The Sony PS3 thread (apparently *still* obnoxious!)

[Kemper_Boyd]

well, yes, that's kinda the point; some reviewers are saying that basically ps3 feels unfinished, and I reckon that's probably partly true.

The more I hear the more I'm *glad* that we're not getting it until March, when hopefully all these issues will have been addressed. And I think they were crazy to launch this side of Christmas *anywhere*, tbh...

Which is why no one in Europe should be pitching a fit. Come the spring
it will almost certainly have fewer of these gremlins, is quite likely to have
a new Cell chip and so be a bit cooler and quieter, and I do think they will
drop the price a little (but won't announce it until they are sure they'll
deliver). There might even be some decent games by then.

It's a mugs game being the first adopters of anything.

[Yak]

Yeah, no fit-piching from me; I'll be happy to get the ps3 when the ps3 is ready for me . In the meanwhile I'll be enjoying xmas with my wii .

[benedictw]

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/ps3.ars/3

Fookin hell thats a painful read.

More doom and gloom from Joystiq.

Sony missed the 400,000 goal for US launch; many analysts predicted they only reached half that amount. To add insult to injury, some analysts expect Sony to only make roughly 10% of the original 4 million promised by year's end. Ouch!

Plus from the NY times:

Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.

[limb_clock]

Just Heard on KFI Tech Guy, With Leo LaPorte, that some guy had to wait for 34 hours before he could update his PS3 firmware, which also took an hour to do. And he said that if you don't have an internet, or can't update the firmware, the basically, you just can't use the console for anything.

It's rather sad really.

[starshipcommand]

This is the company that took a couple of years to realise that trying to sell MP3 players that couldn't play MP3s was a bad idea

[Guru-Meditation]

That applies to the PS3 too, most of the issues will probably be resolved before it even launches in Europe.

So ultimatly Europe should be thankful it's not getting the PS3 until next year?

[Yak]

I think that's about the long and the short of it, yeah .

[Hajile]

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/ps3.ars/3

Fookin hell thats a painful read.

More doom and gloom from Joystiq.

Sony missed the 400,000 goal for US launch; many analysts predicted they only reached half that amount. To add insult to injury, some analysts expect Sony to only make roughly 10% of the original 4 million promised by year's end. Ouch!

Plus from the NY times:

Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.

Read that. A bit downheartening, yes, but As I won't start caring about the machine until long after all these teething troubles are sorted out, I don't care. The 360s exploding rumours were of a bit more interest, but that's only because explosions are cool.

[WARNING - RANT AHEAD]

It did raise an important question in me, and it's not one that the article addressed - Why are none of these new consoles just about playing proper console games? None of them are. The 360 has gone insane with its pretentions of being a PC and with the online rubbish, to the extent that downloading updates can break the machine, the PS3 seems to be more concerned with being a multimedia booty bag than a games machine, and its launch lineup reflects that, and the Wii controller has given us more accusations of supposed 'user error' in game reviews (Wii fans I'm looking at you) than any other controller ever built, and its exclusive titles are nothing more than a series of Hypersports-style subgame collections.

I personally think that putting consoles online is the single biggest mistake ever made. Console games you need to download patches for, PC game style, anyone? Bah. Consoles are for playing games on, and nothing else. No web browsing, no software downloads, no bloody pissing weather channels.

The appeal of consoles used to be that you could plug a game in, fire it up and then play, and you'd get a complete experience, not to spent two hours mucking about with settings and install options beforehand, not to register online for free bollocks you don't want anyway, not to put something on your console that will make it stop working and no controllers you have to be taught how to use. How come everyone seems to have lost sight of that?

Please, no more of this 'trying to be more than just a games machine' rubbish. And give us some proper console style games - no more of your endless torrent of first person shooters and RTS games on 360. More of the big name franchises we expected to be there waiting for us at the launch of the PS3. And give us some proper Wii exclusives that aren't just designed to hold your interest for five minutes or less.

If they don't do that, then I'll be more than happy to stick with my consoles of previous generations, and in 18 months, while everyone else is waiting for their update to Gears of War 2 to download that fixes all the bugs the game was released with or calibrating their motion sensing controller, I'll be on PS1 playing Chrono Cross, or my Gamecube enjoying Pikmin.

Plug in and play, people, and join me in the gaming revolution.

I want my consoles back.

[teamonkey]

I want my consoles back.

Give it a few months and there'll be plenty of old ones on eBay.

[Absolute_Zero]

The 360 has gone insane with its pretentions of being a PC and with the online rubbish, to the extent that downloading updates can break the machine

Eh? What pretensions are you thinking of? The PS3 is the console that planned to ship with Linux... will allow other operating systems.

I've yet to come across many (if any) 360 users complaining about the online "rubbish."

[Darkflame]

Hajile~ Xbox Live rules and certainly in no way takes away from the consoles.
And the Wii's exclusives certainly arnt just mini games.
(Zelda, Metroid, Mario, to name the obvious)

and no controllers you have to be taught how to use

So you dont like any console made in the last 2 decades then?

[disciple]

PS3 vs Xbox360 from a developer point of view
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-348-1.htm

May be highly biased, although some of the info on the GPU and CPU comparisons are interesting, as are the "buggy" dev tools.

Cheers

Bubba

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.

[Anders]

The 360 has gone insane with its pretentions of being a PC and with the online rubbish...

Some of the "online rubbish" (XBLA, multiplayer) is the best thing about the machine.

[Darkflame]

PS3 vs Xbox360 from a developer point of view
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-348-1.htm

May be highly biased, although some of the info on the GPU and CPU comparisons are interesting, as are the "buggy" dev tools.

Cheers

Bubba

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.

Hating sony with all my heart, id like to believe that.
But when someone says "I cant go into details" a few times, warning lights flash.

[ChunkyMonkey]

I though that was quite interesting, although this bit kind of lowers the credibility:

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.