Console Wars
Which side are you on?

With three consoles on the market sometimes it can be a hard and confusing choice to make. Do I want High Definition capability, innovation, or just want something to play games on?

In this review we will give the pros and cons of each of the systems to make the choice a little simpler for readers.

Specifications

3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each

1 MB L2 cache

512 MB GDDR3 RAM

Custom ATI Graphics Processor

DVD Media

Cell Processor PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz

7 x SPE @3.2GHz

RSX Graphics Processor

256MB XDR Main RAM

256MB GDDR3 VRAM

Blu-Ray Media

IBM Broadway 729MHz Processor

ATI Hollywood 243MHz Graphics Processor

88MB System Memory

DVD Media

Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 was released in November of 2005. It was the first console on the next generation market which gained them considerable market share in the next generation race. Games such as Kameo and COD3 allowed the Xbox to have a very successful start.

The system is capable of 1080i native and 1080p upscaled at the time being, it comes in 3 different types: Arcade, Premium, and Elite. The difference between the Elite and Premium is the 120 GB hard drive in the elite which will give you extra room to download movies and tv shows off of Xbox live. Microsoft is currently trying to expand their reach in digital distribution and assure consumers that physical media is going the way of beta max. The Arcade model does not come with a hard drive, the consequence of this is that you won't be able to play online or use backwards compatibility with old Xbox titles such as Halo 2 and Ninja Gaiden.

The big games the Xbox 360 currently offers include Gears of War, Halo 3, and COD4. The Xbox 360's game library has stretched to almost every genre though so you won't have any problems finding a game you like.

The bad news is that the Xbox's hardware (perhaps from being rushed to the market) has a high failure rate. Heat causes the motherboard to warp and contact to the central processing unit is lost causing the dreaded 3 rings of death. Turn around time from Microsoft is about a month in most cases. The falcon chip is in most newly manufactured systems though and is supposed to solve this issue with a new 65 nm chip.

PS3

The PS3 was released in late 2006 with the promise of 4D gaming, and a bunch of other marketing ideas that didn't quite work out. Added to the fact that the price tag was a whopping 600 dollars, it definitely wasn't easy for consumers to swallow and Sony's slow start in this console war shows that.

The PS3 in 2007 had a scarce selection of games, but a few great ones like Resistance, Motorstorm, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma. The PS3 struggled through 2007 fighting both competition in gaming and in format wars against HD-DVD. Price cuts towards the end seemed to jump their sales rate a bit, but their first time beating the Xbox 360 in the monthly NPD happened after the format war was won.

In 2008 the PS3 is looking much more promising with more titles such as Uncharted, Ratchet and Clank, and COD4. They have beat the 360 out both months in 2008 so far.

Wii

The Wii came out around the same time the PS3 did in 2006, but was instantly a crowd favorite, in fact it was and still is hard to find in some places. Wii Sports shipped with the console which was also an instant hit. Other great games like Zelda, and Excite Truck were also available on release.

Although lacking in power compared to the other two units on the market it has seemed to capture a new demographic of gamers interested in the innovation of the controller.

Great games that are currently available include Super Mario Galaxy, No More Heroes, Mario Kart and Super Mario Smash Brothers Brawl. Most of the good games are first party, but hopefully third party games will catch on.

Conclusion

All consoles have something to offer to different people, if you are interested in high definition games you need the 360 or ps3. If you are interested in control innovation you will need the Wii. If you want the latest in high definition media the ps3 is the only console that offers a Blu-ray player. In all actuality games should be the bigger deciding factor than anything else in your console decision, so look at what games each offer and decide from which you want from there.


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