News 360 video service has issues, Gates compares PS3 to brick

Lol. Slightly

I'm still waiting to hear a good reason to buy the PS3 even when it matures and gets some decent games. 360 is in a similar boat but its got a year head start, equal hardware specs except for the HD media drive and a better online service.

As far as I can see it, if sony hadn't insisted on the blu-ray then the PS3 could have been cheaper, on time and with far less problems.

The Wii looks like its going to be fun but still not up to scratch.

PC gaming is the only thing which I have been constantly interested in so I'll be sticking with that.

 

The 360 has me sold on the media extender functionality. I think that a 360 and Vista Ultimate are going to be an awesome combination. I am always in the midrange graphics camp so either system will be a step up from my PC (and my N64).

 

The wii will not win the war, it will be awesome and will sell like hell,

The PS3 is on the edge, either people will buy it because they think it is a great bargain.... or they will say: "scre* this i want a game console, not a blue-ray disc player that has very few and expensive films for it", the BR drive wont do any good for it in terms of game size, 25GB for the expensive single layer blue-ray versus 8.5GB for the less expensive dual layer dvd..... +this
then blue-ray is rather useless don't you agree?

The 360 must evolve its services (like the video service here) so it is cheaper and gets more quality, and decrease the price of its hardware and games or else it will die, the dvd drive is enough for now, especially with this.

and the PS3 is more useful than a brick, especially if you want to build a house, it is bigger than a brick, and it heats up so it will be warm all winter, the only problem is the price and the availability.

edit:
wikipedia is a good tool

 

Sony could possibly still be taking losses on PS3 hardware next christmas as to where MS will be making huge bank off of all marked down 360's. The question is, will MS be able to offer some solutions to their current generations mistakes.

I just recently bought a 360 about 4 weeks ago, and within 48 hours the thing overheated and didnt work properly afterwards, that being said I had to buy some Nyko component to increase air flow in my 360. Will they ever fix the optical drives from scratching discs when the 360 gets moved while in operation. Will we ever see a bigger hard drive?

This christmas is a ****** year for game release dates on the 360 platform, I took a look at my local Gamestop's upcoming release lists and I wasn't very pleased at all, however I think 2 players playing Gears of War on Xbox Live will hold me over for some better games.

Im really hoping Sony sees some serious fallout due to their mishandlings with the PS3, I would really like to see more Sony only games being brought to other consoles, games like Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear Solid.... So Bill if you're reading this (and you probably are) open your wallet this X-mas and buy us some contracts to cross platform these games.

 

I just have a few things I want to point out.

#1. PS3 is a great bargain for a few reasons: 1. It will likely outlast every other console due to its sheer processing power (look at the N64, it is still fun to play and one reason is because it was incredibly powerful in its day, so games still look half decent and run smooth). 2. If Blu-Ray does become the next standard then you will already have a player for that standard, DVD is an example of this. It was new and expense once but now is available to everyone, the same thing might happen to Blu-Ray. 3. Prices for games are not going up because of Blu-Ray. PS3 titles are the same price as their 360 counterparts. Besides that if I was a game Dev. I would love to have freedom in making my game great and not being limited by capacity. We are already seeing games like Crysis and other new titles taking more than 6 gbs of space, so it is likely that new 360 games will be moving to multiple disks or HD-DVD soon. 4. If you equipped a 360 with a the stuff that a PS3 premium comes with it would cost you a hell of alot more. First you need a 360 premium that costs $500, plus the HD-DVD drive for around $200, plus the WIFI for $130, plus two more hard drives for $130 a piece. Thats a total of more than $1000, and the specs are still inferior. A PS3 on that level costs $660, so it is a bargain. 5. With the PS3 they give you instructions so you can use a standard 2.5" SATA HDD to upgrade storage. This means for the $130 I could pay for 20 more Gbs of storage on my 360 I could buy about 100 Gbs of storage for my PS3, which in my opinion is a hell of a deal (this is for 5400RPM seagate, for 7200RPM I could buy 60 Gbs).

#2 As far as procedural texturing is concerned you are right that using it will allow gaming to take up less space allowing them to fit on a regular DVD. The only problem is that a lot of people making these games are not terribly enthusiastic about changing their ways (look at the lack of multi-threaded apps these days vs. the number of single threaded apps).

#3 As far as making a good house is concerned, I think the 360 would be a much better candidate because it is more boxy, heats up more, and you can change the look of your house anytime by slapping on some new faceplates

 

The PS3's had a rocky start, and will have a bit of a bad time until supply and demand is sorted out, but those are teething problems. It's funny to see people complaining about the lack of games for the PS3; it seems like the same people have amnesia every time there's a console launch, and forgot every single console launch that ever occurred before it.

Yes, there are no must-buy games for the PS3 at the moment, and I won't be buying one any time soon. I do, however, plan to buy one next year (and a Wii!), when Sony's had more time to hammer out any kinks in the console itself, as well as find some more games to put on the thing.

In the mean time, I'll satisfy myself with the 360 I was supposed to get for my birthday but didn't.

Wait, I lost you... being more difficult to program for is supposed to deter customers when they still get all the multiplatform releases as well as PS3 exclusives?

 

Bill Gates is right about the brick comment. People will eat up anything Sony puts out. However people are forgetting that the 360 has the larger and more established library so it is a no brain which console is worth the cost at the moment. I don't find it fair that some of you cite the low Sony sales of PS3 (low shipments to begin with) to the Years worth of 360 sales as a strong point in Microsoft's camp. It's same with the people who still use PS2 consoles numbers against 360. It's not fair grounds. Let's wait and see next christmas when supply is there to meet the demand. I own a 360 already and a PS3, so I'm hardly one to take sides, but I do see through BS Sony and MS say. I don't care for Blue-Ray but I have one by default; I still haven't purchased a single BR movie though . I don't plan on owning any 360 HD DVD addon either now that they offer HD content over Live for download. Saves me the trouble and money. When the PS3 exclusive start coming I'm sure some people will change their tune, just like they did when the 360 titles rolled out (Gears of War, Oblivion, ect..). I know Oblivion is PS3 bound but it did move 360 units (I was one of those person's who purchased a 360 along with Oblivion hehe).

 

Ta10n, what kind of weed do you smoke? i want some

you are saying that power = fun?
so if N64 is fun because it is powerful then the gay cube is even more fun because it is more powerful, so the wii must be REALY FUN because it is even more powerful than the gay cube.
hmmm and there are people saying that the N64 is more fun than the 360 so in your logic the wii must be lots of times more powerful than the 360.

POWER!=fun

IF!!!!! and if it dies? CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE ANOTHER DISK PLAYER (considering you have the wonderful PSP that is also a player for UMD disks) DEVICE THAT IS ONLY USED FOR GAMES (or not even that)!!!!!!
The PS2 had a DVD player, the DVD has been around since about 1996 and the PS2 was launched in 2000, it was a "cheap" dvd player for the time, and DVDs were a proven technology with all its quirks ironed out and a rather good library of media..... if i buy a blue-ray player i will want something without bugs, and that is a good price/quality/media available.

that is like saying that prices of N64 games were not bigger because of the diskettes.
they are the same price (or not).... for now.
yes i would love the large capacity to fill it up with useless peaces of code, textures and stuff that is not optimized/compressed so it would be easy to say: "hey i filled up this big ass disk with a game, i are so smart".
crysis 6gbs of space are smaller that the capacity of a dual layer dvd.

the premium costs $400, the HD-DVD drive (that you will want if you want to see HD-DVD films, it does not work with games) costs US$100, the WIFI is US$100, the hard drives are US$100 each.... thats 800$, the top PS3 costs US$600.

most of the 360 hardware will go cheaper for sure and this difference will grow smaller.

lets see.... they give you instructions on how to open a PS3 and insert a 2.5" sata hard drive, joe average says "i don't know anything about computers and manuals are for idiots..... i think i will insert it here in this slot with a hammer "

evolution my friend, that is the word, if it wasn't for it we would still be using prescots and agp or even worse, we would still not exist...

in this part you are right except on the part that the 360 has a concavity and if you pile them there would be holes in you wall, and i have heard that the PS3 heats up like the devil but thanks to "smash my PS3" i know it is hard as nails.

 

I was under the impression that the devs were saying that they don't need the extra space that BR brings to the table, that the BR drive is slower than the '360's...meaing all that data is pretty much worthless unless you keep spinning the disc, and finally that the Cell does F-all in gaming tasks (which are more GPU than CPU anyways). Isn't the GPU in the '360 the as yet to be released R600? And isn't the PS3's GPU the equivalent of a 7800?

 

While devs may not need it now, it is a nice thing to have the space at their disposal. The Cell is important because with that kind of processing power doing things like real world physics, AI, etc. becomes easier to do and won't bog the system down. As far as the GPU is concerned I did hear the same thing about the R600, but just because 600 is bigger than 520 doesn't make it better. It is more likely that the R600 will never be released PC side, in fact it only makes sense. When have we ever heard of a console graphics chip coming to PC? As far as the PS3's GPU after a bit of research the RSX perfectly matches a 7800GTX 512mb in terms of clocks and transistor count, but it carries 256mb of memory at 700mhz on the PS3. While this may be discouraging the floating point performance of the RSX alone is almost twice that of the 360. After doing a bit more research it looks like the R600 series is coming to the PC but not the R600 in the 360 specifically. After more digging it looks like the 360 GPU is close to an X1900XTX (with 700mhz GDDR3), which is strange considering the TFLOP numbers. So according to the TFLOP inaccuracys either A. Nvidia and Sony have an ace up their sleeve, or B. Microsoft and ATI were lying about the XENOS specs. Either way we will have to see some comparisons before we can judge either.

 

Links?

 

please don't tell me im the only one to agree with Ta10n, if i am, too many people are closeminded and refuse to look at it from a wider perspective.

its not about now, its about whats upcoming. PS3 doesn't have any games coming about worth lusting over as its simply just launched.

would you enjoy playing FEAR if they brought it out on the amiga?

yes, but lets say they really create a game so utterly envelopped in graphical bliss, or has such a huge universe that even with optimisation and compression it still exceeds 10GB? you have to go one way or the other regarding BR and HD-DVD as it is the future, and since it's reasonably new tech then it has to be pushed forward to succeed.

And if HD-DVD fails then the HD-DVD drive people baught for their 360 becomes just as useless. Simple thing is, we don't know which will win in the Hi-Def race, Sony pushed for what it thinks will be the champion, while MS back the other competitor.

I think the PS3 will simply dominate the market, not just because it's branded by sony (i've taken into account the fanboys), but because it truly is a remarkable piece of gear, and when games start to increase, we will see an absolute sky rocket in PS3 sales.

 

At least if the HD-DVD drive fails, you can still play games which is you know, the primary purpose. I don't know if anyone has seen the vid on Kotaku

Slot Loading PS3 fun

Sony: Blu-Ray on PS3

BR vs HD-DVD Fact vs Fiction

Stuffing BR Discs full of Pre-renders

Slower loading than '360 for PS3

HD DVD vs. Blu-ray: who cares?

Xbox 360 HD-DVD Q&A

 

And can you not with blue ray? (which is why i failed to see the argument in the firsyt place)

interesting links

 

Most people who buy a 360 probably wont buy the HD-DVD drive unless it is already a success ?

Programming difficulty is a little bit of a nebulous explanation really, since I don't believe they mean "Its too hard! I can't do it!" I suspect they mean more "We've figured out how to do it, but its going to take twice as long and cost twice as much as it would have otherwise" (except with words like "complete bitch" being thrown about I guess it might be more than twice as much ) meanwhile the 360 essentially uses the same backend as a PC, so they can develop one version and with a minor amount of work, get a game that functions on two platforms, which is obviously going to be attractive to them.

 

I plan on getting a 360 for xmas and going to be selling a few things later to fund it, but I will not buy the HD DVD drive as there is no point yet as the HD DVD films are priced far too high. When HD DVD's are price same as or lower than current DVD's then I would get one. But Ill also get the PS3 in 2008 and also the WII maybe next year as I have and always buy every console created regardles if I like it or the company that made.

 

Why is everyone centered around this fictional "console war." All of the systems this gen are going to have amazing titles on them, and will definitely meet their worth. I have a 360 right now and I'll be owning a PS3 and Wii as soon as I can afford to spend the money on them.

It is fun to argue the points though so here I go: Most of the points about "why the PS3 will lose" are pretty moot. Although Procedural Texturing is pretty cool, in that article DXR pointed to, the guy basically says that programming them is extraordinarily difficult. But he also states the Cell's programming difficulties as one reason why the PS3 will suck. But lets go back in time for a minute. All of these arguments....ALL OF THEM...were listed as reasons why the Dreamcast and Gamecube will be so amazing and why the PS2 will be an utter failure. Yes, the Dreamcast did indeed look JUST as promising as the Xbox 360 looks right now. Then the PS2 came along and destroyed everyone. Obviously I can see that the 360 is in a better position than the Dreamcast was, but history does tend to repeat itself. No, I don't think the 360 will be a failure and plunge Microsoft Games into obscurity, but it will take a miracle for them to topple Sony.

Everyone said the PS2 was insanely difficult to program for. That the emotion engine was impossible to work with. Now we have games that look like Shadows of Colossus and Final Fantasy XII. Game developers are crapping out PS2 titles left and right and people have figured out how to make the best of the emotion engine to produce some very pretty games. The same will happen with Cell. It will be hard at first, but when developers and programmers get used to working with the technology it will become easier and more productive.

Everyone said that the DVD drive was useless, and driving up the price of the system unnecessarily. They said that games will never need 4.5 GBs of space, let alone a 9 GB dual layer DVD. Now developers are struggling to fit games onto a dual layer DVD. It is almost ignorant to think that games won't be demanding more and more space as time goes on. Example: Blue Dragon, 360s Japan life-raft, is going to be a 3 DVD game.

Not only that, but when the PS2 was out for 300 dollars people were out spending 300+ on stand-alone DVD players. People who got the PS2 could play their games and watch movies. If Blu-Ray becomes the standard, I already have a player, therefore I can wait for the high-quality stand-alone players to go down to a reasonable price and play them on the PS3 to hold me over. Assuming HD-DVD becomes the media standard, anyone who wants to watch an HD-DVD will either have to spend $250 for one for their 360, or spend that much and more for a stand-alone player. If they buy one for their 360, they are already exceeding the price of the PS3.

Also, already mentioned but worth repeating; The PS3 can take any 2.5" SATA HDD. The 360s proprietary 20GB hard drive cost 100 dollars. For $100 dollars I can go out and buy a 120 GB SATA drive for my PS3. I can load entire games on the HDD and play them with vastly lower loading times. The 60GB PS3 has built in wifi. If I want Wifi on my 360 I have to go out and buy the $100 wifi adapter. The PS3 can also rip music CDs and play a very large host of media formats from the hard drive, CD, DVD, SD card or stream. It also has a built in web browser and an online system as functional and convenient as Xbox Live. And of course all of these things can only get better through further updates from Sony on the PS3s firmware. You can't argue that the PS3 doesn't offer value because it is actually a HUGE value. If this weren't a console and they slapped an OS on it and sold it as a PC they could easily sell it for over $1000. They could base their price entirely on the Blu-Ray drive, which sell for 700-1000 dollars by themselves. The PS3 is a huge value.

Right now the ONLY thing MS has on top of Sony is a year head start and a very nice online play system. Bill Gates was right, the console war will be decided by next Christmas When games like MGS4 and Gran Turismo 5 are hitting shelves for the PS3 we will see the playing fields tip very heavily. I'm not even gonna mention Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. You release Dragon Quest IX on the PS3 in Japan and they will declare it a damn national holiday. Everybody is hyping up GoW, but can anyone name ONE "must-own" title for the Xbox360 that anyone can like other than GoW? Not many, are there? So what has the 360 been doing for a year? Releasing wave after wave of sub-par or "decent" titles. Sure, there are fun games out like GRAW and Oblivion, but besides GoW or possibly Oblivion it's not like there are any legendary titles you'll be playing 2-3 years from now.

PS3 users can look forward to MGS series, Gran Turismo series, Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, anything else made by Squeenix, etc...

And if you think single developers or games can not drastically tip the scales in which console comes out the most successful for it's generation, consider this: Final Fantasy VII was originally planned for the N64. Squaresoft realized quickly into game planning phases that the cart didn't offer enough storage space and the N64 couldn't handle a game on the scope of Final Fantasy, nor could the technology relate the art style of the game so the decision was made to put Final Fantasy on the PS1 and they struck a deal with Sony to make FF a Sony exclusive. This catapulted Sony so far ahead of Nintendo and Sega most people couldn't believe it. Then future titles like Gran Turismo and MGS came along and put the final nails in the coffin.

 

well said.

 

I was thinking about this for some time after reading your post and it's partly fanboyism and anti-fanboyism. Nintendo is an old name, they make good products that don't quite seem to get the praise they deserve. MS is sort of a neutral. it's a good system, the proce is looking more reasonable all the time and they have some good gmaes.

The biggest problem with the PS3 is, well, that it's made by Sony.

Think about it, if the PS3 was made by, say, Asus (to pull a random tech manufacturer out of the air) we would probably be chiding them for the poor decisions, but still excited about the console. One the whole, it looks like it has the potential to be very impressive, but so far has been poorly executed.

It's biggest defect is that it's made by a company which is widely percieved in the tech world as being almost as evil as AOL (and that's pretty evil). The rootkit, Sony BMG as part of the RIAA, exploding batteries, the attitude that "you should feel privelledged to own our products", the legion of rabid fanboys, killing Lik Sang, the list goes on. I think a lot of the antipathy towards the PS3 is really indirectly aimed at Sony rather than the console itself. Was WANT the PS3 to fail because Sony deserves to burn in hell for their crimes against the tect world.

 

You can do a list for every company including MS and Nintendo. You say Sony is Evil. Business is evil, You have to be evil to be at the top.

There is alot that goes on behind closed doors in every big multinational company. Stuff that they have done wrong or immorally etc. Its just that Sonys doors dont seem to be closed and unlucky by that so this is where all the hatred comes from.

If only you could see whats going on behind Nintendos doors and whats left behind MS's to moan about.