Xbox 360 Vs. PS3
Interesting article from a game developer talking about xbox 360 vs. ps3. Check it out definately worth reading. BTW just to let you guys know, I'm not a ps3 hater. I plan on getting one when I have the money.
article from http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-348-1.htm
As long as consoles have existed, discussions, debates, arguments, fights, and all out WARS have taken place over who makes the best video game units. Growing up, I was always a Nintendo fan boy; I didn't want to hear anything about Sega Genesis... In my mind, Nintendo had Mario, Zelda, and other great first-party titles. Sega had Sonic, and red blood.
Things are slightly more complicated these days however. Console makers are taking different approaches to designing their products; some go for hardcore processing power, others focus more on online gaming. We already have a heated debate going on in our forum about which console is better, PS3 or XBOX 360.
I thought it would be a good idea to ask my friend, who is a lead programmer for a large gaming company that produces games for both PS3 and XBOX 360. He has also worked on PS2, XBOX 1, and PC games in the past 6-or-so years. Obviously, considering his position working with both consoles and both Sony and Microsoft, he doesn't want to step on any toes, so wishes to remain anonymous at this time. Here are his thoughts on the subject:
PS3 vs. XBOX 360
Being a video game developer (I develop for both, Playstation 3 and XBOX 360) people ask me almost daily which platform I think is better. These are my personal feelings, in no way does this reflect my employer.
Short answer: XBOX 360.
Long answer: Price, performance, visual quality, game selection and online support. I think the XBOX 360 wins in every category.
Price: This is obvious; the XBOX 360 core is only $299. The PS3 is around $499 for the 20GB version. It comes with a hard drive, but you don’t need a hard drive to enjoy a lot of great games on the 360 so I think it’s fair to compare both core systems.
Performance: On paper, the PS3 is more powerful. In reality, it’s quite inferior to the 360. Without getting into too many details, the three general-purpose CPU’s the xbox360 has are currently FAR easier to take advantage of than the SPU’s on the PS3. I suspect a few years down the road some high budget, first party PS3 exclusive titles will come out that really take advantage of the SPU’s and do things the XBOX 360 can’t, but I don’t think the console is worth buying based on this speculation (for some it will be though, we'll have to wait and see how these games turn out).
Graphics: The XBOX 360 is a clear winner. The GPU is more powerful. It has more powerful fillrate, and far more pixel and vertex processing horsepower. Part of the reason is their choice of memory, and architecture of pixel and vertex procesing. I can’t get into details but the same vertex shader will run much slower on the PS3 than the XBOX 360. The 360 also has a clever new way rendering high definition anti aliased back buffers. To accomplish the same effect on PS3 is prohibitively expensive. For this reason I think many games will have no choice but to run in non-HD resolutions on the PS3 version, use a lower quality anti aliasing technique, or do back buffer upscaling. The end result in all cases is going to be noticeably worse image quality.
Game Selection: The XBOX 360 has a huge head start here. 1 year is an eternity in gaming. Almost all multi-platform developers have made the XBOX 360 their primary platform due to timing of release-to-market, this means the games will look and perform better on the 360. The PS3 versions will be ports of the 360 versions. (The opposite was true for XBOX 1 vs. PS2). The XBOX 360 is also far faster to develop for due to better development tools (massively popular Visual Studio .NET vs. proprietary, buggy PS3 compiler and debugger), better documentation, and easier architecture (3 general purpose CPU’s vs. 8 specialized processors that require DMA). Timing has also caused all next-gen middleware developers to make XBOX 360 their primary platform, and they will ‘add ps3 support’ as needed. This support will probably be inferior to the XBOX 360’s due to manpower and more importantly, demand. It’s this catch-22 now that will continue to drive the 360 forward and hold PS3 back.
The other obvious point here is that right now the Xbox360 already has a very impressive line-up of titles on store shelves; the ps3 just launched, and has virtually nothing of interest. Also, many 360 games are already discounted ($35 for Fight Night 3 on Amazon). PS3 games are all full price since it just launched.
Live: Microsoft’s online support with XBOX1 was phenomenal. They built in-house experience, user base, facilities, $$ commitment from executive level (since it proved successful), and most importantly, feedback from 100,000s of XBOX Live subscribers. Playstation 2’s online support sucked. They are now playing catch-up, trying to emulate Xbox’s model. But they had their hands tied just trying to make the PS3 work, it was incredibly ambitious (blu-ray etc.). I haven’t seen it yet, but I seriously doubt the quality will be anywhere to the level of XBOX 360.
HD Content: The PS3 comes with one built in (blu-ray). The XBOX 360 offers HD-DVD as an add-on for $200. You probably don’t care about HD-DVD right now. But you will soon (The quality between DVD and HD is comparable to VHS vs DVD, if you have the right TV) so I suggest paying attention to the war that’s begun. There are two formats: HD-DVD and BLU-RAY. Basically if you rent a BLU-RAY DVD from Bockbuster, it won’t play in your XBOX 360 HD-DVD, and vice versa with the PS3. The implications of this format war would require another article on its own. But as far as the consoles are concerned, the XBOX 360 wins because the DVD player is a separate unit. Playing movies is very taxing on the DVD reader, and let’s face it. In 3 years when your PS3 DVD drive goes out due to playing lots of movies (PS2 was notoriously bad about this) you will have to go buy another PS3. With the 360, you’ll just chuck your HD-DVD player, and go buy another one at the store. In 3 years standalone units wlil probably only cost about $99-150. Another point for the XBOX 360, is that I don’t know who will win the format-war, so I would rather wait with purchase of a HD player. The PS3 doesn’t give you this option.
PS3 controversy: Shootings, Wallmart fights, $15,000 Ebay sales etc. My advice is ignore it. It will pass soon.
article from http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-348-1.htm
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Comments
Price: the 360 has the clear win
Performance: Sure games run a bit better but overallon the 360 right now...but the PS3 platform is better and games will run better as dev teams bend and twist the architecture...
Game Selection: thats a give 1 year vs. 1 week... most 360 games will have a PS3 variant.
Online Support Well Sony hasn't had the best track record so we will see what the PS3 online system can offer and how well Sony backs it up.
Also I have a bit of news for him on the GPU's in these systems:
RSX Pipelines
-24 shader pipelines.
-each pipeline produces 5.7 ops.{(shader opperations per second)
Total of 136 sops
ATI Pipelines
-48 shader pipelines.
-each pipeline produces 2 ops {(shader opperations per second)
Total of 96 sops
Nvidia's chip is much stronger than the ATI chips and will out perform them all day long.
As far as I know, Sony has always been difficult to deal with, and I'm sure they will continue to be that way. I'll wait to see what the true outcome of this generation's console war is, but I'm willing to believe heavily in this article.
550MHz Core
300 Million Transistors
136 Shader Operations per Cycle
Independent Pixel/Vertex Shaders
256MB GDDR3 RAM at 22.4GB/sec
External Link to CPU at 35GB/sec (20GB/sec write + 15GB/sec read)
1920x1080 Maximum Resolution
Based on that, I'll make some guesses to the number of pipelines and ALUs.
24 Pixel Pipelines (2 Vector + 2 Scalar + 1 Texture ALUs)
8 Vertex Pipelines (1 Vector + 1 Scalar ALUs)
(24 x 5) + (8 x 2) = 136
550MHz x 96 = 52.8 Billion Pixel Shader Ops/Sec
550MHz x 24 = 13.2 Billion Texture Address Ops/Sec
550MHz x 16 = 8.8 Billion Vertex Shader Ops/Sec
PS3 - 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
Xbox 360 - 480p, 480i, 720p, 1080i
ATI's GPU doesn't support full HD content in progressive scan...
Agree and semi disagree, the PS3 platform is going to live on for years to come as will the Wii and the Xbox 360. To learn the platform and push proper game content would be smart for a developer as they can make a better game and sell more copies. The actual down fall by Sony and the PS3 was releasing the actual info needed to the dev's to develop the games. Hence why most of the top dog games won't be rolling out for another 5 or 6 months. I have played on all 3 consoles now and can honestly say the difference between the 360 and PS3 isn't much, the Wii lacks in graphic’s but has awesome content, and yes I understand the Wii is not a graphical power house like the 360 and PS3. But overall currently there are more attractive titles for the Xbox 360 but I suppose that would be due to over 1 1/2 years of development under each of the dev's belts.
actually xbox 360 will support 1080p with the update. here are a few articles about it
http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/733/733658p1.html
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/20/tgs-xbox-360-to-add-1080p-support-ps3-to-lose-bullet-point/
Attractive to you, but there are other segments out there. There are tons of moms and dads - NON TECHNICAL moms and dads out there who will be buying one or more of these next gen consoles this holiday season. This is where the real market is, the non-enthusiast buyers. Almost everybody I talk to that is not a techy, a gamer, or a 18-32 year old male doesn't actually really like the kinds of titles that are available for the 360 or PS3 right now.
Why do you think the DS is so insanely popular? There are families out there buying these games. I mean grandma, aunt betty, and mom and dad. The DS' technical specs are like 1999 generation.... Yet it is moving millions upon millions of units.
From what I know the physical limits of the ATI chip will not support 1080p I heard a software update will brute force a type of 1080p support which in turn to me says slowers graphics as a full image of 1080p cached is pretty dang big, and with the system sharing 512MB of memory with the CPU and GPU I am sure the 360 will take a hit.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20061120132150.html
Lets see if they can drop the prices by 40% than...
$300 core xbox vs $500 "core" ps3. Big difference there already.
I like how the hd dvd isnt included with the 360, otherwise I wouldn't be able to afford that extra $200. Thats alot, especially for a college student.
You seem to have something against the 360.
Speaking as someone working in the game industry:
1 - The PS3 has the upper hand... on paper
2 - The 360 has by FAR the better programming interface
The world is very different than it was 6 1/2 years ago when the PS2 was released. At the time there was little to no competition whatsoever for the graphics and computational power of the console. Custom chips meant a lot back then.
By the time that people have understood the PS3 programming interface and "bent and twisted the architecture" there will be generations of hardware and software FAR beyond what we have today. The game we are working on today for instance, as far as we can tell, can be ported to the 360 in a month or so, whereas the PS3 requires a complete rewrite.
There's no incentive to learn the new interface. Why invest time in learning how to program the PS3, which is different from the PS2, which was different from the PS1, when the 360 offers the same (expanded, and far superior) dev tools, as the original XBox, and every other PC game out there.
I liken the PS3 somewhat to Betamax (not that I'm not the first person to draw this conclusion) - By the time we figure out how to use it, and why it's superior, it wont matter anymore.
M
edit:// Mondi's prediction: If this generation of consoles (ie - 360, PS3, Wii) is not the last. Then the next generation will certainly be the last of the specialized gaming consoles that will be released. The gap between custom hardware/software and generalized solutions is rapidly closing and will come to an end in the next few years - You saw it here first
Everything boils down to money, and the PS3 takes more.
On the other hand, I've had more trouble out of my first gen Xbox than my PS2. And then there was the initial release of the Xbox 360's that all died but supposedly that issue has been resolved.
For me, it comes down to buy time. If I buy right now, it's going to be an Xbox 360 due to price and game availability. If I wait and the PS3 price drops to relatively the same as the Xbox 360 AND there is an ampule, first rate game supply, then I might consider the PS3.
And now, I must go to sleep so I can wake up early for Black Friday to get in line to buy....a freezer. Yep, freezer. That's what happens to you when you get old. Things like freezers take precedent over stuff like plasma TV's and iPODs. Maybe I will die in my sleep.
Daxx