Pedal to the Metal - The Best Console of Generation 7

If one's aiming for an objective judgment, avoiding as much subjectivity as possible, it's the PS3.

It did sell marginally more in the end, and it's library ended up having more high-rated games. That's considering the first 2 years draught on the PS3 x last 3 years draught on the 360.

That's interesting, especially considering that the 360 had one more year on the market, since it launched in 2005 and the PS3 in 2006.

So, any other argument is completely subjective: PS3's PS+ great value x XBL more active gaming community (especially in the starting years of the gen) - free online x overall better online service - privileged game genres in each platform - hardware strenght (really? if there was a gen where this ultimately didn't matter that much was on gen 7, more than any other) - price (not a point if a gen ended, since it's only a means to obtain a result: selling more than the competition), etc. Any of these points can go either way, it just depends on how you view it.

PS: Not really counting the Wii here... or it would have won sales by default, while the PS3 would win on exclusives. Then there's subjectivity all over again, if sales matter more than library when trying to declare a winner, and vice-versa.

Yup. shows what happens when you put games first,

@SambaLele: there are so many holes in that argument brother... First of all your weighing the entirety of the worth of the console on sales (wii wins here) and exclusive games as determined b a ddysfunctional metagame.... Why are we not accounting for the dozens of highly rated console exclusives on 360 that are no where to be seen on playstation, the outstanding xbla games that out did psn all generation long or the fact that the xbox 360 had the better multiplat 8 out of 10 times because of the intelligent choice to have an easy to develop for console... See, and don't take this wrong, but the Sony supporters are far more interested in putting a few extra exclusives on a pedestal and then claim that thats all that determines the generation and call it the only objective aspect of the hardware wars in gen7... Cmon brother you just know that isn't true.

@TheEroica:

Actually PSN games were and are better, it enjoyed a GOTY. :D

@Heil68: lol see... Theres that selective mentality in action. :P as if journey alone absolved a generation of weaker titles on psn.

Just like last gen lems, whose arguments couldn't punch there way through a wet paper sack.

Tried to bring up exclusives as a reason why Live and Xbox are better, yet PS3 had more overall exclusives and was out a w.hole year less.

This gen, lems hate indie games since SONY decided to step up with development of them

@Heil68: I will say this though Heil, one reason I wanted a ps4 as my flagship starting console of gen 8 is because they have created a safe haven for indie games and it shows... Soooo many great indies coming out on psn that Ms doesn't have. Even if ms has an indie GOTY I'm still not gonna say the xone is the king of Console indies when it's having its ass handed to it around every other corner.

Just as Champ stated, if games(which you're bringing up and where the butthurt is coming from :D ) were the prerequisite, SONY and PS3 come out on top and did, for best console gen 7.

Obi is proud you went with SONY this gen.

Of course, both HD twins fail spectacularly next to the PC. Playing Mass Effect at 1080p with instant elevator flights, no texture pop-in, FPS controls, it's crazy how people could play the game on an Xbox 360. The console version frankly looks unfinished; so shoddy that the textures themselves lazily arrive late to the scene. This is common across all games that have multiplats on PC. Wii was the console to go, because everything else was on the PC.

@Heil68: Oh burn :3

wikipedia

@Willy105: Ahh but then are we talking about the best console or are we talking about the best combination? Don't be hiding behind that pc, like my good buddy @Heil68: ;)

Besides the SONY exclusives which included an unprecedented amount of GOTY's, a perfect 10/10 and 2 top 5 GOATs, not to mention the other barn bursting amount of high scoring exclusives not found on PC.

People were just being nice; it's not always we get Sony crossing the border into competency.

@Heil68: at gamespot, beyond two souls is a better game than the last of us Heil. :P

You better hide behind a shield, because hell is coming :3

beyond two souls> Mass Effect 1 and it = ME2 and ME3

:D

@Heil68: you just strengthened my point... #happygarruslives

That SONY is synonymous with world class gaming and the PS3 won gen 7? Yeah, I knew that already.

@Heil68: nope that gamespot isn't infallible. :P

wait, but that's impossible.... The might of pedal to the metal has chosen the godbox360 as the true king of gen 7... B-)

@TheEroica: which one? The one that RROD in 2006? The one that RROD in 2007? 2008? 2009? The one in...of wait, the 360 sucked after that.....

@TheEroica: @Willy105:

Eroica is all too familiar of what MS did in 2009.

@Willy105: @Heil68: unfortunately Microsoft's meteoric rise and swift dethroned of the arrogant king and claim it's title with forward thought, concepts and services that quite literally altered our hobby forever, didn't have legs till the very end, true. Though I wouldn't say that it was the lack of new exclusive games/ip that troubles me most about Microsoft, it's that it never seemed to process with them and that spoke volumes to me. One reason among many why Sony is quickly claiming their role as leader backk.

Good pod-cast guys, though I have one squabble with your assessment regarding the 'impact' argument-

It seems tome that the impact argument is coming from a very American-centric perspective, in the U.S the 360 was front and centre as the de-facto console because it catered to American tastes, but everywhere else this is not the case.

Sony didn't really really take notes per-se but I think they learned the hard way about listening to their consumer base. Microsoft didn't invent party-chat they brought it to the fore-front. A lot of the things Sony have done with the PS4 is just in hindsight common sense.

@Zaibach: you just pinpointed the one thing that always bugs me when I offer an opinion on gaming... The regional perspective. All of us here on system wars bring to the table a point of view that reflects where we live and what is popular their at the time. Indeed this was no doubt the 360, given it completely squashed the guts out of the ps3 in marketing and sales in North America.

That said, feature wise, I still look at the easy to develop xbox with many or those common sense type features mixed with the handicapped ps3, who not only had the cell to overcome as an obstacle but also had such poor ram allocation that it didn't even allow for party chat and such poorly designed methods of installs and downloads/updates where xbox took another step ahead.

Quality games will always be subjective. We have people here who honestly believe the wii had a better library than both of them.... But given all that I witnessed, played and experienced, sans a dramatically dried up approach to new ip/exclusive games during the last couple years of the consoles life, the 360 certainly led the way providing the hardware, software and features that always made Sony Chace them all gen long.

Good points brother...

@Heil68 said:

@The_Last_Ride said:

@TheEroica said:

@Heil68: at gamespot, beyond two souls is a better game than the last of us Heil. :P

You better hide behind a shield, because hell is coming :3

beyond two souls> Mass Effect 1 and it = ME2 and ME3

:D

There is a special place in hell for you :3

Just an FYI to those waiting on the new episode... Im just waiting on a busted AC adapter to show up tomorrow and Ill have the first part of the P2M game of gen awards show up!

I'm starting to think you guys don't want me on anymore :(

@clyde46 The P2M guys love you, hell I don't even know you and I love you. They didn't record this past week but I think they are doing this weeks cast and I'm sure they will love to have you on.

clyde, you're one of my favorite community members bar none brother... as far as Im concerned you can be on every week. :D As @slaves said above, we've had a bit of a weird scheduling lately... mostly my fault. been pulling some very long days and weeks. If you're not on the E3 mega casts in a few weeks i'll riot....

You can come on anytime, just let us know and we'll do a Saturday show so you dont have to stay up so late for us blokes.

i totally agree to this, 360 didn't do much in europe. It still hasn't got essential features americans have gotten

@TheEroica: Thank goodness

@slaves:
The Joys of living on the correct side of the pond, everyone else has messed up time zones.

I don't hear from you guys anymore :(

@TheEroica:@Heil68:

@clyde46: I've been on the DL of late... Family calls. Funny, I was gone last year at this time as well. How has the move gone? you settled in?

We could podcast this Saturday if it works for everyone.

I don't, actually. I hope you noticed that I'm not saying you can't be partial. I just made a point that, if one wants to truly be impartial and declare a de facto winner (not only his personal best), then he'd have to use the data garnered throught the whole of the 7th gen, and discover that by simply comparing it (sales, reviews, etc.), and not based on his personal joy and experience. Or you'll just have a conclusion that's applicable to you and you only (well, and to those with the same opinion of yours, of course).

You're trying to give your own argument a tone of "irrefutable reality", because it's looking into different aspects of the consoles... but it's just rethoric, trying to hide what's actually only a personal input. The use of fallacies (like generalizing "sony supporters", while also implying that my input is along those lines; or trying to subvert or reduce what I said to something else, like in "you're weighing the entirety of the worth of the console on sales") doesn't help, and instead of showing holes in my argument, imply that you are avoiding that argument.

Wii did win in sales. I said that. But if we are pitting the Wii against the other 2 consoles, than there would be no way to determine a clear "winner of the gen". There would be the most commercially successful one (Wii) and the one with the best library (PS3). But who can say what's more important to the industry? Or maybe to the gamers, and not the industry (or to both)? This kind of problem in avoiding subjectivity when valuing something against another thing, in conflict, is commom to many professions (like for those who work in the legal area), and it is solved by trying to achieve a consensus, or majority at least, among people that are not judging it with a conflict of interest. That's why professional reviews are an important tool, and why an average score, calculated from many different review scores is as well. It's not more disfunctional than your or my opinion on the matter... if anything, it's less.

If there was an industry consensus on the sales x library matter (or at least a SW consensus... lol), then it would be a completely different case, especially for the Wii that won in one, but not the other. But there isn't (not that I know of). So no one, at least not yet, can say that sales are more important than games, or vice-versa. And that's the same to your other points: who determines that the "intelligent choice to have an easy to develop for" console is better than a console with incomparably lower hardware failure rates; that superior multiplats are better than more and better exclusives (and how much better must multiplats be to count); also copy and paste the 4th paragraph from my other post hereand this'll still only be a list of examples of subjective items. Trying to give them the strengh of "facts" is just pointless rethoric, and the favorable conclusion can go either way.

So I stand by my other post: when putting only the 360 against the PS3, the PS3 is the winner since it beat the 360 in both aspects, even though it launched a year later. If you can select more ways to objectively judge the matter, be my guest. So, if the Wii must enter the equation, then there's no clear winner, we would have to decide if sales are more important than exclusives or not. Which is subjective. This way it could be in any place, possibly even last.

@SambaLele: my issue

Sales= Objective. There is nothing to argue here. More people bought x system.

So we're good there

Reviews=subjective. No matter how many ways one spins this, reviews are glorified opinions. The only objective thing that comes out of this is that game critics opinions averaged out to this arbitrary metascore, based around a system that doesn't actually take into account the varying review scales in the first place.

@jg4xchamp: I agree with that, as long as you're looking at one review. Yet I still would take any review from a notable gaming media over a personal opinion of, for example, a forum poster (unless it's someone whose opinion I respect).

But that's still subjective.

Objectivity comes when you gather dozens of reviews and have an average, and see that there's a standard score for certain game, and it tends to be more praised than bashed, the opinions start to become consensus. That's not something a single site or magazine (these are still around right?) could have a defining influence on... and I'm not sure if it's even possible for any company to bribe that many media outlets. Thus, there's always a trend, a natural trend, and the objectivity is exactly in this, in the resulting pattern.

If you think that professional reviews are exactly the same thing as amateurs' opinions, then try to explain the discrepancy between the average achieved by review scores and by users' scores. The "coincidence" between the success that a game usually experiences when it's critically acclaimed. There are always a few exceptions, of course, but the condition of exception confirms the status of rule. You can also say that it's the reviews that drives sales, but this is only another way of praising their importance to the industry, and ultimately is admitting it's effects, thus the objectivity (even, in this case, if it's by the reverse logic, but it's the same result anyway).

Issues on how the average should be calculated are only technical aspects that can improve on what's already a lot more credible than mere opinions.

Declaring that even an average of many reviews is an inherently arbitrary (subjective) score by definition is relativistic nihilism, defeatism, fatalism, determinism... you get it. It's also denying even the very same process with which very basic social structures work, like the definition of what is success, beauty, justice, morally acceptable, etc.

Of course you can say that this is just "spinning" the question, but it's actually the opposite. It's not avoiding that issue.

It's like with news. Real life news I mean. Especially editorials. If you only seek for news in one media every day, you'll always only see one aspect of reality, one sided opinions about it. But if you read the news in a media that you know tends politically to one side, and then read one that tends to the other, you're a lot more probable to have access to more information, to different point-of-views that'll help you understand what's really going on, here or anywhere, since one will defend and protect certain interests and the other will defend the opposite. I don't know, could go on and on on this issue, but going serious like this in a SW sticky may just be a waste of time. I apologise if I sounded rude in any way, and for the tl;dr posts, but that's my 2 cents.

Except it's still the same issue, but you made the sample size bigger.

It still wouldn't provide anything objectively.

You can't objectively say anything more than "X system got more critically praised games". Which objectively is still adding up a bunch of opinions. Whether you value one over the other falls under simple premise. It's not necessarily concrete as sales which as straight forward as it gets. More people bought this. The end. A metascore is by any argument a group of opinions being put into an average that by any estimation is a flawed system based purely on how it tries to translate varying scales into being equals. At best it's an objective measure(by how it's added up) based entirely on subjective reactions.

As far as their impact on the industry. Sure review success does tend to translate into commercial success for a lot of games, but there are also plenty of exceptions to that rule. Sure the internet user review is a shittier source because of hyperbole, but let's not get carried away with giving game credits all the praise here for being better than an alternative that is mostly garbage. It's a fallacy to assume that just because one alternative is straight poor, that the other alternative is clearly not only better but also a good alternative. Because both still wouldn't be objective measures as they are still driven by a subjective reaction. The only thing that changed is the skillset of the human being behind those reactions. One side is more articulate, the other side is simply bitchy.

That's not to say the argument can't be made. By all means make it. Wii had the most commercial success. PS3 had the most critical success.

But I would maintain that a critical reception by any definition of the word wouldn't be an objective argument for quality. All it really is a well informed/well argued opinion(even if you got a larger quantity of opinions). Better than a forum post/opinion, but not necessarily something that fits the parameter of objective. Better or worse by it's very nature is a product of point of view.

And don't apologize; I much prefer this to the rest of System Wars.

Long posts like these remind me of what a pain the mobile version of GameSpot is.

Yeah trying to type these shits on a phone is awful.

Yeah, sometimes it loads the text box, sometimes it doesn't; and it's always incredibly slow.

Thanks for the considerate answer. I'll disagree one more time, but if you want, we can just agree to disagree, it's also fine of course.

"Wii had the most commercial success. PS3 had the most critical success."

Yes that a nice way to sum it up. I guess there aren't many other objetive ways to compare the platforms. Are you agreeing there or just summing up what I said? Because:

"But I would maintain that a critical reception by any definition of the word wouldn't be an objective argument for quality."

"critical success" is critical success anyway you see it, right? Isn't that objective? There must be some kind of cognitive dissonance going on if you agree that it's a valid point regarding to it's existance, but it's not a valid point regarding to it's consequences.

Maybe the problem is that you're predetermining the effect to mandatorily have the very same nature as the cause. See:

"Better or worse by it's very nature is a product of point of view."

So you deny that an objective effectcan be the result of subjective causes (in the case, a colective of subjective causes). Even if they can be effectively measured? For example, seeing these lists (this and this), can't you read the implied demographics that voted the most on both lists? One show the top games for PS3 users, and the other is the equivalent for the 360. Isn't that an objective info, easy to deduce?

But even then you aren't considering that the very same issue that could harm one platform (subjectivity), can and should also affect the competitor and even out in the end, unless one assumes a scenario of conspiracy. In the end, the aleatory unfairness towards one should compensate the other when you consider the sheer number of games, gaming journalism companies and scores involved.

And for the last:

"It's a fallacy to assume that just because one alternative is straight poor, that the other alternative is clearly not only better but also a good alternative."

Just to clear that up, while that's indeed a fallacy, I by no means think that user reviews are what grant legitimity to professional reviews. It's kind of a complex question, and I made a big post about it, but it was too much of a tl;dr, and erased it. But I guess it won't hurt though if I make an observation here: in the '90s and early '00s reviews were a lot better than nowadays, even on gamespot. It was common to have separate scores to different aspects of the game, like graphics, sound, story, gameplay, "tilt" or replay value, etc., with singular scores and an overall score, plus the text, and in some cases multiple reviewers for the same game.

Even though they are not as reliable as before, professional reviews are still a lot more careful and mindful than our playful experience with the game. The discrepancies I mentioned between user reviews and professional reviews are only the symptoms that varied professional reviews show a more consistent range of scores (Halo 3, Gears of War 2, Little Big Planet, Uncharted 3, etc.).

100%

See here is where we differ, I'm saying the objective part is what is the most you can get out of that measure.

By any stretch that measure is an average score based on a flawed system. It doesn't say anything about a system beyond people in this line of work had glowing words to say about it. So if the argument is PS3 had better received games from critics, no harm no foul.

If the argument is the PS3 had the better games, because they were better received, that's where that stops being objective.

Hence my beef. Regardless I enjoyed being mediator for part 2 more than being part of the console talk, even if I did find a way to chime into the next part ;p

"PS3 had the most critical success."

:D