…at least on the Xbox side. This Christmas, the Xbox team decided to face Sony and to play hardball.
NXE
First, there is that firmware upgrade. Everyone gets it, and everyone will be pleased. Like a fresh coat of paint, it doesn’t change the fundenmentals but looks new. There is some notable features, like the “run from hard disk” function that make finally make the hardware silent.
Also, seeing that upgrade, I do think that the plan all along was to go toward a clone of Steam for 360 games. Seen in that light, the choice of DVD for the optical drive (as opposed to bluray or HDDVD) becomes obvious: it puts a 10GB size limit, that albeit somewhat big for many, shouldn’t be too painful over broadband.
Lineup
When asked how he thought the PS3’s Christmas software line-up compares to the Xbox 360’s, Maguire replied: “I think we’ve never been in a stronger situation. This is the first year for me that I can sit back and think, ‘yeah we’ve got five super strong titles’. Some of them ground breaking by creating almost a new genre and the others stiarting to really use the strength of the Cell chip and the graphics. When I look at LittleBigPlanet, when I look at Resistance, when I look at MotorStorm, and then I look at things like Abba on SingStar, before we even get into Killzone next year, I think we’ve got a line-up really to be proud of.” (Source)
Big budget FPS: Gears of Wars 2, checked. Song game: Lips, checked, bonus: ability for the user to plug an USB device to sing over its own songs and get a score for that. Exclusive first party titles: Banjo Kazooie & Fable 2, checked. Exclusive title stolen to Sony: Final Fantasy XIII, checked.
Little Big Planet
Announced hyped as the big Christmas title, I think only disappointment awaits Sony. Not only a western player prefers to play games, not create them, but Sony will understand why Microsoft put its policies against user originated content. Nonetheless, that following video leaked, showing a prototype of a similar project by Microsoft’s research team.
Hardware
The Xbox is noisy, the Xbox has (had?) a big failure rate, but now, it’s so cheap. The Arcade pack was something like 179€, now every model gets an 40€ mail in rebate, so the Xbox is as expensive as basic PS2 packs, at least 100€ cheaper than the Wii, and almost 3 times cheaper than the PS3. Global panic helping, sales of the Xbox 360 are double of that of its competitor; plus attach rate is as high as it could get, so third party titles are usually more polished on the 360.
Competitors ?
Well, I’m a little more on the handheld devices, and if the DSi wasn’t region locked, I would have bought it for Christmas. At least Nintendo succeded in shifting global eyeballs from Sony PSP 3000, a sleek capable device hindered by a screen that is seen as faulty by many gamers, absolutely no lineup and a renewed protection against jailbreaking custom firmware. The worst about custom firmware is that they make the PSP better, even if you don’t want to pirate games, under custom firmware, games have very short loading times, battery life double, and homebrew software makes it much complete. And did I mention that an homebrew plugin allow composite output for games ?
Also, I can’t help but think bad about Sony refunding its DVB adapter for the PS3 because the French government allowed MPEG4 streams for HD content and Sony wouldn’t rewrite the driver to support these streams.
