PS3 vs. xbox 360: Which is Better? [Sparty vs. abbews]

[sparty]

Topic:

Is the Xbox 360 gaming console better than the PS3?

Challenge Details:

I accepted abbew's challenge to champion the xbox 360 as the premier current generation gaming console on the market. We have agreed that this debate will be based on statistics and facts rather than personal opinion, though I should qualify that with the statement that I am a happy xbox 360 owner and abbew is a happy PS3 owner.

Commentary Thread:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?p=5970612#post5970612

[sparty]

Position: Affirmative (xbox 360 is a better console than the PS3)


Less Filling vs. Tastes Great. PC vs. Mac. Star Trek vs. Star Wars. SNES vs. Sega Genesis. PS2 vs. XBOX. What do all these debates have in common? Pop culture fanboy wars that have raged as intensely as any war simulated by the Total War series.

All these debates have culminated in the debate of the moment: PS3 vs. XBOX 360. Two gaming consoles representing the current generation of cutting edge hardware, games, and home entertainment features. Both consoles with rabid followings and intense gameplay that takes advantage of the raw gaming horsepower inside these machines.

The XBOX 360, however, is the better console when it comes to games, hardware, online service for home entertainment, and sales.

Games

What's a console without games? The XBOX 360 and PS3 boast incredible libraries of games, but really it comes down quality and general consensus about those games by a broad spectrum of reviewers.

I looked at the Top 100 games for each console at Metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com) and only counted games that were exclusive to the system on which they were released. So games like Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, and Fallout 3 are not included.

PS3 Exclusive Top 100 Games
----------------------------
Rank. Game Title (avg. reviewer score)
2. LittleBigPlanet (95)
6. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (94)
14. MLB 09: The Show (90)
17. Demon's Souls (89)
18. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (89)
34. Resistance 2 (87)
35. Flower (87)
38. Valkyria Chronicles (86)
39. Resistance: Fall of Man (86)
41. Shatter (86)
44. Comet Crash (86)
49. MLB 08: The Show (85)
59. inFAMOUS (85)
64. MotorStorm (84)
70. Yakuza 3 (84)
72. PixelJunk Monsters (83)
73. Everyday Shooter (83)
82. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (82)
90. Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds (81)
95. Echochrome (81)

XBOX 360 Exlcusive Top 100 Games
----------------------------------
4. Gears of War (94)
7. Halo 3 (94)
8. Braid (93)
11. Gears of War 2 (93)
16. Mass Effect (91)
20. Portal: Still Alive (90)
21. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 (90)
22. Forza Motorsport 2 (90)
24. Rez HD (89)
25. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (89)
26. Left 4 Dead (89)
27. Fable II (89)
34. Shadow Complex (89)
39. Project Gotham Racing 3 (88)
40. Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (88)
43. Ikaruga (87)
50. Trials HD (86)
51. Geometry Wars Retro Evolved (86)
57. Project Gotham Racing 4 (85)
62. Dead or Alive 4 (85)
63. Pure (85)
65. Dead Rising (85)
73. Splosion Man (85)
76. Viva Pinata (84)
86. N+ (84)
89. Defense Grid: The Awakening (83)
95. Pac-Man Championship Edition (83)

PS3
Total Titles: 20
Average Reviewer Score: 86.15/100
% of games in the top 50: 60%

XBOX 360
Total Titles: 27
Average Reviewer Score: 87.93/100
% of games in the top 50: 63%

There are 26% more exclusive games in the 360 library that received a top 100 ranking from game reviewers online and in print publications than the PS3. What's even more telling is when you take the top 25 games from each system and compare them. There are twice as many 360 exclusive titles, 10 games, in the top 25 games than there are for the PS3 which only boasts 5 games.

If you look at the top selling game from each list you find an even wider disparity between the two consoles.

Halo 3 set set the record for first day sales in 2007 when it sold $170 million in sales. (Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=202102318) The total sales, however, amounted to 8.1 million copies sold. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...games#Xbox_360)

Motorstorm the top selling PS3 exclusive title sold 3.31 million copies. Again, less than half the number of Halo 3 units sold.

Broadening the look at exclusive title sales we find an even wider gap between XBOX 360 sales and PS3 sales.

XBOX 360 Exclusive Top 100 Top Selling Games
-----------------------------------------
Halo 3 - 8.1 million
Gears of War - 4 million (may include PC version so we'll drop it 20% from 5 to 4 million)
Gears of War 2 - 5 million (PC not included)
Forza Motorsport 2 - 2.674 million
Fable II - 2.6 million

Total sales for exclusive titles: 22.374 million games sold

PS3 Exclusive Top 100 Top Selling Games
---------------------------------------
MotorStorm - 3.31 million
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - 3 million
Resistance: Fall of Man - 2.5 million
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction - 1 million

Total sales for excluive titles: 9.81 million games sold
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...#PlayStation_3)

So why do sales numbers mean anything in this debate about consoles? Game sales are reflective of the popularity of a game console and of the quality of the games released for it. Bad games don't sell as well as established good ones which is why both lists contain a significant number of franchises. After all, why would you want to own a gaming console in which the games aren't well reviewed. Look at the Nokia N-Gage & Atari Lynx as examples of this in the handheld gaming market.

But what about the nuts and bolts of the actual hardware that runs these gaming goliaths?

Hardware

Make no mistake, both machines pack a serious punch. The XBOX 360, again, has the edge in this category based on actual game performance and developer flexibility.

There are plenty of full rundowns across the internet about what these two gaming consoles bring to the entertainment center. I'll just cover a few of the technical comparisons:

Both the PS3 & 360 GPUs run at 500 MHz, but that's where the similarities end.

Polygon Count
360 - 500 million Triangles/sec
PS3 - 250-275 million Triangles/sec (site lists 250, but I've seen as high as 275 reported elsewhere)

Why it matters -

3D gaming is all about polygon count. The better, more realistic, 3D objects you want to include in your game and on screen at one time the higher this count needs to be. The 360 has nearly the double the PS3s power when it comes to polygons. For games like Madden 2010 where there are high resolution models and textures on the screen at one time it's why it consistently performs at 60 fps vs. the PS3's 30 fps.

Vertex Shader Processing (max only)
360 - 6.0 Billion Vertices/sec
PS3 - 1.0 Billion Vertices/sec

Why it matters -

Vertex shaders are responsible for all those special effects you see in games that make objects appear more realistic or generate some other visual flair.

Fill-Rate w/ 4x Anti-Aliasing
360 - 4.0 Billion Pixels/sec
PS3 - 2.0 Billion Pixels/sec

Why it matters -

This is where you start to really see a difference in terms of on screen graphics quality between the two systems. Anti-Aliasing reduces the appearance of jagged edges on 3d curved surfaces. With higher polygon counts, detailed models and gigabytes of textures being poured into every current generation game jagged edges stand out. Just search and you'll see that this is not an unnoticed problem by gamers, developers, and PS3 fans alike. (Source: http://www.google.com/search?q=ps3+anti+aliasing)

Frame Buffer Bandwidth
360 - 256.0 GB/sec
PS3 - 20.8 GB/sec

Why it matters -

Frame buffering is used to improve things like anti-aliasing, screen render times, and rendering rasterized graphics like backgrounds in driving games, crowds in some sports games, etc. The end result is a system that can supplement graphic output by storing anything that isn't rendered on the fly in a buffer and move it to buffer memory or the screen quickly. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framebuffer)

Statistics Source: http://www.pcvsconsole.com/compariso...60-vs-ps3-gpu/

The Red Ring of Death Hardware Issue...

The one glaring hole that any 360 owner can tell you worries them is the dreaded red ring of death. According to SquareTrade, a company that manages consumer appliance warranties over the life of 16,000 Wiis, PS3s and 360s the failure rate on the PS3 was only 10% while the failure rate on the 360 was 23.7%. (Source: http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/S...ility_0809.pdf)

This, at first glance, is a staggering difference in hardware reliability! However, Microsoft has since addressed the issue in early 2009 with the Jasper models and offered existing 360 owners a free 3 year warranty during which time Microsoft will repair or replace red ring of death at a cost to Microsoft of about $1.1 billion dollars. (Source: http://www.edge-online.com/features/...about-red-ring).

What about developer support for the hardware?

Pete Hines, head of Bethesda Softworks has publicly endorsed the 360 over the PS3 for development based largely on hardware. (Source: http://www.techradar.com/news/comput...he-xbox-439961) That's one thing coming from a PC centric developer like Bethesda since the XNA development toolset is largely the same between the PC & XBOX platforms. They aren't alone though. One of Sony's biggest 3rd party development shops, SquareEnix, has also come out and endorsed the 360 over the PS3. (Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com....php?id=204117)

Developer support is key to the success of a console because it means developers are willing to invest the time and energy into developing costly AAA titles for platforms they favor. It's easy to see how this translates in real world terms with the announcement that the next installment in the Final Fantasy franchise will not be Playstation exclusive as it has been for over a decade at this point on current gen consoles (handhelds aside).

Enough about the nuts and bolts of these two consoles, let's talk about online services and what each offers.

Online Service

The claim that Sony rails against with their Playstation Network (PSN hereafter) vs. the XBox Live (XBL hereafter) is that XBL makes you pay $50/year for the multiplayer experience. That is true, but the number of gold level subscribers on the XBL network has been hinted to be as high as 5 million subscribers. (Source : http://www.edge-online.com/news/gree...ox-live-vs-psn)

While both services offer roughly the same suite of features with online marketplaces, chat, avatar based games, arcade style offerings, game achievement badges/trophies, and friend lists each one has a few exclusives worth noting.

The PSN offers an internet browser with the google search engine along with the Folding@home functionality. While the internet browser and google are pretty handy when coupled with the PS3 wireless keyboard and mouse users who would take advantage of it are already likely to have a computer with some sort of always on internet connection at home already. In that sense, it duplicates an already proliferated technology for the sake of completeness. Folding@home helps advance protein folding research at Stanford. Kudos to Sony for advancing science!

That's where the exclusives end however for the PSN which has an estimated 4 million PS Home accounts compared to the 6 million estimated accounts.

The XBL online service offers the following exclusive services:

* Netflix 720p streaming On Demand movies.
* Copy game to harddrive to reduce system noise and improve load times while reducing wear on the system.
* Windows Media Center (Vista Home included) integration so you can wirelessly stream media from a media center computer on the same network to your xbox.

The Netflix integration alone is incredible given Netflix's broad userbase of over 10 million subscribers (http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/12/n...ps-on-truckin/). There are over 1 million subscribers already streaming via the November 19th 2008 NXE update to the 360 dashboard. (Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/...g-via-xbox-360)

Online services being roughly the same, the 360 offers much deeper interactive features and value added tools with many more exclusives in the pipeline such as last.fm streaming, Facebook & Twitter integration, Sky TV for UK & Ireland, 1080p streaming, and XBL exclusive content for Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Lips. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_live)

Last but not least we should look at the sales numbers for these two platforms.

Sales

I looked at the following timeline: November 2006 through 05th of September 2009

America

360 - 15,022,408 units sold
PS3 - 9,308,496 units sold

Japan

360 - 971,878
PS3 - 3,486,939

UK
360 - 3,103,425
PS3 - 2,233,945

France
360 - 1,137,219
PS3 - 1,545,047

Germany
360 - 919,580
PS3 - 1,205,644

Spain
360 - 635,391
PS3 - 1,249,112


Italy
360 - 835,034
PS3 - 987,934

Scandinavia
360 - 589,735
PS3 - 640,030

Other Europe
360 - 1,011,010
PS3 - 1,776,273

Worldwide Total:
360 - 26,649,021
PS3 - 23,974,744

Source: http://vgchartz.com/

The US market accounted for 24 million units combined of the world's 50 million units. In the largest market, with the most unrestricted trade, the 360 outsold the PS3 by 40%.

While the PS3 was clearly more popular sales-wise in Europe with a total around 9 million PS3 units sold vs. about 6 million 360 units. That's only a 33% difference in sales numbers compared to the much wider margin in the US and far bigger volume.

Since console support by game developers is largely a result of sales numbers it's easy to see why the quality of the exclusive titles in the top 100 games for each console heavily favored the 360 vs. the PS3. The PS3 has made significant sales gains on the 360 over the course of the least 18 months. The demise of the HD-DVD format was a big hit and with both units now running $299.99 for the optimal configuration price is no longer a barrier for PS3 purchase. In spite of this incredible growth during the period of 4th of January 2009 until the 5th of September 2009 the Xbox 360 has outsold the PS3 worldwide by 100,000 units.

More console exclusive games sold, more consoles sold, more powerful hardware where it counts and most importantly more popular with consumers worldwide warts and all, the 360 is clearly the better console.

[abbews]

This is my very first debate, and good luck.

Hardware:

Bluray.
PS3's bluray is one of the best and stable in the current market. What do 360 have to counter that?
HD DVD? That battle is long won by PS3, and Bluray just keeps getting more common the every day.
Soon bluray will take the throne of the DVD.

a bluray disc can contain 25-50 gb ( and is being upgraded to fit for more)
the dvd 360 uses ( can't remember the name ) contains maximum ~9 gb.

That means that the bluray outnumbers the 360dvd hugely in content.

The blu-ray has more space for HQ textures,HD videos just to mention some.

Only that makes the PS3 much greater then the XBOX 360.


Will update this post later today, I'm off to school now.

[sparty]

This is my very first debate, and good luck.

Hardware:

Bluray.
PS3's bluray is one of the best and stable in the current market. What do 360 have to counter that?
HD DVD? That battle is long won by PS3, and Bluray just keeps getting more common the every day.
Soon bluray will take the throne of the DVD.

There's no question that this is the truth about blu-ray as the standard format for high-def physical media. As I pointed out, however, sales figures in 2009 are still 100,000 units lower than the 360 for the period of Jan 4 2009 through Sept. 5 2009. This year saw an incredible increase in blu-ray disc sales. Between the period of January through March sales doubled to 9 million blu-ray disc sales from the similar period in 2008. (Source: http://news.cnet.com/blu-ray-sales-n...om-a-year-ago/)

This incredible increase during a down worldwide economy coupled with the blu-ray as the now standard high-def format should have translated into much higher PS3 sales according to your logic. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case. PS3, while selling more than in 2008 so far in 2009, still lags behind the 360 sales suggesting that even the addition of the blu-ray format standard in the PS3 isn't enough motivation to move sales higher than the 360.

Why is that?

The fight over the next format isn't being fought by physical media any longer. The rise of widely accessible broadband internet, flatscreen LCD HDTVs, and streaming HD media services all point towards the High Definition war being between streaming vs. physical media rather than the traditional physical media vs. physical media.

The XBOX 360 offers more avenues for owners to obtain these services whether it's through the Netflix on Demand service, HD movie purchases and rentals through Xbox Live or from the upcoming SkyTV HD offerings in Ireland and the UK as already pointed out in my original post. PSN has not responded in kind with the breadth of value added HD services that the 360 has and this has largely mitigated the reliance of the 360 on physical media dominance.

a bluray disc can contain 25-50 gb ( and is being upgraded to fit for more)
the dvd 360 uses ( can't remember the name ) contains maximum ~9 gb.

That means that the bluray outnumbers the 360dvd hugely in content.

The blu-ray has more space for HQ textures,HD videos just to mention some.

This has been true since 2007, but so far the blu-ray space has not been fully taken advantage of by PS3 developers. Why you might ask? Hardware limitations with the PS3 and with developers working cross platform.

The PS3 developers working on PS3 exclusive titles can store 25gb of textures which in Role Playing Games has the potential to significant extend the game being on a single disc. That said, the XBOX has multiple disc games already at the same pricepoint as single disc games. Lost Odyssey is 4 discs long because of the need for texture and sound room. It didn't stop the developer from building as visually lush a game, it just meant that it was spread over a few discs.

For PS3 developers who are also working on games for the XBOX they're going to be reluctant to add more data to a disc than the 360 will hold. Look at all the ports of games. It wasn't like Oblivion, Bioshock, or Call of Duty 4 received facelifts, significantly more content, or other boosts due to the increased capacity on the PS3.

Finally, when you start getting into how that data gets from the disc to the screen in a game you've got to look at hardware specs. The 360 has the ability to push more polygons, with more special effects, while caching more texture data than the PS3 so even if the data was there the PS3 wouldn't be able to smoothly render it on screen. (Source: http://www.pcvsconsole.com/comparisons/xbox-360-vs-ps3-gpu/)

[abbews]

I'm sorry to say this, but I have to resign this debate due to much schoolwork and upcoming exams.
You made a great arguement/debate sparty, and I wish you the best of luck.

You made great arguements, but I still thinks that PS3 is better, since you only mentioned minor factors..

regards
abbews

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