Xbox man slags off PS3, oh the irony

By Davey Winder
Friday, 12 December 2008 15:05

Entertainment

File under: no surprise there then. However, it wasn't that fact that a Microsoft man was slagging off the Sony PS3 just before Xmas that caught my attention, but the irony of what was being said.

Regular readers of iTWire will be well aware of my love and hate relationship with my Xbox 360. I love it when it is working, and hate Microsoft when it goes tits up.

Currently, I have to admit, I hate Microsoft. Less than two months after, eventually, getting an Xbox 360 Elite back from the repair shop that actually worked, it stopped working again.

This week my Xbox 360 died. The bad news is that no red rings of death were involved. bad news, I hear you question, why is that then? Because the problem is an unknown one, it has just simply stopped working.

Rather than throw good money after bad, I took the decision to go buy a new Xbox 360. Not so new that it has the all singing and dancing Jasper motherboard I am afraid, but new enough to be a Falcon-based unit which my Elite, sadly, was not.

All of which added to the irony of reading the words of Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for Xbox 360, when he says that the new Sony PS3 'Home' service "feels like 2005 tech in 2008. I'm not sure that’s what people want."

Hey Aaron, what I want is a games console that works, and my PS3 has always done that since day one despite being one of the first units sold in the UK upon release. It still feels very much like a 2008 device as well, especially when I stuff a Blu-ray movie into it.

Look, I know that Greenberg was talking about the avatar based 'Home' world that has just been launched for the PS3 which he compares to "Second Life for hardcore gamers" on the one hand while with the other launching an avatar-based front end for the Xbox 360.

The icing on the irony cake for me though, has to be the quote that PS3 Home "doesn’t feel like it broadens the experience and invites people in." That's as maybe, but at least my PS3 switches on and does something.

Oh, and before the usual suspects start firing the 'you've got a new Xbox so stop complaining' missiles at me, can I just point out that the Elite it has replaced was only just over a year old. In 2008 I expect my tech to last longer than 14 months, and not to have broken down three times during its short life...