[QUOTE="HoldThePhone"][QUOTE="verde622"] In a world of bells and whistles, one videogame console stands above all the competitors. This console is Microsoft's Xbox 360. The PlayStation 3, or PS3, is comparable, but far from equal. The PS3 costs more and delivers less. Graphically, the 360 is miles past the PS3. While online gaming is supported by both systems, The 360's Xbox Live is greatly superior then the PlayStation Network, or PSN. The true separation between a good console and a great console is the games. Games are what make or break a videogame system. The Xbox 360 tops the Playstation 3 in that category as well. In most every way the Xbox 360 is greater than The PlayStation 3.
Internally, the Xbox 360 is a stronger system than the PS3. Xenon, 360's central processing unit (or CPU), is based on a custom triple-core PowerPC design by IBM. The Xenon has a floating-point performance but it has a theoretical performance peak of 9.6 billion dot products (binary functions) per second and 115.2 gigaflops. Each of the three CPUs are multithreading capable and are clocked at 3.2 gigahertz. The PS3's CPU, called the Cell also runs at 3.2 GHz but is divided into eight sections (called Power Processing Elements), two of which aren't even used for the game themselves. Game developers are tasked with assigning what each of the PPEs are to do while running a games. This makes developing games for the PS3 notoriously tricky. Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the super popular franchise Final Fantasy, was quoted as saying in a recent edition of Electronic Gaming Monthly, "I'm not interested in the PlayStation 3. The machine's architecture is tricky," (Intihar, 38-50) This knock from such a respected entity in the gaming world was a huge blow to the PS3.
In the past, competitive gaming was limited to two or more people sitting next to each other. This left individuals susceptible to face-to-face verbal brutalizing and violent outbreaks by their gaming counterparts. Now, in this day and age, a player can smack talk to someone from across the globe. This is something the Xbox 360 does very well. Xbox Live (XBL) is the near perfect realization of a utopian online community. Using Xbox Live, a player can create his or her online identity. A player can do this by creating a Gamer Tag, which is what is displayed universally through the multiplayer aspect and the non-multiplayer aspects of the Xbox experience. Another feature of Xbox Live is a player's Friends List. The Friends List is a tool that shows what all of your Xbox Live buddies are up to. Playing with people of even skill is quickly achieved when the ability to choose who you play with is added. With Xbox Live, a player can be playing a demo he or she just download for an upcoming game and engaging in a private voice chat with some one who is watching an HD DVD, meanwhile the player is using his or her Windows Live Messenger (which is integrated to your Xbox Live Gamer Tag) to message a friend on to his Windows Live Messenger enabled cell phone. This kind of scenario just isn't possible on the PlayStation Network. Say, a player is playing a game online, and his or her friend sends him or her a message to switch games, so you change disks and join your comrade. One of the problems with the PlayStation Network is that there is not a unified friends list. So say a player meets many people he or she enjoys playing with in one game, and you want to play with them in another game. On Xbox Live, this would be very easy to do, but on the PlayStation Network, a player would have to load the game, check his or her friends list, see what that person is playing, then load the other disk and try to find them. Xbox Live is better in everyway possible compared to the PlayStation Network.
Exile91
Ok, this is coming from a measly Junior AP English student and I have to say, that was the most poorly written, biased, piece of garbage I have ever read. I hope you are still in middle school.
I have to agree with you
Personally, I would have never written a paper on videogames or videogame consoles. However, this paper could've been pretty interesting if it were on the sociology of videogames and their impact on North American culture, et cetera. The reader, presumably your highschool/middleschool teacher, probably doesn't care much about how Xbox Live is better than Playstation Network.
step out side guys, holy s***. Yeah videogames are more popular than before, but the average guy is still going outside to play sports, go to movies, and watch MTV all day rather than play videogames. And news flash, gamers are still seen as complete losers (most of them are actually) and the average guy will play some Halo or Madden maybe once every 2 weeks.
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