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E3 PlayStation (Games) XBox (Games)

PS3 vs. Xbox 360 115

Posted by Zonk from the content-vs.-form dept.
The Guardian Gamesblog has a point by point breakdown of the Xbox 360 and PS3 spec sheets, comparing and contrasting the two consoles based on what we know about them so far. In the end, they come to the rational conclusion that for gamers what will end up deciding the battle is the gameplay. From the article: "We've pretty well reached the point of complexity with dual analogue sticks, analogue triggers and four face buttons, so while you can expect to see more content in terms of things happening, not much originality was on display. Gameplay advances will come from peripherals and Sony really showed that off with their kooky EyeToy games. Nothing wrong with controlling two bondage-clad Japanese spy chicks via videoconfering in my mind :)"
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PS3 vs. Xbox 360 More

PS3 vs. Xbox 360

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  • Too much information (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Nothing wrong with controlling two bondage-clad Japanese spy chicks via videoconfering in my mind :)"

    There's so much wrong with that I honestly don't know where to start.

  • Like open-source or yahoo! music? Nope, we just get discs you swap in and out. We'll probably get thalamus I/O before we get open-source games!
  • The majority of gamers will probably end up with both. Unless prices dont' drop. But even in that situation, specs won't really help most consumers make their decisions. Especially considering how different the three consoles are shaping up to be. Should be an interesting next year.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2005 @06:39PM (#12571791)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I would agree...there's no way to really know till we some real games in person. But, from what I've seen so far I would say they're almost exactly equal except for the graphics card. If you look at the official PS3 specs, 1.8 out of that 2 teraflops are in the GPU. It looks like MS screwed themselves by ditching nVidia this go round... The PS3's shader capabilities are what will really make the difference.

      I really wish Nintendo had told us more about the Revolution...don't count it out yet guys!
      • Just read over that, and it could sound a little hypocritical...so I just want to add that I could care less who has the best graphics, they'll all look good :)
      • Sony is using fuzzy mathematics.
        ATI chip in XBox 360 has unified shader architecture. While Nvidia has seperate Pixel and vertex shaders. The 1.8 comes from adding each of the shader performances. To do a proper comparison following Sony's math ATI's GPU flops performance must be doubled.
        Plus both companies use single precision floating point operations to determine the flops rating.

        In reality, both consoles are neck and neck as far as performance is concerned.

        • Re:huh? (Score:2)

          by tc ( 93768 )
          Well, that's not quite the case. My understanding of the unified shaders on the ATI part is that a given pipe can either be working on a pixel or a vertex at any given time, and that the split changes based on workload. So the total floating point performance is just a straight computation based on the number of pipes - no doubling.

          On the other hand, I don't see where Sony get to twice the MS number for GPU perf, unless the total number of pipes in the NVidia part is approaching twice the total number of p

    • Re:huh? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2005 @06:59PM (#12571964) Homepage Journal
      "Isn't it a little premature to be doing comparisons on these?!?!"

      Is it even worth comparing them based on graphical prowess? The PS2 is significantly inferior to the XBOX when it comes to graphics, but its game library is far richer. It is for that reason alone I have a PS2 and not an XBOX.

      • Re:huh? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by tolan-b ( 230077 )
        Graphics aren't that insignificant.

        I bought both, and ended up ditching my PS2. A significant part of that decision, in the light of relatively similar lineup of games that I actually wanted was the graphics. That and having a modded xbox running xbox media centre playing divxs from my home server..
      • "PS2 is significantly inferior to the XBOX "

        That word significant doesn't mean what you think it does.
        • "That word significant doesn't mean what you think it does."

          I think it means the PS2 isn't as powerful as the XBOX. Could you please tell me what the proper way to say that was?
          • you were probably looking for the word 'slightly'
            • Hmm... well, I looked up the words 'slightly' and 'significantly', and I'm pretty sure I chose correctly the first time around.
              • Actually, I think that he wanted you to run a t-test on some benchmark.

                Certainly 30 or 1000 runs of some benchmark to ascertain a statistical significance isn't too much to ask to back your claim that the XBox's hardware smokes the shit out of the PS2's hardware... is it?
                • "Certainly 30 or 1000 runs of some benchmark to ascertain a statistical significance isn't too much to ask to back your claim that the XBox's hardware smokes the shit out of the PS2's hardware... is it?"

                  Games look better on XBOX than PS2. I don't know why you need statistics to compare the two.
                  • This is the most hilariously idiotic thread I've read in awhile. Dont't worry, I'm not calling you idiotic, just the other guy.
                    • Heh. Well I'm not exactly being mr. innocent in this thread. I've had a short fuse with twerps who argue out of bias. Star Wars and video games both have given me a lot of trouble.
            • I don't think he was trying to make a mistake by incorrectly using the word 'slightly'.

              The XBox is technically much more capable than the PS2.
    • I've read just a few of the bits which I already had some background info on (graphics, CPU and memory) and it all seems terribly lacking to me. I don't think the difference in CPU architectures nor graphics shaders are even mentioned.

      This article is worthless.

    • Re:huh? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by b0r0din ( 304712 )
      Something's gotta be in the gaming news cycle, and both products were announced at just about the same time. This is your basic gamer pundit wankfest.

      I don't care which platform has better pixeltextureshader crap and which has wifi/bluetooth integrated 10-terabyte storage systems.

      It's all about the software. Are the games going to be any good? Are they going to be fun to play? Is Sony going to release games which are mostly based on the same semi-feminine anime-based spikey-haired protagonist model which

  • No-brianer (Score:3, Funny)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2005 @06:42PM (#12571809)
    Sony really only needs to add one accessory [wikipedia.org] to the Playstation line-up to guarantee a win.

  • Peripherals are the downfall of Nintendo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by trueneutral ( 771705 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2005 @06:45PM (#12571842) Homepage
    It's funny that when Microsoft and Sony say that innovation will come from peripherals, people suddenly start to listen. But if Nintendo suggests the idea, everyone starts calling their downfall.
    • That may be because Microsoft and Sony started with impressively powerful base hardware, then started saying things about innovating with peripherals. Nintendo's claims about innovative peripherals sounded more like they were making excuses for having a weaker system.

      Anyway, "innovative peripherals" sounds great in theory, and I hope that at least one of these three companies can deliver.

  • Why Worry (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Godman ( 767682 )
    1) They won't be publicly available for a while yet 2) They don't use all available power from the instant the system is put out. Differences in speeds will really only become apparent when the higher end games start coming out towards the End of Life of the system, since they've been working on it for the life of the system. That's why the X-Box suddenly leapt ahead fairly recently. The PSII hit its stride before the X-box did. That's when the spec sheets will matter. And anybody who really cares will hav

  • Kooky toys. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rahga ( 13479 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2005 @06:56PM (#12571934) Journal
    "Gameplay advances will come from peripherals and Sony really showed that off with their kooky EyeToy games."

    We know this because NES ROB and Zapper were so darn successful at shaping gameplay for the next 20 years after their introduction.

    Yes, that's sarcasim. Perhaps gameplay advances will come from a new theme once in a while. I don't wanna be a space marine any more.
    • Hey man, don't dis the Zapper!
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Track and Field sprint pad is the precursor to today's Dance Dance Revolution pads.

        But the zapper never developed. Lik-sang sells a couple generic Desert Eagle/MP5 wannabe zappers but that was as good as it good. There were major compatability problems GunCon1,2,3 too many standards from different companies.

        If the original PS3/Xbox360 actually set the standard by including a cheesy zapper from day 1, there is hope in the gun peripherals.

        • The only thing Nintendo hasn't released yet is details about their controller. Don't be surprised if it'll include a zapper/powerglove or some super-tilting-virtual-reality-gamepad.

  • Well , before we compare videos read this: (Score:5, Informative)

    by AzraelKans ( 697974 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2005 @06:57PM (#12571948) Homepage
    I just caught this on a forum in gamespot, so take it as you like:

    ---
    Mark Rein Reveals That Most PS3 Demos Are Not Realtime!
    2005-05-17 16:10:06: Written by SD6

    Mark Rein of Epic Games revealed to VE3D that only a select few of the games and demos shown during Sony's press conference were realtime.

    In addition to the Sony demos being shown by Phil Harrison, the Epic and EA presentations were the only third party portions actually running on the PS3 in real-time. But most of those movies, which I probably watched 3 or 4 during rehearsals for the event, look very achievable and some were probably rendered on the actual box but in non-real-time. When a system is year away, heck even with a system is 6 months away, it is reasonable to expect the power of the dev kits would still only be a fraction of the power of the final system.
    --

    Anyone else saw that coming a mile away?

    Anyway, yes ps3 presentation was a lot more spectacular than xbox but if you check the actual specs you will realize they are pretty similar they both have free internet access, wifi capabilties, and although sony tried to hide this similar physic and graphic capabilities (Actually unreal 3 runs on xbox 360 too so the demo shown by sony most probably runs on xbox360 too).

    Actually if you check the new Sega game trailer, well thats actual footage from the ps3 and as you can see is basically identical to the 360 footage shown.

    And no, contrary to popular belief, "not realtime" or "prerrendered" does not mean "the machine can still do that, and therefore is powerful enough to do it so we shouldnt judge it down" it actually means any machine even your grandpa 486 can pull a video like that if you give it enough time to render it.(and the needed ram and disk space) if its not realtime its a fake and can not be used to judge the machine, period.
    • Give gamers a week or two, and I don't think anyone will have any doubts as to what's prerendered and what's not. However there's a huge stark contrast between the Sony and Microsoft presentations, and I think it's best summed up best in the IGN Xbox editorial reactions [ign.com]. Sony makes you want to have their console while Microsoft tries to make you need their console as one of the editors puts it. I think a lot of people are rooting for Sony (especially on /.) because MSFT for the first time is losing so ba

  • It's not the specs that are important!!! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Really people, it is not the hardware in the box that is the most important thing. Every console release, this shit happens. A whole bunch of clueless fanboys climb up on their high horses and start bleating about the number of instructions, where the memory sits, Gigagooglyflops per second pixellation, blah blah woof woof. None of it makes any difference if there aren't any good games for the system. No doubt we'll be treated to the normal run-of-the-mill movie cash-ins and pointless stale sequels.

    I still

  • 7 controllers on the PS3? (Score:3, Informative)

    by vistic ( 556838 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2005 @07:11PM (#12572085)
    From TFA:
    "For some reason, Sony will support the odd number of seven controllers on its PS3. A theory going around my house is that they suddenly realised they had more Bluetooth-width than expected and bumped up the number of possible controllers to seven. An alternative view is that they oversubscribed with eight and are now having to make the best of the limitations."


    The reason for this was actually already answered on Slashdot [slashdot.org].
  • Hmm... not the best written comparison on the web at the moment, quite shocking when you realise it is on the Guardian web site!

    They have a number of glaring mistakes including:

    Microsoft's will be 8 times larger than PS2's current 8 MB card, but Sony's will support their SD memory sticks.

    Err... no Sony has nothing to do with SD memory cards and shun them where ever possible in favour of their own "Memory Sticks".

    They also mention that the large number of cores will make it difficult for develope

    • Of course it should be taken with a mine of salt, as i is 100% rumor, but "the word" is that the Rev will have four 2.5GHz PPCs and dual ATI video processors.

      In defense of the article, Nintendo really hasnt shared enough information to be included in this comparison. Maybe it is 4x PPCs, or maybe it really is only 2-3x more powerful than the cube.

      Nintendo's explaination of the Rev's power is even less trustworthy than Sony's. Nintendo undershoots the numbers by a huge margin every time. Based on that fa
      • "or maybe it really is only 2-3x more powerful than the cube." .. a 3rd possibility is that they're simply using a different scale. One of the common comments made about the XBOX 360 screens is that it looks like the same number of polys but with normal mapping and some shadows. To a gamer, that doesn't look like 10x the power, especially when some XBOX games already do shadows.
    • They have a number of glaring mistakes including:

      "Microsoft's will be 8 times larger than PS2's current 8 MB card, but Sony's will support their SD memory sticks."

      Err... no Sony has nothing to do with SD memory cards and shun them where ever possible in favour of their own "Memory Sticks".

      The PS3 has slots for Memory Stick, SD and CF cards.

    • My guess is that one of the SPEs is disabled for production yield reasons. If only 7 out of 8 SPEs have to work, then your production yield goes up by quite a bit.

      For example, suppose that on any given chip you manufacture, the probability of any given SPE working correctly is 75%. If you require all 8 to work, then your yield is about 10%. If you only require at least 7 out of the 8 to work, then your yield is about 36%, or over three times as much.

  • Remember the PS2 Hype? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Saige ( 53303 ) <evil.angela@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday May 18, 2005 @07:28PM (#12572254) Journal
    In case you don't read this old article [dvdfuture.com].

    You know, one from when people were so excited about all the USB ports and the Firewire port and the PCMCIA port on the PS2, how it could render Toy Story in real-time and movie studios were looking at using them for render farms. Where it would be easy to edit home movies on the PS2. And how it was HD compatible so you could play all your games in HD.

    Or how Sony stated that the PS2 would be a viable entertainment platform for 10 years.

    Does anyone actually expect the PS3 to ship with the 255 different ports on the thing that the E3 demo one had? I sure as hell don't. I expect the PS3 that is sold to be a substantially different machine. The Xbox 360, however, will be little changed.
    • >The Xbox 360, however, will be little changed.

      I can't help laughing out loud.

      Even XBOX 1 was hyped as a machine that can render toy story graphics.
      And "Raven" prerendered demo for XBOX 1.
      Yes, XBOX 360 is hyped too.
      • Hey, I'm not saying that the Xbox 360 isn't hyped - there's a lot of hype coming out for both consoles.

        Just that Sony has a track record of promising a ton of features, and even showing them on early versions of the console, then having a lot of those things just "disappear" in the final console.

        I don't remember the first Xbox coming anywhere near that level of over-promising/under-delivering.
    • Indeed.
      But both Sony and MS hype their consoles, because they are fighting head-to-head. The only company not hyping their console is Nintendo.
      They know they can't compete with the sony or ms, but they usually deliver more than what they promise and are quite profitable.

      I still believe tho that this generation of consoles will be a very interesting, but I hope the companies won't go all out graphics like in PC games but rather think more about gameplay.
      • With the new gen of consoles, I think I'm most interested in seeing the online experience the various consoles offer. I have broadband, and about 2 1/2 months ago I discovered Xbox Live - which has so been worthwhile overall for me. Sure, I get the obnoxious teenagers spewing garbage, but I also have plenty of friends to play with and talk to, and now an entire clan (w00t! Go PMS [pmsclan.com]!) of people to team up with. So I'm getting plenty more good experiences than bad.

        Which is why I want to see how things work

  • Marketing, hype, tech...whatever (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SillyHatsOnly ( 875532 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2005 @08:13PM (#12572601)
    It all comes down to a snap judgement in the store (not including presents and such). I don't know too many people who get excited over buying a M$ product, regardless of what it is.
    It took me forever to buy an Xbox. I wanted one, but every time I went to the store, I'd stare and the box and just feel compelled not to buy it. No problem buying games though.

    Nintendo, hell yeah I'd buy it. Sony, yeah, what the hell. M$...eh, not so much.

  • An obvious question (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 18, 2005 @09:16PM (#12573138)
    So does this mean that the PS3 and XBox 360 will be as powerful as Sony and Microsoft promised the PS2 and XBox would be?

  • Couch Theories (Score:2, Interesting)

    by niker ( 593109 )
    FTA:

    Fifth, controllers.
    For some reason, Sony will support the odd number of seven controllers on its PS3. A theory going around my house is that they suddenly realised they had more Bluetooth-width than expected and bumped up the number of possible controllers to seven. An alternative view is that they oversubscribed with eight and are now having to make the best of the limitations. Whichever, the PS3 supports more players in the same room than the Xbox 360 which only offers four. Really, though, with inte

  • Yet another reason why /. is becoming irrelevant and little more than a way to waste time at work.

    With a reader base that knows the ins and outs of computer hardware and is a veritable treasure trove of scientific knowledge we get to read "OOO Shiny new thing!!" articles, knowing full well that you could have the fanciest hardware on the planet but it's a worthless piece of shit without useful (and in the case of games, engaging/fun) software.

    Now to be more or less on topic though, I won't be buying e
  • I'm surprised that the article didn't really compare (in any detail) the online strategies of these two companies. The Xbox's more fully integrated Live service is a real draw to those who do any significant amount of their gaming online. The fact that Sony (as far as I can tell) mentioned just about nothing regarding any integrated online services for the PS3) is pretty amazing... Also, their HD comparison didn't note that games for the 360 are mandated to run @ 720P. The PS3 having 1080P (very rare on
  • Ok I have read the reviews and seen the slides from the press conference and I don't see anything that says the ps3 has only 1 cell in it. From everything they have said there should be 4 (maybe 3) cells in a single ps3. I may be missing someone so if someone could please point me to a credible source (sony) that states there is only one cell in the ps3 I would appriciate it.

    On the other hand if it turns out there are more than one cell in a single ps3 then I don't think the comparisons are even close.

    • Re:How many cells? (Score:2, Informative)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )
      According to Sony's press conference, there'll be 8 cells, 7 of which will be actively used and 1 remains as "backup". I haven't heard any details about why/what/how this 1 cell is kept aside.
      • I think the OP meant Cell as Cell processor, not vector processing unit. Since the Cell was touted as a chip for multiprocessor systems it's quite surprising to see that Sony went with only one of them.
      • Actually only one Cell would be in the PS3, it'll have 7 SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements) and one disabled for "redundancy" is their reason, but in fact is to increase yields.
  • i would expect mainstream media to depict this as a two way battle, but please /. at least aknowledge the revolution.
  • Although I work for a competitor of both of them, I still spent the better part of the past two days soaking every bit of news and opinion on the PS3 and the Xbox 360 (nonstop clicking on the reload button, with literally over a dozen window and tabs on every gaming and tech site) -- the consoles which are going to be battling it out for control over the gaming scene for the rest of this decade.

    General consensus seems to indicate the PS3 has much more raw horsepower, and the demos floored me like they did
    • From what I know of the PS3, the GPU uses a custom bus, has 256MB dedicated video RAM (GDDR3) and full access to the main 256MB memory (XDR).

      As for middleware; apparently they've shielded the intricacies of the whole Cell architecture through the compiler. I fail to see where the PS2 architecture concepts are still there though, then again; perhaps it might help with the backwards compatiblity ;)

      I doubt the GPU on the PS3 will be used for typical GPGPU purposes (atleast not for the first couple of years)
    • Nice to finally get a developer's opinion of the two.

  • Side by side a repost from before w/ updates (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pao|o ( 92817 ) on Thursday May 19, 2005 @05:05AM (#12575472)
    I took the time out to compare and contrast between the Xbox 360 & PS3 and I came to to this conclusion.
    Xbox 360 has a CPU FPS of 115.2 GFlops
    PS3 has a CPU FPS of 218 GFlops
    Xbox 360 has a GPU FPS of around 884.8 GFlops*
    PS3 has a GPU FPS of 1.8TFlops
    Xbox 360 has a combined FPS of 1TFlops
    PS3 has a combined FPS of 2.18TFlops
    Xbox 360 has a DVD-ROM
    PS3 has a BD-ROM
    Xbox 360 is WiFi ready
    PS3 is WiFi built-in
    Xbox 360 has 3 x USB 2.0 ports
    PS3 has 6 x USB 2.0 ports
    Xbox 360 has support for 4 wireless controllers
    PS3 has support for 7 wireless (Bluetooth) controllers
    Xbox 360 uses Memory Units
    PS3 uses MS Standard/Duo/Pro, SD standard/mini & Compact Flash Type I/II
    Xbox 360 has support for select Xbox1 games
    PS3 has support for PS1 & PS2 games
    Xbox 360 has support for 1 720p & 1080i display
    PS3 has support for 2 480p, 720p, 1080i & 1080p displays
    Note:
    * Derived from subtracting published Overall System Floating-Point Performance of 1TFlops with reported CPU GFlops
    Source:
    Wikipedia's PS3 Tech Specs
    Official Xbox 360 Fact Sheet
    Xbox 360's reported CPU GFlops
    • Any details on the shader of the GPU on XBox 360 and PS3? All I know is that PS3's can do 163 instructions/cycle, but that says very little indeed. What about number of pipelines, the architecture, instruction sets, etc?
      I suspect this is a far more crucial topic than you'd expect considering the media attention every other spec gets.
  • At this point with the specs (sort of) released for both consoles, it looks like the XBOX has no chance in hell of winning the tech war. Hopefully it can at least get some good games for it. Perfect Dark Zero and Gears of War look like some hopefuls. Hopefully Epic can make GoW better than how the excreted Unreal Championship 2
  • I finally realized what Ballmer meant by presentation "disaster", if you remember back when the Xbox was presented they used the same system than sony: some impressive tech demos and then CGI "hinting" the system capabilities. (actually some of the game shown are STILL under development) is a tried and true system that works for presenting a new console.

    This year MS tried to be "creative" and tried to reach a bigger audience by explaining "how" any gamer could use the system and "why" it was build like tha

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