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Want to buy a PS3 /
Playstation 3 XBOX
360 or Wii ?
Read the top guide
on PS3's and FIND
WHAT YOU'RE
LOOKING FOR!
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continued from page 1 of the Top PS3 Guide
PAGE 2
Unlike the PS2 controller, the SixAxis controller has a centered
Home button, which functions much like its counterpart on the Xbox
360 controller. You use it to return to the console's main menu
screen, as well as to sync the controller to the console and start it
up or shut it down wirelessly. Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Familiar interface
If you own a Sony PSP, you'll immediately notice the similarities
between the PS3's interface and the PSP's cross media bar-style
GUI (graphical user interface). You navigate horizontally through
top-level selection categories such as users, system settings, and
media options such as photos, music, videos, games, network, and
friends. When you select a top-level category, a vertical list of sub
options appears, and you can navigate down that list until you find
the option you want. The interface is polished and generally
user-friendly, but you do have to drill down a few levels to reach
certain features, and getting to some functions isn't quite as
intuitive as it should be. Still, the overall design is slick enough to
be called Mac-like, and--at least from an aesthetic standpoint--is
more appealing than the Xbox 360's Dashboard and Nintendo Wii's
Channels interfaces. Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Digital media hub
The PS3's media features are extensive--enough so that the
console could be a worthwhile purchase even for people who never
deign to even fire up a game. For starters, the PlayStation 3 hits
the shelves as the most affordable Blu-ray player you can
buy--merely half the price of $1,000 to $1,300 models from the
likes of Samsung, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips,
and--ironically--Sony. Before we delve into the PS3's HD movie
prowess (see "movie watching," below), let's take a holistic look at
the console's multimedia functionality.
In addition to the built-in memory card reader on the 60GB model
(we applaud Sony for not subjecting us to a Memory Stick-only
environment), the PS3 can read digital photos from a variety of
USB-attached devices, including most digital cameras, the PSP,
USB flash drives, and home-burned CD-Rs. (One caveat: the
images may need to be placed in a special directory, such as DCIM
or Picture, if they're not already there.) A few different slide show
styles are available, including a unique "photo album" view that
splays the images across a white work surface as if you'd dumped
them there and spread them out. When stored internally on the
hard drive (copying back and forth is easy), photos appear rapidly,
and in the basic slide-show mode, you can advance your slides
forward by simply pressing on the top-right shoulder button (the left
shoulder takes you back a slide). Most JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, and
PNG images should work just fine. By contrast, the Xbox 360 lacks
both an internal media reader and the impressive photo album
viewer, and the Wii--while including some cool and fun
photo-viewing and manipulation functionality--includes only a
built-in SD card reader. Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
As for music, the PS3 supports most of the major music-file types,
including MP3, ATRAC, AAC, and WAV, and like the Xbox 360, has
a built-in music visualizer. As with the photos, you can import songs
from a flash memory card or a USB thumbdrive--again, you'll have
to create a special Music folder--or rip songs directly to the hard
drive from a CD. (Yes, unlike some Blu-ray players on the market,
the PS3 can actually recognize and play CDs). While the PS3 even
plays Sony's increasingly obscure SACD discs, it cannot play back
music from attached iPods, nor can it stream from other music
players that incorporate copy-protected music formats. Here, the
360 has a leg-up: it offers some iPod compatibility, and it can play
back WMA music files as well.
On the video front, the PS3 plays Blu-ray discs in full
high-definition as well as DVD movies. It also supports MPEG1,
MPEG2, and MPEG4/h.264 video files from flash, USB, or
disc-based media (reading from the "video" directory). If you
transfer the videos to the PS3's hard drive, thumbnails on the
video menu are shown as 15-second video clips, rather than just
as still images of the first frame of the video. You currently can't
stream files from your PC or over your LAN (local area network),
but you can stream video from your PS3 to your PSP using the
PS3's Remote Play feature. Sony hasn't yet provided for a way to
convert videos you might download from its PlayStation Store to a
portable size that can be automatically be transferred to your PSP.
But we've been told to expect tighter--and better--integration with
the PSP both offline and online in the future.
Sony's version of Web TV
Taking a page out of the PSP's book, the PS3 also has a built-in
Web browser, but the nice thing about the PS3 is that if you
connect a USB keyboard, you don't have to type in URL addresses
using the system's tedious virtual keyboard. Likewise, a USB
mouse lets you point and click your way through a Web page, just
as if you were on a PC. The system will eventually allow you to pair
the PS3 with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which is probably
the ideal setup for living-room use. It's unclear whether all
Bluetooth keyboards, past and present, will be compatible, but
Sony assures us that many will. (We were able to pair a Plantronics
Discovery 655 cellphone headset with no issues, so the Bluetooth
function definitely works for third-party products.)
The browser appears to be pretty robust with the requisite Flash
support, and it certainly is a nice convenience for those who to
browse from their living room couch. That said, the sharpness of
Web pages' appearance--and how readable they are-will depend
on the quality of your TV and its size. For example, viewing Web
pages on a 60-inch DLP set is going to be more of a challenge
than say, looking at those same pages over a 20-inch computer
monitor. And viewing Web pages on anything less than an HDTV at
full resolution (720p, 1080i, or 1080p) will be decidedly
eye-straining.
The PlayStation Network
As of this writing, Sony hasn't turned on its PlayStation Network, so
we can't say a whole lot about it other than it will be similar to
Microsoft's Xbox Live service, including typical online gaming
features along with community and messaging, as well as voice
and video chat further down the road. Xbox Live Silver, Microsoft's
free entry-level service, gives you access to some community
options but to play online multiplayer games, you have to upgrade
to Xbox Live Gold service, which runs $50 per year.
The promise of free online play is obviously a big plus in Sony's
favor. That said, Xbox Live has been around for years and has had
time to mature, and the majority of Xbox 360 games offer some
form of online play. Not all of the initial PS3 titles will offer
head-to-head online gameplay, but expect at least some online
showcases: Sony's Resistance: Fall of Man is designed to handle
online fragfests with as many as 32 players per match. (Nintendo
will also offer free online play and communications for the Wii, as it
does on the DS, but none of the initial Wii titles feature
head-to-head online gameplay.) Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Microsoft has its Xbox Live Marketplace, where you can download
games, demos, video content--including, as of November 22,
full-length movies and TV shows in high-definition--as well as game
themes and additional game content. The PlayStation Store will
offer similar options and functionality but it will most probably take
several months to flush out and reach a level of richness
approaching that of Xbox Live.
Also, keep in mind that despite the PS3 online play being
ostensibly free, Sony and its third-party publishers--just like
Microsoft and Nintendo--will be aggressively pushing
"micropayment" transactions (additional levels, in-game extras,
retro games, and other goodies) that will cost users. Instead of the
points-based payment system found on Microsoft and Nintendo's
networks, Sony says it will stick to dollars and cents--users can
simply transfer cash to their PlayStation 3 Wallet via credit card or
with prepaid gift cards. (International locations will likewise be
denominated in their home currency--yen, euros, pounds sterling,
Canadian dollars, and so forth.)
Cell inside
When final specs were released for the Xbox 360 and the
PlayStation 3, not surprisingly, there was a big debate over which
system was technically more powerful. The 360 uses more
off-the-shelf PC components while The PlayStation 3's 3.2GHz Cell
processor was built from the ground up just for the PS3. It consists
of a single PowerPC-based core with seven synergistic processing
units and is the result of a joint effort between IBM, Sony, and
Toshiba, which is ironic, considering that Sony and Toshiba are in
a deathmatch over Blu-ray and HD-DVD.
The key thing to know about the Cell is that it has the juice to run a
new class of gameplay physics that will allow developers to create
spectacular effects and eventually provide a whole new depth of
realism to games. Paired with PlayStation 3's RSX Reality
Synthesizer graphics-processing unit, a gargantuan 550MHz,
300-million-transistor graphics chip based on Nvidia's GeForce
7800 GTX graphics technology, and you're looking at a very
high-end PC. The only problem, of course, is that it'll take
developers years to learn to take full advantage of all that
processing power and truly deliver on the graphical promise of the
system. The same, of course, is true for the Xbox 360, but we
suspect from our talks with developers that the PS3 may ultimately
be declared the more powerful system. (Say what you will about
increasing development times and rising costs for producing video
games, but Blu-ray's 25GB to 50GB storage capacity--as opposed
to 8.5GB for the Xbox 360's DVD drive--does give developers the
chance to create huge games). Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
At the end of the day, as Microsoft learned, you can tout all the
power you want, but if you can't keep your system cool--and fairly
quiet--you're going to have some serious problems on your hands.
What's impressive about this PS3, in fact, is that with all this power
under the hood, the system runs as quietly as it does. After
running for three hours straight, we found that we could still place a
hand over the back of the unit and not get scorched--the system
runs pretty warm, but not blazingly hot. While the 360's tendency to
overheat has been exaggerated, its cooling fan and DVD drive are
comparatively far noisier, sometimes to the point of distraction.
Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Play time
The first thing we should be clear on is that for your $600, you
don't actually get any games (the first round of systems will ship
with a Blu-Ray movie, Talledega Nights). There's also only a single
controller. With our review unit, Sony sent over retail copies of
Resistance: Fall of Man, a first-person shooter that's arguably the
system's most impressive title and Genji, a hack-and-slasher that's
garnered only average reviews. At a couple preview events, we
also played several other launch titles, the majority of which are
also available for the Xbox 360.
In fact, it's very hard to tell the difference between titles that are
already available on the 360 and their PS3 counterparts because
they're ports of the same game. Where you start to see some of
the promise is in Sony's in-house titles, such as Resistance: Fall of
Man and NBA 07. The latter may not measure up to 2K Sports'
NBA 2K7, but the game looks impressive, with crisp graphics and
smooth 60fps high-def gameplay. Formula One Championship
Edition is another title that really jumps out at you graphically; the
game looks really impressive but won't be out until later next year.
We're also waiting to compare the PS3 versions of EA's Fight Night
3 to its Xbox 360 counterpart to see if the company was able to
make any improvements. Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
The long and short of it is that the PS3 clearly measures up to the
Xbox 360 in terms of its graphics prowess and the added
dimension that the tilt controller offers, is a new twist. That said,
there really isn't anything available yet that's too unique or so far
beyond what the Xbox 360 offers that you think, "I gotta get this
system to play that game." The reality is, as usual, you're going to
have to wait for that breakout title. (Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4,
due in 2007, is currently getting a lot of buzz and will supposedly
be a PS3 exclusive.) Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Backward compatibility
While you're waiting for that killer PS3 game, you can still fall back
on hundreds, if not thousands, of PlayStation catalog titles. The
PS3 is fully backward-compatible with nearly all PlayStation 2 and
PlayStation 1 games. Just toss in a disc and the PS3 will create a
virtual memory card on its hard drive to store saved games and
preferences. We had no trouble running PS2 titles such as Shadow
of the Colossus and Star Wars Starfigher. While we expect that a
handful of older titles won't run on the PS3, Sony deserves kudos
for near-universal backward compatibility. By comparison, Xbox
360 support for Xbox1 titles is limited to a set list of games with
emulation profiles (Microsoft updates the list periodically, but it's
still limited to less than half the number of the games available for
the older console). Nintendo does better with the Wii: it plays all
GameCube game discs.
Hardware and accessory compatibility is a mixed bag. You can't
connect PS2 controllers to the PS3 because the new console lacks
the older controller port, but because the PS3 control design is
nearly identical, your older games will play just fine. Likewise,
games that utilize any unique accessories that must plug into the
PS2-style control port--such as Guitar Hero's mighty ax--won't work
on the PS3. But USB accessories--such as the EyeToy--should be
good to go. Have some old God of War saved games that you just
can't part with? Invest $15 in a special card reader, and you can
transfer any games from your PS2 memory cards to the PS3's hard
drive.
Movie watching
Before we got our hands on a retail unit, we'd been able to spend
some time previewing the system, and while we had a pretty good
picture of what it can do in terms of gaming and multimedia
functionality, we hadn't been able to test it as a Blu-ray player.
Sony, of course, is taking a big risk by attempting to go out with a
new system that not only features a new processor but a new,
unproven optical drive format. The company is making a heavy bet
on the PS3 as a game machine, but it's also staking its Blu-ray
fortunes on the system as well, and we were most curious to see
how it delivered as a Blu-ray player. Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Because we were more familiar watching Mission: Impossible III on
the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player, we decided to do our
testing using that disc rather than Talledega Nights. Watching on
one of the finest large-screen TVs available, the 60-inch Sony KDS-
R60XBR2, we watched several scenes from the movie on the
Samsung first, then switched over to the PS3. In case you're
wondering, load times for the disc were essentially identical at 40
seconds on each player (we hit stop on our stopwatch when a
picture appeared on the screen). That isn't terrible, but this is
obviously an area where Sony can make some improvements down
the road with a next-generation drive that's faster.
As for the picture, it was quite comparable to what we saw on the
Samsung, and navigating the disc was a fairly zippy process. In
other words, at first glance, the PS3 seems to stack up fairly well
against Blu-ray players costing nearly twice as much ($1,000),
which may obviate the need for those players to actually exist. Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Furthermore, the PS3 is the first A/V device to hit the market to
utilize the HDMI 1.3 specification. That doesn't mean much
now--there's no corresponding HDMI 1.3 products to connect it to.
But in the future--2007 and beyond--that should enable to PS3 to
pass HD video and next-gen surround-sound audio (such as Dolby
Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD) to compatible A/V receivers via a
single HDMI cable. In the meantime, the PS3, like other Blu-ray and
HD-DVD players, can pass 1080p HD video and uncompressed
LPCM surround soundtracks to compatible A/V receivers and TVs.
Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
If we had one complaint with the PS3, it was that it didn't upscale
standard DVDs to HD resolutions, a feature that's standard on
other Blu-ray and HD-DVD players. Instead, they default to 480p
(progressive-scan). But that's hardly a deal-breaker, especially
when you consider the competition: the Xbox 360 requires a clunky
add-on drive to play HD-DVD movies (though downloadable
high-def movies will soon be available via Xbox Live), and the
Nintendo Wii doesn't play back movie discs of any type.
Accessing Blu-ray and DVD menus with the PS3 controller is
functional, if awkward. Unfortunately, you won't be able to program
a standard universal remote to control your PS3--it lacks an
infrared port, so it needs to receive commands via Bluetooth. Not
coincidentally, Sony offers a Bluetooth compatible remote for $25.
Conclusion
Though not with out a few minor drawbacks--and we'll probably find
a few more as we continue testing the system--the PS3 is a
versatile and impressive piece of home entertainment equipment
that lives up to the hype. As usual, the launch titles don't do all that
much to sell the system, but that should start to change within the
next six months as more impressive titles come to market. Whether
you buy the PS3 today or whenever it becomes available in
quantity, you can be sure you'll feel that you got your money's
worth--from a gaming and a multimedia perspective. Reviewed by:
David Carnoy Edited by: John P. Falcone Want to buy an XBOX
360, PSP, PS2 or PS3 game system?
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PAGE 2
Unlike the PS2 controller, the SixAxis controller has a centered
Home button, which functions much like its counterpart on the Xbox
360 controller. You use it to return to the console's main menu
screen, as well as to sync the controller to the console and start it
up or shut it down wirelessly. Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Familiar interface
If you own a Sony PSP, you'll immediately notice the similarities
between the PS3's interface and the PSP's cross media bar-style
GUI (graphical user interface). You navigate horizontally through
top-level selection categories such as users, system settings, and
media options such as photos, music, videos, games, network, and
friends. When you select a top-level category, a vertical list of sub
options appears, and you can navigate down that list until you find
the option you want. The interface is polished and generally
user-friendly, but you do have to drill down a few levels to reach
certain features, and getting to some functions isn't quite as
intuitive as it should be. Still, the overall design is slick enough to
be called Mac-like, and--at least from an aesthetic standpoint--is
more appealing than the Xbox 360's Dashboard and Nintendo Wii's
Channels interfaces. Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Digital media hub
The PS3's media features are extensive--enough so that the
console could be a worthwhile purchase even for people who never
deign to even fire up a game. For starters, the PlayStation 3 hits
the shelves as the most affordable Blu-ray player you can
buy--merely half the price of $1,000 to $1,300 models from the
likes of Samsung, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips,
and--ironically--Sony. Before we delve into the PS3's HD movie
prowess (see "movie watching," below), let's take a holistic look at
the console's multimedia functionality.
In addition to the built-in memory card reader on the 60GB model
(we applaud Sony for not subjecting us to a Memory Stick-only
environment), the PS3 can read digital photos from a variety of
USB-attached devices, including most digital cameras, the PSP,
USB flash drives, and home-burned CD-Rs. (One caveat: the
images may need to be placed in a special directory, such as DCIM
or Picture, if they're not already there.) A few different slide show
styles are available, including a unique "photo album" view that
splays the images across a white work surface as if you'd dumped
them there and spread them out. When stored internally on the
hard drive (copying back and forth is easy), photos appear rapidly,
and in the basic slide-show mode, you can advance your slides
forward by simply pressing on the top-right shoulder button (the left
shoulder takes you back a slide). Most JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, and
PNG images should work just fine. By contrast, the Xbox 360 lacks
both an internal media reader and the impressive photo album
viewer, and the Wii--while including some cool and fun
photo-viewing and manipulation functionality--includes only a
built-in SD card reader. Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
As for music, the PS3 supports most of the major music-file types,
including MP3, ATRAC, AAC, and WAV, and like the Xbox 360, has
a built-in music visualizer. As with the photos, you can import songs
from a flash memory card or a USB thumbdrive--again, you'll have
to create a special Music folder--or rip songs directly to the hard
drive from a CD. (Yes, unlike some Blu-ray players on the market,
the PS3 can actually recognize and play CDs). While the PS3 even
plays Sony's increasingly obscure SACD discs, it cannot play back
music from attached iPods, nor can it stream from other music
players that incorporate copy-protected music formats. Here, the
360 has a leg-up: it offers some iPod compatibility, and it can play
back WMA music files as well.
On the video front, the PS3 plays Blu-ray discs in full
high-definition as well as DVD movies. It also supports MPEG1,
MPEG2, and MPEG4/h.264 video files from flash, USB, or
disc-based media (reading from the "video" directory). If you
transfer the videos to the PS3's hard drive, thumbnails on the
video menu are shown as 15-second video clips, rather than just
as still images of the first frame of the video. You currently can't
stream files from your PC or over your LAN (local area network),
but you can stream video from your PS3 to your PSP using the
PS3's Remote Play feature. Sony hasn't yet provided for a way to
convert videos you might download from its PlayStation Store to a
portable size that can be automatically be transferred to your PSP.
But we've been told to expect tighter--and better--integration with
the PSP both offline and online in the future.
Sony's version of Web TV
Taking a page out of the PSP's book, the PS3 also has a built-in
Web browser, but the nice thing about the PS3 is that if you
connect a USB keyboard, you don't have to type in URL addresses
using the system's tedious virtual keyboard. Likewise, a USB
mouse lets you point and click your way through a Web page, just
as if you were on a PC. The system will eventually allow you to pair
the PS3 with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which is probably
the ideal setup for living-room use. It's unclear whether all
Bluetooth keyboards, past and present, will be compatible, but
Sony assures us that many will. (We were able to pair a Plantronics
Discovery 655 cellphone headset with no issues, so the Bluetooth
function definitely works for third-party products.)
The browser appears to be pretty robust with the requisite Flash
support, and it certainly is a nice convenience for those who to
browse from their living room couch. That said, the sharpness of
Web pages' appearance--and how readable they are-will depend
on the quality of your TV and its size. For example, viewing Web
pages on a 60-inch DLP set is going to be more of a challenge
than say, looking at those same pages over a 20-inch computer
monitor. And viewing Web pages on anything less than an HDTV at
full resolution (720p, 1080i, or 1080p) will be decidedly
eye-straining.
The PlayStation Network
As of this writing, Sony hasn't turned on its PlayStation Network, so
we can't say a whole lot about it other than it will be similar to
Microsoft's Xbox Live service, including typical online gaming
features along with community and messaging, as well as voice
and video chat further down the road. Xbox Live Silver, Microsoft's
free entry-level service, gives you access to some community
options but to play online multiplayer games, you have to upgrade
to Xbox Live Gold service, which runs $50 per year.
The promise of free online play is obviously a big plus in Sony's
favor. That said, Xbox Live has been around for years and has had
time to mature, and the majority of Xbox 360 games offer some
form of online play. Not all of the initial PS3 titles will offer
head-to-head online gameplay, but expect at least some online
showcases: Sony's Resistance: Fall of Man is designed to handle
online fragfests with as many as 32 players per match. (Nintendo
will also offer free online play and communications for the Wii, as it
does on the DS, but none of the initial Wii titles feature
head-to-head online gameplay.) Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Microsoft has its Xbox Live Marketplace, where you can download
games, demos, video content--including, as of November 22,
full-length movies and TV shows in high-definition--as well as game
themes and additional game content. The PlayStation Store will
offer similar options and functionality but it will most probably take
several months to flush out and reach a level of richness
approaching that of Xbox Live.
Also, keep in mind that despite the PS3 online play being
ostensibly free, Sony and its third-party publishers--just like
Microsoft and Nintendo--will be aggressively pushing
"micropayment" transactions (additional levels, in-game extras,
retro games, and other goodies) that will cost users. Instead of the
points-based payment system found on Microsoft and Nintendo's
networks, Sony says it will stick to dollars and cents--users can
simply transfer cash to their PlayStation 3 Wallet via credit card or
with prepaid gift cards. (International locations will likewise be
denominated in their home currency--yen, euros, pounds sterling,
Canadian dollars, and so forth.)
Cell inside
When final specs were released for the Xbox 360 and the
PlayStation 3, not surprisingly, there was a big debate over which
system was technically more powerful. The 360 uses more
off-the-shelf PC components while The PlayStation 3's 3.2GHz Cell
processor was built from the ground up just for the PS3. It consists
of a single PowerPC-based core with seven synergistic processing
units and is the result of a joint effort between IBM, Sony, and
Toshiba, which is ironic, considering that Sony and Toshiba are in
a deathmatch over Blu-ray and HD-DVD.
The key thing to know about the Cell is that it has the juice to run a
new class of gameplay physics that will allow developers to create
spectacular effects and eventually provide a whole new depth of
realism to games. Paired with PlayStation 3's RSX Reality
Synthesizer graphics-processing unit, a gargantuan 550MHz,
300-million-transistor graphics chip based on Nvidia's GeForce
7800 GTX graphics technology, and you're looking at a very
high-end PC. The only problem, of course, is that it'll take
developers years to learn to take full advantage of all that
processing power and truly deliver on the graphical promise of the
system. The same, of course, is true for the Xbox 360, but we
suspect from our talks with developers that the PS3 may ultimately
be declared the more powerful system. (Say what you will about
increasing development times and rising costs for producing video
games, but Blu-ray's 25GB to 50GB storage capacity--as opposed
to 8.5GB for the Xbox 360's DVD drive--does give developers the
chance to create huge games). Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
At the end of the day, as Microsoft learned, you can tout all the
power you want, but if you can't keep your system cool--and fairly
quiet--you're going to have some serious problems on your hands.
What's impressive about this PS3, in fact, is that with all this power
under the hood, the system runs as quietly as it does. After
running for three hours straight, we found that we could still place a
hand over the back of the unit and not get scorched--the system
runs pretty warm, but not blazingly hot. While the 360's tendency to
overheat has been exaggerated, its cooling fan and DVD drive are
comparatively far noisier, sometimes to the point of distraction.
Want
to buy an XBOX 360, PSP, PS2 or PS3
game system?
Play time
The first thing we should be clear on is that for your $600, you
don't actually get any games (the first round of systems will ship
with a Blu-Ray movie, Talledega Nights). There's also only a single
controller. With our review unit, Sony sent over retail copies of
Resistance: Fall of Man, a first-person shooter that's arguably the
system's most impressive title and Genji, a hack-and-slasher that's
garnered only average reviews. At a couple preview events, we
also played several other launch titles, the majority of which are
also available for the Xbox 360.
In fact, it's very hard to tell the difference between titles that are
already available on the 360 and their PS3 counterparts because
they're ports of the same game. Where you start to see some of
the promise is in Sony's in-house titles, such as Resistance: Fall of
Man and NBA 07. The latter may not measure up to 2K Sports'
NBA 2K7, but the game looks impressive, with crisp graphics and
smooth 60fps high-def gameplay. Formula One Championship
Edition is another title that really jumps out at you graphically; the
game looks really impressive but won't be out until later next year.
We're also waiting to compare the PS3 versions of EA's Fight Night
3 to its Xbox 360 counterpart to see if the company was able to
make any improvements. Want
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The long and short of it is that the PS3 clearly measures up to the
Xbox 360 in terms of its graphics prowess and the added
dimension that the tilt controller offers, is a new twist. That said,
there really isn't anything available yet that's too unique or so far
beyond what the Xbox 360 offers that you think, "I gotta get this
system to play that game." The reality is, as usual, you're going to
have to wait for that breakout title. (Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4,
due in 2007, is currently getting a lot of buzz and will supposedly
be a PS3 exclusive.) Want
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Backward compatibility
While you're waiting for that killer PS3 game, you can still fall back
on hundreds, if not thousands, of PlayStation catalog titles. The
PS3 is fully backward-compatible with nearly all PlayStation 2 and
PlayStation 1 games. Just toss in a disc and the PS3 will create a
virtual memory card on its hard drive to store saved games and
preferences. We had no trouble running PS2 titles such as Shadow
of the Colossus and Star Wars Starfigher. While we expect that a
handful of older titles won't run on the PS3, Sony deserves kudos
for near-universal backward compatibility. By comparison, Xbox
360 support for Xbox1 titles is limited to a set list of games with
emulation profiles (Microsoft updates the list periodically, but it's
still limited to less than half the number of the games available for
the older console). Nintendo does better with the Wii: it plays all
GameCube game discs.
Hardware and accessory compatibility is a mixed bag. You can't
connect PS2 controllers to the PS3 because the new console lacks
the older controller port, but because the PS3 control design is
nearly identical, your older games will play just fine. Likewise,
games that utilize any unique accessories that must plug into the
PS2-style control port--such as Guitar Hero's mighty ax--won't work
on the PS3. But USB accessories--such as the EyeToy--should be
good to go. Have some old God of War saved games that you just
can't part with? Invest $15 in a special card reader, and you can
transfer any games from your PS2 memory cards to the PS3's hard
drive.
Movie watching
Before we got our hands on a retail unit, we'd been able to spend
some time previewing the system, and while we had a pretty good
picture of what it can do in terms of gaming and multimedia
functionality, we hadn't been able to test it as a Blu-ray player.
Sony, of course, is taking a big risk by attempting to go out with a
new system that not only features a new processor but a new,
unproven optical drive format. The company is making a heavy bet
on the PS3 as a game machine, but it's also staking its Blu-ray
fortunes on the system as well, and we were most curious to see
how it delivered as a Blu-ray player. Want
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Because we were more familiar watching Mission: Impossible III on
the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player, we decided to do our
testing using that disc rather than Talledega Nights. Watching on
one of the finest large-screen TVs available, the 60-inch Sony KDS-
R60XBR2, we watched several scenes from the movie on the
Samsung first, then switched over to the PS3. In case you're
wondering, load times for the disc were essentially identical at 40
seconds on each player (we hit stop on our stopwatch when a
picture appeared on the screen). That isn't terrible, but this is
obviously an area where Sony can make some improvements down
the road with a next-generation drive that's faster.
As for the picture, it was quite comparable to what we saw on the
Samsung, and navigating the disc was a fairly zippy process. In
other words, at first glance, the PS3 seems to stack up fairly well
against Blu-ray players costing nearly twice as much ($1,000),
which may obviate the need for those players to actually exist. Want
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Furthermore, the PS3 is the first A/V device to hit the market to
utilize the HDMI 1.3 specification. That doesn't mean much
now--there's no corresponding HDMI 1.3 products to connect it to.
But in the future--2007 and beyond--that should enable to PS3 to
pass HD video and next-gen surround-sound audio (such as Dolby
Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD) to compatible A/V receivers via a
single HDMI cable. In the meantime, the PS3, like other Blu-ray and
HD-DVD players, can pass 1080p HD video and uncompressed
LPCM surround soundtracks to compatible A/V receivers and TVs.
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If we had one complaint with the PS3, it was that it didn't upscale
standard DVDs to HD resolutions, a feature that's standard on
other Blu-ray and HD-DVD players. Instead, they default to 480p
(progressive-scan). But that's hardly a deal-breaker, especially
when you consider the competition: the Xbox 360 requires a clunky
add-on drive to play HD-DVD movies (though downloadable
high-def movies will soon be available via Xbox Live), and the
Nintendo Wii doesn't play back movie discs of any type.
Accessing Blu-ray and DVD menus with the PS3 controller is
functional, if awkward. Unfortunately, you won't be able to program
a standard universal remote to control your PS3--it lacks an
infrared port, so it needs to receive commands via Bluetooth. Not
coincidentally, Sony offers a Bluetooth compatible remote for $25.
Conclusion
Though not with out a few minor drawbacks--and we'll probably find
a few more as we continue testing the system--the PS3 is a
versatile and impressive piece of home entertainment equipment
that lives up to the hype. As usual, the launch titles don't do all that
much to sell the system, but that should start to change within the
next six months as more impressive titles come to market. Whether
you buy the PS3 today or whenever it becomes available in
quantity, you can be sure you'll feel that you got your money's
worth--from a gaming and a multimedia perspective. Reviewed by:
David Carnoy Edited by: John P. Falcone Want to buy an XBOX
360, PSP, PS2 or PS3 game system?
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