Uphill Struggle Comments by Rob Fahey

@Rash - again, I reiterate, what is this hardware MS are criminally pushing at me and friends because none of us need any or have brought anything other than what we got with our Premiums. Yes, the standalone HDDs are WAY overpriced but with no games having a mandatory install, 20gig was a reasonable amount and 60gig should be plenty. I can still buy a cheap external USB HDD for my media and run that through the 360 so why would I or anyone else ever need to shell out for a proprietory one unless they brought a core pack?

You starting in this thread banging on about the "expensive NECESSARY add ons" for the 360 counting against it. What are they exactly...? Your HDD arguement - whilst valid in terms of the overpricing issue, doesn't actually prove your original point as an HDD upgrade is never neccessary to have full functionality. Plus, the 360 is primarily a games machine not a home emdia hub which means that 320g's of storage isnt neccessarily an issue. And as I stated, if I did want that storage for my media I'll just buy a cheap USB storage device.

I have to say a hard disk upgrade isn't needed for the 360, I got the 20gb model on release and yes it fills up so you know what I do... delete old videos/demos.

If I had a 60gb model it would take 3 times longer to fill, and then I would delete stuff.
If I had a 120gb model it would take 6 times longer to fill, and then I would delete stuff.

The point I am making is no matter what size you get you will find a way to fill it in time, luckily I don't have mandatory installs to deal with so I have no issues with 20gb.

The only accessory I have bought for my 360 was a VGA cable at £5 and a play and charge at £13 (but you could just buy some rechargeable battery's at £4 if it bothered you)

So really out of the box it has not really needed any expensive add-ons, a blu-ray drive add-on would be expensive but us 360 owners weren't forced to buy one where we... blu ray trojan...

Great article.
I bought a PS3 in November when LBP launched, not because I really wanted that game but I needed a reason to fork out for the machine...LBP is great. My second reason for buying the PS3 was as a BLU-RAY player to back up my huge but dwindling collection of HD-DVD's.

The PS3 is quiet, it is cool running so I can hide the frankly ugly black pump in a cabinet. The Dual shock 3 takes no time to charge and stays charged for ages...but the whole system reeks of Meh!

The online PSN store is utter shit, no other way to describe it. Shit. Poor selection, no demos, just poor quality trailers. Yes the occasional full price demo, but I want demo's of games I might fancy bunging a few quid at. XBLA is simply in a different league.

The 360 is a noisy wheezey, grunty machine that should not be better than the silent running Sony jobby but is in ways that even a credit crunch cannot fathom. The 360 is cuddly, soft, firm and homely. It wants you to love it and it will love you back.

I am way too old to be a fanboy, but if I were a few years younger I would sell the PS3 and buy another two 360's.

rich, if you're trying to telling me you didn't invest in a play and charge kit after your "everything in the box" original purchase then i'm sorry you are lying.

This debate didn't start with me and I never suggested the issue is about the necessity to own the overpriced add-ons. The issue as i said in my previous post is MS pushing their expensive proprietory hardware on to unsuspecting consumers whose needs don't necessarily reflect your own. As i implied before generalising consumers needs to fit you own agenda doesn't support your argument. There will be consumers for whom Wifi is necessary. Play and charge should be standard.

Percy, as for 20GB being fine, well MS certainly doesn't agree with you otherwise we'd all still be buying them. And if you want to keep that noise down then installing games to the drive is pretty much mandatory, so at some stage, as those Arcade games continue to expand in size, that 20GB won't be enough.

The only folly that Sony made with the Playstation 3 is that they made the judgment that the consumers in the market of console gaming were rational buyers who thought their purchases through. For that you cannot blame them, they come from a country where consumers are rational people who don't have the space of money to waste on a sub par piece of machinery. The credit crisis wont hurt the Japanese as much as the rest of the world because their purchasing power is in the money they have earned instead of what a company deems them "good for."

Lets do some basic math. (All prices from Gamestop.com

The refurbished Playstation 3 40 gb with one wireless Controller is 349.99 USD.

The refurbished Xbox 360 without hard drive and one wireless controller is 169.99 USD.

A 20gb refurbished hard drive for Xbox 360 is 59.99 USD

So that brings the XBOX 360 up to 229.98 USD with 20gb less Hard drive memory and only DVD capability.

Now lets add a year of online service @ 49.99 USD.

With the total package your XBOX 360 has come to 279.97 with a year of online, 20 gb hard drive, and DVD capability. Another year of Online will bring you to 329.96 USD.

Also since it is a REFURB your warranty is void. So there is a 60% chance that in the next 2 years you will either purchase another 360 or have to send it to Microsoft @ 100.00 USD. Lets keep in mind that the Red Ring of Death is not the only problem that the 360 has experienced. This 100.00 USD would be charged for any problem such as a fault disk tray system that either interferes with the game or dvds ability to play or may play the game or dvd while leaving scratches (an unfortunate event that Microsoft will not reimburse you for.)

Honestly I don't care about the Online Network interface as long as I can read my messages and find my friends. I spend most of my online game time in the Lobby of whatever game I am playing. Also while I know that the developers have an easy time developing for the XBox 360, I enjoy the satisfaction of buying PS3 exclusive titles that still cost 59.99 USD, the same as Xbox 360's, but I know that my exclusive game is far superior in programming ingenuity.

With the global recession it will be unlikely that we will see any next generation systems soon. So while the Playstation 3 is out of the gates slow, it has already prepared itself for the next generation with superior hardware while the Xbox 360 and Wii will have to spend their time and money on R and D. Lets also not forget the worst part of the original Xbox, Microsoft's cash cow, the poorly designed accessories. How long did an Xbox controller last? Not as long as the Playstation2 controller that is for sure. While we run down the long stretch I wouldn't be surprised to see PS3 come out on top of XBox 360 by the time Next Gen comes.

Furthermore as you pointed out rich these aren't issues to you yet because you see 360 merely as a games console, but as MS continue to shoehorn media capabilities into the box no one can guarantee what demands the changes will bring to customers. Contrary to Percy's assertion early adopters are finding it necessary to upgrade their HDD.

lol @ rash', still

@darth2d2

I don't know where you do your shopping but I just bought three 13 month XBL Gold cards for 29.99 USD at Walmart.com. Amazon.com as well Buy.com are selling the same card for under $30 USD as well.

You will find MS stopping with the 20gb Hard drives is nothing to do with it not being enough storage, the problem is nobody makes 20gb hard drives anymore so it actually became cheaper to ship with a 60gb.

As for future needs as a media center... Well I could get a bigger hard drive and move everything accross, but why when it streams everything so well, I stream music while in games a lot of the time. Past that its connected to the same TV as a full media PC so not an issue. But I can see in the future that it may move to another room, so then it can still stream accross aswell as tap into the PC's TV tuners and recording so I would say its best to stream it all anyway.

So I am still failing to see the need for a hard drive upgrade for most users, I am not going to deny there may be some people out there but I doubt it.

I see it as most 360 owners bought the 360 as a games console so that would mean that most 360 owners don't actually care.

I am not arguing about the price it is ridiculous , but most people don't need it.

Percy, the problem i have with your argument is that it's based on personal experience? your knowledge, experience and time for your platform is different to others, so it is incredibly presumptuous of you to assume most will have the same needs as you for the lifetime of the system.

and that's the fundamental point: for the lifetime of the system. permit me to discuss this from the facts. MS may have got the 360 into your home as a games console, but their long term ambition is to delivery all your entertainment needs through it's services on the platform, effectively making it a media centre. if you are suggesting that you won't ever have to invest in addition to your original buy, then you are mistaken. MS, as a proven software and services provider, will present compelling reasons to it's consumers to upgrade because that's where the future revenue is. Netflix on NXE is an example of that ability of theirs. those are the the unmistakable facts.

by not being open and honest about their strategy in their hardware offering, MS are asking unsuspecting consumers to pay through the nose to join that strategy later.

when i look at the PS3 i see a media centre that has games console as one of it's offerings. i feel confident that as the system evolves through software and services i have everything in the box to make the most of such new offerings. whether i partake in those offerings will be up to me, but at least i won't be short-changed. that is choice, my friend, not paying through the nose at a later stage.

i don't believe Sony's software and services will be as compelling as MS's but with regards to hardware, considering the similarities in their ambitions, MS's hardware isn't up to task.

I will admit its very much from my point of view, but I do have many friends who own different consoles and each one I have asked why they bought a 360/PS3/Wii? none of them have said because it will be the better media center in the future.

I fully agree that if I want to start using netflix and such like then my 20gb HD isn't going to be up to much. What I am trying to say is that most people who have bought a 360 to play games on are going to keep playing games on it. It will come to a point where netflix will be going etc and at that time I would weigh up if it was worth it and would then have to add the price of a overpriced HD into the equation, personally I would just call it a bad idea and just keep using it for what I bought it for which is to play games.

The actual arguement of which is the better media center is debatable, my personal view is if you want to connect it to a network with a media PC then the 360 could be the better option as it intergrates very nicely, meanwhile the PS3 is a better standalone media center as you can chuck a huge HD in store everything on it, play blu-ray etc

This is where the PS3 falls down to me, its great it does all that, but not everybody wants all that.

If you want a good media center then build a PC, mine can play HD-DVD and Blu-ray, 2 freeview tuners, 2 satellite tuners, card reader and a 7.1 speaker system attached. I know that the PS3 and 360 both look weak in comparison. As it is I also chose to spend more and get it upto gaming spec to but that isn't needed.

Basically if somebody wants a great media center they will build one, if somebody wants to play games they will buy a console. There is a cross over where people will actually consider the media capabilities of a console before buying, but most consoles are sold for games, both the 360 and PS3 have great games but then the price comes in, when all you want to do is take it out of the box and play games then the 360 is the cheapest by a long way.

I can honestly say I don't have anything against the PS3, it is nice but its just too late and too expensive, I bought the 360 because it was first and it had nice graphics, the PS3 is yet to make me go 'wow, I need that'.

Just think of any product in the world, you buy one at £280, 3 years later somebody trys selling you something which does nothing better or worse for £300 would you accept it? That is why I still haven't bought one.

Percy, before we digress any further let me remind ourselves that this is about overpriced add-ons in the mainstream games market. you argue those additional features aren't necessary, yet my argument, which is the most crucial that you haven't addressed, is: when Microsoft's hardware strategy is to turn the 360 into a mass market media device, how can those add-ons not be necessary at some stage in the consoles lifespan?

i understand building your own can be the best solution, but the practicalities of that to the consumer as well as revenue potential aren't as rewarding as an all in one standard.

again you're looking at this from your perspective, while i'm looking at the business. Microsoft's hardware isn't designed well enough to deliver on their ambitions. in the long run, the unsuspecting consumer will pay for that.

p.s. by most accounts PS3 is a better media server than 360. check that.

Basically if microsoft are trying to push the 360 as a media center and that is there future business model then due to the over priced add-ons which are needed for that purpose will ultimately lead to less people taking up the services than they hoped, so overall it would fail.

I just believe you are grouping media center people and gamers as the same thing when I don't believe the 2 are exclusively the same.

Right now I would say the majority of consumers view the 360 and PS3 as games consoles, to which as games abilities alone there is nothing between them, on that note you have to admit the 360 offers the best value.

When you start adding media capabilities overall I will admit the PS3 is the overall strongest, there is some points the 360 wins on, but as mentioned cheap HD upgrades and blu-ray playback overall win that side of things.

Overally I won't debate the PS3 is excellent value if you want everything it does, but how many people actually want everything it does? this is where the sting comes in and that is why the PS3 is struggling.

To sum it up:
PS3:

Positives:
Games
Media ready
Cheap add-ons
Blu-ray playback

Negatives:
You have to pay for all the above if you want it or not.

360

Positives:
Games
Cheap to buy

Negatives:
ridicously expensive add-on's
said add-ons needed if you want it to do 'more than games'

You have to consider a lot of people bought a PS2 later in its life as it was cheap and had loads of games, now its the 360 which is cheap with loads of games. I would say the playstation brand and loyalty is the main reason the PS3 is doing as well as it is. Dare I say if you take the 2 consoles and literally kept everything the same expect for who manufactured each console then the PS3 would be first, with the brand and being first to the market Sony would have cleaned up the market and it would be the late and expensive xbox in a lot more trouble as the xbox brand was nowhere near as strong at the time.

If you look last gen, the xbox was the better console power wise but it was too expensive and too late and with no brand name/loyalty it didn't get a huge share of the market. This generation the PS3 is the one which is the later more powerful console but its price is much higher. As said if it didn't have the playstation brand it would have much bigger problems.

Glad this has remained a sensible debate either way, sure we will agree soon. :-)

I think FUD is the prime cause of the PS3's failure.

"I think FUD is the prime cause of the PS3's failure. "

I am sure it has slowed the 360's sales too, not sure which will be hit worse be the cloud of FUD actually.