160°

Sorting through the hype: Next-gen consoles

The UWM Post got a chance to sit down with G4 TV's "Attack of the Show" host Kevin Pereira and talk about all about the next-gen consoles like PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii. They also digressed about which one will be "top dog" this holiday season. So what knowledge did the face of G4 share? Read and find out.

UrbanJabroni6364d ago

I think the following quote is what most of the logical non-sony fanboys think. Sure, it might be a cool system in a year or two, but right now there is NOTHING to justify the insane price.

"The people that are going for the PS3 right now in my opinion are hopefuls — they’re fanboys and are either misinformed or they have that desire to be the cool kid with the newest technology.

I think a lot of people, especially in the game press, stepped back, breathed for a second and really looked at the console, looked at the games available, and said “you know what? Waiting in line for a week, struggling with pre-orders, spending a thousand dollars on a bundle, it’s not worth it.”

I know it sounds incredibly negative against the Playstation 3 and it’s not. I’m just trying to counteract all the hype.

It’s a beautiful console. It’s a powerful system and in a year to two years you’re going to be seeing games for it that are incredible. It will offer those experiences that you want from a console of its magnitude.

Right now, this holiday, it’s just not worth it. "

THAMMER16363d ago

I'll get a PS3 when they offer a game that says this is what the PS3 is about. Untill then Wii60 baby.
The PS3 is a $600.00 bait and switch scam. Oh it is so powerful but you have to wait and get bad games for 2 years and the Wii motion controller will out do ours and we have not vibration and the 360 uses DVD9 and still has better looking games oh but we have Blue Ray too it is the future of movies once we get enough of them in the market.

Hate it or love it the Wii is not 1080p but it is what games are about 100%.

FadeToBlack6363d ago

When the ps3 shows me something amazing i cant get on my 360 then i will get it. Untill then i will be enjoying my 360 and maybee a wii.

LuminousAphid6363d ago (Edited 6363d ago )

Same. Why would I go buy a PS3 at launch when I can play any multi-system game better and more smoothly on the 360? Not to mention the exclusives, which the PS3 seems rather light on right now.

I do hate Sony, because I think their company is one of the most slimy, filthy, ridiculously misleading companies out there right now, but I can admit that they know what they are doing. If the PS3 ever gets enough must-play titles that I can't experience on the 360, I might consider buying one...

Actually, no I won't. Not unless it is the same price or less than a 360... which will most likely never happen. I'm sure at some point I will know someone foolish enough to own one, so I can just play theirs.

PS360PCROCKS6363d ago

well for me I already have a PS3 since my roommate has it so I'll play the few games they have without having to spend the insane price, but yes for this holiday having played it, it is not showing me why it can justify $600. Even my friend thinks the 360 is better right now so atleast he is not a rabid moron like some other people I could call out.

borgome6363d ago

Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.

Ever since Mr. Stringer took the helm last year at Sony, the struggling if still formidable electronics giant, the world has been hearing about how the coming PlayStation 3 would save the company, or at least revitalize it. Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun.

Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise.

Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the world’s most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the world’s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other.

The PS3, which was introduced in North America on Friday with a hefty $599 price tag for the top version, certainly delivers gorgeous graphics. But they are not discernibly prettier than the Xbox 360’s. More important, the whole PlayStation 3 system is surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online.

I have spent more than 30 hours using the PlayStation 3 over the last week or so and may have played more different games on the system - 13 - than probably anyone outside of Sony itself. Sony did not activate the PS3’s online service until just before the Friday debut. Over the weekend a clear sense of disappointment with the PlayStation 3 emerged from many gamers.

“What’s weird is that the PS3 was originally supposed to come out in the spring, and here it came out in the fall, and it still doesn’t feel finished,” Christopher Grant, managing editor of Joystiq, one of the world’s biggest video-game blogs, said on the telephone Saturday night. “It’s really not the all-star showing they should have had at launch. Sony is playing catch-up in a lot of ways now, not just in terms of sales but in terms of the basic functionality and usability of the system.”

Sadly for Sony, the best way to explain how the PlayStation 3 falls short is to explain how different it is to use than its main competition, Xbox 360. When I reviewed the 360 last year, I wrote: “Twelve minutes after opening the box, I had created my nickname, was in a game of Quake 4 and thought, ‘This can’t be this easy.’ ”

I never felt that way using the PlayStation 3. With the PS3, 12 minutes after opening the box I realized that Sony inexplicably does not include cables to connect the machine to a high-definition television. Keep in mind that one of Sony’s main selling points has been that the PS3 plays Blu-Ray high-definition movie discs. But high-definiton cables? Sold separately. The Xbox 360, by contrast, ships with one cable that can connect to either a standard or high-definition set.

Then, before you are even using the PS3, you have to connect the “wireless” controller to the base unit with a USB cable so they can recognize each other. If you bring your PS3 controller to a friend’s house, you’ll have to plug back in again. The 360’s wireless controllers are always just that, wireless.

If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesn’t seem too complicated, but the PS3 can’t do it.

In that sense it often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3’s online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, you’ll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you can’t download in the background while you go do something that’s more fun (like play a game). On the Xbox 360, not only are files downloaded seamlessly in the background, but you can also shut off the machine, turn it on later, and the download will resume automatically.

The PS3’s whole online experience feels tacked-on and unpolished. On the Xbox 360 each user has a single unified friends list, so you can track your friends and communicate with them easily, no matter what game you are in. On the PlayStation 3 most games have their own separate friends list and some have no friends function at all. There is a master list as well, but in order to communicate with anyone on it, you have to quit the game you are playing.

There are some high points. The multi-player battles in Resistance: Fall of Man are excellent. The arcade-style action in the downloadable Blast Factor is suitably frantic.

But the list of the PS3’s disappointments remains, from its undersupported voice chat to its maddening cellphone-like text messaging system. (In frustration I ended up plugging in a USB keyboard.) Overall, Sony seems to have put a lot of effort into cramming as much silicon horsepower under the hood as possible but to have forgotten that all the transistors in the world can’t make someone smile.

And so it is a bit of a shock to realize that on the video game front Microsoft and Sony are moving in exactly the opposite directions one might expect given their roots. Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sony’s PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3’s deficiencies.) The thing is, if people want to use a computer, they’ll use a computer.

Through the decades of the Walkman and the Trinitron television, Sony was renowned as the global master of easy-to-use, seamlessly powerful consumer electronics. But recently Sony seems to have lost its way, first in digital music players, in which it ceded the ergonomic high ground to Apple’s iPod, and now in home-game consoles. For now Sony’s technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun.

As a practical matter, given the limited quantities Sony has been able to manufacture, the PlayStation 3 will surely remain sold out throughout the holiday season. If you can’t find one, don’t fret. Sony still has a lot of work to do. As Mr. Grant of Joystiq put it: “Maybe in six months it’ll be finished. Maybe by next fall I’ll be able to do all the cool stuff. I’m still kind of waiting.”

60°

Indie hit Dredge is getting its own movie adaptation

Rob Webb of KnowTechie writes: We're still waiting on the details, but this video game adaptation promises to be seriously creepy.

Read Full Story >>
knowtechie.com
60°

Chatting Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered with Suda51

CGM Writes: While we were over at PAX East, we were able to sit down with Goichi Suda (Suda51) and talk about the upcoming remaster of Shadows of the Damned

Read Full Story >>
cgmagonline.com
80°

Remembering Medal Of Honor: The Forgotten Master Of WW2 Games

Ibrahim from eXputer: "The Medal of Honor franchise was once the crown jewel of FPS war games, later defeated by the tides of time and poor development."

banger881d 23h ago

They tried to turn it into Call of Duty and it killed it off. They should reboot it and go back to it's roots. But they'd ruin it with online-only/multiplayer style bullshit so why bother? I have very fond memories of these games, but this series can stay dead as far as I'm concerned.

FPS_D3TH13h ago

Was literally just thinking of this game the other week with the secret nut cracker mission and the shooting Bismarck dog lmao. Loved these games as a kid

PrecursorOrb11h ago(Edited 11h ago)

I wish they’d remake warfighter

Strictly for the campaign

The_Hooligan11h ago

I have fond memories of playing the Medal of Honor Breakthrough MP Demo. It had two maps and custom servers. Living on campus, I had it downloaded on one of the PC Lab servers so I could access it on any computer at the university. Joined a clan and made friends that I still keep in touch with today.