i must say XBOX 360 is amazing and is worth every penny! i played on it in the light (leeds) a MUST BUY !!!

Quite hard... hummm...

The PS3:

Pritty good, good games. BUT: hating the controler, and the Broardband isn't built in. *shakes head* shame.

The XBOX 360:

Looks nice, lovely shape. Im not a great Microsoft fan i must say, but over all good games (can't go wrong with Halo) and everythings built in.

Nintendo Rev.:

What is with that controller? You've got to love it though. Its behond its time.

The PS3: not released yet. I've not seen anything final about the controller. The games will rewrite all paradigms of the known world. ™

The Xbox 360: not released yet. The games will render all previous models of entertainment obselete.™

The Nintendo Revolution: even the final production name hasn't been released yet, let alone the console or even official pictures of any of the games. It will dissolve your spirit into a purely virtual form to reassign all values of humanity into a digital range of expression.™

Or:

They'll all have their strengths and their weaknesses. The PS3 has a bigger follow-on market so will probably get the most attention from developers. The 360 has some fairly-familiar hardware, which could make development easier but also stifle creativity due to the budget-friendly PC cross-over market meaning that often it will have games that can work inside another machine's design styles rather than ones specifically designed for it. The Revolution (or whatever it becomes) is the only one that shows a genuinely creative approach to gaming, but may suffer from eyetoy-style gamer fatigue if the controller doesn't prove itself to be gentle on the wrists and arms. A major plus for the Revolution is that it uses a very similar architecture to the GameCube so its environment is a very well known field compared with the new expanses offered by 360 and PS3, making Revolution development fast and cheap. This could lead to some genuinely exciting new projects.

Let's face it, no-one even agrees what is the best console of the current generation let alone the next gen machines that aren't even released yet.

Personally I'll probably go for a PS3 through brand familiarity and the pretty decent backwards compat. function letting me play my old games. I'll be keeping a close eye on the Rev too and may end up with one of them as well. I doubt I'll get the 360 for the simple reason that there's only so much space in my house, so much money to go around, and most big games are multiplatform anyway. I couldn't afford to buy most of the good games from the last twelve months, and I doubt I'd have time to play them properly even if I had bought them, so there's no point in me getting every machine under the sun. On the plus side, I've got some good things to look forward to when I get the time and money again (and they'll be lots cheaper).

[I've added a new option to the poll]

I'm liking the PS3 the best so far. Aside from that damn controller, it looks as it's going to be the best. I don't like the XBox because the controller, game selection, and the unnecessary perphirals. I also like the games. Ratchet and Clank, Devil May Cry... woo. Go PS3.

The Revolution... it's still remains to be seen.

You guys do know that the current PS3 controller images are just placeholders until they finalise the design, don't you? They just did that OTT boomerang thing because it looked swish next to the console and gave a sense of scale to the photos.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I read an article somewhere that confirmed Sony's use of the new controllers. I can't see that as a particularly good idea, though... as the gaming community at large seems to detest the design.

And Mata, if you're going to add another item to vote for on the poll, could you please fix the capitalization of the originials? Please? *cookie offerings*

Yes, I could, but that would stop it from irritating you then, wouldn't it?

I definitely saw $ony somewhere quoted as saying that the pictured design of controller was still in its concept stage. I'll wait to hold something before I judge it, but I agree it doesn't look very comfortable. Given the reaction to the boomerang style I would be very surprised if they kept on with that design... Although, it does still depend on what it feels like to hold. It might be silk in the hands. Kinaesthetic senses are fickle things.

Oh Mata, you're such a tease.

Anyway, I agree that it might feel nice, but I think one of the greatest things about the Playstation is that the controller works extremely well on two systems. The third, while still similar, is a departure and let's be honest - most of the PS2 gaming population is casual and doesn't really want to learn a new controller over the one they've been using for almost ten years. Even Micro$oft is keeping their basic design for the 360.

Ah well, it remains to be seen, but with DMC4 and Ratchet 5 waiting for me, I can safely put my money on the PS3.

Coming soon... Devil May Cry 4! Featuring:

Gothic posing!

Gun juggling!

Enemies with no AI!

Cheesey dialog!

Feet that slip across the ground when the hero runs!

A ruined castle-type-place setting!

Tease? Moi? I wouldn't do it if it weren't so easy Mike!

It's a city setting and Devil May Cry 3 had terrific AI. The voice acting could use some work, though.

You're kidding right?! The Playstation controller is the most cramp inducing piece of plastic ever. I hated it. Also, I like that the two games are sequels! Woo! More of the same!
I'm actually considering an Xbox 360...sometime in the not too distant future, the Revolution looks losta fun, but again in a different league than the xbox and playstation.

If I were your father, I'd hug you right now while some lame music played in the background.

Also, the 360 is absolutely the greatest thing since invention and immediate uninvention of the World Destructor 3000. It blows the PS3 and Nin Rev out of the water, and they weren't even in the water. The graphics are simply amazing and the hard drive lets it double as a media center. I love the living crap out of the 360.

Whoa whoa whoa, easy up there fanboy. You're cool, yeah. Don't blow it. ¬_¬

For me, the 360 looks distinctly meh. Being a PC Gamer, I suppose I'm kinda biased, seeing as the graphics on display by the PC match, and in some cases even surpass, that of the 360. We still know very little about the PS3, and even less about the Revolution, so to say the 360 will blow them out of the water is a little premature.

Heheh, dirty.

Also, didn't they invent a new graphics card just for the 360? Playing games on the 360 is like watching a movie. A movie about Batman beating up Hitler.

LittleBear: I thought that was Oscarhilton posting there!

/spam

What are you talking about? I have always been Oscar.

I'd just like to say that I found this amusing-

If you are Oscar, then uhhh, tell me something about yourself that you wouldn't know if you weren't Oscar... hmmm?

Oh and to make this un spamful -

I think that xbox360 is quite promising. I don't think it should be white though, it just doesn't work. But the PS3 looks quite fun too and I think it can play games for previous PS (I think?). Can't say I'm much of a gamer though so I'm a little indifferent...

Edit: Oh and Travis, nice one.

I have small hands. I liked the PS2 controller. And franchises aren't necessarily a bad thing - franchises, while already being good and dandy, allow more money and thus more innovation. And please, don't even talk to me about sequels and franchises if you're arguing for the 360.

And to Travis, how could you compare? The Revolution and PS3 aren't out and they're pretty sure to be better. By a lot.

I love my precious PC and my lovely D&D-based roleplaying games. If I became addicted to any other game systems then I'd have either no sleep, bad grades, or no posting time. I've also sucked miserably at every video game I've ever tried, which could have something to do with the dislike.
People with duplicate avs confuse me easily. Bah.

At least when artistUnknown and I did it we had different titles.

And it's not just the same avs. It's the signature, the profile, everything except for the name.

Little_bear! Stop stealing my image!

What on earth are you on about?

EDIT: Sorry for double post. ¬_¬

Hoe. Lee. Crap.

Current 360 graphics are of a similar quality to high-end gaming PCs. The graphics will also improve as programmers get better at using the 360 hardware, whereas PCs will improve over the next few years just by bringing out better hardware. Certainly, the 360 is the cheaper option here, but the point is that it's not really a leap ahead of the competition.

We might be nearing the point where game graphics are about as good as it is currently affordable to make with the budgets available. The 360 and the PS3 would probably be capable of rendering environments in a near-film realistic manner, but do programmers and designers have the time or resources available to let them do this? The hardware manufacturers will probably continue to one-up each other for a while to come yet, but the practicalities of game production mean that unless creation tools become a similar magnitude of improvement over the previous generation then we're just going to be seeing the same things with better resolution... Which is exactly what the 360 currently has.

This also calls forth the old argument about just how important graphics really are anyway. There are games out there that are astonishingly beautiful, but that doesn't actually make them play any better. It's definitely an advantage, I'm not denying that, but it's always down to the way the games play in the end. The brain fills in the gaps. I used to find the graphics on Tekken 3 quite impressive, but after playing Tekken Tag for a while I decided to go back to compare them and the resolution drop is massive. The important thing is that while playing it I didn't notice at all. Those bodies looked rounded to me because my mind filled in the gaps. To take your example, I could imagine Batman fighting Hitler in my head ten years ago and it would still have made a great game: better graphics don't mean that the game will be any better.


I like the PS controllers and I've got quite big hands. The XBox S controller is... Alright, but not great. My loathing of the GameCube one is fairly well documented on these forums in other places.


You mean like the ever decreasing circles of the Jak & Daxter games? Or the de ja vu that is Banjo Kazooie, or perhaps the yearly update syndrome of EA sports games that Ubisoft seems keen to copy.

I wouldn't really call incremental releases as being supportive of innovation. Devil May Cry was a big jump in design for Capcom, but 2 and 3 only contain moderate changes: the biggest innovation has happened, now the franchise steps in to milk the formula (formula milk?).

I agree that franchises can be used to fund innovative projects, such as the Clover Studio, but this is the exception rather than the rule. I can't think of any other equivalent to Clover. The business model just doesn't support this kind of behaviour. If a company has two options, to repeat the same formula using existing resources and make a very good profit from fans or to spend money making something new from scratch without a guarantee of sales at the end of it, guess which one they choose?

The trouble is that platforms like the 360 and the PS3 are just going to make this worse. Companies are always going to play it safe when production budgets spiral so far into the stratosphere that every game could break the studio. The constant demand for more detail means that smaller games just won't be able to match up unless they try something incredibly new visually, which the current selection of game players have pretty consistently refused to buy in any significant quantities.


I presume that you were deliberately contradicting yourself. Personally I am absolutely sure that the PS3 will trigger spontaneous evolution of players into a higher form of life, existing on a plane of pure energy.

That said, with the extra six months of preparation time (which is a long time in hardware) it's probable that the PS3 will have a slightly better chipset, but frankly who really cares? It'll still have the same people making games for it, and those are the most important component, not the silicon inside the box.*

If you want innovation then the Revolution is currently the only platform that can really promise something new, everything else is just the same as before with nicer graphics and a similar mix of good, bad, and tediously average games.

*May not make complete sense when viewed outside of rant.

I heard that they're coming up with something so that you can connect the Revolution to the internet (whatever that is) and download all the old cartridge games. I'm not sure what they'll be charging for that, but it still rocks my face completely off. Imagine being able to play Bionic Commando, Master Blaster, and friggen EXCITEBIKE again. If you'll excuse me, I need to go change my pants.

Also, I was at a friend's place the other day. He just got a 360, and was showing me some of the sweet stuff you can do with it. You can set it up to have a wireless connection to your PC, so you can listen to music from your computer while you play games. Get bored of playing games? Why not watch some of the movies you have on your computer (read as PORN), or check out some of your favorite pictures (also read as PORN). All from the comfort of your couch.

Now that is so cool I had to make up a new word for it. That is Ninjatastic.

I dont get the fuss over consoles. I think I'm just too old and fixed in my thinking that PCs are the best, most wonderful and only place for games to live. Apart from my classic N64 (argh its now a "classic" )

For people such as myself who sit in front of a PC all day, the option of continuing to sit in an office chair while trying to relax seems a bit silly. Sofa-based gaming is the best, even if the games are necessarily slightly limited by the lack of interface options.

The computer is for my free time. Long live D&D-based RPGs! The only problem is that my hands feel really cold. The computer is in a fairly chilly basement room.

Yes, that was a joke, Mata.

However, I do think that the PS3 and Revolution will be better systems than the 360 for a different reason - games. Looking at Microsoft's lineup, I see a world full of WWII shooters, Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Sports, and Racing. I don't care about any of those. Sure Microsoft has the occasional game from Rare that might be fun, and it might have an RPG or two like Advent Rising or Jade Empire, but they're too few and far between.

PS3 has everything but Nintendo franchises, and Nintendo has a fun corner too. Those are the games that I care about and games make a system great.

However, I would wager that the PS3 has nicer specs than the 360, that the Cell processor is going to be phenomenal, and the Blu Ray is the way of the future. I think the PS3 is going to capitalize on the Connectivity aspect that Nintendo never did well enough, and that it's going to be the best system because of all the aforementioned reasons.

It would be surprising and disappointing if all the new consoles didn't come wi-fi enabled straight out of the box. I think that even Nintendo will do this, given their recent success with Mario Kart on the DS. Can you imagine how cool it would be to have sword fights with a friend who's in a different city through the Revolution?

I agree with you on the 360 line up, it does look rather uninspiring, but I've not seen a great deal for the PS3 that has excited me either. Apparently Heavenly Sword is shaping up very nicely indeed, and, being a third person platform/beat-em-up, it is my kind of game, but other than that it mostly looks like more of the same in $ony's camp too. The next Metal Gear has lovely graphics, but it's all about the gameplay really and I suspect that Kojima has probably gone about as far with that as he can before he needs to start radically rethinking the control process. Maybe he's done that, but it's still way too early to tell.

I've generally found that most releases over the last year have been a little less exciting than usual (the one exception is God Of War). There are too many things that are just upgrades, meaning that where before I might have saved up a bit and got things new from the shops, currently I wait for at least six months and pick games up cheap from eBay. At the moment I'm so uninspired with new games that I'm going back and playing through a few of the games that I've been through before. It might not have that kick of the new, but they're still damn fine peices of game craft, and that seems to be lacking in the industrial production processes that is happening at the end of the platforms' lifetimes.

There have been some very nice titles on the Xbox, Halo obviously, Oddworld Stranger, and a few others have also made me think 'that's an interesting game, it's a shame I can't get it'. Generally I agree that the Xbox hasn't had many games that I feel I've missed out on, but there are a few that I would've liked.

It would be better if you asked us when normal people have a chance to get there hands on them.
Dont you think?

I don't think it's right for you to be condemning a poll when you yourself make dozens of them much more esoteric, pointless, and boring.

This is a topic on speculation.

Anyway, Mata - I agree with that comment on the XBox, but the lovely thing is that more likely than not, you can get the games on a different system. The only few games that have intrigued me, and most of them came out on other systems. Soul Calibur II? Gamecube and PS2. Halo? PC. Conker's? N64.

Sure, there are a few exclusives I'd have liked to play (namely Panzer Dragoon Orta, Advent Rising, and Jade Empire) but I'm not too worried about missing them.