[News Bot]

iSuppli teardown report shows PS3 is much cheaper to build today than in 2006

Click here to read more.

[Joshuashawharvey]

It's their own stupid fault.

[Rik]

They make the money back on game sales anyhow.

[Sup2a]

well I am a die hard fan of Sony in general, that was a bit of a stupid move to not make anywhere near a profit on a product... Still like mentioned they would make billions on their other products, Sony are one of (or) the biggest electronic manufacturers in the world. You watch as the PS3 claws its way to the top like the PS2 did, the PS2 was never the "better" console specs wise, but it certainly made it all the way to the top for that generation of consoles.

[Joshuashawharvey]

That's true, although the PS3 is the console with the better hardware spec.

Have you ever noticed that with each generation of console, it's generally the best spec one that comes worse off?

I always thought of Sony as the ones to think of ways of enhancing gameplay. The PS1 and the PS2 most definitely did that. The PS1 provided some of the most compelling titles ever available compared to it's competitors, and the PS2 did exactly that, with TRUE backward compatability and accessories that other consoles at the time would only dream of having. Sony always came up with something new to enhance our gaming satisfaction in terms of it's GAMES and the way we played them. I never considered them to be ones to just throw in the most advanced and expensive hardware possible in the hope that people, especially in this economic climate, will just go ahead and buy it without considering the MUCH cheaper and viable alternatives. In terms of gaming, what benefit does the PS3 have over the Xbox 360 or Wii that makes you think "That would be the best option", unless you're a die-hard PlayStation fan, of course.

It seems currently it is all backfiring on Sony, and i'm not too sure they can redeem themselves this time.

To sum it up:-

The most expensive of the consoles by a noticeable margin. Even it's games are more expensive!
The least titles available compared to it's competitors.
An absolutely shocking marketing strategy. When was the last time you saw a PS3 advertisement?

In my opinion. If they sort those three things out, they will easily redeem themseves and regain the crown.

[Sup2a]

yea that is true, It was the same with PS2 as well at least here in AUS, everyone avoided it for a long time.
The PS3 was released a fair bit later than the 360, i think that would be the main reason there are so many titles for 360 as opposed to PS3, in 2009 they have a very large list of exclusive titles especially in the RPG section, i disagree on the games being more expensive... it depends where you are looking and how old the games are, PS3 games are on blu-ray discs as well no doubt that would rise the price a little, but as far as ive seen most PS3 games have not dropped in price yet as the 360 games have been around for a while, PS3 games are starting to come out on platinum and you can get quite a few very good titles at $40 AUS. That certainly is true, marketing is rubbish, 360 and Wii are advertising a LOT Wii especially at prime time, xbox also seem to be marketing WITH games like GH3, the only PS3 ad i have seen is for Little Big Planet, certainly not aimed at the right audience i believe...
The playability is the same, i mean you can buy an xbox for the fraction of the price and it will play games just as well as PS3.. for now anyway, quite a few people are predicting newer games will need serious processing power and the xbox's processor(s) wont be able to keep up, and most people who are really into serious gaming wont buy a Wii just because it cannot play the heavy games like GTA IV and whatnot...
I think what PS3 really has going for it right now is Blu-Ray... and im afraid in terms of competing AT THIS TIME not too much else... Which is somewhat disappointing, however i do predict PS3 will manage to sort them selves out especially in 2009 (if the financial crisis doesn't worsen too badly)

[Joshuashawharvey]

I agree with most of your statements there, although some of the PS3 games are more expensive even though they are the same title. I've seen some up to £10 more expensive just because they are Blu-Ray.

I don't believe that Blu-Ray is a serious advantage, well not presently. In terms of capacity it obviously is, but in terms of speed, it is a major disadvantage, hence why you have to install half of the games onto your hard drive so your games don't take 10 minutes to load, which I absolutely loathe! It's great for Blu-Ray films though.

Although you might be right about newer games needing serious processing power, what we have to remember is that Xbox 360 has been around now for 3 years, it has double the RAM of the PS3 (512MB as opposed to the 256MB found in the PS3) and arguably has a more powerful GPU which will both counteract the faster 8-core cell processor in the PS3.

Look here for GPU comparison

It seems all PS3 have advertised is Little Big Planet. The amount of Xbox 360 and Wii advertisements is astonishing, and I think some of them are really catchy, especially the Wii ones.

I'm looking forward to seeing what titles Sony release, but we have to remember that MS and Nintendo won't just stand there and take it. They probably have a long list of games that they plan on releasing too.

[Sup2a]

yes that is a good point Blu-ray isnt the best for gaming... and the Hard drive really isnt big enough to keep all those couple of gig files on their, luckily Sony have made it VERY easy to plug a laptop HD in there.

The RAM is something that ive researched deeply, they use different types of RAM in each console, the 360 uses GDDR3 while the PS3 uses XDR, these types of RAM are useless for running an OS like windows and programs that need to store part of themselves int he RAM, XDR RAM is astonishingly fast, you may have thought Sony had let themselves go int he RAM only offering half the RAM, but XDR RAM runs VERY fast for things like games, it runs at 3.2Ghz!

PS3 XDR runs 4x512MB chips in form to equal 256MB XDR @ 3.2Ghz ~ w/ 25.6GB/s memory bandwidth

360 RAM is nowhere near as fast cant find the exact stats of it but its not where NEAR as fast, check this site out Rambus - PLAYSTATION3: An Engineering Masterpiece so RAM PS3 has the advantage

The graphics card is the most debatable part... its difficult to choose between them because they are better in one way than the other, i cant remember which is which but they are VERY close but one is better one way and the other, another way, either way they are very close in the graphics card department. The PS3s biggest disadvantage certainly is the blu-Ray, however it is and advantage at the same time, being the next gen disc apparently xbox were developing a blu-ray version, but i haven't heard of anything more than a few articles.

[Joshuashawharvey]

I do sort of agree with the RAM there, but we're talking about HD gaming here. With high resolutions, larger capacities are a MUST to accommodate such resolutions. The speed of the PS3 RAM counteracts the capacity of the Xbox 360 RAM so i'd say they were on level grounds there.

I don't know how true this article is, but it shows a higher memory bandwidth on the Xbox 360

I believe the Xbox 360 has the advantage over GPU. Along with both consoles having their own dedicated graphics memory, the Xbox 360 can also share the RAM for use as VRAM, which gives it that edge. The article on my previous post also shows the Xbox 360 GPU significantly outperform the PS3 GPU.

The last I heard, Microsoft said they will NOT be implementing Blu-Ray in the Xbox 360

[Sup2a]

I reckon thats a VERY bias article cant find half the links i bookmark lol, i have no idea how they get that high memory bandwidth when their memory is GDDR3 which is only 700mhz as opposed to 3.2Ghz. Right, found why

The Xbox 360 has an extensive amount of bandwidth in comparison to its competition;[4] however this statistic includes the eDRAM logic to memory bandwidth, and not internal CPU bandwidths. The eDRAM internal logic to its internal memory bandwidth is 256 GB/s. The high bandwidth is used primarily for z-buffering, alpha blending, and antialiasing; it saves time and space on the GPU die. Between the eDRAM die and the GPU, data is transferred at 32 GB/s.[5] The memory interface bus has a bandwidth of 22.40 GB/s and the southbridge a bandwidth of 500 MB/s.

bed time i reckon... early morning. Shall continue this int he morning no doubt

[Joshuashawharvey]

The high bandwidth is used primarily for z-buffering, alpha blending, and antialiasing; it saves time and space on the GPU die

Which overall means better graphical performance and visuals with incrased AA and also less stress on the GPU so that can perform better.

I've just read some other articles and people are even noticing the graphical advantage on the Xbox 360. Some posts claim that the PS3 graphics look blurred. I believe this is because most of the PS3 games use 720p resolution as opposed to most of the 360 games which use 1080p. This is probably because with the PS3 only having 256MB GPU RAM, it is only capable of 720p on some games without it struggling.

I do believe it's a very biased article too, but some aspects of it are in fact true.

LOL. Night