© Dave Productions 2008
Rival Systems
The Xbox 360 has 2 rival systems in this generation game consoles. To a lesser extent you could say it is also competing with the PlayStation 2 but that system has been replaced with the latest PlayStation.
The PlayStation 3 is probably the 360’s biggest rival. The style of games is similar, mostly suited to the “Hardcore” gamers (as apposed to casual gamer). From a Hardware point of view the specifications are better. It has a blu-ray drive for games and blu-ray movies. Blu-ray has a maximum disc capacity of 50GB, although most games out currently are on single layer 25GB discs. The blu-ray drive has a maximum read speed of 2x, so to speed up loading times a lot of games install part of the game onto the PS3s inbuilt Hard-Drive.
The PS3 current has 2 hardware iterations, but in total there have been 4 versions. The two discontinued versions are the 20GB and 60GB versions. The 60GB actually had two slightly different versions depending on the region they were bought in. The Japanese and US versions had inbuilt hardware for playing the back catalogue of PS1 & PS2 games. The European 60GB used emulation to play the back catalogue of games. The 20GB version was only released in Japan and the US but due to low sales compare to the 60GB PS3 it was not brought to Europe and was discontinued after only a few months in the other areas.
The 80GB PS3 is the same as the 60GB but uses emulation for PS1&2 games and the bigger HDD, it is not currently available in the European market. The 40GB has similar specs to the 80GB but is not backward compatible with PS1&2 games and the smaller HDD. The 40GB PS3 currently retails for £299.99.
The PS3s top selling games include MotorStorm, Resistance Fall of Man, Uncharted Fall of Man and Oblivion. The PS3 has been criticized for its lack of games when compared to the 360 but it was released much later than the 360 and the games library is improving. With such titles as Haze, Metal Gear Solid 4, Killzone 2 and the free online service add on “Home”, the PS3 will begin to catch up to the 360.
