PS3 vs 360 - a professionals perspective

Apachai · 06-24-2007, 04:57 PM

just a lil something i found..

Being a video game developer (I develop for both, Playstation 3 and XBOX 360) people ask me almost daily which platform I think is better. These are my personal feelings, in no way does this reflect my employer.

Short answer: XBOX 360.

Long answer: Price, performance, visual quality, game selection and online support. I think the XBOX 360 wins in every category.

Price: This is obvious; the XBOX 360 core is only $299. The PS3 is around $499 for the 20GB version. It comes with a hard drive, but you don’t need a hard drive to enjoy a lot of great games on the 360 so I think it’s fair to compare both core systems.

Performance: On paper, the PS3 is more powerful. In reality, it’s quite inferior to the 360. Without getting into too many details, the three general-purpose CPU’s the xbox360 has are currently FAR easier to take advantage of than the SPU’s on the PS3. I suspect a few years down the road some high budget, first party PS3 exclusive titles will come out that really take advantage of the SPU’s and do things the XBOX 360 can’t, but I don’t think the console is worth buying based on this speculation (for some it will be though, we'll have to wait and see how these games turn out).

Graphics: The XBOX 360 is a clear winner. The GPU is more powerful. It has more powerful fillrate, and far more pixel and vertex processing horsepower. Part of the reason is their choice of memory, and architecture of pixel and vertex procesing. I can’t get into details but the same vertex shader will run much slower on the PS3 than the XBOX 360. The 360 also has a clever new way rendering high definition anti aliased back buffers. To accomplish the same effect on PS3 is prohibitively expensive. For this reason I think many games will have no choice but to run in non-HD resolutions on the PS3 version, use a lower quality anti aliasing technique, or do back buffer upscaling. The end result in all cases is going to be noticeably worse image quality.

Game Selection: The XBOX 360 has a huge head start here. 1 year is an eternity in gaming. Almost all multi-platform developers have made the XBOX 360 their primary platform due to timing of release-to-market, this means the games will look and perform better on the 360. The PS3 versions will be ports of the 360 versions. (The opposite was true for XBOX 1 vs. PS2). The XBOX 360 is also far faster to develop for due to better development tools (massively popular Visual Studio .NET vs. proprietary, buggy PS3 compiler and debugger), better documentation, and easier architecture (3 general purpose CPU’s vs. 8 specialized processors that require DMA). Timing has also caused all next-gen middleware developers to make XBOX 360 their primary platform, and they will ‘add ps3 support’ as needed. This support will probably be inferior to the XBOX 360’s due to manpower and more importantly, demand. It’s this catch-22 now that will continue to drive the 360 forward and hold PS3 back.

The other obvious point here is that right now the Xbox360 already has a very impressive line-up of titles on store shelves; the ps3 just launched, and has virtually nothing of interest. Also, many 360 games are already discounted ($25 for Fight Night 3 at CircuitCity). PS3 games are all full price since it just launched.

Live: Microsoft’s online support with XBOX1 was phenomenal. They built in-house experience, user base, facilities, $$ commitment from executive level (since it proved successful), and most importantly, feedback from 100,000s of XBOX Live subscribers. Playstation 2’s online support sucked. They are now playing catch-up, trying to emulate Xbox’s model. But they had their hands tied just trying to make the PS3 work, it was incredibly ambitious (blu-ray etc.). I haven’t seen it yet, but I seriously doubt the quality will be anywhere to the level of XBOX 360.

HD Content: The PS3 comes with one built in (blu-ray). The XBOX 360 offers HD-DVD as an add-on for $200. You probably don’t care about HD-DVD right now. But you will soon (The quality between DVD and HD is comparable to VHS vs DVD, if you have the right TV) so I suggest paying attention to the war that’s begun. There are two formats: HD-DVD and BLU-RAY. Basically if you rent a BLU-RAY DVD from Bockbuster, it won’t play in your XBOX 360 HD-DVD, and vice versa with the PS3. The implications of this format war would require another article on its own. But as far as the consoles are concerned, the XBOX 360 wins because the DVD player is a separate unit. Playing movies is very taxing on the DVD reader, and let’s face it. In 3 years when your PS3 DVD drive goes out due to playing lots of movies (PS2 was notoriously bad about this) you will have to go buy another PS3. With the 360, you’ll just chuck your HD-DVD player, and go buy another one at the store. In 3 years standalone units wlil probably only cost about $99-150. Another point for the XBOX 360, is that I don’t know who will win the format-war, so I would rather wait with purchase of a HD player. The PS3 doesn’t give you this option.

PS3 controversy: Shootings, Wallmart fights, $15,000 Ebay sales etc. My advice is ignore it. It will pass soon.

Emarian · 06-24-2007, 05:12 PM

That guy is a genius.

Shooting Palanx · 06-26-2007, 04:13 AM

360 is much more preferable for gameplay, PS3 only has the advantage-wise of the perks it has.

Emarian · 06-26-2007, 04:44 AM

All the consoles are about gaming, so I guess the 360 pwns PS3.

Apachai · 06-26-2007, 10:17 AM

lol yea

Emarian · 06-26-2007, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gamefreak

lol yea

I mean seriously, you get what you pay for. A blu-ray player can be 1,000$, and the PS3 has one, and it's 600$. There has to be something wrong with the other stuff then to sell a blu-ray player so cheap. That's probably the highest expense of the PS3, with very little going to other parts of it.

Jorgi · 08-07-2007, 02:58 PM

Dude, everbody can say stuff like that easy and make it sound professional.
I bet there are tons of PS3 fan professional articles that tells PS3 is best.
What we know for sure is:

PS3 has: Bluetooth, HDMI, HD dvd player, wifi and full surround.
I don't know the good things about 360.

The rest about 360 bugging and PS3 overheating blabla is rumors, like fanboys produce.

I have NO idea about other stuff, but i know my favourite games comes for PS3, it has great power and graphics. And with that said i dont really care about the rest.

Apachai · 08-07-2007, 04:11 PM

dude i never said i made it SOUND proffessional.... that is from someone who works with both consoles day in day out as a bussiness, he is employed at one of the leading games design companies.

and ps3 has blu-ray player.... i would like to see you try to play a hd-dvd on it.. bc it wont play it

blu-ray takes ages to load also, around 10x longer than hd-dvd

360 has wifi and full surround sound

get your facts right dude ffs

Jorgi · 08-07-2007, 09:38 PM

I know it has blu ray and it won't play normal hd, i just call it that cus it is same quality (hd image), btw why does blu ray take ages to load when it takes 3 sec to load a game to the main screen on my ps3? ( if i skip the advertising)
I think that is a 360 fanboy made rumor.

360 doesnt have wifi, you can buy a usb wifi wich is expensive.

Isn't it annoying to buy all the addons, and when you bought them all and think you have the best, 360 lite comes with HDMI wich is standard.
Im happy i don't have to buy all this stuff, my ps3 has all built in.

360 suports 5 surround
ps3 suport 7 surround

so my facts are right.

Btw i found this about processors:

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.

PS3 and 360 battle it out in the specs department: what in the world do they mean?? | Games | Guardian Unlimited

Btw one thing i can admit about 360 is that it has more memory, but its not much and you won't see the big difference really.

About the graphics we really don't know yet it is up to the developers what they can show up with without the system crashing or something, time will see.

Apachai · 08-07-2007, 10:01 PM

"360 fanboy made rumour"

lool just to let you know im not a xbox 360 fanboy, never have been never will be... i am a fan of gaming, and i am a neutral.

and it is proven that blu-ray takes a lot longer than hd-dvd to load. it is scientific fact! it was one of the main critisms of blu-ray, except the high price. amoung the media, NOT fanboys