How can Xbox360's still be so powerful?

[wannabedamned]

-Expensive Upgrade price because a PS3 at launch costed £425. The Xbox 360 at about £300. That Is VERY steep whereas you can buy a new GPU for £100 and won't have to buy all new games (Xbox 360). Upgrading a Hard Drive for 360 is extremely expensive and PS3 only accepts slower, more expensive, notebook hard drives.

I wont bother getting into the debate about a single GPU upgrade vs an entire console, as It's a silly debate that never leads anywhere.

The PS3 laptop drives arent that expensive, and the fact they are slower than desktop drives has no baring on performance because they are running at the spec required by the PS3. I hate the pricing of the 360 drives however, its stupid.

Media Extending needs you to already have a PC so that doesn't count. The PS3/Xbox 360 has a poor playback ability. Try Playing an MKV with multiple Audio tracks and ASS Subtitles.

The PS3 plays quite a lot of containers without the need of a PC and the 360 plays a fair few aswell although it doesnt like AC3 5.1 channel, You're correct it doesnt play MKVs which is fair enough

None of the new PS3's have linux, and the linux restricted access to the GPU so it was ****ty anyway.

For gaming yes, But Linux allowed the PS3 to be used as a desktop, which was the point being made.

Poor Digital delivery because if I want to buy Battlefield Bad Company 2 I can't just download it.

No but if you want any of the games here you can download them
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/games/catalog.aspx?d=4&r=-1&g=-1&mt=0&ot=7&sb=2&rl=0&p=1

 

[IKMS]

It's very doubtful as its hideous, I'm only speculating but i would guess both Xbox and Playstation may be dropped as a name in the next gen.

They are going to do a Nintendo then?

Nintendo always change the name of their consoles, I like the way they do it.

Fact is Nintendo fail a lot, they have great idea but don't execute properly.

 

[shanezog]

I have not been saying consoles are great JUST for casual use. They are used for that, but they also have a MASSIVE online community. There are 23 million Xbox Live subscribers. Similar number of PS3 online users. Even ignoring those figures, why would anyone think otherwise!? With the exception of some MMORPGs (WOW being the most successful), hardly any PC game won't have a console counterpart with a hugely popular online element. Call of Duty being a very good recent example, with the PC version being criticised thanks to its lack of support for dedicated servers - it therefore has not seen as much online success as its console counterpart.

PC Lan parties are not attended by millions of people every year in the UK. Please, get real! It's big, sure, but not in the millions! More people will be gathering round consoles in social situations that those attending LAN parties! To suggest otherwise is just nuts.


Are you TRYING to be ironic by demonstrating your inability to spell?

Not really i was on a laptop and the keys are tiny, it's hard to type, what does that have to do with anything anyway. Lol, never said the online PCers could spell better now did i >

 

[Legend]

I play the consoles when I want to play with friends cus I'm the only one who can be bothered to get a GPU.

This statement speaks volumes and pretty much says it all!

The PS3 plays quite a lot of containers without the need of a PC and the 360 plays a fair few aswell although it doesnt like AC3 5.1 channel, You're correct it doesnt play MKVs which is fair enough

PS3 doesn't play MKVs but there are some free converters which convert them to MPEG in about 30 seconds. That's all I do, easy.

Not really i was on a laptop and the keys are tiny, it's hard to type, what does that have to do with anything anyway. Lol, never said the online PCers could spell better now did i >

Depends how fat your fingers are. If you make such a direct comment about "skill and maturity", spelling ability isn't so far removed from that.

 

[Fledge]

This is a very interesting article....

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/ps3/2009/12/14/is-console-gaming-dying/1

Raises some good points. The current console business model is unsustainable.

That IS a VERY interesting article, thanks for the link

 

[Legend]

That IS a VERY interesting article, thanks for the link

Interesting, but the guy is getting way ahead of himself in some areas. Plus he's a fan, not an industry professional. He has no real insight into the business model or what is actually going on behind closed doors at Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Fact remains, console gaming is a HUGE billion dollar business, with HUGE billion dollar companies behind it. People have been talking about the demise of PC gaming for years, yet it's still hanging in there, and is simply dwarfed by the consoles, so why would THEY be at risk?! The death of physical media is a LONG way off, and the idea that this generation of consoles will be the last to have proprietary, state of the art hardware is just absurd. If the PC market for upgrading and the latest tech is still going strong, why on earth would anyone assume that the consoles have a limited lifespan... they will continue to evolve in just the same way.

 

[EsaT]

PC Lan parties are not attended by millions of people every year in the UK. Please, get real! It's big, sure, but not in the millions! More people will be gathering round consoles in social situations that those attending LAN parties! To suggest otherwise is just nuts.

More nut than to claim that playing online or in neighbour's sofa is comparable to those going through all the efforts of dragging PC along in travelling to even farther away events without any economical goals in mind?
When money is offered you'll find participants for anything so that kind events are bad measure of real hardcore hobbyism.

PS3 doesn't play MKVs but there are some free converters which convert them to MPEG in about 30 seconds. That's all I do, easy.

Different container formats support different features and codecs so can't be generalized.
Old MPEG-video container being especially limiting in codecs and transcoding/recompression of actual data streams taking more time than few seconds unless video is really short and low resolution.

 

[wannabedamned]

Different container formats support different features and codecs so can't be generalized.
Old MPEG-video container being especially limiting in codecs and transcoding/recompression of actual data streams taking more time than few seconds unless video is really short and low resolution.

In the case being discussed though, MKVs most cases it's a quick 2 minute job, because Remuxing just moves MKV to VOB, No re encoding. Just a container change pretty much. That allows for play on PS3s. Obviously if someone has used some sort of ludicrous codec thats never been heard of a re encode would be needed. but its rare that happens, i'm yet to experience it

Not the same case on 360 however, and a remux\change of container on 360 does often require more thought and audio channel altering. And can take considerably more time.

 

[Legend]

More nut than to claim that playing online or in neighbour's sofa is comparable to those going through all the efforts of dragging PC along in travelling to even farther away events without any economical goals in mind?
When money is offered you'll find participants for anything so that kind events are bad measure of real hardcore hobbyism.

It's nothing to do with the effort involved. That in itself will naturally reduce the number of people willing to participate. We're just talking sheer numbers, and I was responding to the claim that PC lan parties/events somehow rival the console social gaming community. Which is nuts. The number of console gamers simply dwarfs the PC gaming community, as is clearly demonstrated by the 80-90% market share of games sales that cross platform releases see, and the tens of millions signed up to Xbox Live and PS3 online, not to mention the numerous 'real world' events that are happening regularly.

 

[rjk]

xbox

lol

 

[cmndr_andi]

Looking at this report [1], It doesn't seem that PC gaming is going too bad.

Legend, I think you need to give "Average Joe" a bit more credit, many non-enthusiasts break into PC gaming just fine.

Also, bear in mind that Direct download sites like Steam and Direct 2 Drive don't release sales figures like retail outlets - so the volume of money made by PC games is largely unreported. I for one haven;t bought a retail game for months and over a dozen steam games in the mean time and I don't think I'm the only one.

 

[Legend]

Looking at this report, It doesn't seem that PC gaming is going too bad.

Legend, I think you need to give "Average Joe" a bit more credit, many non-enthusiasts break into PC gaming just fine.

I for one never said PC gaming was going bad. I just pointed out how much it is dwarfed by consoles. And that article is notable by the absence of real figures, just percentages. "85% of people surveyed saying they use their PC for online gaming" - how many gamers did the survey ask?? The games sales figures and online subscriptions to Xbox Live and PS3 speak for themselves.

And 'Average Joe' is the majority of the millions of console gamers who have no interest in PC gaming or the whole upgrading scene, and never will. Anyone who does break into the whole scene ceases to be 'average' by virtue of their new found interest in a niche area.

As for Steam etc. I don't know if they release these figures or not, and I'm sure they are significant, but they won't touch the console game sales.