Unbelievable, I actually did it and bought the Playstation 3 on launch day. Like a 17-year old :-). There were plenty of them available at 5 pm, so the high price tag (600 Euros, that's about 750 US Dollar) really causes a lot of reluctance. With the PS3 I got me Motorstorm (which is supposed to be great), Resistance: Fall of Man (supposedly the best launch title) and, of course, Ridge Racer 7 (I don't know... I have bought every Ridge Racer, I simply like the mindless drifting and the cheap japanese pop music). In addition to that I needed a component video cable to connect the PS3 to my LCD tv. Then I was ready to go...
Or rather: ready to wait... Game consoles are not what they used to be. After I had configured the PS3 to connect to my WLAN, it told me that there is an OS update. Happily, I clicked "download". About an hour later my lowly 500 kBit/s Internet connection had transferred all the data, and some more minutes later I actually could play my first game. The rest (Dolby Digital, HD TV mode selection) works very straightforward and easily.
So how does the PS3 compare to other systems I own (i.e. the PS2, the XBOX, the XBOX 360)?
A) The PS3 vs. PS2 / XBOX
Yes, there is a point in comparing these systems :-). The whole point of the PS3 is delivering huge graphics power on a HD TV. On a normal TV, I couldn't see major differences of graphical beauty between the PS3 and particularly the XBOX. Titles like Burnout 3 on the XBOX or God of War for the PS2 look as good, if not better than Ridge Racer 7 or Motorstorm on the PS3. Sure, the polygon count is lower, but PS2 and XBOX games have been optimized for the normal TV screen while the PS3 images are scaled down. So if you do not own a Plasma/LCD TV, my suggestion would be to skip the PS3 (or the XBOX 360) and go for the much cheaper XBOX or PS2 with their huge library of also typically much cheaper games.
B) The PS3 vs. the XBOX 360
If you do own a HD TV, though, the level of detail, the richness of what you see, the precise lines, ... that the PS3 and the X360 offer, is worth the investment of a next gen console.
But which of the two is better?
To some extent it boils down to what you want. If you need WLAN (as I do) and want to watch HD DVDs, you get either a PS3 or an X360 with some add-ons for roughly the same price. If you just want a good gaming experience, the X360 is cheaper. If you want online competition, the free service of the PS3 will in the long run make it cheaper than the costly XBOX live service.
The capabilities of both consoles are, as of today, equal. Both deliver really stunning HD graphics, both deliver Dolby Digital sound, both can pull of the best gaming experience that you can think of. This is a bit like the competition of a Ferrari and a Porsche - it's far less the car that makes the difference than it is the driver. So, programmed properly, both consoles can give you incredible games. The difference here is not technical capabilities but support for developers (the Sega Saturn had 2 independent CPUs which - according to developer interviews - made it more difficult to program it. The PS3 has seven), company politics, and so on.
To me, the key difference is a very different one. The XBOX 360 makes a hell of a noise, the PS3 doesn't. Here's my personal experience:
- XBOX 360:
- there's a constant, loud hum, which also irritatingly varies in frequency (like going aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaoooaoooaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)
- there's also a high whirring noise, higher than 10 kHz
- and there's a low-frequency scraping noise from the disk drive (or HD?)
- PS3:
- there's a constant, low level noise of the fan.
- nothing else.
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