Though all videogame consoles would like to be the entertainment focus of your home, Nintendo’s Wii is marketed towards a more general audience (with which it has been wildly successful) while the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and Sony’s Playstation 3 chase the hard-core action-gaming crowd dominated by male teens and tweens, as reflected by Xbox 360 Accessories like an Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter. In matters concerning hardware, the Wii is outmatched by both the Xbox and the PS3, but it’s the software that makes a game console successful or not. Thus do Microsoft and Sony’s catalogs appear rather similar, as both are targeting the same market with a similar number of titles offering a similar range of action gameplay.
But big numbers buy bragging rights in action-gaming, and it must also be remembered that, in the final analysis, it’s the hardware that drives the software. (Though no one boasts of their Xbox 360 Power Supply.) And so it is that many find the Xbox 360 and the PS3 fairly similar under the hood, regardless of Sony’s much-promoted “emotion engine” said to render facial expressions so realistically as to make for a much more engrossing gaming experience. Nevertheless, both consoles do have their respective shares of near-rabid fanatics who swear that major differences abound between the two. Yet it’s a safe bet that few, if any, would turn down a rival console given as a gift!
The only differences, in fact, involve those truly special features unique to each platform, in addition to the online experiences each one offers. And Microsoft presents a noticeably more varied online experience than that by Sony, whose online service is not bad at all. But the Xbox 360 provides a more extensive experience in that department, though the PS3 does try very hard to make up for it with a built-in Blu-ray DVD player, WiFi web surfing, and support for Bluetooth wireless devices. To which it ought to be noted that NetFlix on-demand is available through the Xbox 360, likely neutralizing the PS3’s multimedia advantages. But the PS3 is extensively moddable by users with the technical interest, while Microsoft rather discourages such hobbyist tinkering under the hood.
Then there’s the matter of prices, with the PS3 selling more going for than the Xbox 360 on account of its slightly longer list of features. Naturally, if you’re a hard-core gamer, prices are probably not going to be all that big a consideration, because purchasing decisions will often be made based on titles exclusive to each platform. Of course, the truly hard-core don’t care about prices at all and would simply buy each of them!