Do we compare the launch PS3 against the launch 360, or the 360 now?

November 22nd, 2006, 00:11 Posted By: gunntims0103

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November 21, 2006

One of the interesting points I keep seeing over and over in the comments for the PS3 review is pointing out that the 360 had some issues at launch, and yet they didn't affect the final score as much as Sony's unfinished software has. I'll freely admit to that: the 360 had one or two problems at launch and I had a wishlist of things that I looked forward to Microsoft fixing, but the score was still high. Why?

Because the 360 wasn't going up against anything else that provided even a fraction of what the 360 delivered. The PS2 barely had an online strategy, and while Xbox Live was fun on the first Xbox it really came into its own on the 360. So when you surveyed the market at the 360's launch, it stood head and shoulders above its competition. It had some flaws, but what it did, it did incredibly well, and added a ton of features to gaming. It blew the current-gen systems out of the water in terms of functionality, user interface, and media playback. It introduced a truly integrated friends list, as well as custom soundtracks in all games. Even better? In the following year they fixed and improved everything that bothered me about the system. Right now the 360 is a highly refined, user friendly and intuitive system. You can buy it right now for $400.

Now the PS3 is released at $600, and we should look around the market again. The 360 offers background downloading and download queues. The PS3 does not. The 360 is always ready for you to shop for games; on the PS3 it takes going to a different option, logging in to another service, and waiting while the page loads. Buying anything is a pain in the butt. You can't have custom soundtracks in every game, or even many games. The online service is lacking, and so is your buddy list. The Blu-ray playback is broken on many sets, as is the resolution in games. While the 360 added a lot of features to gaming, the PS3 has removed many. It's missing features that its main competitor has, and it's launching at a higher price. Sure, it has a Blu-ray player, and when that starts working correctly on more TVs I might enjoy it more. Right now it doesn't like my television, so the image quality isn't what it should be. It's a broken system. The PS3 right now is more expensive, for an inferior online and media experience. It got a relatively low score at 6, with the caveat that once these software problems are fixed the score could easily rise. Look at what Microsoft was able to accomplish in a year; with some updates the PS3 could easily surpass the competition in terms of features and useability.

The problem is, I'm not willing to give the PS3 a year to see how much better it gets. When I review a piece of hardware, I do it based on what it does now, not what it might do in some nebulous future. I also look at what it's competing against, and what features that product has. Right now the PS3 is broken in many ways, and unfinished in almost every other; its competitor is brilliantly designed and less expensive. You can't compare the PS3 in a review in the modern market against how the 360 launched. You have to look at it based on how the 360 plays if you bought it today.

Sony needs to get their software fixed pronto, and make sure their system can actually use HDTV sets. Until it does, in features and overall usability it simply can't be competitive in the marketplace.

I will say this, though: with the ability to read files from so many types of media and through USB, the built-in WiFi, and the Blu-ray player, Sony could blow the 360 out of the water in value if it can just get everything working. As an investment, I'm confident that the PS3 is going to kick ass in the future. It's just hard to stomach the issues when you have paid $600 now for the system.

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