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“Furious mate, I gotta hand it to you. It takes a lot to freak me out and you happened to achieve it that night within 2 and a half hours.

Congratulations.”

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feature :: xbox 360 vs ps3: introduction

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The two juggernauts of the video games industry are set to re-start their title fight all over again.

With the Xbox 360 about to launch in Australia, AustralianGamer.com thought it must be right about time for us to weigh in on the competition and provide some information and opinions on the next gen offerings, and especially what they will mean to us Aussies.

There's a lot of cash at stake here. A 360 alone will set you back $650 or so, and you want to know whether you'll be happy with your purchase.

Introducing : Xbox 360
In a blizzard of cash, Microsoft have launched their Xbox 360 around the world, the much anticipated follow up to the variably successful Xbox.

The 360s specs are well above the original Xbox, which was already well above the PS2s. But neither the PS2 nor the Xbox are its real competitors. Microsoft have a coup in that they launched their console before the huge 2005 Christmas season, and another strong move in releasing in Europe, the USA and Japan at around the same time.

Microsoft will now have about 6 months alone in the major territories, 6 months running with no competition, and how they use that time in the short term will determine their success long term. About 6 - 10 months after the Xbox 360 launches Sony re-enters the game, and all the rules change.

That Sony is the market leader is undeniable, worldwide. In the US the Xbox has an strong lead, but in Japan, still the heart and soul of gaming, it's a non-event. They sell as many Xboxes in a year as they sell PS2 in a week. The PAL territories, particularly Australia and the UK are more even, with both selling strongly, and quite equally.

Can the lead time and established base mid next year help Xbox hold back the tide of Sony's ever increasing Playstation product, despite Sony's presumably more powerful console? It worked for Sony last time, with the PS2 keeping a lead until recently. This time Microsoft aren't new to the game, and they come in with a line of anticipated and top quality properties. Most noticeably Halo 3, Quake 4, and Project Gotham 3. If they can have these kinds of games at launch, and follow up with strong titles, the Xbox 360 will have a strong future.

Introducing : PS3
For nearly 8 years now, one video games manufacturer has been almost unchallenged in its dominance of mainstream gaming. Through two generations of competition in home consoles they have created markets that were not there and captured more than their fair share of the ones that were.

The question, then, is can they keep going? For the first time, Sony faces a comparable and equally invested (and filthy rich, let's not beat around the bush) competitor in the Xbox 360 from Microsoft. This console might be able to do what the others, from the Nintendo 64 to the Dreamcast and to a lesser extent the original Xbox could not.

There can be no denying that the Playstation 3 is capable in its own right. It is (as it should be) one of the most powerful and well engineered pieces of consumer electronics ever devised. Sony's E3 demos showed quite clearly what the system is capable of and the result is undeniably impressive. In fact, the result was literally unbelievable, with many industry experts (and gaming journalists) dubiously declaring the 'real-time' demos to be rendered 'projected possible gameplay'.

Whether this it true or not is really beside the point. Sony is well capable of delivering, if not quite what they promised, at least enough to cause our retinas and nervous systems to leap outside of our body in paroxysms of delight.

Which could sting, but we'll risk it.



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