360/PS3 Comparisons

[Ashe]

I'm curious about something: How difficult is it to fill up your hard drive for normal use? Essentially, we are talking about not trying to hack the OS and then pirate half the internet, but more along the lines of expected use on things that you wouldn't just prefer to put on your computer in the first place. Which hard drives seem to be at the just right line as opposed to the ones that mean you are constantly having to delete shit to make space while the others are overkill that sit there with tons of unneeded space until you get hellbent on DLing enough shit to fill it up?

[Kaden]

It's definitely easier to fill up a PS3 with standard use. A lot of games are requiring installed content. Fortunately, it takes about three button presses to delete installed content. It's really a non-issue if you pay any attention to your free space.

Can't really say for 360, since it's not plugged in, so I can't get DLC, but I know doesn't have the "installed content" issue.

[Sage]

I got myself down to 2 GB w/ my 360.

It uh, sucks. But I only have the 20 GB HDD. At this point, if you were to get a 360, just get the elite. You won't have trouble.

[Ashe]

I understand that you can use any 2.5 inch SATA HDD for your PS3 (even swapping the 5400 RPM drive for a personal 7200 RPM drive to decrease load times) whereas you have to buy special made drives for the 360. In theory, is it possible to basically sit on a couple of spare HDDs to swap in and out of your PS3 for more space if for some reason you need more? Are you able to drop this into your computer and copy certain files like movies or games onto it (or backup save files and other content from the PS3 to your computer) and then drop it back in without complication? And what I'm most curious about, what would happen if you attempted to use a Solid State Drive? Would it work, and if so, would it drastically increase performance for load times?

I've recently been tossing around the idea of getting one of these (I can't afford both) and have been deciding between them (this is if I somehow manage to get the money - and then get it through my wife). There's a lot of different points I don't mind discussing about that if people were interested, but first I'm hoping to address these questions since they aren't well covered in the research I've done so far.

[Waffuru]

I understand that you can use any 2.5 inch SATA HDD for your PS3 (even swapping the 5400 RPM drive for a personal 7200 RPM drive to decrease load times) whereas you have to buy special made drives for the 360.

Yes. The PS3 will take any 2.5 SATA HDD and the 360 only takes the Microsoft made 360 hard drives.

In theory, is it possible to basically sit on a couple of spare HDDs to swap in and out of your PS3 for more space if for some reason you need more? Are you able to drop this into your computer and copy certain files like movies or games onto it (or backup save files and other content from the PS3 to your computer) and then drop it back in without complication?

Yes, although I am not sure you'd really want to mess with switching out the hard drives all the time. It's not hard, but it does take a few minutes to unscrew the housing for the drive and put the new drive in and screw it back on. You can copy whatever files onto your drive and have it work without complication, I've done it before. There are no games that you can copy over to the drive but music, photos and movies all work without issue. If you have a USB external drive then the PS3 has a backup utility that works great for backing up saves.

And what I'm most curious about, what would happen if you attempted to use a Solid State Drive? Would it work, and if so, would it drastically increase performance for load times?

It does work, and decreases load times by 25-50%. However, write times (when installing games especially) are not affected because the Blu-ray drive's read speed caps out at 9mb/s (which is also why they like to force install, because 9mb/s is slow as hell). It isn't worth the cost in my opinion, you're better off with more storage and a 7200 RPM drive. With the SSD you're going from like 15 seconds load time to 10 so it would be better served in your PC or just buying a huge SATA drive.

I've recently been tossing around the idea of getting one of these (I can't afford both) and have been deciding between them (this is if I somehow manage to get the money - and then get it through my wife). There's a lot of different points I don't mind discussing about that if people were interested, but first I'm hoping to address these questions since they aren't well covered in the research I've done so far.

gl with the wife, I own all consoles and am willing to give you my take on all of them whenever

[Super Buu]

As far as 360s go, I've been pretty happy with the elite's hdd. I install games and download tons of frivolous demos and shit and it took me a looooong time to fill it up, at which point it was easy to free up space since there was so much crap I hadn't touched in ages or bothered to delete once I was done with it.

[Ashe]

As far as 360s go, I've been pretty happy with the elite's hdd. I install games and download tons of frivolous demos and shit and it took me a looooong time to fill it up, at which point it was easy to free up space since there was so much crap I hadn't touched in ages or bothered to delete once I was done with it.

Which size were you using? Trying to get a rough benchmark here so its not like "I must get the 250gig or I'll always be figuring out what to delete!" or "Ugh, I've got 220 more gigs to fill and absolutely nothing to really put on it."

[Waffuru]

Well, do you intend to download things off of the respective online services? Cuz without those I think you'd be hard pressed to fill an 80gb with just game installs and save data.

[Ashe]

Well, do you intend to download things off of the respective online services? Cuz without those I think you'd be hard pressed to fill an 80gb with just game installs and save data.

Depends on what they offer. I mean, movies and stuff would mostly get bought in disk form or watched on Netflix (if a 360), things like that. I don't necessarily feel a need to go moving my music to a gaming system that'll likely be up here on my computer desk. Though if DLC costs extra, that'll be quite frustrating if I find myself having to delete it after paying money to get it.

[Waffuru]

The PS3 has Netflix streaming now too, fyi. Demos are usually pretty big, and some DLC can be though most isn't really too big... couple hundred mbs at most. Some DLC is free, some isn't.

I am not sure for the 360 since I don't really use it online much, but anything you buy on PS3 you can redownload through your account history and also on up to 5 consoles (I believe).

So if you don't store a ton of demos and just stick to save games and game data for one person I don't think you'll really have to manage it much.

Sounds like you should be fine for a long time with 120gb. Either of the $299.99 consoles.

[Medraut]

My PS3 is full of porn.

[Josh]

I've got about 10 or so games installed on my PS3, and about 6 movies and I still have about 120 gigs of space left so you should be okay even with a standard 160 gig hard drive.

[Sage]

To confirm what Waff said; you can buy DLC on X360, then delete it, then redownload it with the same XBL Gold profile you got it with originally, for free.

I've deleted and redownloaded Halo maps a bunch of times and believe me, Microsoft milks the shit out of the Halo crap.

[Ashe]

Awesome, alright, well, to sorta evolve the topic a bit more... I know completely that PS3 was built around Blu-Ray. Last I heard, for 360s you had to get that added as an external feature or something to that extent, but I've seen no confirmation. In fact, I have no idea if 360s play Blu-Ray at all. Whichever we'd get, I'd highly like to get something capable of Blue-Ray for HD media rather than having to DL everything.

[Medraut]

PS3 does play blu-ray.

for 360 they do not right out of the box, however like you said, they may have an accessory that you could hook up but in reality you're probably better off just getting a separate blue ray player.

I think I might remember the 40gb ps3's that first came out didn't have the blu-ray but that was so long ago it won't even matter anymore since all ps3's currently in production come with bluray.

Did I mention xbox you have to pay for xbox live and you can be banned from it. PS3 Network is free and I don't recall anyone getting banned from it yet that I spoke to.

[Ashe]

Yeah, I know about that part. Given that the majority of the people I know play on Live though, that adds some weight to that side of the argument.

I've also watched the current six parts of "console wars" by Techno Buffalo (love their reviews) for info on stuff. I think I like the PS3 UI better than this new NXE UI. Its just more streamlined and simple to deal with. To me, the 360 UIs seem a bit... overkill. Just lots of big pretty images that interfere with efficiency. Like the friend list, having to actually scroll all through it to see anyone past like third or fourth, instead of a compact mode to let you see them all at a glance.

EDIT: Oh, just to put info out there. If I chose one or the other, it would likely be an Elite or Slim, for the sake of current models. Unless the PS3 Fat had some kind of argument for it (only thing I seem to care about regarding that is loss of touch sensitive buttons that feel all cool and loss of other memory type slots like digi-cams and stuff, but those are not at all major).

[Medraut]

Also another thing to take into consideration that not many people do.

Current and future franchise only titles.

Like Halo will be xbox only as well as left 4 dead stuff and ps3 will have final fantasy only stuff.

Shiz like that. Dunno if there's a site that'll list all the good titles of xbox both present and soon coming vs the ps3 opponents.

[Kaden]

360 will not play Blu-Ray. I think it needs the add-on to play DVD movies.

The only reason to get an old PS3 over the Slim is for the emotion engine. If you don't care about playing PS2 games, though, then it's largely irrelevant.

No one's really brought it up, but failure rate of hardware does need to be mentioned. If you know you won't really be bothered by shipping times, then I guess it doesn't matter so much, but if you expect the stuff you buy to actually work... well...

[Ashe]

Also another thing to take into consideration that not many people do.

Current and future franchise only titles.

Like Halo will be xbox only as well as left 4 dead stuff and ps3 will have final fantasy only stuff.

Shiz like that. Dunno if there's a site that'll list all the good titles of xbox both present and soon coming vs the ps3 opponents.

From the lists I've already looked at, I didn't see all that much in the PS3 category that were exclusives that I was super worried about.

I used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pla...on_3_games and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_360_games with sorting for "Exclusive". If anyone has a more complete list, I'd love to see it, however. And Final Fantasy is no longer entirely exclusive. Versus will be PS3 only (I'm not sure where Agito will go) but a single game spinoff isn't much weight to consider.

360 will not play Blu-Ray. I think it needs the add-on to play DVD movies.

The only reason to get an old PS3 over the Slim is for the emotion engine. If you don't care about playing PS2 games, though, then it's largely irrelevant.

No one's really brought it up, but failure rate of hardware does need to be mentioned. If you know you won't really be bothered by shipping times, then I guess it doesn't matter so much, but if you expect the stuff you buy to actually work... well...

Failure of hardware is something I greatly am curious about as well. 360s seem to pretty much have a 99% failure rate over any decent amount of time, for whatever reason (They keep saying its fixed, yet people still keep running into RRoD.) I haven't heard all that much about PS3 failures.

I'm not familiar with the emotion engine, but while I like backwards compatibility, I do have a PS2 that works great.

[Waffuru]

The 360 had an addon to play HD-DVD movies... they are no longer making those drives or the movies.

Microsoft on Blu-ray for 360:
"As we have stated before, we have no plans to introduce a Blu-ray drive for Xbox 360."

Xbox 360 Failure Rate is 54.2 Percent

"...(360) has a 54.2 percent failure rate, compared to 10.6 percent for the PS3 and the Wii's 6.8 percent." via gameinformer

emotion engine is the name of the CPU in the Playstation 2, it was included in original PS3s to insure full backward compatibility and later removed to lower costs. Some of the PS3s had/have software emulation of PS2 games which works about as well as the 360's backwards compatibility of Xbox games. In the end though, no one really gives a shit about old gen games until they have a nostalgia value.

edit: roflmaomlao I can't believe they list Sneak King as one of their exclusives, I guess technically it is only available for 360 but really wikipedia REALLY?