Yes, I love the Xbox 360. And for some reason, yes, that makes me hate things that have to do with Sony. So it was with grim determination that my roommate and I slogged through the cold, driving New Year’s rain to arrive at La Case de TonyB, also known in the virtual world as the DLB. (Dirty Lazy Bastard, for those who must be in the know).
It should be mentioned that The DLB is a rabid Sony fanboy, and abhors anything Microsoft has ever done. (He and I used to be roommates before the Next-Gen Wars began…also known as Perfect Timing ©).
In my attempt to be as unbiased as follows, here’s what my findings are:
- The XMB (Cross Media Bar) is very elegant (while not particularly innovative thanks to the much earlier launch of the PSP) It doesn’t exactly feel like a particularly scalable solution for volumes of media just yet, and indeed the elegant approach borders on a spartan, almost Control Panel-esque place of maintenance more than an inviting place to Play Beyond. (To be fair, elegance is nothing more than an exercise in straddling that line, but parts of the XMB feel very utilitarian). Not very customizable, either, although the idea of customizing your experience seems more of a central tenant of the Law of Microsoft, not necessarily a problem with Sony or their console.
- The gaming experience is a bit of a mixed bag. TonyB was graciously avoiding the lame titles (Tony Hawk Project 8, Genji, etc.) during the demo. Other than the two titles we spent any time with, nothing else (Playstation "arcade" titles mostly) really grabbed me.
- We had intentions of formatting (a partition, at any rate) his PS3 and installing Yellow Dog, the (apparently?) Sony-sanctioned Linux build designed for the PS3. (Terrasoft has had four versions of Yellow Dog prior to this version that are supported on the normal Linux platforms). TonyB attempted to prepare the PS3 for its cleansing, and in so doing formatted the hard drive. This brought us to the next point…
- All the demos TonyB downloaded were (quite logically) purged by the format. This meant that to truly "demo" the PS3, demos must be redownloaded. Upon arrival at The House That Sony Built, the Motorstorm demo was 47% complete. Our (perhaps anti-climactic?) intro to the PS3 began with a slow green crawl across the progress bar, upwards of 30 minutes worth of downloading…slothful, agonizing downloading. No, you can’t leave the progress bar without terminating the download. And yes, the 360 launched in this condition as well. My two counters (recently forwarded to me from the Microsoft PR team) would be: Wasn’t this fixed 9 months ago? And why can’t you at least RESUME the downloads if you leave (something the 360 DID allow from Day One)? Yuk.
- Motorstorm is one of the most enjoyable demos I’ve played this year; the "physics" (not quite faithful to Real Life © exactly) are just what they should be, and the graphics are sharp and generally stunning.
- Upon inserting a game into the console, the game DOES NOT BOOT, but instead allows you to choose when you’d like to start the game via the Games option on the XMB. This is fantastic, and something the 360 needs to add in the next Dashboard update.
- Upon powering up the console, you will immediately launch what is in the drive. This is lame, and something the 360 gave you as an option in the first Dashboard update. (Neither company’s current approach is OK, as Khidr pointed out; both should be user-configurable options)
- Resistance is a great title. It’s a responsible, evolutionary step in the shooter genre, and is a testament to wonderful game design. I can tell where the game made concessions (somewhat low-poly character models and light, sometimes non-existant physics) to make advances in other places (HUMBLINGLY solid frame rate, visceral interactivity with some environmental objects like glass and the tubes on the back of the Chimera, sharp texturing), and I applaud them for their first outing on the fresh-off-the-presses-PS3. It’s not everything I’ve ever wanted in a game, but these guys should teach game design philosophy.
- Multitasking as a whole isn’t really implemented on the PS3. This is painfully apparent on the download front, but also shows in several other spots. For instance, playing music in the quite cool music player (love the album/arist/song info at the bottom; Microsoft, pay attention!), but as soon as you leave the (again) elegant visualization, "no music for you". (No custom soundtracks for games!?) I am thoroughly spoiled by the "9.5 out of 10" implementation of music on the Xbox 360 (network/iPod/MP3 player support, dash-to-game-to-dash playback, the fact that cinematics pause even custom soundtracks during playback…really top-notch stuff from M$), but come on, guys! How ’bout JUST while I browse the web? (Cool feature, that web-browsing; didn’t play with it much, though) Or maybe while I sit through the downloads…
- You can bind (we tried) a normal Bluetooth headset to the console through the Options menu. This works as you’d expect it to, which is to say relatively painless. With online multiplayer not being as important for Sony’s vision at the outset, it’s not quite as useful as it might be in Microsoft’s playground, but I am impressed with its ease of implementation. Strangely enough, the PS3 doesn’t support TonyB’s Rio MP3 player, but that might be a firmware update (for either the Rio or the PS3) away.
- The Playstation store LOOKS far more refined than the Xbox Marketplace (see, I didn’t use elegant again, although it’s still appropriate). The XBLM has a much better feel, and is much more intuitive to control, though. Again, I don’t really agree with either approach; you need both for the ultimate online experience. My preference is on the feel, since that’s what will keep me coming back; your mileage may vary.
Overall, it seems like this is just a radically different approach to console gaming and the living room experience. It’s not perfect (not really even close), but the promise of a Spring Dashboard Update firmware update this spring will fix some of the woes mentioned above. I’m not even going to crack into the online gaming or buddy presence choices, since at the end of the day, it seems that it is just that…a choice.
Sony has decided to create a box with lots of geek appeal, and some interesting potential. The elegance (last time…I think) of the interface belies the lack of functionality you’ll experience, and that might be the most frustrating part of it all. The 360 and the overal 360 experience is not quite as streamlined or seemingly robust (although still quite accessible and deep, to be fair), and yet the actual functionality of it is simply stronger in almost every respect. To give an example of that squandered potential: Sony has opted to offer three different encoding formats for ripping CDs, with several different bitrates. And yet I can only listen to my files while watching an acid-trip viz? On the flipside of the coin, Microsoft gives you no such options for encoding, yet the music PLAYBACK (arguably the more important part of music) is handled sharply and with an eye towards the user’s experience.
I have no doubt that there will be A Grand Unlocking of what the PS3 has under the hood (developers are losing one of the seven Cell threads to the OS, so I’m sure they hope so…), but I’m not really seeing it just yet.
Added to that a complete dearth of worthwhile games outside of Resistance, and it’s got the feeling of an awkward teenager…certainly a ladiesman in the making, but that stupid bowl cut…
Anyone out there with thoughts on the Sony’s entry into The Great Race?
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