Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello. I have a chum who wants a PS3 rather than a 360. I have told him he's insane.
Who can give me some 'proper' reasons for not choosing a PS3 (or good reasons, if you wish).

So far I've got

ZOMG THE CONTROLLERS! (of course, the DS3 is coming soon)
The price of games
Technically, it hasn't caught up with the 360 yet (although, potentially, it will be far better)
LIVE is much better than the PS Network

He won't ever have any BezzieMates^TM.

The games. There's more and better games on the 360. All the rest is just fluff. If he looks at the catalogues of both machines and still wants a PS3 then he's a berk.

Although he will get to play Super Stardust HD.

Yep. The games and Live service trounce the competition.

If he won't take your advice, then let him find out the hard way.

if as a good friend who has owned both cant convince him otherwise I doubt what we can do.

for the here and now, the 360 is the only sane choice*



*unless the ps3 was for free.

Several have my colleagues have bought PS3s recently, as their first "next-gen" (whatever that means) console. I did explain about the games libraries of the 360 and the PS3, but their counter-argument was that (1) they wanted a BluRay player anyway and (2) although it doesn't have the best games it has has enough good games to satisfy their limited needs. It has some decent shooters (COD4, UT3), a decent driving game or two (Burny P, arguably Motorstorm), a decent action game (Uncharted) and a decent platformer (Ratchet & Clank). These are the sort of people who only buy a half-dozen games a year and don't track major releases, they just buy a new one at semi-random when they are bored of the ones they have. They are also concerned about hardware failure rates on the 360. For that sort of consumer I think the PS3 makes sense, frankly.

On the other hand, I think it's unarguable that the 360 has the superior games library; even if no further 360 game came out ever and every upcoming PS3 big release (Killzone, Resistance 2, GT5, MGS4, LBP) turned out to be fried gold the 360 would still be respectable throughout 2008. As for online, I don't think the Xbox's commanding position is down to Live, actually; apparantly CoD4 and Burnout Paradise have online support on the PS3 that is as neat and elegant as the 360 verson. Plus, paying for Live annoys me. No, I think the 360's online advantage is the community support. My 360 friends list is about 40 strong, I have just five on my PS3 one. 'Nuff said.

Well to be fair that PlayTV PVR tuner thingy that apparently will let you record DRM free copies of your TV to you hard drive (and take them to you PC) makes the PS3 look rather good. But you should never buy a console of 'future' things IMO. Too risky.

The only risk around that I can see is the pricing and whether it can record while you play games. Other than that, I think it's a thoroughly reasonable proposition, frankly. The PSP integration is very neat.

Oh, as for the fact it's DRM free, this really isn't the big deal Sony are playing it as. All Freeview recordings are DRM free as all Freeview transmissions are vanilla MPEG-2. Even Windows Media Centre, with Full Vista Skanky DRM Edition, will let you burn them to disk (albeit in an awkward proprietary DVR-MS wrapper format, but it's trivial to losslessly convert it to MPEG-2). Most cheap Freeview PVRs can be cracked open and persuaded to offer up their MPEG goodness too.

Also also: I have my suspicions about the claimed hi-def support Sony are claiming. I wouldn't bank on it panning out.

You could always get him to read this



Malc

Oh I totally agree. I just think it's best to wait till the device you are buying has enough stuff out that if you bought it you would be happy if nothing else was released for it. That and Sony's track record on DRM is not very good, so I won't believe them till it is released.

I would love a PVR mind.

I would, but I must confess to not being terribly impressed by that article. Anything that has several factual innacuracies that can be pointed out by me (of all people) haven't really been researched well enough, IMHO.

Oh?

Such as? (genuine request btw, in no way is it a dig or an accusation of lying)

Malc

That you had to turn the 360 off at the unit itself, that you couldn't get at your old Xbox save games and some bits in the backward compatibility. Plus both consoles do so much more nowadays.

Not that I want to step on Dudley's toes as this forum's Voice Of Controversy^TM, but I find myself warming to the PS3 more and more. Right up to the final second I still wasn't sure which version of GTA4 to plump for and though common sense prevailed and I bought the 360 version, it still would've been nice to have played it on a console that doesn't sound like a jet engine during the wee small hours of Tuesday morning.

In fact, seeing as I don't use Live much anymore and I'm a bit penniless, I'd be quite tempted to get shot of the 360 and go PS3 only. It's only really the glorious XBLA and the thought of losing my beloved Rez HD that keeps me going. Even Test Drive Unlimited is starting to bore the tits off me.

Have you played Crackdown?

This is the biggest complaint I'd level, I'd say that the PS3 games lineup (both boxed and download) is a lot stronger now than it was towards the end of 2007. When was the article written? It feels rather dated. His talk of reflashing the PS3 every week suggests it's quite old as the updates have been nowhere near that frequent over the last six months.

I agree with Zio, I have a sneaking affection for my PS3. I received it as a Christmas gift and otherwise probably wouldn't have bought one until the back half of this year, so I was slightly initially dubious, but I really have warmed to it. I really like the hardware design (it feels much more expensive than the 360), I like how quiet it is, I like the BluRay support, I like the openness of some aspects of the design (the Live Vision cam works on it, I can back savegames up to normal memory cards, I can install Linux), and the two platform exclusive games I've played to completion on it (Uncharted, Ratchet and Clank) I really, really enjoyed. Perhaps two games doesn't sound like a lot but it's more platform exclusives than I've played on the 360 this year.

Perhaps it's my British affection for the underdog, but I actually like the PS3 a good deal more than most people on here.

8 June 2007

Malc

Aha, I didn't see the date tucked away in the left bar. Well, I'd say that article is too old to be of any use, the PS3's software was rubbish back then.

It's stepped up to lame now.

Get said chum to write a list of games they want to play, and compare that against the lists of PS3 and 360 games. If they're a multiplayer fellow, get them to draw a smiley face next to the games that they know somebody who will play multiplayer with them, and a frowny face for the games that they wouldn't be able to play.

Compare them.

If said chum refuses to write a list, they're clearly insensible and your guidance is for naught in all cases.

Icons man! There are lots of threads without icons!

Also, 360!

He's kidding, right?

No, why?

Have I missed sumfink?

Craster polishes shiv.

What are you going to do with tha.. ARGHREG!L!!L

Seriously, what have I missed?

Tell him the Wii is best because that has a Cookery game.

Ahhh!



I just pissed myself reading that. Sorry Grim...

Fuck, I was in such a strop. I'd spent hours coding it with one hand while holding a pretty-much constantly screaming baby in the other. Rage, I tell you. Hand-shaky rage! At least I don't have to finish it now, though.

What, you think you can just raise a baby to a few months old and that's it?

You have a lot to learn.

Eh?

If I have to explain it - erkkkkkkkkkk *wrenched away from keyboard*

Finish what - raising the baby? OHOHOHOHO.

I think was myp's joke.

Bingo bango!

Aha, gotcha.
Actually, I'm still correct, because I threw the baby to the floor and jumped up and down on it, cartoon-stylee, in the middle of my tantrum.

Textbook error. Jump up and down on our bastard child, and we'll be having words...

True, but I'm that sort of buyer as well - I'd buy very few games (although largely because I'm a cheapskate), and I'd be annoyed at the 360 break rate too (although the new ones are apparently much better for that). However, I still would and do recommend the 360 over the PS3 as a games machine.

The PS3's controller is crappier, and needs to be recharged all the bloody time. It makes a lot of games more annoying - not a huge factor as you get used to it, but still a factor.

The early games are nearly all shit (poorly ported or just plain poor), there are few exclusives, and no 'must have' exclusives (I would choose a 360 for Crackdown alone, all other things being equal. Uncharted is good, but once you've finished it there's no incentive to ever touch it again, whereas I spent months playing Crackdown well into the night last year, and will do so again as soon as I can). Right now, downstairs, we have about eight or nine games that I'm already totally bored of after a few hours of play at most (barring Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and you can get that on the 360 anyway, or the first one on budget, which is just as good). By contrast, I still get a strong urge to play Dead Rising or Saints Row, or even Oblivion, almost a year after buying them. Looking around for games, there's practically nothing I'd play for free on the PS3, let alone pay for, whereas I had to deliberately avoid Cash Converters last year for fear I'd keep buying more 360 games.

The prices.

The 360 will likely be easier to mod. If that doesn't sound interesting, wait until the new lot of consoles come out and it'll pay off a lot more.

The 360's online stuff, and general purpose usage is miles better (barring that remote play thing with the PSP, which admittedly sounds cool, although the chances of my ever needing to use it are approximately 1 in six hundred billion) Even something as simple as the 'keyboard' on the PS3 is illogically set out and hard to read if you don't press your face against the screen (and we have an HDTV now, by the way. It's made some games look marginally clearer and more sort of cartoony, but mostly it just makes tv and old dvds look fuzzy. Those games with tiny text are still infuriatingly illegible, just slightly less so).

The games. I realise I've said this already, but it's a games console, man. Get the one with the best and best range of games. That's the 360. The Wii comes runner up if you're after a party games thing or particularly enjoy jumping around.

The stupid fucking buttons. The PS3 doesn't have on or off buttons. Instead, it has incredibly irritating patches you have to rub suggestively or stand there holding your finger over like a moron for three or four seconds. You can turn it off with the controller, yeah, but only on 'standby'*, so it's not actually off. To switch it properly off you have to reach the back of the machine. The 360, meanwhile, has proper buttons that you can prod satisfyingly when you've been repeatedly beaten and want to eject the game with disgust. You can also switch it off using the controllers, although admittedly you have to go up to it to switch it on - but most of the time you'll be doing that anyway to fetch the controller or change the CD.

Also, if all else fails, just say "PS3 is teh suck". Apparently that works on some people. I didn't believe it either, but it does.


*I fucking hate machines that have an 'off' light. If I switch it off, I WANT IT OFF, DAMN IT. Same goes for appliances with clocks. In the london house, we had about six clocks in our kitchen and front room at one point, despite having bought no actual clocks. I thought we were supposed to be saving electricity, not building devices that pointlessly burn even more even when they're not in use?

No you don't. Just hold down the big X button in the middle of your controller and it turns on the XBox.

Cor - that's going to make him swear when he finds out

As much as Dimrill will when he finds out how to restart GTA missions?

Actually I suspected you could switch it on remotely too, but couldn't clearly recall doing so, so played it safe.

I tend to keep the controllers on the machine anyway, and need to go to the telly to switch it on, so it wouldn't make much difference to me.

Surely though, the 360 also goes into a 'Standby' mode when you switch it off - it just doesn't have an LED to point that out for you. Otherwise, how else would it pick up the 'on' signal from the controller if there was no power going to it? And the 360 doesn't even have a power switch on the back like the PS3, you have to actually unplug it. From the wall and everything.

Sorry, I don't know why I give a shit as I (mostly) prefer the 360 at the moment anyway (though, as I said above, I fear that may be slowly changing). I'm just trying to be one of those infuriating devil's advocate types.

If you mean answering the text message, that's what I'm whinging about. It ports you right back to the start of the mission, which normally involves a huge arse drive to get back to where you have to do something. Case in point is

You don't have to drive all the way back to the mission start point too though, which you had to in all previous GTAs.