Oct 20, 2007. Why Xbox 360 rules and the PS3 sucks.

What makes the 360 so much better than the PS3? The first reason is exclusive titles. Yes, the PS3 has Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Killzone, and a few more titles, but it does not have as many world class studios developing great titles as Microsoft. There's no doubt that Microsoft is blowing Sony out of the water with first party titles.

Another reason the 360 is dominating is that it's gaining franchises that were only available on the Playstation 2. That's something the original Xbox was never able to obtain. Titles like Ace Combat, Katamari Damacy, and Ridge Racer. These were once the coveted Playstation titles that made many gamers purchase a PS2 over the original Xbox.

Do you know there's still a battle between blu-ray and HD-DVD? Do you care? Probably not. Because it turns out that consumers don't want either format. It was a smart move for Microsoft not to incorporate the technology. Sony spent so much time, effort, and money on blu-ray that the PS3 suffered from lack of blu-ray lasers and an increase in price that they've never been able to offset compared to the 360. But the real issue is the cost to the developers. Blu-ray discs are expensive compared to their DVD counterparts, so many developers simply feel that it's not worth the effort developing for a company that supports blu-ray over standard DVDs. And in terms of game data, the extra blu-ray space is used for high quality textures and movies.

Three general purpose cores are better than the PS3's cell processor. Many developers are finding out that the cell is difficult to program. Just ask the team behind the Unreal Engine that's still not optimized on the PS3. And that's with the help of Sony. The point of a console from a developer's view is that it's a tool used to create games. It's not a science project. Microsoft understands the simple principle that the machine is there to help the developers fulfill their gaming ideas, not to fight them on it.

Sony's one strong point is the PS3 Home, which sounds great on paper. The problem is that can it generate the same community online as World of Warcraft or Maple Story? Yes, PS3 gamers have to use it, but face it, the characters are all dull. They look like real people. And that's not what gaming is about. Gaming is about playing as somebody else that's doing something that you can't do in real life. Buying fictional jeans and a shirt for your character is something you can do in real life. Talking to some character at a park isn't as exciting as hunting orcs in Warcraft. So what's the point? Microsoft knows that the online community is centered around activities that draw users in because they don't exist in the real world.

We think the PS3 will be a sore spot on Sony's gaming history. It's not a bad system, but in terms of games, hardware, and imagination, it just isn't as great as the 360. They can keep dropping the price, but it's very doubtful that it will ever have a base as strong as the PS2, or the 360. Maybe the Atari Jaguar or Neogeo.