achievements, which then (along with your Gamerscore) you can show off on your Gamercard. And despite the disadvantages the achievement system brings, it’s one of the things that made Xbox Live so popular.
The Wii online service (going by the great name of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection) features the notable Virtual Console, allowing you to buy games from NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Sega Mega Drive and Neo Geo among other old gaming consoles. Other than that, NWC is nothing special, except for… the friend codes. Yes, “codes” meaning “long strings of digits.” In order to add someone to your friend list, you have to know their 12-digit friend code. If you ever happen to come across any idea that’s more stupid than this, please let me know.
PlayStation Network is completely free; except for a few cases where you’ll have to pay to be able to play (e.g. in massively multiplayer online games), and of course the shopping in PlayStation Store, otherwise everything is free. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. The PSN’s features are similar to Xbox Live’s, although they’re mostly inferior to them - for instance, the lack of in-game messaging is considered as one of the PSN’s biggest faults. There is promise for the future of the platform: PlayStation Home. The service will allow you to create an avatar character and communicate with other PSN users in a The Sims-like environment and unlock so-called “accomplishments.” Unless Sony breaks their word and PS Home turns out to be an amateur combination of Xbox Live’s achievements and Second Life, PlayStation Network may finally become a notable online gaming service.
Depleting your budget
Console prices can be a major factor influencing your choice, but don’t rely entirely on the amount of money you’d have to spend on each of the systems – sometimes it’s better to save a little bit more, and buy a reliable and efficientt gaming console.
PlayStation 3 comes in three different retail units, although one of them has been discontinued, so I’ll focus on the other two. You can choose between a 40 GB and 80 GB model priced at, respectively, $399 and $499. The 40-gigabyte model isn’t equipped with a memory card reader, backward compatibility hardware, and 2 additional USB ports the 80 GB model has. In Europe, the 80 GB model isn’t available yet, but you can get the 40-gigabyte one for £300.
Xbox 360 is available in three SKUs – Premium (commonly referred to as just “Xbox 360″), at $350 (£200), with a 20 GB hard drive, Elite, a 120-gigabyte monster priced at $450 (£260), and Arcade ($280, or £160), which comes with no hard disk but a 256 MB memory card and five Xbox Live Arcade games instead. The only notable difference between the systems, except the hard drives, is that the Elite model is black, whereas the other ones have a “matte white” colour.
The only available model of Wii will cost you $250 (£180), and it comes with Wii Sports or some other Nintendo game included, depending on the store.
Choosing the system
If you’re still reading this, here’s the part where I get down to brass tacks. I’ve personally chosen Xbox 360, but that in no way means that you should do the same; the decision mostly depends on your personal preferences and the way you’ll like to use your console.
http://sarcasticgamer.com/forums/../wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/sg-consoles.png
*Regua is a forum moderator and contributor to Sarcasticgamer.com. He is the author of Sarcastic Gamer’s Wikipedia page that can be found right here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcastic_Gamer).
Choosing a next generation video gaming console system is one of the most difficult choices a gamer has to make. Most of us has already chosen one of the three - some may already regret their decision, others have turned into uber fanboys. If you’re still not sure, get comfy, because I’m going to take you on a little journey into console land. I’m going to attempt to thoroughly describe and compare Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and the Wii in an unbiased way. Not intentionally biased, at least.
Before getting into the technical details, you have to ask yourself: what do you exactly want from a gaming console?
Suiting your preferences
Wii, despite selling better than its rivals, is more of a toy than a gaming console. Although many people call it the “real next-gen” and say that “this is what real gaming should look like,” the only people whom Wii may attract are:
children
the ’social gamers’ (”why don’t you come round tonight, we’ll play some Wii”)
the first-time gamers
the Nintendo fans
the ElderlyXbox 360 and PlayStation 3, on the other hand, may appeal both to the hardcore gamers as well as the casual ones. Both the 360 and PS3 have many things to offer to the “Casual Gamer,” including many casual gamer-friendly retail games and a vast collection of mini-games to download via Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network.
If you’re a long-time gamer, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are the most powerful systems with many interesting games to buy.
Other things you have to consider are the games that are available for each platform. The Wii mostly offers you different games with the same main characters by Nintendo, with no more than a few games developed by third-party producers. The 360 and PS3 have a huge amount of games, suiting the preferences of both the “how do you hold this controller thingy?” gamers and the “I’ll pwn u in 3 secs” players.
Also, the versatility of PlayStation 3 is a great advantage of the system. Not only is it a great gaming platform, but it’ll allow you to watch high definition Blu-ray movies, wirelessly connect to the Internet and use their web browser, exchange hard drives with any standard 2.5? SATA hard drive from your PC, plug in your keyboard and use it, basically making it more of a Blu-ray playing PC, than a gaming console. Both PS3 and 360 can be used to watch movies, play music, browse photos, etc., although PlayStation will do a much better job considering the number of media-related features it offers.
http://sarcasticgamer.com/forums/../wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/sg-consoles-2.png
Performance
Comparing the consoles’ hardware is a really tough job. PlayStation 3’s Cell processor is said to be outperforming 360’s Xenon right now, although some specialists tend to have completely different opinions. They are both clocked at 3.2 GHz, but PS3 has 7 single-threaded cores, and the Xbox’s processor is equipped with 3 dual-threaded cores. The CPUs, unfortunately, aren’t directly comparable, so the time when we’ll know the real power of both consoles will come no sooner than in three, maybe four years.
Wii, on the other hand, has a 729 MHz CPU… honestly, my cell phone’s not much worse than this.
The amount of RAM available for the consoles is also similar; Xbox 360 has 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM (at 700 MHz), although it’s shared between the CPU and GPU. PlayStation 3’s system RAM has 256 megabytes (XDR, at 3.2 GHz) to take advantage of and 256 MB GDDR3 (clocked at 700 MHz) of GPU RAM. Wii’s memory of 64 MB GDDR3 for the CPU and 24 MB GDDR3 for the graphics processor once again leaves the console behind its two rivals.
Okay, let’s now leave the stuff nobody would understand anyway. Comparing the elements that would be really important to a typical gamer is both easier for me and more interesting to you.
The thing you’ll need the most is the hard drive. The tons of games, trailers, DLC available for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as well as the movies downloadable from the Xbox Live Video Marketplace consume a lot of hard drive space, and it - unfortunately - is limited.
PlayStation 3 is available in three SKUs - with 40, 60 (discontinued) or 80-gigabyte drive. This is more than enough for everyday use, but - as I’ve mentioned before - if you suddenly run out of spare bytes to save games on, you can always get a 500 GB 2.5? HDD and use it.
Xbox 360’s drive capacity depends on the model you choose. The “Premium” (recently referred to as just “Xbox 360?) features a 20-gigabyte HDD, the Elite SKU offers a 120 GB drive, and the Arcade model has no hard drive at all (it uses memory cards to save the most important data on).
Wii, however, beats both of the consoles with its outrageously spacious 512 MB flash memory! Yeah, that’s right - it’s five hundred and twelve megabytes.
http://sarcasticgamer.com/forums/../wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/sg-consoles-3.png
Xbox 360 features a 12x DVD drive, PlayStation 3 has a 2x Blu-ray drive, and Wii supports only the Nintendo’s DVD-like format, that doesn’t even allow you to watch your standard DVD’s on it. PlayStation may load the games for a little bit longer than Xbox 360 because of the slow-speed optical drive, but it compensates for this with the 50-gigabyte capacity of Blu-ray discs.
Connecting your console to the Internet is probably the first thing you’ll do after buying it, so let’s talk about what the consoles have to offer. PlayStation 3 and Wii both have a built-in WiFi adapter, whereas you’d have to spend $100 to get one for the 360. Ethernet port built in every console would seem to be pretty obvious, but strangely Wii… doesn’t have one. Again, you’ll have to pay to allow your Wii to connect to the Internet in the good ol’ wired way.
As you can see, the consoles have a lot of power. What would they use it for, though? That brings us to the next section…
Entertainment
Nowadays, a “gaming console” isn’t just a device you play your games on; most people use it as media players as well, and in this section I’ll cover what the current generation of consoles has to offer you in this matter.
First of all, let’s make it clear: if you want to use your gaming console as a movie/music player and an entertainment system (perhaps integrated with your PC), you do NOT want a Wii. It’s designed only to play games.
PlayStation 3 will do a better job working as a part of your home cinema system. By supporting the Blu-ray format, not only did Sony make it easier for it to win the format war, but also it made Playstation the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market appealing to the people who don’t even use their PS3’s for gaming. It supports more audio/video formats than 360, adopts the industry standards and even allows you to install Linux on it. Another advantage on the PS3’s side is the DVD upscaling - if you have a gargantuan HDTV, PlayStation will scale your films’ resolution to match the TV’s. Nice, eh?
Xbox 360, on the other hand, has the Xbox Live Marketplace. Provided that you live in North America, you can access a giant collection of movies to rent as well as trailers and demos to download. If you, however, live in Europe, the only films downloadable from the XBLM are the ones you’ve seen a billion times on the TV. (wanna watch The Fugitive again?) Some changes in the European Marketplace have been promised, but thus far I don’t see anything being altered.
Once again, there is no clear winner here. The XBLM is quite enjoyable, although it can only be an addition to another movie player, whereas PlayStation 3 can work as a full-time player, and what’s more - it can do it amazingly well.
http://sarcasticgamer.com/forums/../wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/sg-consoles-4.png
Connecting to the world
Playing online has become a vital part in a gamer’s life. All three next-gen consoles offer the ability to play online; each one of them does it differently, but is it possible to say which one does the best out of the three?
Xbox Live, often considered as the best online gaming platform, is unfortunately a paid service. You’ll have to spend fifty bucks a year to be able to play with other people using XBL (note: the messaging functions of XBL are available even if you don’t buy the subscription, although you wouldn’t be able to play games online and the access to XBLM would be limited), but you surely won’t regret the money you’d spend. Although Live has had some issues recently, and has it’s share trash talking fools, one of the greatest online communities, many (and by “many” I mean “really many”) game demos and Arcade games available, an easy and accessible messaging and find a friend system, fine matchmaking capabilities (which some games seem not to take advantage of, strangely) and - probably the most unique thing making XBL distinguish from other online networks - Gamerscore and achievements.
If you haven’t heard about the Gamerscore system yet, basically it’s the points you get for unlocking in-game achievements, which then (along with your Gamerscore) you can show off on your Gamercard. And despite the disadvantages the achievement system brings, it’s one of the things that made Xbox Live so popular.
The Wii online service (going by the great name of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection) features the notable Virtual Console, allowing you to buy games from NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Sega Mega Drive and Neo Geo among other old gaming consoles. Other than that, NWC is nothing special, except for… the friend codes. Yes, “codes” meaning “long strings of digits.” In order to add someone to your friend list, you have to know their 12-digit friend code. If you ever happen to come across any idea that’s more stupid than this, please let me know.
PlayStation Network is completely free; except for a few cases where you’ll have to pay to be able to play (e.g. in massively multiplayer online games), and of course the shopping in PlayStation Store, otherwise everything is free. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. The PSN’s features are similar to Xbox Live’s, although they’re mostly inferior to them - for instance, the lack of in-game messaging is considered as one of the PSN’s biggest faults. There is promise for the future of the platform: PlayStation Home. The service will allow you to create an avatar character and communicate with other PSN users in a The Sims-like environment and unlock so-called “accomplishments.” Unless Sony breaks their word and PS Home turns out to be an amateur combination of Xbox Live’s achievements and Second Life, PlayStation Network may finally become a notable online gaming service.
Depleting your budget
Console prices can be a major factor influencing your choice, but don’t rely entirely on the amount of money you’d have to spend on each of the systems – sometimes it’s better to save a little bit more, and buy a reliable and efficientt gaming console.
PlayStation 3 comes in three different retail units, although one of them has been discontinued, so I’ll focus on the other two. You can choose between a 40 GB and 80 GB model priced at, respectively, $399 and $499. The 40-gigabyte model isn’t equipped with a memory card reader, backward compatibility hardware, and 2 additional USB ports the 80 GB model has. In Europe, the 80 GB model isn’t available yet, but you can get the 40-gigabyte one for £300.
Xbox 360 is available in three SKUs – Premium (commonly referred to as just “Xbox 360″), at $350 (£200), with a 20 GB hard drive, Elite, a 120-gigabyte monster priced at $450 (£260), and Arcade ($280, or £160), which comes with no hard disk but a 256 MB memory card and five Xbox Live Arcade games instead. The only notable difference between the systems, except the hard drives, is that the Elite model is black, whereas the other ones have a “matte white” colour.
The only available model of Wii will cost you $250 (£180), and it comes with Wii Sports or some other Nintendo game included, depending on the store.
Choosing the system
If you’re still reading this, here’s the part where I get down to brass tacks. I’ve personally chosen Xbox 360, but that in no way means that you should do the same; the decision mostly depends on your personal preferences and the way you’ll like to use your console.