You may have noticed our biased opinions, but we tend be stay rather objective despite all that. Sure, we have our grips about the new system, but as a whole, thus far we have come to the conclusion that once again, it will be the better option with the next generation of gaming. Much of that is dependant upon the 3 points cited by you above: hardware, software/games and connectivity. The later not being too importnat as we’re more LAN based rather than XBL, but that could change with the next system. And sure, $ony could surprise us all, but as you noted, that surprise may come in the form of “We’re charging you $500 for the basic system!!!” — I guess we’ll see.

Anyway, thanks for your imput. Be sure to check the other threads we have to offer.

I am glad that you liked my article enough to repost it to your own site. I would like to add in a bit more detail and conclusions that I have come to since my post (a few months ago). (also a slight responce to “Advocate” and others like him/her)

#1: XBOX 360 will be sold at $299 and $399. The lower priced model is the “Core” system with only an XBOX 360 and a wired controller. The higher priced system has a hard drive (needed for backwards compatibility), wireless controller, remote control, high-def cords and XBOX Live account. This may disterb you at first, but it is a smart move by Microsoft. At one keynote speech, they said XBOX 360 should be a gaming platform for everyone, not just gamers. While everyone reading this is probably an avid gmer, you should buy the 399$ system. The “Core” system was meant for the “non-gamers” of the world that XBOX 360 was suppost to open a whole new world of fun to. This will increase XBOX 360 market share tremendously. The latests I have heard about the PS3’s price is that it will be “expensive”. So expensive that it is supposted to last people 10 years instead of a console’s normal 5 years. This may mean $400-600. I would seriously doubt a price lower than 400$, unless they used the media to make everyone expect a high price, so that XBOX 360 would pushed to a higher price.

#2: I do know (in much detail) about the GPU and CPU of both the XBOX 360 and PS3. I only considered the GPUs of the PS3 and XBOX 360 equal because there is no way to estimate without having the actual hardware. What I will say about the cell is that although the Cell with SPEs are theoretically faster (well, in at least FP Comps), it doesn’t matter. No developer wants to program for them. You will see no use of the SPEs in multi-platform games (making XBOX 360 3 times more powerful than the Cell). For the PS3 only games, programming for the SPEs is very complicated and a mess. Just having the difference between the PPC core and a SPE makes planning, developing, and debugging much more difficult and time consuming.

#3: How can one say that the PS3 is more popular than the XBOX 360? (Almost) No one has even touched the boxes let alone the mass public that doesn’t know about it. We’ll see which is more popular when it is released on (latest estimate), the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

#4: I didn’t say this before, but where is the PS3 version of XBOX Live? It is one third of the essencial 3 pillars of a successful gaming platform (hardware, games/software, connectivity)

I really tried to not be biased. I am not an avid gamer, but more of a hardware nut. I am not loyal to any box or company. Although it may seem that I am all for XBOX 360, it is only for their hardware and business strategies. I am mearly trying to predict to my best ability the future. Sony has been mysterious and we may all be surpriced

Again, thanks for reading!
–Kyle Egbert

Posted May 23, 2005, 10:22 AM ET by bae924
Hey Sony fans, I think you guys need to realize something. When was the last time that Sony delivered on a promise when it comes to the power of a console (or other product for that matter)? I believe we all know the answer to this question.

Don’t let Sony trick you into thinking that the PS3 will be as powerful as they say it will be.

The truth behind the specs of the consoles:

Xbox 360’s three dual-thread 3.2Ghz processors, though about half as effective in floating point calculations, have three times the general purpose processing power as the PS3. Of the articles I’ve read, analysts agree that from a game console point of view, XBOX360’s six-hardware-threaded general purpose central processing unit matrix gives Xbox 360 the edge over Sony’s less versitile, harder-to-program-for CELL CPU. Don’t let Sony’s floating point numbers make you think that the Xbox 360 is only half as powerful, because if you do, you will be disappointed.

Xbox 360 has 5 times the memory bandwidth as the PS3. (278.4GB/s vs 48GB/s) The PS3’s memory bandwidth is insufficient to maintain its GPU’s peak rendering speed, so don’t expect and anti-aliasing or alpha blending in your PS3 games.

Xbox 360’s ATI Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is more flexible and has more processing power, even when you discount the PS3’s memory bandwidth bottleneck.

Basically, if jusut states what we are already familiar with, but in an effort to have all this info localized into one friendly location, I put it here for our edification. Ta-ta

Posted May 29, 2005, 11:40 PM ET by Advocate
#439, Mr. Kyle Egbert,
Um… where do I start? You say that you are informed, you say that you’re figures should atleast be close, but to have commented so late into the blog and still not know the more recent news is quite sad. Actually, you do know more facts, on the X360, you’re very biased towards the PS3. It tires me to explain to those who post unfairly, but I guess I knock out a few key points and let you decide if you want more. So, firstly, the PS3 will be launching at PS2 launch price (same as PS1 launch price) which is just under $370. To think that you were comparing $100-200 difference in console price instead of the true $70 news is somewhat astonishing. There’s a big difference Kyle.
Secondly, the Blu rays will be encased and more adequately protected from scratch or wear if you bothered to even look it up.
Thirdly, you can’t say the proccessors are equal, in your “fair” comparison it wouldn’t even be comparable not “equal”. Plus you don’t know a thing about CELL architecture and so when you say “dots” you forgot to read up on the news about the X360 being more into application proccessing than gaming. There is always 2 sides of the story and you only had one.
Don’t post biased comments in future if you want to come off as having some technical knowledge. So far the PS3 is more popular than the X360 regardless of all this crap that’s flying around so buckle up and hope that your earlier launch does some damage, cause PS3 will totally kick ass when it launches.

*I personally like how he accuses Mr. Egbert about being biased, yet puts that last sentence into his retort. Plus, the fact that his sign-in name is “Advocate”, hmmm, for what? OH! For the PS3, of course. I believe that Mr. Advocate is more jaded in his opinion that Mr. Egbert. In my opinion, no one will know the better machine until this time next year, provided Sony releases their machine in the Spring. But, lets face the obvious, we’re all a little biased since good memories are tied to certain machines. Did someone say “Halo”?