Hi all,
I recently came into a little bit of money at the casino and decided that i’d buy a new gaming console. I searched the internet and could only find Fanboy rants. I would like to know about how reliable online gaming is on both consoles. If both are wireless capable. lets compare the Elite to the 80G. I don’t need to know about exclusives games for the system.
Thanks.
I’ll start by saying I owned a 360, and moved on to a PS3, for reasons I’ll list at the bottom.
**I would like to know about how reliable online gaming is on both consoles.
**
The 360 has a much better online experience, which NOUNE will, I’m sure, go into detail about. However, it’s free on the PS3, versus ~$40 on the 360.
**If both are wireless capable.
**
Capable? Yes. Out of the box? No. Only the PS3 has built-in WiFi. It’ll cost you $50-80 (depending on your willingness to experiment with modding a router) for a 360.
I don’t need to know about exclusives games for the system.
Really? Exclusives are, in my opinion, a very important part of the equation that only you can decide on.
My main reasons for switching to a PS3:
Bluray. This was huge for me. I love movies, and I have a 47" screen to watch them on. I can also take advantage of the full 7.1 HD soundtracks that only bluray offers (“only” meaning “let’s not talk about HDDVD”).
**Free online play. **I’m not a big online player. But on the very rare occasion, I don’t mind a slightly inferior experience. And I can’t tell the difference, because I was never willing to spend the money to go online with a 360.
**Media streaming. ** Yes, the 360 does a pretty good job. But the PS3 is an absolute workhorse in this department. And now the 360 can’t even boast about Netflix streaming, which PS3 just got last week.
Did I mention bluray? It’s amazing.
Some other differences:
Controller. I will admit that I miss the 360 controller. It has a little more heft to it, and fits my hands better. Sony is clearly focused on an asian market when they design their hardware peripherals.
**
XBLE v. PSN.** Not just online gaming. Both have somewhat different games on sale as well. It’s also kind of a toss-up, but I’d casually say that lately they’ve been doing a better job. I think there was more free DLC for a recent game that Sony offered that MS didn’t. Something to look into.
Just one thing to add to Munch’s reply. I have both consoles, and although it’s been a few months since I played (due to school demands), IIRC, the PS3 has fewer games than the 360, which might be important to you. I’m not a big fan of online gaming; I play games for the story and the action, so I move through titles pretty quickly. Sometimes it was frustrating to rent a PS3 game only to beat it 2 days later and have nothing else I was interested in playing. So if you go through games as quickly as I do, the 360 might be the best bet.
On the other hand, the PS3 does use Bluray, which has a much larger storage capacity than HD-DVD. That means that there could be some games that the 360 just won’t be able to handle due to sheer complexity. I don’t think we’ve hit that wall yet, but given that the console’s lifespan is another two years at least, I can see 360 having to a). use two discs for certain games or b). just not offer certain titles.
the 360 doesn’t use HDDVD - that was a separate peripheral you had to buy. The regular 360 works off of regular DVD media.
X-Box 360 owners are literate and Playstation 3 owners eat babies. Do you want to be a baby eater?
I kid, I kid. The only reason I have a 360 is because it was a damn sight cheaper than the Playstation when I bought it for Christmas of 2008. I have been wholly satisfied with my purchase and have experienced no problems with my hardware or my software. If you don’t have a high definition television then some of the in game text might be difficult for you to read. Fallout 3 improved by a large margin once we got the HDTV.
If you don’t already have a Blue-Ray player I might go with the PS3 just because.
Odesio
What kind of games do you like?
Also, Xbox Live is sweet and completely worth 50 bucks a year.
There. Your predictable reply from me.
The 360 is cheaper but the PS3 has more functionality out of the box. Conversely if online play is more important to you Live is more reliable but costs roughly $50 a year where PSN is free. Personally I don’t play online much but I own SF4 and UFC for the PS3 for precisely this reason. I don’t take my rankings all that seriously but I like jumping on occasionally to be reminded that I’m not as good as I think I am. 
The 360 has more games with a very broad base of different genres, but the PS3 does has some must have exclusives. I bought a PS3 mostly for MGS4 for example and the R&C games and Demon Souls look very tempting.
The PS3 is also a Blu-Ray player which may be important to you if you have a high end HDTV.
Also about the Netflix streaming… If you have a Netflix account it’s free on PSN but requires the $50 gold account on Live. I bought my 360 back in 2007 and my PS3 over a year ago so it wasn’t a consideration for me, but if I were looking at the two systems now it definitely would be.
Ultimately I would recommend looking at a list of exclusives for each system and see what intrigues you more. Most big titles are multi console these days but there are still exclusives that can make a difference. MGS, Halo, Mass Effect, R&C, God of War, Gears of War, Killzone, Crackdown etc… are all big, popular titles that only saw, or will see, a release on one console or another.
Ignorance fought. Thanks!
As someone who has only a casual interest in console games, I own and am happy with the PS3. The Blu-Ray player was the tipping point for me.
If I were shopping for a system now, I’d probably took a good look at the upcoming motion controllers both consoles have announced. I don’t own a Wii, but playing games with the Wiimote is really fun, and now both the PS3 and the XBox are chasing the Wii’s popularity with motion controllers. It seems that Microsoft’s technology is much more aggressive, but will it deliver?
The PS3 tends to have slightly worse conversions of games, if they come out for the same platform. Brutal Legend, Fallout 3, Bayonetta, Ghostbusters, pretty much anything I’ve watched, tends to show this.
The PS3 has delays in downloadable content, six to eight months after the X-Box.
And personally, I can get a Blu-Ray player for $80, and am very happy with it, especially as I don’t like using my game system to watch movies.
That said, go with whatever feels good to you. There are very few system exclusives to the PS3 anymore, thanks to mismanagement at Sony, so it’s pretty much you’ll be able to get anything for either system. Except God of War 3 and Gran Turismo 5. (And, contrawise, Forza 3 is only on X-Box.)
The real question is, what do your friends have?
Right here. If you want to play online with friends, you have to have the same platform.
Can people play Madden online cross-system? I mean, can someone on an Xbox 360 play a PS3 owner online? What about with a PC?
Oh, and what games do you like to play?
Now, I will say the X-Box has a better online experience, but you do have to pay for it. And no, it’s not wireless, but instead of buying the godawfully expensive adapter, I picked up a Wireless Bridge for $70 a few years back. Works with anything. Was very handy when my DSL went down, I wired it into my PC and picked up wifi from my neighbor three houses down for a few days.
(yes, I got permission first.)
No, you can not play games cross-platfom. Generally, period, two words, im-possible. It may be true that there are one or two exceptions to this, but I don’t know them.
No.
Happy 360 owner here. Well, okay, not completely happy, but it’s no fault of the system. It’s been working fine since day one (Okay, so “day one” is like, January 3rd 2009). Live has been a good friend to me, though I pay for it only irregularly, the downloadable content has been very nice.
My only complaint, really, is that there’s just not enough variety in titles on the 360. We’ve got LOTS! LOTS of FPS games! And uh… 3rd person shooter games! And uhm…some racing games… and…yeah. The problem is that the PS3 has mostly the same games. And most of the ones it has that aren’t shared with the 360 are still in the same genres of games I’m not really that excited about. The only game that I really, really want to play on the PS3 is Valkyria Chronicles, and I’m sad to say I’m not buying a $300 game system for it.
Bluray doesn’t even enter into my picture. I only got an HDTV a couple months back. (Note: Whoever said that text on the 360 may be hard to read on an SDTV is spot on. There were a few games that were literally unplayable for me in SD because I couldn’t read the onscreen text. And that was on a 32" TV, so it’s not as if I was playing it on some tiny little thing. Not sure if the PS3 has this problem, though I wouldn’t be surprised.)
So I guess my suggestions, really are:
A) Make sure the console has games you want to play. This is not a guarantee
B) Do as suggested, and buy what your friends have if you want to play with them.
I’d also like to thank all my fellow PS3 fans who haven’t brought up the overrrated Red Ring of Death on the 360.
Online gaming on my PS3 has been pretty rock solid - I have a wireless-G router about 30 ft away, through a wall with the kitchen in between, so one would expect some interference.
I primarily play Burnout Paradise, Battlefield 1943, and GTA IV online, and I’ve had few issues in the 2.5 years I’ve owned it.
I agree with the others that you should go with the console that has games you want to play - but all things being equal, if there aren’t any exclusives that grab your eye, I would highly recommend the PS3, especially since it has the Blu-Ray player, and now has Netflix streaming. Netflix, by the way, works well over wi-fi, for me at least - certainly better than on my HTPC. If you are a Netflix subscriber, you may want to check out the thread I started for some other folks’ impressions of this new-to-PS3 feature.
These threads come around a lot. I feel that it comes down to a few basic things when deciding between the two platforms.
How do you like the controller?
Go to the store try it out. I have a PS3 partly because I prefer the feel of the controller. It just fits my hand perfectly.
What do your friends have?
This is important for online play. But, it is also nice to have friends you can trade games with.
What exclusives do you prefer?
This is becoming less important. But, each console still does have exclusives. I enjoyed Little Big Planet and MLB 09. I don’t care that much about Metal Gear Solid, the game play is super fun but damn enough with the cut scenes. I don’t care much for the Halo series of games. Other than that, I don’t have any xBox exclusive experience.
Ah, thanks. Too bad, by the way.
And that is different how from PSN, which allows the gamer to buy movies, tv shows, games, music videos, etc.?