Xbox360 Vs Ps3

In today's gaming community there are many heavy hitters that are all playing game for the greater market share, but the two that are constantly on top would be Sony's PlayStation3 (PS3) and Microsoft's XBOX360. With each company continually trying to outdo each other, there is a need for consumers to have an informed opinion about each gaming unit to make the right purchase for their needs. Currently, the XBOX360 is on shelves all across the world and the PlayStation3 will be out shortly before the holiday season of 2006.

The main core or heart of a gaming system would be its central processing unit (or CPU for short). In comparing CPU's we must look at their number of dot product calculations per second that the system can perform. These calculations are crucial to understand because they are used in 3D math to calculate various items such as projections, transformations, vector lengths, and many more (Deboe). If we look at the clock speed of both units we notice that they are identical at 3.2 Ghz, but since the dot product calculations per second are higher in the PS3 compared to the XBOX360 (51-billion and 33.6-billion respectively), this allows for Sony's gaming machine to have the edge over the Xbox for overall brute processing power (James).

If the Central Processing Unit does not have a powerful Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), the system will definitely dwindle in performance when trying to display the high end graphics to the display device (usually a television). It seems as though Microsoft wins the battle when looking at the numbers of both systems GPU's. The XBOX360 currently has 48 pipelines with a custom built ATI graphic processor; not to mention, the PS2 has 24 pipelines through a custom NVIDIA graphic processor (James). Although the XBOX wins in the numbers department, Sony's pipelines are noticeable more powerful then that of Microsoft's; but in the end both systems will deliver the same performance when in use.

What is a gaming system without the games? As of October 2005, there have been over 150 PS3 games by multiple developers and publishers (Playstation 3). Many of the games that are currently in the market for the PlayStation2 are going to have sequels in the XBOX360 allowing for a constant market base of enthusiasts that want to have their latest rush of their favorite game. But as with all systems, they all have their own proprietary games such as Gran Turismo (Sony) and Halo (Microsoft). As with past gaming systems from both manufacturers, the gamer, in all of us, can expect to see a larger selection of titles for the PS3 compared to the XBOX360 (as noted from their predecessors). If Microsoft wants this number to increase they will need to find a way to appeal to the international market (Deboer). After reviewing both systems' selection of games, the obvious winner is the Sony PlayStation3, but it is really up to the gamer to select what genre of games they want to play which will be the deciding factor on which system to purchase.

The ability to chose which games the gamer would like to play will be through a disc like storage medium. Both Sony and Microsoft's systems will have no compatibility issues with previous disc types (CD-R/RW, DVD-+R/RW, etc.), but their games will be saved and packaged on specific types of disc media. XBOX360 will incorporate the original nine gigabyte DVD, while the PS3 will utilize their new proprietary BLUray disc (which is Sony's new high definition storage medium) (DeBoer). The BLUray will hold approximately 54 gigabytes, allowing for larger and more dynamic games. In today's game development stage, all games