Xbox 360 vs PlayStation 3 Recap
The time has finally come and the longest console generation yet is coming to a close. It is now more clear than ever that the products millions around the world will be unboxing over the next few weeks are what we will all be stuck with for many years to come. Before we dive in to what’s ahead, a quick recap of the current generation would do well to show where we are today.
The Xbox 360 was released in November, 2005 at a price of $400. Think about that for a minute. What were you doing in 2005? That was a LONG time ago. The PlayStation 3 lagged by a year and was released in November 2006 with pricing at $500. Both consoles had other models available for more or less money, but those prices were what was necessary to get a system with a functioning hard drive sufficient for someone who enjoy playing games.
The year late and extra $100 definitely doomed the PlayStation 3 to a slow start, but over the years it has caught up. Current figures peg both companies as having sold around 80 million consoles, which definitely seems to give the edge to Sony. The geographical distribution is interesting in that Microsoft really has dominated in the US while Sony has dominated outside of the US.
Sony’s system had more raw power with it’s proprietary CELL architecture, but for years after release developers often griped about how painful the system was to make games on. In recent PlayStation 4 promotional videos some developers even mentioned receiving their PS3 developer kit with only a Japanese instruction manual. Over time, people learned the system and games were able to look marginally better on Sony’s console.
There’s a reason everyone moved to standard x86 processors for the next round.
Microsoft took the lead in the services department. Nowhere was this more evident than with the Xbox Live vs PlayStation Network debate. Yes, we all know that online gaming was free on the PlayStation . . . but the old adage about getting what you paid for was never more true. Any games focused on extensive multiplayer thrived on the Xbox.
Despite the overall better services offering by Microsoft, there was one service it either couldn’t, or refused to offer: blu-ray. The format had been spearheaded by Sony and the PS3 was able to double as a blu-ray player. It was also able to pack enormous sized games on a single disc. For a time, Microsoft offered an external HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360 but by the time it was released everyone in the know already knew that format was dead.
Probably the most interesting change we saw in this latest generation was the decline of first party titles. They still exist, but they just don’t seem as important as they used to back in the Nintendo vs Sega days. Microsoft’s big exclusives were the Halo and Gears of War games while Sony’s main draw seemed to be centered on Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series and The Last of Us. While all those games have their fans, the biggest and most popular games always came out on both systems, at the same time, and were almost identical on each system.
Both companies have undoubtedly learned many lessons and countless dollars have gone into developing their successors. So what is coming? Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow.