PS3 or XBOX 360?

Question

Durability, graphics, and game availability

Answer 1

Much has been said on the difference between the two machines' noggins, some biased towards the Microsoft and others towards Sony. The CPU in the latter has more going for it in terms of "core" hardware but the former's cores - while fewer - are more powerful. According to game designer Nick Harper,

The cores really place the power in the hands of developers. The Xbox 360 has 3 running at 3.2GHz each, the PS3 has seven apparently. So theoretically the PS3 is faster, much faster, which means it can do a lot more complex things. These days complex things refer to physics calculations and graphics operations. But it's all about how to use them as the power can only be exploited by using the cores together. It's a bit like having several complex puzzles to solve with several clever people available. If you give each person one puzzle will they solve it quicker than if you give all the people one puzzle at a time? The better developers will make their code efficient, meaning theoretically better games.

The PS3 will be more complex to develop for, which might mean that the first wave of games will be better on the 360. Having said that, the PS3 line up looks a lot more impressive right now. We'll have to wait and see what Greg plays with on the floor at E3.

In terms of the active memory on access, the PS3 is two times as powerful as the PS2 and the Xbox 360 is twice that.
Nick says,

The reason memory speed is an issue is purely for framerate. If you have a massive polygonal monster (err literally) to display that's a lot of vertices to process, on top of texture mapping, normal mapping, light mapping, per pixel shading etc etc yawn. And you're trying to squeeze all that data down a pipe to be processed and spat out at the other end. The faster your memory the more you can squeeze down the pipe at once, meaning the more data you can process. So memory and processor speed are very connected.

Now for those teraflops. The more there are, the faster the machine can do sums. In more high-tech speak, gamesindustry.biz says:

a measurement of how many of the floating point operations crucial to the graphics and physics in modern games can be processed per second

Sony wins in tech-talk on this crucial ground, with two times the terraflopping of the Xbox 360. Says Nick,
Expect to see this utilised for physics and world realism. The actual core games probably won't change that much because we're still using the same input devices - analogue stick joypads. But certainly expect to see more going on. Some of it will be irrelevant to a game but pretty - trees swaying, individual leaves being affected by wind and so on; some of it will be much more relevant - armies of bad guys swarming toward you, massive explosions, things collapsing with true physics, etc.

With all the different processors added up, PS3 can perform twice as many raw calculations per second. In practise though, the different chips will need to wait for each other to catch up, so it will never run at full tech speed.

Next, the graphics.
High-Definition, High-Definition, High-Definition. It's all about HD. Both companies are "totally stoked" about the HDTV revolution expected to take the US by storm (propelled by the media, of course), which should saturate the market with screens twice as detailed as current widescreen products. Of course, because both Sony and Microsoft purport to be releasing media centres, this means there'll be plenty of HD for non-gaming applications. For interactive software, however, the PS3's announcement suggests that the graphics in the machine are twice the current market leader on PCs.

PS3 will be able to output a higher-resolution (i.e., more high definition) signal, but there are very few TVs in existence that can use this highest resolution. In a few years though, who knows? Games will also have to be made in widescreen compatible. In the meantime, I'm pleased that both companies will still support my old televisual clunker.

Sony's machine is unique in that it offers two HD outputs, for the ultimate in multitasking. Game on one, FAQ via the Ethernet connection on the other. They don't want us to move ever again, do they? Can I have fries with that?

Third, memory.
There is far far far more memory in both of these machines than most people will be able to fill, but that's not stopping either Sony or Microsoft from calculating for future profits from upgrade sales on removable hard drives. Microsoft's will probably ship with 20GB - a behemoth amount (think 5,000 songs on an iPod). PS3 purchasers will have to buy their hard drive at the pay point. Both machines support memory cards. Microsoft's will be 8 times larger than PS2's current 8 MB card, but Sony's will support their SD memory sticks. More memory will come from the USB ports - a whopping six on Sony's machine and three on the Xbox 360. That means I'll be able to save my draft PhD thesis on my new console, as well as on computers strewn throughout the UK and USA. Egad, the possibilities. More normal folk will be able to view files and listen to tunes that they'll keep on these removable memory devices.

Fourth, music.
The days of stereo are over; let's move on to surround sound. As with the previous iterations of the consoles, both the 360 and PS3 will feature Dolby 5.1.

Fifth, controllers.
For some reason, Sony will support the odd number of seven controllers on its PS3. A theory going around my house is that they suddenly realised they had more Bluetooth-width than expected and bumped up the number of possible controllers to seven. An alternative view is that they oversubscribed with eight and are now having to make the best of the limitations. Whichever, the PS3 supports more players in the same room than the Xbox 360 which only offers four. Really, though, with internet access on both machines and the new HDTV taking up most of the space in the living room why have so many friends in person; just play with them online.

Sixth, online.
Both machines will release with out-of-the-box Ethernet capabilities. Both will be WiFi enabled (but hopefully will be better than my current provider whose "wireless" adaptor is attached to my laptop with a very long wire and whose service is infuriatingly sporadic) and both hope to corner the market on downloadable content. Internet access, music downloads, movie downloads, video and text chat (with the later-released video cameras): this is the showdown space for the non-gamers, and this is where Microsoft kicks butt. For gamers, Microsoft is also in the lead with their profiling service which should offer a useful service to folks who want to play hard-core online titles, meander through the Final Fantasy MMOG or just play drafts.

Microsoft simply has more experience with the online medium, so it's expected that their implementation of Live will be better. From what I've heard on the inside, it's definitely easier to design for.

Finally, release dates.
The Xbox 360 will be released everywhere by the end of the year, and the PS3 will be out (for sure in Japan) in Spring 2006. Just enough time to take the wind out of Microsoft's sails.

Answer 2

It is all just opinion. 360's are genereally focused more towards jsut the hardcore gamer with titles like gears of war. It does not put much of an emphasis on multimedia. The ps3, while not the most popular in terms of games is capable of somethings that the 360 is not for instance the blu ray player. It all comes down to what you will be using it for.

Answer 3

defiantly the xbox 360 even though the ps3 looks better and is newer the xbox 360 has lot better and more games. i played both the 360 games are more fun make more sense and are really fun. the xbox 360 also has xbox live you can chat with your friends and play games they have and you don't have. everything is better on xbox 360 but on ps3 the graphics are slightly better(slightly!)

Answer 4

The 360 does have the games NOW. But the Ps3 is going have a good line coming next yr. Games like killzone2, MGS4, LittleBigPlanet, GT5, FF13 and FFvs13. Yeah of the course the 360 have the line up now. But i dont see much games for 360 in 08 that i wanna play. Expect NG2 IMO

The 360 online is better now. Yeah it have some great stuff, like DLing movies and Tv shows. And great friendly comm. But The PSN is free, but just wait til HOME comes out.

i use my blu-ray alot. I have like 10 blu-ray not include the 5 free. Ever since i watched blu-ray, hate watching DVD. Its looks like crap, if you had a HDTV. from what i see blu-ray is 2-1 against HD-dvd in NA. Blu-ray is already winning Worldwide. In the Future, i believe blu-ray is going to be a next disc standard.

PS3 exclusive are good too right now, I love uncharted, its a great game. GOTY IMO. Warhawk is a fun and fast pace online game. Heavenly Sword, yes it's great too, Yeah it is short. It was one hell of a 6 hr game. Also R&C is a great game. Very fun plat former game

The 360 have 33% failure rate. Called the RROD it kinda looks like http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=72rly8g&...

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gaming/xbox-3...
http://digg.com/gaming_news/The_360_s_fa...
http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/featur...
http://www.gwn.com/news/story.php/id/132...

Answer 5

PS3 has amazing graphics. XBOX 360 does too but PS3 has better graphics by a long shot. I'm not so sure about how long they last and so far the 360 has more games but I'm guessing that the PS3 is probably going to get a lot more over time.

I suggest the PS3.

Answer 6

PS3 - I like consoles with grrrrreat graphics!

Answer 7

360

Answer 8

i prefer the ps3 by a long shot its good controller comfortable and good gfx and brillient hd good internet online play is cool, u can hook up an external hard drive to it so u have plenty of memory for the movie u put on it game are good assassins creed good game and hopefully GTA IV, yea so i like ps3 and i think 360 is rubbish i dnt like the noise its loud :o and controllers are uncomfortable but thats just my opinion :)

Answer 9

xbox is better online is better even though u have to pay more games to choosw from and console is cheaper

Answer 10

xbox 360 for hard core gamers.

Answer 11

the ps3 has better graphics because of blu-ray but not as many games as xbox 360 i think if you wait for a while there will be more games on PS3

if your going on price get the xbox360