The Home Entertainment confrontation: PS3 vs. Xbox 360

by Robert Stevens  |  February 3, 2010

If until now we’ve reviewed mostly portable consoles (PSP, PSP Go), now it’s time to speak about the Home Entertainment market and to put face-to-face two of the most popular home gaming consoles: PS3 and Xbox 360.

The Home Entertainment market is a very dynamic environment in which the storage capacity, graphics features and controller input have crucial importance, and can make a big difference between one console and another. For the time being, the three giants who dominate the market are: Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, with the following products: PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. Among these three, the Nintendo Wii is somewhat atypical as it  employs a sensor bar and a wireless remote controller and its overall interface and gaming graphics are much more rudimentary than those of high core usage games as NFS on PS3 for example. The Nintendo Wii is a more general purpose gaming console, and it was designed to be more "user-friendly" with games targeted at the general family members. As such, we’ll leave Wii outside of this confrontation, but you can check reviews here.

Speaking of PS3 and Xbox 360, both gaming consoles have undergone multiple adjustments along the years , both on the outside and inside, resulting now in two of the most powerful gaming consoles on the market.

So, let the fight begin:

A year older than PS3, Xbox 360 was well received by the critics from the beginning, obtaining 11 prizes from 38 nominations at the 2007 Game Critics Award. Although it lacks the Blu-ray support, Microsoft made available for the Xbox 360 more than 1000 games, as well as Disney movies (High School Musical) and games, on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

For this year Microsoft has planned the release of the Project Natal, a sensor bar (similar to the one of Wii), which will enable a more interactive experience between the player and game. You can find more information about the Project Natal here.

On the other hand, the younger PS3 received negative reviews due to its initial high price and “lack of quality launch games”, but thanks to Blu-ray’s victory over HD DVD and PS3’s makeover into the PS3 Slim, reviews got better and sales went up.

As the table shows, now both consoles have similar performances and offer comparable services, leaving the ultimate choice to rely on the pallette of games offered. While most popular games are developed for both gaming consoles, Xbox 360 and PS3, a lot more are proprietary designed to work on just one of them, like the currently popular Mass Effect 2 for Xbox and MAG for PS3 (source Gamespot.com). The only way to differentiate the two of them lies in our personal taste in gaming. So, choose wisely and have fun!

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