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Microsoft Shells Out $50 Million For GTA IV Content
Ars Technica is reporting on the highly-anticipated downloadable content for GTA IV mentioned by Microsoft at last year's E3. It appears that, first off, that content is only coming to the Xbox 360. Secondly, Microsoft paid some $50 Million for the privilege. This is from a financials conference call held by Take Two, and a question about a deferred payment from Microsoft reveals the general release schedule for the content. "The first 25 [million] is for the first episodic content package that's supposed to go out and that is in March of '08. That's why it moved into current because it's in the next 12 months. The second 25 [million] will be for the second episodic, the episode, and that will be later in fiscal '08."
Companies paying off game developers for exclusive only content/games/accessories has been going on for along time.
Your post is one of the most spectacularly ignorant I've ever read, and I've been reading slashdot for a long time.
It's big
Compared to the Wii, yes. Compared to the PS3, no. Compared to the original PS2, no. Lose one point.
It's loud
The DVD drive is fairly loud. Gain one point.
You have to buy a (shitty) remote control for playing DVD's
This is just plain false. You don't need a remote control, shitty or otherwise, for playing DVDs on the 360. Or, for that matter, for playing video or audio from a PC. Or iPod. Or Mac. Lose two points.
Playing DVD's sucks
Completely subjective. I'm not sure what you think about playing DVDs on the 360 sucks (though I suspect neither do you, since it seems fairly obvious from your prior claim that you've never actually done it), but I'll assume you don't like on-screen controls, or some such. Lose no points, gain no points.
The controllers are clunky
"Clunky" isn't real specific. Their size is pretty much the same as the new Dual Shock. The thumbsticks are better placed (insofar as they're where the thumbs naturally sit), and the trigger buttons are better than the lower shoulders on the Dual Shock (which are, inexplicably, convex. This, presumably, is to help your fingers slip off them). On the other hand, the D-pad on the 360 controller is bizarrely bad. Again, though, this is pretty subjective. I'll call it another wash.
Online access costs money
False. The only thing you can't do without paying for XBL gold is play with other people (oh, and see the Gears of War trailer before Silver members). Granted, that's a major thing, but there's plenty of other stuff that's simply included by owning a 360. Patch downloads, demo downloads, trailers, XBLA, video and music downloads. Lose one point (I'd score it two for being flat-out false like your remote control claim, but online play is a big reason to be online, and you do have to pay for it).
If you leave it on with nothing in the drive, the damn thing has some B-grade sci-fi movie "beep and boop" sounds that are annoying as hell
False. If there's nothing in the drive, in fact, the console is pretty quiet, since it's the drive that's the loud component. It doesn't make any electronic noises at all with nothing in the drive. Unless you mean the noises it makes when you're playing XBLA games which don't need discs, but most of us call those "sound effects" and "soundtracks". Lose two points.
Graphics seem to be a lot less sharp than on the PS2
That's the stupidest thing I've read today. Normally, graphics comparisons are subjective, but you'd have to be blind to think the 360's graphics are less sharp than the PS2. Even if you ignore HD entirely, I can't believe you're making the claim that a console released in late 2006 has graphics worse than a console released in late 2000. Lose two points.
My GF got one, and those things annoyed me so much that I never used it after trying it out for a few weeks
I call bullshit. Most of your claims are flat-out false. There's no way you can believe these things if you'd actually used a 360.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Call of Duty 2 was considered by many to be at its finest on the X-Box 360, it being the overall best-looking, best-performing, and best-playing version of the game. The X-Box 360 uses in no way any sort of x86 code, and even its implementation of DirectX is different than that of the PC.
The PlayStation 2 is a modern graphics system now? A system released in 2000? Are you using a 486?
No. You did NOT just say the PS2 was graphically equivalent to the X-Box. No freaking way, not unless you're playing on an old black & white TV from the 50's. When RE4 for the Gamecube looks very distinguishably better than the (very polished) PS2 variant, and when the X-Box is graphically superior (raw power, AA) to that, you're looking at the PS2 being somewhere off in the rhubarb patch, being largely incapable of AA in hardware, actual performance numbers being lower, since multitexturing and shading are something that has been very important in console graphics basically since the PS2's birth. Comparing numbers directly with the X-Box in similar conditions, the X-Box does it faster, at a higher resolution (PS2 supports only 480p as an alternative to 480i, and only with games specifically supporting it, while the X-Box supports not only 480p, but 720p and 1080i), and with AA. It is absolutely inarguable; the X-Box is simply more powerful than the PlayStation 2, even if its game library isn't exactly impressive.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
You simply could not compete at all in the console marketplace if you were not allowed to buy exclusivity. Every console maker does it, has done it for a long time, and will continue to do it.
I got both.
The PS3 is a better piece of hardware by a large margin. Most of the things I need are default (HDMI/Wi-Fi/HDD/Wireless controllers/bluetooth) and the whole thing seems to be well put together. It's quiet, and it matches the rest of my AV setup (black). 3rd party hardware addons are well supported (wheels/headsets, and you can put any size/brand HDD in the thing.
The 360 is noisy, and was only cheap because of the things that you have to buy as addons (rechargable batteries for controllers/wifi/Live! gold). Cheap, however, covers my opinion of the hardware itself. The dvd drive sounds like it's trying to take off. The power supply is external, huge and hot. It looks like a panty shield too, which is only made worse by the fact that's it's white. Oh, no HDMI either, which means I won't be getting the HD-DVD addon, as I will be limited to 1080i. The HDD was also non-default, so most games aren't written to take full advantage of one. Microsoft are total wankers for upgrades though. Only the microsoft wheel will have full functionality, only the MS wifi adapter will work, gay, gay, gay, etc.
Hardware aside though, the 360 kicks the PS3 in the balls for online integration. It's seamless. I was constantly amazed by how well they managed this.
Desktops are personal preference, but I think the XMB has the upper hand.
The rest is just down to small things, like streaming music from my PC when playing 360 games, and most games recognising the fact, and happily coexisting with my tunes. I'm sure the PS3 will pick itself up in this area, but so far, it has not.
Choice of games is still an issue for the PS3, but it will be picking up over the course of this year, and until then, I have Forza Motorsport to occupy my time. Resistance still gets more net play that Gears though, due to the ability to get a 20v20 TDM game in a huge map.
So, in closing, I'm very fond of both of them, but for different reasons.
And in the end they both cost the same. (this includes live gold/wifi/rechargable battery for wireless controller, but not the actual recharger).
Regarding the 360 vs. PS3 GPU: this gets repeated a lot, that the PS3 RSX GPU is weaker. And it's a true, but also misleading, thing to say. In terms of vertex shaders, the Xenos has a clear advantage over the RSX - it's six times as fast. Wow! But in pixel shaders, the RSX is king. Power wise, then, the Xenos ends up a bit more powerful (not 6X). But the GPUs are not isolated parts. They're attached to CPUs with a bus that has a communications bandwidth - and there the difference lies. And so the Cell is used to do the vertex work, and then pushes it to the RSX, where all it needs is pixels. The upshot is that they work together, as another poster hinted at pretty brusquely. In the end, it'll be the games that decide. But looking at what's out right now, half a year into the real competition, and claiming one is weaker than another is retarded. We'll know in a year what the story really is, and probably not before then.