Why the Xbox 360 is (still) better than the PS3
I’m a 40-something, high-paid professional, who sometimes needs to blow off steam or otherwise look for opportunities to keep in touch with his executive-level friends around the world. Co-op gaming is an important component of my staying sane and in touch.
I play my games on the 1080p, 60″ Pioneer Kuro Elite PRO-151FD. This is a $6,500 plasma unit, and in conjunction with a $9,500 speaker system and similarly priced A/V audio system, it should be clear that price is not a factor in my (or my friends’) gaming decision.
So, this blog article isn’t written for those kiddos who want to argue about graphics, price or some other flame war-worthy debate between these two esteemed game consoles. Rather, I write to those folks who, like me, care more about performance than price. Who may have kids or a significant other, who gets bothered by noise, yet still desires high-fidelity sound. And, I write with the hope that Sony will get a clue and improve their offering to meet the needs of gamers like myself.
I am not loyal to either Sony or Microsoft. I’m loyal to the game, and only for as long as the game keeps me engaged (i.e. new maps, new scenarios and/or new ways of playing that are fun and exciting for me and my friends).
Despite this lack of loyalty to the consoles, I find that Sony is definitely lacking in some key areas, which I believe everyone should consider and I’m disappointed you don’t necessarily hear about in the popular press.
Xbox 360 has much better voice capabilities. PS3’s bluetooth is a non-starter.
Frankly, I cannot understand why more people haven’t made a big stink about this, or why Microsoft hasn’t taken more advantage of the situation.
Here are the issues. The Xbox 360 comes with a “headset” containing a microphone. This headset plugs directly into the wireless controller, and provides a high-quality voice chat for gamers. Basically, Microsoft built voice participation directly into its controllers and the game console itself, providing a quality experience from the get-go. No wires, except for the wire that plugs from the headset to the controller.
Apparently, this has been easy to adopt for third-party headset manufactures, as its easy to find a number of high-quality headsets that have the microphone built-in. This is important for many gamers, who like myself, cannot have ANY game noise at night, for fear of waking the children or seriously annoying the significant other living with us.
For the Xbox 360, I use Turtle Beach Ear Force X3, which allows me to listen to immersive audio, and participate with chat without bother to the other occupants of my home.
Sony has taken a different approach with the PS3, and has enabled bluetooth-based headsets for chat. While this may sound interesting at first blush, it’s really not a great, high-quality solution for gamers who value high-fidelity sound. Here’s why: Most bluetooth headsets (i.e. the ones you use for your phone), fit in your ear and therefore by definition, don’t allow one to use a sound headset. If you use a traditional bluetooth headset, you have to listen to game sound over your speakers. And, because you have a bluetooth headset sitting IN your ear, that ear isn’t getting as much game sound as your other ear. On top of this, most bluetooth headsets are geared for cell-phone quality voice, which is inferior to what most PC and Xbox 360 gamers expect (i.e. voices sound tinny, and are often sound broken up or erratic).
Some PS3 owners have compensated by using USB headsets made for PC’s. These headsets are superior to the bluetooth headsets, but suffer their own problems. First and foremost, they are USB and therefore require a USB cable to connect from the headset to the PS3. In my case, this requires a rather long USB cable and it’s not as elegant as the wireless solutions available for the Xbox 360.
Also, there is a MAJOR issue with USB headsets for the PS3, that isn’t easily discernible with a casual read of the popular press. That issue is: You cannot use USB headsets that require drivers to be installed. This is because installed drivers are PC-based drivers, and therefore cannot be used on the PS3. This severely limits the available USB-based headsets available for the PS3, and it’s often difficult to determine whether a particular USB headset needs drivers installed or not (i.e. sometimes you have to resort to looking at box contents of a particular USB headset).
And beware! Many headset manufacturers say they are PS3 compatible, and they are, but they either lack a microphone or otherwise don’t truly provide high-fidelity sound.
Guess what? You’ve guessed it, didn’t you??!? There are no decent, high-fidelity USB headsets with mic, that don’t require drivers to be installed. Therefore, at least for the PS3, you cannot obtain a USB headset with mic, that will sound great without damaging your relationship with your kids and your significant other.
Fortunately, Tritton just (December 2008) came out with a great USB headset, that will work with the PS3. It is the AX Pro headset. This is the only headset I’ve found, that truly provides high-quality sound, a mic, and works with the PS3 without drivers. The problem? Well, it requires two power supplies (for the headphones and external sound card), and it has two cables running into the PS3 (USB for voice and optical for sound), plus a long third cable going to the headset itself. This does create a bit of a headache for people like me, who run HDMI or optical from the PS3 to their home entertainment systems: If you run optical, you need it for the headphones, so need to figure out how to make the physical switch. If you run HDMI, the PS3 doesn’t send audio simultaneously to both HDMI and optical. You need to switch between the two, depending on whether you want your sound to go to your headphones (i.e. select optical) or your home entertainment system (i.e. select HDMI).
A headache??!? You betcha. It truly stuns me that Sony hasn’t addressed these issues, and delivered a clearer signal or leadership on the issue of high-fidelity headsets, as I believe many people want immersive sound with their gaming, and not upsetting the neighbors, kids or significant other. This is something Microsoft has understood from day-one.
Xbox 360 has immersive audio. PS3 doesn’t.
Speaking of immersive sound, I need to bring up an issue I’ve discovered between the Xbox 360 and the PS3: When playing a co-op Xbox 360 game, the voices of my teammates appear relative to their positions. What I mean by this, is if one of my friends is behind me, his voice comes from the rear surround-sound speakers, and it truly sounds like he’s behind me. This really improves game play, because when someone says “help me,” I don’t really need him or her to tell me where they are. I sort of follow the voice. I have yet to play a game, where this is happening on the PS3. In fact, quite the opposite seems to happen. In a large co-op of Resistance 2, I can’t tell you how many times I hear the following conversation:
“Help me!” And the friend asks, “Where are you?” The response is “over here.” Needless to say, this is not very effective in the heat of battle. These conversations don’t seem to happen on the Xbox 360.
Now to be fair to the PS3, the games I buy on the Xbox 360 aren’t the same games I buy on the PS3 (why waste money?) So, the fair test would be to test the same games on both platforms. The problem though, is Gears of War isn’t on the PS3, and Resistance 2 isn’t on the Xbox 360. In general, though, I stand by this observation.
Xbox 360 has a more responsive and reliable controller. PS3’s controller can be unreliable at times.
On the Xbox 360, I have yet to experience a controller that goes “amok” unless its battery goes low. I have 4 controllers for the PS3, and every time I sit to play a game, I experience the same thing: At random times throughout the game (although, seems directly proportional to when I’m at a critical stage), my character in the game just goes crazy.
Let me explain this precisely: This behavior happens between once and three times, every time I sit down and play a game. Therefore, it happens once to three times, every 3 hours of game play. What happens specifically, is that the controller and the PS3 console seem to loose contact with each other, for about 3 to 10 seconds. Whatever I was doing in the instant they loose contact with each other, my character continues to do for 3 to 10 seconds. If I was running to a hiding spot somewhere ahead of me, I get to watch my character race past the hiding spot I wanted (usually to the side of bad guys), and continue on running until the controller and PS3 resync themselves or whatever, and I regain control of my controller.
Given how little I play, and the associated bragging rights of winning (or the taunts I get from my friends, when it looks like I’ve done something truly foolish in the game), this is a very important issue for me.
It is my understanding that not all PS3 owners experience this problem, but many do. Because I experience this with all my controllers, I suspect it’s a problem with the PS3 itself, but can’t get Sony to do anything about it.
Additionally, the PS3 controllers seem to be cheaply made, and not quite as responsive as the Xbox 360 controllers. Here’s a test: Take your favorite character and run in a straight line over a long distance. Did you get to precisely where you intended, without having to compensate? I find, with the Xbox 360, that when I want my character to walk straight, he walks straight. With the PS3, my character will walk with a slight bias to the right or left. It’s not quite noticeable over short distances, but over long distances, it can become quite annoying.
Usually, I just compensate and continue on. However, this problem leads me to believe the PS3 controllers aren’t quite as well made, and therefore not quite as precise as the Xbox 360 controllers.
Xbox 360 functions as a great media center, and handles streaming well. PS3 and streaming content is frustrating at best.
I have a home network, and a central file server, that contains all my music. The advantage of this, is I can play (or stream) music to different TVs and audio systems throughout the house. When I build a playlist on my laptop, it’s immediately available to my entertainment system with the big stereo. Fun stuff. I also use this home network for pictures of the kids, etc.
With the Xbox 360, I can link to my home network’s fileserver, and access its music, photos, etc. The Xbox 360 has a fairly intuitive picture browser and music player. It also has decent music visualizations, so I can turn on the Xbox 360, and play a playlist over the big stereo and have nice-looking visualizations show up on my plasma. It’s a nice way to impress guests or to handle background music during parties.
The PS3, like the Xbox 360, can also link to my home network’s fileserver for access to music and photos. This is where the similarity ends. The PS3 has a more advanced picture browser, although less advanced music player. What really stands out, is the PS3 has absolutely no streaming capability whatsoever. This makes the PS3 almost unusable for playing music, although the picture browser is tolerable. Let me explain the music issue.
MP3’s are compressed files of music. The more compression the smaller the file size (good thing), but the fidelity decreases significantly (bad thing). Therefore, my MP3’s tend to have the least amount of compression possible. This results in larger file sizes, but great fidelity (notwithstanding the true audio snobs out there who cannot stand any form of compression, let alone digital representation of music). So, for example, an MP3 that some folks (wanting to save space) would have that’s 3MB, the same file for me may be 9MB. Not a tremendously large difference, but a difference nonetheless. Note that many good tracks out there, may be 12MB or more, with normal compression. They are large, simply because they are long tracks.
The Xbox 360 will stream this music when it plays. Therefore, when I select a song to play, the Xbox 360 immediately begins to play the song, even though the song hasn’t fully downloaded from my server to the Xbox 360. The PS3, on the other hand, will download the full song before it begins to play. For a 10MB file, this can take 3 minutes or more.
I’m at a loss to explain why it takes even 3 minutes for the PS3 to play a song I select, as the song should download much faster than that with my home network. I have a 1000 Mbits/s Gigabit Ethernet in the home. It takes mere seconds to download 10MB from my server to any computer in my house.
And, to make matters worse, let’s just accept that it takes 3 minutes to download to the PS3 and we’re willing to wait that long. One would expect, as the song is being played, that the PS3 would also be in the process of downloading the next song in the playlist, so we don’t have to wait another 3 minutes when the next song comes up. Sadly, such an expectation would be wrong. You need to wait another 3 minutes (or more) for the PS3 to get to the next song, once the current song has finished playing.
Xbox 360 updates are almost transparent. PS3 updates are excruciating and frustrating, politely speaking.
As an executive, with kids, time is perhaps my most precious commodity. I get two nights a week, after the kids go to bed, to game. This gives me roughly about 3 hours, twice a week, for a total of 6 hours a week. Any time sitting idle, waiting for an update is frustrating.
Sony takes frustrating to an entirely new level, however. To fully grasp the magnitude of this frustration, it is best to consider the Xbox 360 update process first.
With the Xbox 360, there are two stages of updates: A console update and a game update. When the Xbox 360 boots up (and it is connected to the Internet), it will see if there is an update for the console. If there is, it will ask you if you want to update the console. Most of the time (perhaps 90% or more), the update is optional. You can bypass the update, and continue using the Xbox 360 without issues. When it is mandatory, or you agree to install the update, most of the time (perhaps 99%) the update takes less than 3 minutes. The console reboots and you’re on your way.
The game update for the Xbox 360 is very similar to the console update, except that the game manufacturers appear to dictate whether an update is mandatory or not, and the update is usually more mandatory than not. Most updates usually take less than 3 minutes.
All told, the majority of Xbox 360 updates are optional and take very little time.
Now, consider the PS3 update process. Update notices aren’t given, until you access a game (or resource) that requires an update. So, you start your game, back out of your game, do an update, and get back to your game. All updates (so far, to my experience) have been mandatory updates, so you cannot play the game until you back out of the game and go to “System Update” in the PS3 control panel. This is where frustration really kicks in: The updates apparently are either really large, or Sony has some really slow computers dishing out updates to its millions of PS3 consoles out there. The last update I did, which is typical of updates, took over 40 minutes to download and install.
I will admit, the update process has sped up over the past year or so, because updates used to take hours. And, I have the ultra-fast, more expensive Comcast service that provides 7megs download (and I usually experience much faster service) speeds.
Just last week, I was about to play Resistance 2, Fall of Man, with my friends and had to go through this cumbersome update process. Again, remember I have 3 hours to play. We didn’t know about an update, until my friends and I were about to play. We all got hit with a mandatory update, which took a total of 50 minutes to complete: Almost 1/3rd of our game time gone.
To add insult to injury, the update process had a notice indicating something to the effect of (I’m paraphrasing here), “This update is required to support new photo albums.” Who the #$@#$ cares about new photo albums??!? I was wanting to kick my buddies’ respective butts at R2. And, now 50 minutes is being wasted downloading an update I don’t even need??!?
In summary …
The Sony PS3 is a great game unit, and carries a significant plus with the BlueRay player. However, for serious gamers who care about high-fidelity sound, cables, their time, chatting with their buddies, and/or a media center, the Xbox 360 still comes out ahead — far ahead. These issues aren’t discussed in the popular press, but they are very important for a quality gaming experience.
I’m sure Sony is quite aware of these deficiencies in its platform, and just doesn’t care to improve the experience for its gamers. Perhaps Sony will prove me wrong.
Kudos to Microsoft.