xbox vs ps3

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by DementedReality

thanks for all the help.

we are going to get the xbox that is on sale. i know its only 4mb, but it will last him the 2 years or so until a new platform comes out and his friends have it.

the boy doesnt want to spend extra on PS3 and it doesnt seem any legit reason to justify otherwise.

You should buy Skyrim and play it all the time, that would be hilarious.

[OutOfTheCube]

Originally Posted by DementedReality

the boy doesnt want to spend extra on PS3 and it doesnt seem any legit reason to justify otherwise.

Aside from... better hardware, more games, free online, plays blu-rays...?

[3 Justin 3]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

Aside from... better hardware, more games, free online, plays blu-rays...?

Debatable.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

Aside from... better hardware, more games, free online, plays blu-rays...?

I personally prefer the PS3, but when I bought my SNES when I was a youngster I wasn't too worried about performance specs (like Blast Processing!). I went with what had the games I wanted and what my friends had.

[Hack&Lube]

My personal opinion is that getting into the console debate is pointless. The reality is that both consoles are ancient technology and the graphics are not great on either. Playing on a controller for a long time will be uncomfortable nomatter which you prefer. I own two PS3s but one was a dumpster dive and the other was $65 broken on Kijiji and fixable. I would never pay full price for a modern console.

However, the important thing here is this: you made the right choice here in choosing the one that his friends have.

Growing up, it was more important to have the ones that your friends have to fit in socially and also to be able to share stories and to share games with one another than to have the "best" system.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Growing up, it was more important to have the ones that your friends have to fit in socially and also to be able to share stories and to share games with one another than to have the "best" system.

Funny after your critique of the iPad.

Were you always the Android kid?

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Funny after your critique of the iPad.

Were you always the Android kid?

If by "Android" you meant "Atari 2600" when everybody was saying how the latest 16 or 32-bit consoles were the newest and most awesome things then yes.

Even as a kid, I felt that the perpetual march of progress in technology made people constantly obsessed with the newest things and that it was a shame that the good qualities of our older technologies or games or music or TV shows or anything were forgotten.

I wasn't the kid that didn't fit in, but there definitely were times where friends would talk about videogames and I would have no idea what they were talking about and I wouldn't fit into the conversation because I wasn't playing the latest and greatest stuff and I had absolutely no interest in it. But that's just me.

However, regarding the original thread, I think it would be good for an 11-year old to have the console that most of his friends have so they can share stories and games and play online together etc.

[Rhettzky]

PS3 also plays 3D movies as well.

[Jimdon]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

Aside from... better hardware, more games, free online, plays blu-rays...?

The online is free because it sucks, you can't even talk to your friend if he's not playing the same game as you or host multiple players in the same party unless they are all playing the same game together at the same time.

Also your 'better hardware' argument is a farce, Xbox has better allocated memory which makes any advantage the PS3 may have null when your whole game runs out of memory and comes to a grinding slowdown, ala Skyrim.

The PlayStation 3 is unfortunate in that it's the platform with the most oppressive RAM issues (in addition to the split-pool set-up of the memory, the OS has a larger footprint than its 360 equivalent) so it makes sense that it has the most noticeable issues. It doesn't sound like something that can be easily fixed, especially given the PS3's limitations in this regard. Which is a pain.

Not to mention that if you buy the Xbox with the bigger hard drive you can burn your games directly to your drive which makes loading time significantly better and practically eliminates freezing/crashing.

What it really comes down to is what games you want to play, anyone spending more $$$ for a PS3 hoping to get the 'better' of the two systems is going to be disappointed, unless you really need a blu-ray player.

[OutOfTheCube]

The Xbox 360 has held the PS3 back, essentially. Most exclusive games developed specifically for PS3 are unmatched by anything else on the console market. Uncharted series, Killzone series, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, Metal Gear Solid 4... all visually leaps and bounds ahead of anything on 360. It isn't the PS3's fault that devs have to make games to work on a weaker platform first.

[Jimdon]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

The Xbox 360 has held the PS3 back, essentially. Most exclusive games developed specifically for PS3 are unmatched by anything else on the console market. Uncharted series, Killzone series, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, Metal Gear Solid 4... all visually leaps and bounds ahead of anything on 360. It isn't the PS3's fault that devs have to make games to work on a weaker platform first.

This is the reason for that:

The PS3 has a divided memory pool. The Xbox 360 has a unified memory pool: 512 megs of RAM usable as system memory or graphics memory. The PS3 has a divided memory pool: 256 megs for system, 256 for graphics. It’s the same total amount of memory, but not as flexible for a developer to make use of.

So basically if a developer wants to make a game that will run on PC, XBOX and PS3 it has to go off of the PS3's graphics memory specs, or make large fundamental changes in the game just for the sake of PS3 users. This is also why Skyrim runs fine on PC and Xbox, but crappy on a PS3 ( They may have patched this already).

As far as I can tell the reason PS3 only titles look better than cross-platform titles is because the developers don't want to waste the time and money tweaking the game for the PS3's picky memory allocation.

[Lt.Spears]

Everyone i know uses an Xbox, plus ive been using once since 2005 when they first came out. Xbox all the way.

[Rhettzky]

Originally Posted by Jimdon

So basically if a developer wants to make a game that will run on PC, XBOX and PS3 it has to go off of the PS3's graphics memory specs, or make large fundamental changes in the game just for the sake of PS3 users. This is also why Skyrim runs fine on PC and Xbox, but crappy on a PS3 (They may have patched this already).

The PS3 version of skyrim runs fine. I even remember reading an article when Skyrim released that had a split screen video comparing the two systems and they were almost identical with some claiming superior texturing on the PS3 version.

Either way, I own both systems and they are both great. I do use the PS3 more but it's the system all my friends have and I use it for blurays and 3D movies.

[silentsim]

Originally Posted by Rhettzky

The PS3 version of skyrim runs fine. I even remember reading an article when Skyrim released that had a split screen video comparing the two systems and they were almost identical with some claiming superior texturing on the PS3 version.

Either way, I own both systems and they are both great. I do use the PS3 more but it's the system all my friends have and I use it for blurays and 3D movies.

Skyrim PS3 had ALOT of issues till the recent patch (1.4 i believe?)

[Rhettzky]

Originally Posted by silentsim

Skyrim PS3 had ALOT of issues till the recent patch (1.4 i believe?)

Bethesda games in general have alot of issues. The XBOX version had a number of issues as well. In fact, I believe the first three patches were for all systems. I really wish they would spend more time de-bugging their games.

[silentsim]

Originally Posted by Rhettzky

Bethesda games in general have alot of issues. The XBOX version had a number of issues as well. In fact, I believe the first three patches were for all systems. I really wish they would spend more time de-bugging their games.

I am not arguing that, just pointing out that due to being developed on one system, porting it to PS3 led to a lot of issues. Many were complaining the game was unplayable after the save file hit a specific size. This issue did not plague the xbox since it was developed on that.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/a...im-issues.aspx

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...m-ps3-problems

etc

For the record, I have both a PS3 and Xbox. I prefer PS3 for exclusives since Uncharted is my favourite series of modern day systems.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

The Xbox 360 has held the PS3 back, essentially. Most exclusive games developed specifically for PS3 are unmatched by anything else on the console market. Uncharted series, Killzone series, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, Metal Gear Solid 4... all visually leaps and bounds ahead of anything on 360. It isn't the PS3's fault that devs have to make games to work on a weaker platform first.

Jimdon's post said it all. It's actually the exact opposite reason: the PS3 is holding the Xbox 360 back because of memory allocation.

[undercoverbrother]

the PS3 is more of an enterainment system, not just gaming, way more bang for you buck.

[Hack&Lube]

All this arguing about vram is pointless. They are both using 10 year old technology and regardless of how your architecture is designed, having only 256MB and 512MB of VRAM respectively will leave you with low resolution and compressed textures and and the inability to run high resolutions (most games up upscaled 720p or lower) or implement any kind of anti-aliasing at all except for lazy blur filters.

Regardingly the PS3 specifically, while the Cell architecture is unique and very powerful for number crunching and multi-threading certain things, it is not a graphics chip. The RSX chip is made by Nvidia based on the R47 and is close to an Nvidia 7800 which is an incredibly weak graphics solution by today's standards. The Xenos in the XBox 360 is even slower than an ATI x1900 (R580) but it has the benefit of a larger pool of VRAM to work with. Both are slow and a lot of development time and dollars is spent trying to squeeze every last drop of performance out of these ancient chips and to optimize. Money that could be spent on more content or better games.

I am baffled that people think Uncharted is the benchmark for good graphics and the textures are a blurry mess compared to the photo-realistic textures and high resolutions you can get with a proper amount of VRAM.

You buy a console for convenience, for multiplaying on the couch, and for fun. You don't buy one if graphics is what you are concerned about or want to argue about.

That said, there are major performance considerations you would want to make if there are specific games that you want to play. Skyrim definetely has major slowdowns that creep into the game as you progress and Mass Effect 3 is considerably slower in framerate on the PS3. Bad and choppy framerate does have a big negative influence on gaming.

[DementedReality]

thanks again everyone ... i have no idea what all the tech talk is about, but we ended up with the Xbox and the boy is quite happy.

life is a good when you are 11, i will try and let him live a less complicated life as long as possible. now cant wait until he is old enough to play some FPS games ;-)