and All Consoles

The Xbox 360 had the luxury of a year’s head start over its competition, the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, and that served Microsoft well. For any serious gamer the thought of waiting a year may be just too damn long, and they certainly gained market share in view of this, at least in North America and Europe. But now that all the shiny new consoles are out, is the Xbox 360 starting to show its age and look a bit shabby?

To start with, each of the three consoles – the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and Nintendo’s Wii all has their own dedicated fan base that won’t change their minds for anything. These diehard fans do matter, simply for the fact that their spend on gaming is probably worth a fair few families of the casual gamers. And without doubt all these consoles significantly outperform their predecessors.

The two games consoles that are the easiest the do a straight comparison with is the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. They are both intended to function as more than simply a games console – they play DVD’s and music, connect with the internet, display photos, and allow chat. Sony will however be in major trouble if Blu-Ray loses out in the high-density DVD war with HD-DVD. Microsoft has also an edge with their online content, having had the ability to build up a considerable and frequently-updated stock over the last year. They’re now providing movies for download via the Xbox Live Marketplace. It is likely that Sony will eventually catch up with this, but for now, Microsoft holds the edge.

The start with, if you put aside what’s actually inside the consoles for a moment and look at how the consoles perform instead of how they should, the PlayStation 3 isn’t really a year ahead of the Xbox 360. If you do a side by side comparison of cross-platform games this will tend to favour the Xbox 360, which has the ability to offer better lighting effects and less of a tendency to flatten and blur textures. Although, having taken this into account, the PlayStation 3 still has longer loading times.

The Xbox 360 is well and truly a Microsoft product. In the attempt to get the console out quickly wasn’t the best way to ensure reliability, and as widely reported a small but still significant number of the original releases crashed to ‘blue screen of death’. Also, during the recent Fall update, where Xbox Live use were required to download to access the service, causing about one percent of consoles to brick.

The PlayStation 3 console has offered the Sixaxis controller, Sony’s half-assed attempt to respond to the Wii-mote. Whilst this will enable your to tilt the controller to affect your on-screen movements in games such as Tony Hanks, you still get much better control from using the conventional D-pad. If you compare the Sixaxis to the Wii-mote there is a simply object lesson in the difference between a rushed gimmick and an innovation.

So on to Nintendo’s Wii, starting with its bad points. It doesn’t support HD-TV display, and not equipped to play DVDs. If you only looking for your game console to play games, than this should not really be much to worry about. It’s just a game console and that’s that. It’s not by any means as graphically impressive as its rivals. The wireless controller needs to run on batteries rather than being rechargeable.

But hold on. Nintendo have attempted to attract the family and non-gaming market with the impressive play abilities with the Wii-mote. Yet still be able to keep the hardened gamers in view of its difference in game play. Even though being different, Nintendo are also better at being the same – the Wii has been designed to be backwards compatible with more of the old console games than with either the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360. This is particularly appealing at that, offering software emulation for a impressive 30% of Xbox games.

It’s always going to be a hard call to make, which is the best console. But if you word the question differently, will the Xbox 360 sink without a trace since the release of its newer and shinier cousins, the answer is NO. If you preference is serious, mature-rated games with lots of online content, your choice will have to be between the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, and then to go with your preferred choice, usually whatever you had before, Sony or Microsoft. But if you now looking for family gaming, or something to play with a bunch of mates, then the Nintendo Wii should definitely be your new best friend.

Darren Lintern

The successor to Microsoft’s Xbox, the X360 was the first to arrive of the seventh generation consoles. It has been designed to offer a considerable increase in performance over its predecessors, with an emphasis now on convergence – meaning the intention to move towards being a complete home entertainment system, not simply a games console.

Convergence can sometimes be a bad thing. An example being Nintendo’s Wii, which is only intended to do one thing and does that very well. That doesn’t by any way mean that the Xbox 360 is the gaming equivalent of a combination toaster / digital camera / MP3 player. As well as offered a quality gaming experience, a top of the range Xbox 360 incorporates a DVD player, a web browser, a webcam, a chat-room, a digital camera, and a MP3 player.

In respect of the specifications – The Xbox 360 is fitted with a Xenon CPU that clocks at 3.2 gigahertz and has a reported top performance of 115.2 gigaflops. The GPU is an ATI-chip named Xenos. The installation includes two separate silicon dies, each on it own chip capable of 500 MHz. The CPU and GPU both share 512 MEG of 700 megahertz GDDR3 RAM. The DVD drive is 12x and can read at sixteen MB a second, which leaves Sony’s PlayStation 3 4.5 in the dust. So it all seems pretty impressive. In practical terms, the Xbox 360 is great at blurring, lighting, and particle effects. In no way is it being outperformed in graphic quality or speed by the PlayStation 3.

The Xbox 360 is capable of supporting up to four wireless controllers at once, as well as the options to add headsets, which allow free roam within thirty feet of the console. It is able to support HDTV and six-channel Dolby Surround sound. Using the enhance picture and sound qualities will have a great benefit on the games.

When you purchase an Xbox 360 console you automatically gain silver-level membership to Xbox Live. If you choose to upgrade to gold-level this costs about $50 a year which will entitle you to access to online-only content, game downloads at the Arcade, worldwide tournaments, live chat and networking – a complete social experience. In view of the extreme popularity of MMORPG style online gaming over the last several years, it’s not really any surprise that Microsoft decided to put so much effort into their online content. As Xbox Live has been around for so much longer than its competitor’s equivalents, it makes it a much richer experience.

With Microsoft continually adding new downloads and releasing new accessories, it’s no surprise that they have promised to take Xbox Live one step further with Live Anywhere. As demonstrated at the last E3 show, this will enable Xbox gaming cross-platform, onto PC’s and mobile phones. Microsoft has promised that both Shadow Run and Halo 2: Vista will be Live Anywhere enabled. What that does actually mean in practical terms remains to be seen.

The Xbox 360 is still in many ways a typical Microsoft product – It’s generally solid, but still unexciting. It is able to deliver a competent and rewarding experience, but there wasn’t any of the innovative risk-taking that was seen with Nintendo’s Wii. It’s had it own share of widely publicised technical problems, and Microsoft’s service and public relations for the Xbox tends to be on par with that for their PC products. Many people may have been surprised that Microsoft had not put more effort into enabling a backward compatible system with more of the original Xbox games. However, there is a rumour that Microsoft sent out the compulsory Fall Update to intentionally brick modded consoles. If that is really true or not, it still seems to have a horrible believability about it.

Still, none of these things have had any effect on people using Windows. The Xbox 360 console, is still pretty reliable, as long as it does not blue-screen, or over-heat with protracted use, which it has a slight tendency to do. The peripherals available are all extremely well built. There’s already a huge catalogue or good-quality games, and a year after release, the Xbox 360 still looks impressive and runs well.

Published By Darren Lintern

There are many gaming enthusiasts out there that are stuck between which of the new gaming system to buy – Playstation 3 vs. Xbox 360. Although there is no doubt that they are both great systems, the Playstation 3 is by far the best option. Both are similar in price, so that’s not really a factor that needs to be taken into consideration. An important issue that you may not always think about is the warranty of the products. The Playstation 3 offers a full only year warranty while the Xbox 360 offers only a 90 day warranty.

This may be something that you have already realised for yourself, but the first thing you need to know is that the graphics on the Playstation 3 are completely awesome! It you have not yet seen the Playstation in action, go and check out the screenshots of some games. Both the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 offer the same memory at 512MB. The Playstation 3 offers 256MB of XDR memory and 256 MBMB of GDDR3 memory that is specific to graphics. On the other hand the Xbox 360 uses the Unified Memory Architecture, which allows the CPU and GPU to stare the memory. On both consoles systems the bandwidth is similar.

If data storage capabilities are important to you than you be really happy with what the Playstation 3 has to offer. It come with as standard a portable media including six USB cable ports, memory stick slot, SD slot, and support for compact flash. Also included is a 2.5” removable hard drive. For anyone that is upgrading from a Playstation 2 you will be pleased to learn that you can purchase a memory card adapter for approx. $15 so that you won’t need to leave any data behind that was stored on memory cards. The Xbox 360 does slightly lag behind in this area. It will provide you will two memory card slots and several USB cable ports that support your iPod and memory sticks.

The Playstation 3 includes a much better system for supporting its predecessor’s games. In order to play Playstation 1 & 2 games you only need to slip them right in the console for instant play. Many of the Playstation 1 & 2 games will be enhanced graphics than they did on the previous systems. Whilst the Xbox 360 will also accept Xbox games, it does involve a more complicated process. To make it work, users will need to be connected to Xbox Live. Once connected, the games system will download the necessary software upgrade to make the game usable. This will result in you waiting whilst it searches, downloads, restarts and than finally loads the game.

Now on to the controller – The Playstation 3 controller is lighter and much more comfortable to handle than that of the Playstation 2. The changes in design are intended to allow the user hours of entertainment with sore hands. This is of course very important to consumers. Now onto the Xbox 360 controller which has also had a new design. It has been designed with large buttons to allow easy game play. For both gaming systems the new controller design has been well received. Also, both systems offer wireless controllers. However, the Playstation 3 has the ability to allow up to seven controllers to the connected to the console at one time for certain games. This is something that the Xbox 360 doesn’t offer.

Video games systems are extremely popular for all age groups. Every gaming enthusiast wants to lay their hands on a games system that is easy to use with many great features included. They also want to play the most exciting games that are available. The Playstation 3 offers a better product than the Xbox 360 in each of these highlighted categories. Right now, the Playstation is best selling gaming system when it comes to the Playstation 3 vs. Xbox 360 contest.

Published by Darren Lintern