PS3 launch means gears of next-gen global war grind HOT

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 23 March 2007 11:57

Your IT - Entertainment

So, the PS3 has launched in the ‘rest-of-the-world’ at last. Finally, the war of words can stop, and the tallying of true global sales can begin, as the world wonders who will be the real winner in the gears of this colossal next-gen war.

In less than one week, Microsoft will make an Xbox 360 ‘announcement’, which is heavily rumored to be the Xbox 360 Elite – an updated Xbox 360 that comes in black, features HDMI and has a huge 120Gb hard drive – twice the size of the PS3’s 60Gb model as standard.

It comes just as the ‘rest-of-the-world’ can finally get their hands on the PS3 at last, Sony’s much hyped next-generation games console that, on paper, is the most powerful consumer computing device you can buy.

Oddly, for a device that comes with an eight (or 9 with that ‘spare core’) processor, the PS3 only has 256Mb of RAM, compared with the Xbox 360’s three cores and 512Mb of RAM, but I’m sure that Sony will say that it’s not the size of your RAM that counts, but it’s how you use it – and the amount of grunt you’ve got behind it.

One thing is for sure: Microsoft will now be going ALL OUT to keep the Xbox 360 at the top of consumer’s minds, especially as the conventional wisdom on the PS3 is that it has not yet truly bared its fangs and has its best days well and truly in front of it.

This comes at a time when Microsoft have over 200 games available for the Xbox 360, and have enjoyed incredible sales with Gears of War, so much so that Gears of War 2 is being written, and even a Gears of War movie will be released.

The challenge for Microsoft is to continue developing incredible games that so capture the imagination of gamers, as so ably demonstrated by the Halo series and of course Gears of War.

PS3 defenders say that, although the initial run of games is good enough, the next series of games to come out for the PS3 in 2007, and in 2008, will truly start unleashing the latent power of the PS3 architecture, and that this will leave the Xbox 360 in the dust.

Of course, without the actual games at hand to judge for ourselves, we’re back to a war of words. Oops, weren’t they supposed to stop? Clearly not – the arguments can be truly said to have only just begun, and in all those parts of the world where the PS3 wasn’t yet available, will only hot up once more as the inevitable comparisons between different games console owning friends start revving up.

There’s also a very strong parallel here with the relatively underpowered Nintendo Wii, when compared with the much gruntier Xbox 360 and the even more so PS3.

What is this mysterious parallel? If you're interested in finding out, please read onto the conclusion on page 2...