Should I buy the PS3?

Question

I dont have the money for a PC upgrade and I dont want the Wii. Im deciding between the Xbox 360 and the PS3, but have lately been leaning towards the PS3. If i get the 360, then I would buy the HD DVD player which will add up to make the xbox more expensive than the PS3 which come with the Blue-ray player. Also, the PS3 is a much more powerful system hardware wise. The only thing that bother me about it is that there is not nearly as much content available for it as for the Xbox 360. Should I get it or reconsider the Xbox?

Answer 1

UPDATE: Please read below for a few corrections to Bull Goose Looney's marketing blurbs.

Regarding the power of the PS3, think again and read the article linked below.

The PS3 is *not* more powerful than the Xbox 360 (except for streaming floating point arithmetic, wich is seldom used in interactive games).

It's basically like this: in static applications like the folding at home client, the PS3 is more powerful than any device in that price range.

However, you want to play on that thing. And you don't want to do the same things over and over. So you move anywhere you want. And this will be done by the one and only general purpose CPU the PS3 has.

You see that for example in Madden 08. A game that is not very complex in regard to graphics. However simple the game is: The Xbox plays at full 60 frames per second, whereas the PS3 only plays with 30 frames per second (only half as fast as the Xbox 360).

So for games, there is no better alternative than the Xbox 360.

As for regarding High definition Movies, it's true, that the PS3 is currently the cheapest Blue Ray player.

However, HD-DVD has several features, that Blue Ray (and thus the PS3) doesn't have.
For example interactive features and Picture in Picture streams are currently only possible with a HD-DVD.
Or the HD DVD can go online and load additional content and on time information from the internet.

Although Sony is working on a new Version of its Blue Ray standard (then called BR 1.1), wich should also have the features of HD-DVD, it's not compatible with current Blue Ray players.

Regarding Bull Goose Looney's answer:
First of all: Not 30% of the Xbox's are failing. Microsoft set aside enough money to exchange one third of all consoles, just in case they should fail. Please present me a factual source that proves, that 30% of the Xbox are failing.

Then regarding the 8 "kernels" of the PS3. A Kernel is a software program that handles direct communication with hardware. What you mean are "cores".
While true, that the PS3 has 7 cells specialised for streaming and one general purpose CPU, only this one General purpose CPU is really useable in games (as stated above). Since the Xbox 360 has 3 general purpose CPU that can be used for everything. So basically, in games the Xbox is almost three times as powerful as the PS3.

And comparing the graphics chips is also not directly possible, as the nVidia chip in the PS3 is powerful without a doubt, Sony decided to castrate the power of the chip with a slow memory interface.
What good is a fast chip, if the processed data moves at a crawl?
The memory bandwith of the Xbox is at about 280 GB/second, while the bandwith of the PS3 is only 48 GB/second.
This is the equivalent of having a racing car stuck in the traffic on a country road. It *is* more powerful than the tractor next to it, but it's not moving any faster.

Regarding storage space.
Look at PC games. PC games have virtually no storage limit due to a big harddrive in any PC. Even bigger than any Blue Ray disc. Have you seen how large the games on the PC are? Still less than the 9 GB that fit on the Xbox's DVD.
It's because the content to make bigger games is not adding to the gaming experience and takes time, money and effort to create.

The large games on the PS3 are caused by multiple language audio tracks, and game data being several times copied on the disc because of the slow seeking times of the Blue Ray technology. This way the drive can read often used data from several places on the disc instead of having to jump to one area over and over again.

So please: inform yourself a bit more than just thumbing through the marketing material from Sony...

Answer 2

No. I have many game systems, but do not plan to buy the PS3 any time soon. I do, however, have the Wii and XBox 360. The PS3 at the moment doesn't offer anything beyond what these systems do as far as games go. The Wii is definitely the more fun of the two, though XBox 360 has better graphics. The PS3 *may* be worth it in the future, if new games come out that are optimized for the PS3. That is not guaranteed. Sony has bungled the launch and it is not clear when, if ever, PS3 will take off like the PS2 did. In this situation, developers will develop for other platforms - like XBox 360 - first, then port to the PS3. Thus, PS3 games will be non-exclusive, and will not look much better than on the XBox 360. The only reason to buy would be if you really want a blu-ray player. I say, wait and see how the PS3 works out, and hopefully there will be a price drop, before spending your money.

Answer 3

People complain about the price of the PS3, but if you actually look at the PS3 you'll see that it's actually cheaper than the Xbox 360. PS3 already has the Wifi network on it, you'd have to buy the external component for the 360 for like 150 bucks. And of course as you mentioned the HD Dvd player. Since the Xbox only uses DVD-9 discs for gaming, the max output is 720p and 1080i upscale. There are more games for the Xbox 360, because it's been on the market a year more than the PS3. Halo 3 is the only thing that Xbox has got going for them, PS3 is just as good or better than the Xbox. Plus the PS3 has Metal Gear Solid coming out. There has been many problems with the XBox, with overheating and game disc scratching. There has been a report that over 30% of Xbox sold are reported with problems from overheating to complete shut down. PS3 will be introducing a Linux Operating System, so you can eventualy use the PS3 as another computer. You can add many periperhals to the PS3, like printers and such, and accepts many different types of memory cards. If you need more memory, you can always swap out the factory one, or you can just buy an external drive that connects with USB. Performance wise, they are relatively similar. As of now, Xbox games only look better because it's easier for programmers to use that system. However, once game developers fully harness the octoprocessor, PS3 should blow away the competition. But if you still want to consider the Xbox, wait until they actually fix the hardware problems. All recent Xbox are all still problematic.

Answer 4

I have an xbox 360 and love it! The lineup of games are great. I like playing playstation games, but as far as I'm concerned...xbox has it all. The online experience is great, the interface before playing a game is easy to use, the xbox can be connected to your pc or zune wirelessly. And you can say this and that about the specs on each console, but you don't put in a game and stare at it...you play it! That's what it's all about is the gameplay and the looks come second. Yeah, you buy a system to have good graphics and I'm not disappointed with my 360 at all. I even have a 40" HDTV to play it on. And if you get the HD DVD player right now for the 360 you get like five free dvd's with it. Go to www.xbox.com and read up on that, I read that on there somewhere today. Hope any of this helps. Oh yeah, you can't get Halo for ps3 and GTA IV will be on both consoles. So either way you go...big name games are on Xbox too.

Answer 5

This week I was flicking through one of those rubbish free newspapers they've been jamming into my hands at the Tube station recently, and I came across a review of PlayStation 3. A review of a console. It advised me to wait until March and buy one, because the graphics look like real life and it's got a Blu-ray drive.

Comical, yes, but then what are the real arguments for buying one? There must be some. After all, people are complaining that there will only be 400,000 at the US launch and 80,000 in Japan - not that there's no point putting it on the market.

Well, first of all there's "faith". Yes - faith in Sony. Hard to imagine. But some people are just "Sony people". There was a chap in my house, earlier, fixing my boiler, who actually bowed down when he saw the PS3 debug perched on my desk. Yes I realise this is convenient, and I warned him he was making my editorial sound rubbish and unconvincing, but he was still amazed when I showed him Ridge Racer 7.

He didn't care about Xbox. There was a copy of Gears of War on my screen most of the time he was here and he didn't bat an eyelid. Absolute loony. And he didn't make a single comment about Cell, Blu-ray or price. As far as I could work out, he was more interested in an R-Type sequel that doesn't exist than Resistance: Fall of Man

Answer 6

i say get the xbox 360. the ps3 is way expensive and you can just use the extra money for games. Besides the xbox 360 will have a wider variety of games because the ps3 isnt as popular. Plus halo 3 is uber kickass and i think xbox live is one of the better online playing systems

Answer 7

nevermind the power, hidef, the disc capacities, processors and internet connectivity. the reason you want a console is to play games, and to play games until the skin on your thumbs bleed right? which might take more than 3 or 4 hours straight gaming. do you want your gaming experience to be overshadowed by fears of console malfunction? oh. how long have i played? uh oh i better stop playing. i don't want my console to burnout so i can send it back to the manufacturer wait 2-3 months, get the damned console back only to break it again in 3 days wait another 3 months get the console back and find out that the stupid thing has multiple scratch marks on it from lazy technicians. do you want that?

i'd get the ps3.

Answer 8

A-men to wertyu_2, I agree.
I have had my PS3 for about 3 months now and it has been great. The graphics are exellent, i have only used about a 1% of the memory with all of my music on it, my Blue ray discs have been played alot but don't have a single scratch or mark on them and I connected through the internet without having to buy a wifi thing (its inbuilt.)
Go for ps3

Answer 9

1st The PS# is true 1080 HD ths X-Box is NOT
2nd The Blu-Ray that is built into the PS3 is outselling in movie sales compared to HD more than 3 to 1.
3rd PS3 is starting to sell faster than the X-Box
4th Online Play is FREE
5th too many X-Box problems
6th read this to see the issues X-Box is having http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems

Answer 10

PS3 will win the console war, no doubt. Xbox 360 and Wii are so weak from technological point of view, that in couple of years they won't be capable of dealing with serious graphics. GTA IV, for instance, isn't even announced for Wii - this toy won't be able to cope with the game's requirements. Xbox 360 is getting GTA IV, however, the game is going to be released on several DVDs - Xbox 360 owners will have to interrupt gaming process and switch discs (Rockstar complained about this issue). Only PS3 will have it on single BD-DVD.

Let's compare PS3 and XBOX 360:

A third of XBOX 360 (33%) are malfunctioning right from the start. PS3 return rate is only around 0.2%.

PS3 has 8 (7+1) kernels in Cell processor, Xbox 360 -only 3.
PS3 uses advanced tech called Blu-Ray, one disc can store up to 54 gb (in the future - up to 200 gb), Xbox 360 - regular dual layer DVD-9 (8.5GB). It's possible to get HD-DVD (max. - 30GB) for 360, but it'll cost you around 180$, in this case Xbox is going to be MUCH more expensive, than PS3.
Calculations per sec - PS3 - 51-billion-dot-product-operati... per second
Xbox 360 - 33.6-billion-dot-product-opera... per second
PS3 has full media support - USBs, built-in 4 slots card reader (except 20GB and 40GB versions), ability to use printer and so on.
Xbox 360 has USBs and only 2 memory slots.
PS3 supports up to 7 Bluetooth Controllers
Xbox 360 - up to 4 Controllers
PS3 - wi-fi included (except 20 gb version)
Xbox 360 - wi-fi will cost you around 100 $

Graphics are stronger in PS3, due to RSX chip, that was developed by Nvidia exclusively for PS3. To estimate its power (roughly) - take 6800 Ultra nvidia graphics card, multiply it by 2 - get a result, still PS3 stronger, because 6800 Ultra runs on 400 Mhz and RSX runs on 550 Mhz.

PS3 uses technology from AGEIA company. It does to physics of the game same thing GPU (videocard processor) does to graphics. This thing is on sale for PC(special card). The price is around 350$. There is no such thing in 360.

Xbox 360 is widely known for so-called "red ring of death" problem - it gets overheated easily. My PS3 was running for more than 8 hours non-stop with no problems. Sometimes Xbox 360 becomes so overheated, that thermopaste on CPU melts, drips on motherboard and successfully shortcircuits it. That's why in some countries people call Xbox 360 "Coffin 360".

Besides all of this, I've seen disassembled Xbox 360 - regular PC architecture - Billy Gates is an uninventive nerd (as usual).
When I saw disassembled PS3 - it was a surprise - smart architecture, good cooling (don't buy external PS3 coolers - they make everything worse - original system is good), etc.

In 2008 PS3 will get more than 300 games, including Metal Gear Solid 4, The Agent and other great exclusives. Here is the good link to the future PS3 releases. http://ps3.ign.com/index/release.html......

PS3 online is free, Xbox 360 - you have to pay.

There were reports, that 360 scratches discs. No reports on that in PS3.

The funniest thing, that right now there are no games for PS3, that show full potential of the console. Biggest games weigh only 25 GB (Xbox 360 will need more than 3 discs even for those).

On PS3 you can install other OS, such as Linux Yellow Dog, Ubuntu and others. Sony officially lets you do it. There is no such thing in 360.

PS3 HDD can be replaced easily with any 2.5" SATA 5400 RPM HDD (used in laptops). 250 GB will cost you around 170$. In 360 you have to buy exclusive HDD, where 20GB will cost you 100$.

Sony expects PS3 to stay on the market for, at least, 7-10 years. Also Sony reduces price now. Soon there is going to be cheaper 40GB version of PS3.

Sony constantly upgrades PS3 software (free updates for OS) - you get new functions and improvements.

PS3 controller (sixaxis) has a motion control - you move controller - game responds. Wii has it, Xbox 360 - doesn't. PS3 controller is getting vibrocontroller soon (Dualshock 3).

On PS3 you can help sick people by running Folding Home project. Wii and Xbox 360 didn't even think about it.

New 40GB is coming with a lower prive between around 400$ and 400 euros (depends on the region).

I didn't mention Wii, because it's so weak, no point to talk about it. Leave it for kindergarten and casual games.