Mass Effect, probably one of the most vast games to be released for '07, will fit on a DVD9. And it has great graphics.
Me
Quite agree that its not going to be an issue for games that are due to be released within the next 12 months, however as you say it could start to be an issue by mid 2008, a date not that far away in development terms. Certainly its not beyond imagination that games currently in development could face this issue, another thread in here about MGS4 discussed exactly the same thing.Duċk;2620988
I don't think people are saying that all they need to be happy with a game are nice graphics (or all PS3 owners would be swooning over Genji - very nice to look at, but pants to play - fixed camera nastiness). Players of all systems want solid gameplay to match the visuals, but that said good visuals can and do aid the gameplay with some genres, aiming and placing a shot in a FPS is far easier if the target can actually be seen, rather than blending into the background; racing games are always far more enjoyable to play if you can actually see the corner rather than it popping into existance. Extreme examples I know, but they do serve to illustrate the point.
Since I own a Wii and only a Wii, does that make me a more objective judge in all of this?
The Xbox 360 is the better system, IMO, and the public seem to be voting in agreement with their wallets. In fact, in several months' time the question posed by this thread may become moot -- many would-be PS3 owners have been sitting on their hands waiting for their favorite exclusive to come out (including GTP members waiting for GT5), and if Ace Combat and Devil May Cry are any indication, Sony may lose enough exclusives to lose much of its fanbase, as those would-be owners decide to buy the 360 with its easier-to-swallow price.
Even if that doesn't turn out to be true, those would-be owners are still putting Sony between a rock and a hard place. Game developers look at console sales when deciding whether or not to release for a system, but consumers look at game releases when deciding whether or not to buy a console. If consumers don't buy enough consoles (and the PS3 isn't doing particularly well), game developers will avoid the platform (or at least exclusivity deals), which will in turn cause consumers to avoid the console, causing more game developers to avoid the platform.
I'm afraid the PS3's situation may already be snowballing into this, and it won't have the low price that helped the GameCube maintain a faint pulse throughout its similarly-plagued run.
But enough about sales and public opinion. Here's my own:
From what I understand, the PS3's Cell processor, despite its multiple cores, collectively runs at 3.2Ghz (as listed at Wikipedia). If this is true, the hardware capabilities of both systems are roughly the same, and the whole "superior hardware" argument can be thrown out as far as I'm concerned. This is certainly supported by the games that have appeared for each system thus far, which all look about the same. PS3 developers have yet to pull the rabbit out of the hat and produce anything that indicates a huge reserve of power.
If I think the hardware is comparable, why do I think the 360 is better? Good question. Well, first of all, although the 360 had its own hiccups early on, I've never seen a game console bog down and freeze as often as the PS3 does at my local EB. It isn't even turned on half the time, because there's almost no point in bothering -- playing MotorStorm at a slow-motion 10 frames per second or less isn't fun for anyone. I know the problem is being caused by overheating, but the 360 (apart from the first few weeks) and Wii don't seem to be having any problems in their enclosed cases, and the old PS2 they used to have never failed, to my knowledge, despite living in a case that was even worse-ventilated than the PS3's.
Then there's the quality gap between the excellent Xbox Live and the PS3's online system, which from what I've heard is goofy, at best. Speaking of quality, although I love my PS2 and a friend of my loved his PSP, they're not what I'd call "well-built," particularly the controllers and the PSP's buttons/stick/d-pad. Even beyond the cheap controllers, my PS2 reminds me of something like an old Alfa Romeo -- absolutely wonderful, when it's working. Sometimes it'll DRE a basic PS2 CD. Sometimes it'll load GT4's dual-layer DVD instantly. I don't understand it. This uncertainty combined with the brand-new technologies in the PS3 have me worried.
Maybe it's just because of their daunting size, but the Xboxes have seemed much more durable than any Sony product, and the only Xbox/360 controllers my friends have ever had problems with were third-party ones, which always fail the same night that you buy them.
But most important (as it seems to be with everyone's opinion of the PS3) is value. I don't even need to say anything other than "$600 USD." Just...no. I didn't even want to spend the dough a 360 commands. I just use my friends' whenever I'm hanging out with them.
So, to sum up, I think the 360 is superior because the PS3...
- is overpriced,
- doesn't have much more potential (if any more) than the 360,
- appears to be too prone to overheat and screw up,
- is overpriced,
- has a yet-unproven and reportedly goofy online system,
- uses relatively untested technologies, including a revolutionary processor and new-format disc drive, yet was built by Sony, and
- is overpriced.
...and the 360...
- is decently priced,
- doesn't have much less potential (if any less) than the PS3,
- appears to be about as prone to screw up as any Microsoft product (which, if I'm honest, really isn't THAT often)
- has a proven and well-fleshed-out online system,
- uses more-dependable technologies and has proven to be acceptably durable, but most importantly,
- has a great game library that interests me more than the PS3's, and it's only getting better.
Honestly, if the 60GB PS3 retailed at, say, $300, I think the public would be going wild over it like they did on launch day, but because they want it, and not because they want to turn around and make a huge profit on eBay. Its price is its biggest flaw. It just happens to have other, smaller flaws that make the price seem that much worse.
I've played a chronically overheating PS3. I even mentioned this in my original post. No, I don't own one, nor do any of my friends own one, but the PS3 kiosk at my mall's EB (which lives in the same sort of stuffy plastic case as the Wii kiosk and 360 kiosk), as I already said, barely ever works. It's so troublesome that the employees there are sick of dealing with it.
If I was a 360 fanboy, I'd own one. I don't, and very likely never will.
I can certainly say that I've seen a lot worse than just overheating and slow-down from 360's, as I said in my previous post, I know a 360 owner who is now on his third console. All down to the same issue, the machine is kept in a well ventilated location, yet on two occasions when switched on the unit has failed (ring of death - all lights on red). Contact MS and while they are happy to replace the unit, they are generally quite reluctant to discuss the nature of the problem.
I would certainly not accuse you of being a 360 fanboy, I sure however that you would acknowledge you are hardly the biggest fan of Sony.
As a PS3 owner (and quite happy to admit that) I don't personally think that Sony has tried too hard with the PS3 at all; I also find it very unlikely that the PS3 will become the Jaguar of our times.
Wolfe
A problem with that analogy:Have you played a PS3 that wasn't in a plastic box, and then felt the air coming out of it? Said air is ridiculously HOT. If you have that air being forced out of the system, only to come back in because the PS3 is buried in a coffin, it is no fault of the console. It isn't liquid cooled, and that would be the only real way that the problem would be avoidable.Meanwhile, I have seen 360 systems sitting in Wal Mart in relatively open air (comparitively speaking) that are just sitting there, dead, due to overheating. I understand where you are coming from, but using the "it didn't happen to me, nor did I see it happening, so it doesn't occur" excuse is an unacceptable excuse. My PS1 is from launch day. It still works. However, I can't say they all do, and I'm sure my Playstation being one of the last launch day models still left is closer to the truth.
Scaff
Which is my exact point. Wolfe singled this out as a problem common among PS3's and implied it was a minor issue with the 360. Something that quite simply is not true, modern AV equipment and consoles (particularly those fitted with a hard drive) are very sensitive to ventilation and cooling. Simply put its a factor that must be taken into account when picking a location for the unit. To MS's credit they have taken it on the chin and replaced units under warranty for owners (and done so quickly), and to Sony's credit they have put in place temp sensors in the PS3 to pick up temperature increases and put the machine in warning mode to help avoid overheating.
Source - http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/10/04/ps3_heat_claim/
Source - http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/1651/The-Red-Ring-of-Death/p1/
That's the entire point, of course its possible to do on the Xbox and 360, but you need to hack the damn things to do it. Let me ask this, do the Xbox or 360 have a standard option that allows you to set up drive partitions for an alternative OS? Does the Xbox or 360 have a standard option to install an alternative OS? I believe that no is the answer to both of these, yet Sony seem quite happy for people to do as much, providing the tools to do so as this screen shot from Pako's thread shows.
Scaff
In practice, the sentiment is usually right, and you are quite correct in asking that question. Outside of a rather small portion of PS3s from the original Japan/U.S. launch date, however, the PS3 is turning out to be generally more reliable than the 360 was (and in some very rare cases, still is). Which, don't get me wrong, is something I wasn't actually expecting. Its actualy quite a good thing, because I'm sure it would take quite a few class-action lawsuits to get Sony to do something about it, as was the case with the PS2.
