The Revolution Was Televised

Now that both of the major players - sorry Nintendo, but you aren't really taken very seriously anymore - have released their product specs, it's a good time to compare the projected power of each system.

The Xbox 360 is poised to change the face of gaming forever. While technically inferior to the released specifications for the Playstation 3, the Xbox 360 has one major advantage over its competitors: usability. That is to say, the Xbox 360 is poised to take the crown because it's not just a powerful game playing machine, it's designed to be a media hub; a consolidation of hi-def content (like movies and games) with the focus on user freedom.

The new system offers hi-def games - at 720p or better for every single title - and Dolby 5.1 surround - also mandatory for every game released on the console. The console is slated to ship with a 20gb hard drive which will be "easily upgradable" (the PS3 is set to include a laptop form hard drive, which are traditionally more expensive to replace) and will offer the user myriad of functions: video storage, and audio storage - which will play a bigger part now that every game shipped will support custom soundtracks. The system can also be used as a streaming device; the user can share movies and music on their PC and play them back on their Xbox 360.

It is clear that the utilization of the internet and related technologies - like wi-fi (802.11x), which will drive the consoles controllers - are what separate the system from the rest of the pack. Microsoft has decided to give the user many features out of the box, and let the consumer interact with these features as they see fit. That is to say, that Microsoft intends to let the consumers define their system and "make it theirs" - as J Allard, the brain behind the Xbox 360, is fond of saying.

I see nothing similar from the Sony camp.

While the Playstation 3 is amazing on paper, it's the implementation of these features that will set the systems apart. Sony is a powerful company, and they are not about to let Microsoft innovate in the industry they have dominated for the past decade. The system will support Blu-Ray discs - a new media format which is capable of storing six times the amount of data a DVD can - and offer complete backwards compatibility all the way down to the PSX. The system will support many interfaces and storage devices which will help Sony quell the force of the 360.

The Playstation 3 will be a powerful game machine with a focus on powerful software instead of operability. While there are many interesting features - like support for seven Bluetooth driven controllers per console (which begs the question, "Who wants to play seven people on one tv?"), Compact Flash and Memory Stick support, a laptop hard drive (size unknown), and support for 1080p display (which probably none of your televisions or LCD monitors support, even if they are HDTV compatible) - there has been little talk about how these features will be used.

The Playstation 2 was equipped with two USB ports, a hard drive bay, and room for a network device, but support for these interfaces never really caught on with developers. Instead of focusing on what the system supports Sony should be focusing on what that means, and how the new technology can be implemented. Many of the reported features - like audio and video content storage - are similar to that of the Xbox 360, but Microsoft has already discussed how it plans to integrate these concepts into the user experience.

I used to consider myself a Sony "fanboy," one of those guys who hated every other system for no real reason at all. I refused to buy an Xbox or even play Halo, on the grounds that the Playstation 2 was a better machine for playing games. It's interesting now that I'm a few years older, that the features of the systems not directly associated with gameplay excite me so much. I'm not content with just playing the game anymore, I'm excited by the ways I can play my games. It's the innovation of the gameplay, the various ways in which I can play the game, which excite me the most. The quality of the software will ultimately decide the winner in the minds of most gamers, but I have my eye on usability and innovation.

We know that these systems are both capable of amazing graphics, amazing gameplay, amazing quality. Now with most game publishers porting their titles to every console it doesn't even matter what system you buy the game for, the draw becomes what you can do with your console that the other console can't. We don't know exactly how each company will utilize their attributes. At this stage in the game the Xbox 360 has me much more excited then the Playstation 3, simply because they are taking consoles and "gaming" in a completely new direction.

Integration and interconnectivity will be imperative in the next-gen console race, and the company that can master these concepts will prove the victor of the next console war. Sony has the power and the underlying technology to make a move on the well established Xbox Live and the idea of interconnectivity, but I have a feeling their eyes are focused on numbers and graphs instead of on innovation. They have managed to destroy systems based solely on their software and relative power in the past, but this next battle will be less about the aesthetics of gameplay and more about the way you play the game.