to help clarifying my feelings to my friends.
I do not hate Sony. I loved the original Playstation and I got a PSP (which I traded in, but that's a different story) within a week of it's release. I generally buy a system entirely for the fact of "What can you offer, that I can not get anywhere else(or at least to the same satisfactory degree) that your system can provide." I'm not counting games for this discussion because every system has at least one GREAT game, if not several. Also if I did, we'd have to get into that whole cross platform discussion... yadda yadda.
This is also not about the economics of the systems. Sony lost a huge amount during the laptop battery recall as well and the initial investment to the PS3. Any numbers right now, skewer and don't accurately reflect how they are doing overall. Nintendo wasn't too well until they released the DS--now, the machine just prints money for them.
I'm basically going to rant and rave about the current console battle on the terms that I look at a console, and why I'm going to wait and see if I really want to get a PS3.
Xbox 360 owns the online space. Yes, the Wii and PS3 offer free online but you get what you pay for. The 360 has a unified Gamertag across all games (unlike Wii's pain in the butt 16 digit number. You also need to get theirs, which is nice for safety but makes it a bit slower to share with friends and they really haven't had a chance yet to bring their full online weight to bear), and I get to customize my name. The UI appearance. It tells me when my friends are playing and I can tell what games they own and when they play them. The achievement system is more of a e-peen measurement then anything else, but it's helpful to track progress in a game and a good way to find help or offer advice. Voice is simple to use and works really well. Patches are downloaded and updated automatically. It doesn't take long to purchase online games and extra content (where as the Wii is kind of a pain... :/). Xbox Live Arcade has given me a lot of great old school games to play and my family plays that more then any of my Wii games. XNA will allow garage developers to help may Arcade content in the future, which does pique my curiosity. I can get TV shows and movies, leave messages (voice or text) either through my 360 or PC, and stream music from my iPod into my games (sorry, no Zune for me yet).
What does the Wii offer that I had to go snatch it up so quickly? First off are the controls. The technology behind it isn't new, it's just new as it's the primary functionality of a console is using it. And for me that is the biggest draw, as I'm curious to see what weird things developers use to try and make games immersive with a peculiar controller. They also offer free online, though I do with the Virtual console was a little cheaper. Nintendo is very aware of what they have and are no longer trying to compete hardware-wise with the Sony and Microsoft. They tried that in the last generation and Sony had devastated them.
These two also pause the game or quickly make mention that a controller is not plugged in and will pause the game. Where some PS3 users will have the controllers disconnect but the system continues on unaware (which should be easy to fix, as well as the PS3 not up scaling the resolution for older HDTVs without a 720p scale).
What is so does PS3 have to offer that I can not get any where else?
Well, it does have a single core and 8 synergistic processors. This isn’t as easy to program for (because it’s not symmetric like the 360’s 3 cores or Wii’s 2 core PPEs). The 8 SPEs can be really cool as long as a developer is able to take the time to optimize it. Wait, 7 SPEs. 1 of them doesn't work because it would help yield (sarcasm aside, which is understandable because yields are terrible during the beginning stages of a console's lifespan). Wait… no, 6… because the 1 of the SPEs is needed just for the OS of the PS3. Well, maybe RAM has a bigger difference? The 360 has 512 megabytes Unified with 10 in the Videocard to use as a cache system (Because of a unified shader that ATi has implemented), so 522(?) for the CPU and GPU to share as a developer sees fit. Where as the PS3 has 256 dedicated to the CPU and 256 for the GPU... except the CPU needs to reserve 64MB system memory and 32MB graphics memory for the OS. Where as the 360 has 32 MBs reserved (I guess it's using 24, but they don't want to have developers use resources that may or may not be there in the future). Both companies are playing with their numbers, so just don't take the values at face... value.
Sony seems to have issues with QA (at least with Genji). Their different branches seem to have internal issues on what needs to be required for online, though their online libraries seem to be sorely lacking. So, I'm left with a "Well... now what?".
Because the Blu-Ray drive is running a bit slower then current DVDs they have compromised by installing a good deal of files to the hard drive (Ridge Racer takes up 5GBs, which sounds like a significant chunk [and it is] but you can always uninstall it when you've beaten the game and then load it back up again if you so desire) and have delved into focusing on using procedural texturing because the read speed is slow but the processor is solid. I'm looking forward to that as that is technology that videogames haven't really exploited yet.
Now the price is a sticky point for some, though not necessarily for me. It's still a lot cheaper then the Neo-Geo was (and that was before I had any semblance of money!) and people who broke $2-3k televisions with their Wii remote may not see 600 dollars as such a bad thing as the worst the PS3 controller would do is fall off the couch.
The biggest point is that I don't think what Sony currently has is worth me getting yet another new system for (Because I can pick up Resistance whenever I decide to get a PS3). I'll pick one up when the new Metal Gear Solid hits, but for now I think the system needs time to mature to figure out where their strengths truly lie and where they need to catch up. What the PS3 has to offer, some people felt is what they want delivered to them. I am simply not one of them and that's why I'm going to wait until it does.
Sources and Further Reading:
http://dpad.gotfrag.com/portal/story/35372/?spage=1
http://www.romsteady.net/blog/2006/11/quality-assurance-at-sony.html
http://www.innerbits.com/blog/2006/11/08/analysis-of-the-ps3-online-the-ugly/
http://www.innerbits.com/blog/2006/11/17/analysis-of-the-ps3-online-follow-up/
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2006/11/09/Procedural_Textures_Future_Gam/1.html
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