Living the digital lifestyle

The latest next generation consoles that are officially available in India are the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the Playstation 3 commonly known as PS3 the successor to the hugely popular PS2 from Sony, I have the opportunity of owning both the consoles so here are my views regarding the same.

For the sake of comparison I will compare the premium models of these consoles, PS3  is currently selling only one model officially in India, both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are next generation consoles and support games in high definition (you got to have a HDTV if you want to really enjoy these games) if you already have an HDTV these consoles will be your entry point in the HDTV era, both these consoles are very powerful piece of hardware and I won’t get into a debate which one has a edge as both of them are pretty powerful, personally I own the Premium Xbox 360 and a  40GB PS3 console.

The Xbox 360 was launched in late 2005 in the US and it was officially launched in India on 23, September 2006, I had my first Xbox 360 console imported from states in Feb 2006 (I would have never done this had I known the hardware failure rate of Xbox 360)  as I was not sure when it would be launched in India, on the other hand Sony PS3 was launched internationally in November 2006 and it came to India late April 2007 with an insanely high price of Rs (39,900) now with the recently launched 40GB PS3 model which is around 25K it is competitively priced with the Xbox 360.

Pricing

As of writing this blog the Xbox 360 premium SKU retails for around Rs 27,000 with a few games and the PS3 40 GB version with a GT5 for Rs 24,990 on the other hand the Xbox 360 games are a bit cheaper around Rs 200-300 less than the PS3 version.

Hardware

In terms of hardware the PS3 ranks a bit higher than the Xbox on paper, the PS3 has an integrated WiFi apart from the gigabyte Ethernet connection to connect to the net for online game play, the PS3 also has an integrated web browser via which you can browse websites play videos via youtube etc, the Xbox 360 has a 100 Mbps Ethernet connection, you can add WiFi functionality to the Xbox but you need to purchase the WiFi adapter separately, the PS3 wireless controller has and inbuilt battery which can be charged via the PS3 / PC USB port, The Xbox 360 has an standard DVD drive,  On the other had the PS3 has the next generation blue ray drive (supporting high definition movies) that can also read standard DVD, CD’s, the premium version of Xbox 360 sold in India doesn’t yet support HDMI connect on the other hand it’s an standard with every PS3, If you like you can also install Linux on the PS3.

The PS3 also has an higher capacity hard disk but you need a higher capacity disk coz many of the PS3 games install part of the games on the hard disk again on the other hand you can easily upgrade the hard drive to a bigger one yourself without voiding warranty, The Xbox 360 premium model comes with AV / component cables which are HD ready on the other hand the PS3 comes with a standard AV cables and you would need to purchase the component or the HDMI cable separately, with the Xbox 360 you get an headset which attaches to the controller using which you can chat with your friends that are online, which PS3 you don’t get any headset but you can use any blue-tooth headset for chatting.

In terms of looks the PS3 looks much more elegant and Xbox 360 in comparison just looks bland.

 

Games

Well ultimately both these consoles are gaming machines first, in terms of the numbers of games Xbox 360 has a lead here and until 2007 the Xbox 360 had a definitive edge, as early games on the PS3 platform were not that great compared to the Xbox 360 version.

Now most of the developers have got used to the PS3 platform are building great games for both the consoles, the PS3 is finally getting some great exclusive games so if you are buying the console now you can be assured that both of the consoles have plenty of games, still the problem in India is availability of games you get just about 65% of the games in India and again the games are launched a couple of weeks / month later than the international launch and you might need to import some games from sites like play-asia as some of the good games are just not launched in India.

 Online Play

Both these console provide multiplayer experience where you can play online with other player from all over the globe, for the Xbox 360 this service is  called Xbox Live which is a paid service

and cost about Rs 2K per year and on the other hand the PS3 has Playstation online which is free of charge but currently Xbox-Live has a lot more features than the PS3 online network and its a very mature service, the PS3 is playing catch up in this area, the good news is that the Playstation online network is improving a lot with newer updates coming frequently, with the rumored in game XMB comming soon to PS3 things should be at par and best of all its FREE, In my personal opinion gaming on the playstation network is much more stable as I don’t get that much lag while playing PS3 games compared to the Xbox ones as many of the PS3 games use dedicated servers while the Xbox Live uses P2P for a connection and your connection depends upon the host connection which can be very frustrating at times.

 Media Connectivity

For those who love to watch your media on the big TV sets both these consoles can acts like an excellent media extender and you can watch your pictures, videos etc from your PC streamed via these consoles again here PS3 holds an edge I was able to watch Divx videos stored on my PC hard disk via the PS3 they were connected wirelessly via WiFi without having to do any conversions I was able to play 90% of the video files without any issues on the other hand on the Xbox I was only able to play a hand full of the same and again I had to copy the videos to a USB memory stick it just did not play the movie over the network and for some reason it played only when I was connected to Xbox Live and don’t forget the built in blue-ray functionality in the PS3 for the movie buffs.

 Reliability

This is one issue that plagues the Xbox 360 the console is one of the most un-reliable pieces of hardware that I have owned, believe me I have been burnt due to this and this is the one of the most important reason that I have stopped recommending Xbox 360 to my friends, I feel that after spending around 24 – 30K you should have a piece of hardware that should run at least 4-5 years without any problems.

As you know I had imported the Xbox 360 from US and I knew that I won’t have an warranty here but I did not bother coz I thought Consoles are pretty rugged I had an PS2 from 5 years and I had no issues with the same, but after about 8 months I started to get artifacts and the Xbox used to heat a lot and later on I got the dreaded Red Ring of Death called the RROD which made my Xbox 360 dead,  the sad part was that my console was out of region I was not under the warranty and I was really upset coz I had built up a great library of games for the Xbox, later on in 2007 I purchased a Xbox 360 in India  with warranty this Xbox had RROD after 4 months of purchase and got it replaced pretty fast by Microsoft, the replacement worked until a couple of months when it would just not read the game disks properly, figured out that the DVD drive was failing got again to support and got a new console it took me 40 days and emails to some high officials at Microsoft  Gaming division to get my replacement done (there excuse was my issues somehow got mis-managed due to mis-communication between Redigntion and Microsoft) currently I am on my 4th console and keeping my fingers crossed as I just don’t want to call MS support again.

The hardware failures on the Xbox 360 is an known one known as RROD and due to the same Microsoft has increase the warranty from one year to 3 year for this RROD issue, though Microsoft India is fast at replacing the console due to an RROD issues (takes 4 – 15 days) for replacements, but I just can’t recommend an console which might break every 5-6 months. It is rumored that 33% of the Xbox 360 consoles get RROD issue, personally out of the 6 friends that have an Xbox 360 I know 5 of my friends had an RROD issue.

On the other hand the PS3 doesn’t have any know problems like the RROD issue with Xbox 360 but again I can’t stress enough if you are buying any of these consoles please buy it from an authorized retail shop with warranty, just don’t even think about buying these consoles from the grey market to save a couple of thousand bucks!

Some great games not to be missed

Xbox 360 exclusive:  Forsa 2, Gears of War, GRAW, Halo 3 (if you are a halo fan)

PS3 exclusive: Warhwak, GT5 Prologue,   Metal gear Solid 4 (MGS 4), Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Multiplatform: GRAW 2,  Call of duty 4 (COD4), GTA 4, Rainbow Six, Virtual tennis 3

Conclusion

Both the platforms have great games to choose from that will keep you busy and entertained till you get exhausted, Microsoft could have had the upper hand in this generation of console war, but for its poor hardware record…… finally this year the PS3 has started to shine and the future looks promising.

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Filed under: Gaming