A Peek At the Origin of PS3's New Visualizer

Folks at the Gamasutra network had a quick sitdown with the Q-Games team, the people behind the PlayStation 3's new Gaia music visualizer. They discuss the origins of the project, as well as some possible plans for the future. "McLaren explains: 'This representation of the earth is a 3D model with some shaders and SPU trickery going on. We tried to accurately model the earth's atmosphere and have all the correct highlights on the oceans, etc. The texture data is sourced from the NASA Blue Marble project.'"

Comments

Peak/Peek

[Anonymous Coward]

Peak = top, summit Peek = look

at least!

[sammyF70]

something to buy a PS3 for :)

Re:at least!

[Sciros]

"at least" indeed.

Once Square and others start to really get going with PS3 (that is, once Japanese developers stop concentrating so much on the PS2, haha) it will pick up strength quickly. ...Yeah, really, the PS3's biggest problem might not be price/Xbox/Wii as much as it is the PS2 which keeps the PS3's target audience fully occupied since it's still doing alright in terms of games.

Re:at least!

[techpawn]

the PS2 which keeps the PS3's target audience fully occupied

Kinda like Vista. Right now, current users don't see a real good reason to upgrade the cost is too high for what they get compared to a perfectly good system that works right now. They are their own major competitor and that's not going to change. At least the PS3 and force the hand of a killer app like XBox360 and Halo 3. Vista... Not so much... Microsoft can lock you in, but, an office suit doesn't change that much and there are other alternatives for software.

Re:at least!

[lluBdeR]

Yes, I was going to pay the ridiculous price for a Playstation 3, but since it didn't have a nifty visualization while it plays music (how often do people do this with their console?) I bought a Wii instead.

Couldn't you just save yourself a few hundred dollars and download a Winamp visualization?

Re:at least!

[tieTYT]

Once Square and others start to really get going with PS3 (that is, once Japanese developers stop concentrating so much on the PS2, haha) it will pick up strength quickly.

This is what I've been thinking. But then, you gotta think from the perspective of the people trying to make money off of the games they develop. They're thinking, "Why would I release this game exclusively on the PS3 when it has a fraction of the population as the 360 or the Wii?" They're thinking, "If I'm making this game exclusive so I don't spend energy/resources on porting, it makes sense to put it on the more popular system". The PS3 is not the pony to bet on.

Re:at least!

[sammyF70]

actually, it goes a bit further than that. developing a game for the PS3 is way more expensive than developing one for the Wii. Google "development costs wii ps3" and you'll find plenty of articles about PS3 games costing up to 4 times the price of a wii game. Lower population but higher costs are not an incentive to develop games (but apparently it is for music visualizers .. go figure ..)

Re:Peak/Peek/Pique

[edittard]

Pique = a state of annoyance, or to torment/irritate someone.

He was piqued by yet another case of semi-literate, lemur-brained oafs posting lame poppycock to slashdot..

Still no games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is that all the PS3 news is on pointless random crap like this visualizer and not on games?

Apparently the PS3 would make a vastly overpowered and expensive DVD and CD player, which would be nice if you couldn't get an HD-DVD player for about a quarter the cost.

But a game player? Forget about it.

Wake me up when there are games for the PS3 worth playing that aren't available in vastly superior versions on the Xbox 360.

Re:Still no games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is every article about game consoles an invitation to rehash the discussion of why the PS3/Xbox360/Wii sucks? Do you people need some kind of outlet for your tribal competitive urges? Normal people work these issues out through jingoistic nationalism or professional sports.

Re:Still no games?

[beckerist]

Or mind altering drugs. I never understood it either, why not enjoy EVERYTHING? Is it that ingrained in our psyche to HAVE to compete?

Yay for the PS3 to get a cool new feature. The end! (See, it's not that hard!)

Re:Still no games?

[Total_Wimp]

Topic: The new visualizer for the PS3

Off Topic: Ranting about why any other aspect of the PS3 sucks

For the record, the new visualizer looks nice if you happen to be playing music, which the PS3 does fairly well. Please feel free to tear this comment to shreds if you'd like to get back on topic. In exchange, I promise not to rant about the red ring of death when responding to any article where Xbox hardware isn't specifically mentioned.

Cheers,
TW

Re:Still no games?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times do you play music on your PS3? Honestly?

My TiVo can stream MP3s from my desktop. I've never done it, because it's pointless. If I want to listen to music from my PC, I can play it directly on my PC. (Although I'd hope that the PS3 at least has playlists, something that TiVo doesn't offer the last time I checked.)

The PS3 can have all the wiz-bang wanna-be media-center features they want, it still doesn't change the fact that Sony has never sold the PS3 as a media-center except to gamers. So the only people who would buy the PS3 are people interested in playing games on it.

And there's STILL no compelling reason to buy it to play games.

The visualizer is simply pointless, but it does stand as evidence that Sony is doing absolutely nothing to try and resolve the problems with the PS3.

Re:Still no games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft fanboys like you should be shot. So stupid, so devoid of logic and so self-righteous.

Some people have their entertainment systems where their TVs are. Some people don't have TiVo.

Duh.

Go back to sucking on Bill Gates' cock.

In number?

[Devir]

360 is vastly superior in number. far more units have been sold so far making it's numerical superiority over the ps3 unquestionable.

Re:In number?

[Pojut]

For now, multi-platform release games have consistently looked better on the 360 than on the PS3. Oblivion is one of the rare exceptions to this, but it got a texture update for the PS3...can't really objectively compare the two.

I personally think it's just because developers need more time to learn how to work with the more complicated PS3. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my 360, but once developers really start knowing what they are doing with the hardware, the PS3 is going to have some unmatchable visuals.

Then again, that doesn't mean the games will be more fun...but who knows, time will tell. I'm rooting for all three consoles to do well, personally...each has it's strengths and weaknesses. It would be nice to use my PS3 for something other than a media box, though...

Re:In number?

[nuzak]

> the PS3 is going to have some unmatchable visuals.

It already does -- take a look at the new Ratchet and Clank. Heavenly Sword is pretty awesome too, tho much of it is simply high-def cutscenes.

When I bought my PS2, it was so I could get at the great catalog of PS2 games. The sales guy said about XBox games: "you either shoot it, drive it, or it's a sport". But now it's the 360 that has the variety. Heck, they even scored Culdcept Saga, a game that has gotten my non-gamer gf addicted from the demo alone.

And then there's movies. I think I'm spending more time watching movies on my xbox than playing games (at least as *my* game time is concerned, as it's otherwise tied up with Zuma by the aforementioned girlfriend.) Sony had the platform and the clout to make the PS3 into an ultimate movie distribution device, and they're still holding out to do that "someday", but frankly, they've utterly squandered that opportunity, and may now lose it outright to Vudu, a box that costs as much as a PS3!

Firing Kuratagi wasn't enough -- Sony continues to spin gold into shit, and shows no signs of changing course anytime soon.

Re:In number?

[Gravatron]

Games like call of duty 4 proved you can get the ps3 and 360 to match visual for visual, and the first party sony games look fantastic, or at least Rachet and Uncharted did. I'd wadger that 9/10th of the early multiplatform release woes can be attributed to ether EA, who sucks at porting, or to the well publicised issues with the UT3 engine on the ps3. Ut3 on the ps3 plays great though, so I think epic must have finally figured out their problems.

The ps3 and 360 can really pull off some amazing visuals, its just going to take a year or two before we really see what they can do. Both consoles recent exclusives look fantastic, so i'm hopeful for the future.

Re:In number?

[provigilman]

It already does -- take a look at the new Ratchet and Clank. Heavenly Sword is pretty awesome too, tho much of it is simply high-def cutscenes.

The OP was talking specifically about multi-platform releases. Take Madden for example...the 360 version looked great, but the PS3 version could only get 30fps (as opposed to 60 on the 360) going. This is a problem.

First party games are always optimized for that platform, it's the multi-platform releases where you start to see who's better at what. Last-gen I only bought multi-platform releases for my XBox because they just simply looked better.

For current-gen, at least so far anyway, it seems to be going the same direction. The 360 has the best looking games (again, only talking multi-platform here), the Wii has the interesting IP's and control scheme, and the PS3 has what? They lost Assassin's Creed, GTA, DMC and a whole host of other exclusives... Sure, they have the FF series, but the 360 has a bunch of exclusive Mistwalker RPG's coming out!

If the PS3 doesn't clean up their act (and their graphics) in very short order, they're going to have problems.

Re:In number?

[king-manic]

The OP was talking specifically about multi-platform releases. Take Madden for example...the 360 version looked great, but the PS3 version could only get 30fps (as opposed to 60 on the 360) going. This is a problem.

First party games are always optimized for that platform, it's the multi-platform releases where you start to see who's better at what. Last-gen I only bought multi-platform releases for my XBox because they just simply looked better.

For current-gen, at least so far anyway, it seems to be going the same direction. The 360 has the best looking games (again, only talking multi-platform here), the Wii has the interesting IP's and control scheme, and the PS3 has what? They lost Assassin's Creed, GTA, DMC and a whole host of other exclusives... Sure, they have the FF series, but the 360 has a bunch of exclusive Mistwalker RPG's coming out!

If the PS3 doesn't clean up their act (and their graphics) in very short order, they're going to have problems. I think it's just a case of the first gen development problems. It's hard to code your own solution to a new architecture so the PS3 versions of multi-platforms games seem poor due to this. However, the 360 first gen games were also nothing to write home about. There was nothing to compare it too but many looked like xbox games with a slightly higher poly count. So far I've always bought multi platform games on the PS3 because I hate live with a vital passion (their C policy is ridiculous I refuse to even use prepaid cards because of a poor customer experience). Nintendo firts party games have been varied. Fire emblem is my favorite the rest i could take or leave. For the 360 mass effect is awesome. And for the ps3 I'm addicted to Ratchet and clank. I think there's room for all of em and hope they succeed because only console manufacturer means the customer suffers.

Also, mistwalker is bleh.. Blue dragon wasn't fun. I'd rather play similarly blah Fable.

Re:In number?

[the_fat_kid]

"the aforementioned girlfriend"
Hey, this is Slashdot, you insensitive clod.

Re:In number?

[Penguin's Advocate]

I won't try speaking for "looks" (for a lot of reasons), but in terms of performance and stability, I can attest to the PS3's superiority over the 360. Oblivion is a great example of this. Putting "looks" aside, the PS3 version has far shorter load times, loads far less frequently, and is far more stable than the 360 version. Having put in well over 200 hours (each) on all three ports of Oblivion (360, PC, PS3), I can say that the PS3 version is *the* best executed version. Try riding a horse in Oblivion on the 360 and you're in for a slideshow, no such issues with the PS3 port. The 360 version also crashes frequently. I have never seen the PS3 version crash. I've had a similar experience with Assassin's Creed. I played through it on the PS3, and then a second time on the 360. The 360 version took longer to load, stuttered, and crashed. The PS3 port exhibited none of those symptoms. To be completely honest, the 360 crashes a lot, in many games (most recently, and frustratingly, Bioshock). I've been fortunate enough to avoid the red-ring so far, many of my friends have not been so lucky (one is on her fourth warranty replacement since July). The most stable game I've seen to date on the 360 is Rock Band, which has thus far (with a ton of playing, for a ton of hours, by a ton of people over the past couple weeks) been "Rock" solid. *I* wanted to get the PS3 version of Rock Band, but my wife thought it was more important that we actually be able to play with our friends online, which I *grudgingly* must admit is true. The PS3 is in a sad state at the moment. IMHO the PS3 is definitely the superior console, but has been abused by it's creator and abandoned by it's friends. There haven't been many games for it so far, but it has served as an excellent PS2 replacement and Blu-ray player for the past year between its few stints as an actual PS3. I apologize for rambling...I just really like the PS3 and hate seeing it down. (For the record, I'm a game programmer, but I've been working solely on DS and Wii titles for a while now. Fortunately for me, those platforms don't need defending.)

Re:In number?

[Total_Wimp]

From the great grandparent:

For now, multi-platform release games have consistently looked better on the 360 than on the PS3. Oblivion is one of the rare exceptions to this, but it got a texture update for the PS3...can't really objectively compare the two.

The translation of this is that Oblivion looked better because the people who made it polished it specifically for the PS3. Madden undoubtedly looked better on the 360 for a similar reason. It's not a deficiency in the PS3 that gives it graphics headaches on multi-platform games, but developers who don't put in the effort to do the port correctly. Bethesda made that effort and EA Sports did not.

Sure, you could justifiably argue that consumers would be better off with a 360 because more developers are making better versions of their multi-platform games for it, but this does not translate into a deficiency in the PS3 itself. The Oblivion experience clearly shows the PS3 hardware is more than up to the task. And though it certainly signals a problem for Sony, that problem is not necessarily Sony's fault.

Developers are the ones who need to step it up. Yeah, the developers have a much bigger market with the 15 million or so 360 owners, but it's flat-out stupid to give a poor product to the 8 million or so PS3 customers. Pissing off a third of your potential customers has never been a good way to maximize profits.

Re:In number?

[elrous0]

I've got a 360 that I bought just a five months after release (April 2006). I've had it crash maybe once or twice in almost 2 years of use, and I've had no RROD's.

If your 360 is crashing all the time, you need to either send it in for repair or consider where you're placing it (needs to have some space around it to avoid overheating), because it's not supposed to do that and doesn't for most of us.

Re:In number?

[HAKdragon]

They lost Assassin's Creed, GTA, DMC and a whole host of other exclusives... Sure, they have the FF series, but the 360 has a bunch of exclusive Mistwalker RPG's coming out!

Assassin's Creed was first shown off for the 360 so people where confused when they were showing it off at E3 and only mentioned a PS3 release. GTA was never completely exclusive to the Playstation. GTA got a port to the GBC (not the greatest, but surprisingly good giving the limits of the handheld. GTA2 had a Dreamcast Port. GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas were all available for the XBox.

Re:In number?

[Breakfast Pants]

proved you can get ps3 and 360 to match visual for visual Huh? Of course you can do that, just adjust your game to pander to the lowest common denominator. You can do that for basically any two systems you choose. Do xbox1 games on the 360 prove the two systems are equivalent?

Oh cool!

[FredFredrickson]

I'm going to go out and buy a PS3 now!!! Man I love sony. I hope it comes with a rootkit.

Re:Oh cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really beginning to wonder if you people are Microsoft paid astro-turfers that keep talking about Sony rootkits and Sony arrogance.

Technologically, the PS3 is turning out to be more interesting than I anticipated. Strangely, there is this powerful anti-Sony sentiment that has effectively killed interest in the platform on the internet.

Re:Oh cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it does.

1. It's Sony.

2. Thanks to the DMCA, they effectively own the hardware and only lease it to you. Try and exercise too much freedom with your PS3, and it will be bricked by Sony.

Of course, it's not really a rootkit, per se, but it might as well be. You don't get to actually use "their" hardware unless you play by their rules.

Re:Oh cool!

[BLKMGK]

Perhaps it's not so strange considering the aforementioned rootkit and their continuous pushing of proprietary formats at every chance. Sony seems to always want to do it differently - for a cost premium to the end user. Their arrogance has gotten old and I, like many, avoid them when possible. Is that really so hard to understand?! I as a consumer fear the day they actually manage to get one of their "special" formats accepted as any kind of standard. Let's not forget they are as much a part of the various *AAs as any other company - that alone is reason enough to be angry with their behavior. If none of that makes any sense to you then I'm sorry, you're beyond hope ;-)

Re:Oh cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I as a consumer fear the day they actually manage to get one of their "special" formats accepted as any kind of standard. "

You mean like... Compact Disc? Damn Sony (and their collaborators) and their damned proprietary formats.

Re:Oh cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

anti-sony != pro-microsoft

Re:Oh cool!

[donscarletti]

Sony PS3 is a proprietary format, does not play games for any other platform, which is exactly the same as the other two consoles in the current generation. Sony PS3 uses USB and Bluetooth for controller communication, which are as standardised as anything else. Sony PS3 has slots for Sony's Memorystick, right next to its slots for SD and CF, the competing media. PS3 supports Sony's Blueray format as well as Toshiba's DVD and Sony's now standard CD.

As for the **AA, my (unhacked) PS3 lets me rip CDs to MP3s then copy them to other devices. I don't get what people are supposedly missing on the PS3 from those Japanese media tyrants called Sony, I can't speak for the XBox, but I've looked all through the Wii for the "Rip DVDs then share them on bittorrent channel" but if it was there I couldn't find it.

The Sony rootkit was a very evil thing to do, but it wasn't developed in house and only the music publishing division was involved. As for the competition, Microsoft calls its flagship rootkit an Operating System and still distributes it with impunity even though it contains DRM like NGSB and spyware like genuine advantage. As for Microsoft, everyone here has been chiding Sony because MS now has all the software being target for it. Doesn't this seem at all familiar to any of you? When Microsoft created the slightly cheaper platform that managed to take the market despite being not quite as powerful? All I know is that Sony's two generations of gaming hegemony were fun but Microsoft's twenty years of PC dominance brought nothing but crippled innovation and instability.

Re:Oh cool!

[BLKMGK]

Beta, UMD, Memory Stick Duo, BluRay. Probably more I've missed. I'm far from an XBOX fan - the only older XBOX I own are hacked to run XBMC and I only bought a 360 after they began to crack it too. I'm presently working on setting up XBMC on Linux and it's pretty solid but the Linux part can be a PITA. I won't get into an O/S pissing match\debate - we're talking about Sony not MSFT. Sony music and movies are a large part of their business. Know what DVD are hardest to rip these days? In my experience it's Sony's because they dork up the format so badly - I'm ripping my 600+ DVD collection to disk right now so yeah I'm feeling the pain. Guess which music CDs are a PITA to rip? Yup, as often as not it's Sony's! They crap on that format too. MSFT has DRM? Guess who pressures them to put it in? If they want to legally display DVD they have to cowtow to Macrovision and all the rest which means contracts that force them into it - ask TIVO how that works out. Research what MSFT had to do for CableCard certification sometime for a real chill. Sony is as much a part of that crap as any other content company and judging from their media they're big fans of it - rootkits and all. If you think that Sony was unaware of what the company was doing that built their "rootkit" then you need todo more research into that company - they were as close to in-house as you can get and still have deniability.

By all means be impressed by the Sony hardware, it's apparently good stuff. Just don't ever think Sony will ever intentionally give you full access to it for your own means. If you're lucky it will get broken like the PSP and XBOX. I for one hope that it and BluRay die a log expensive death and take Sony with it, they are far far from benevolant.

BTW NGSB is so nebulous that not even Google gives a consistant answer on it. >

Re:Oh cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

You complain about Bluray, a format that uses MPEG consortium standard codecs and standards based, now open sourced Java. So it has DRM. Yeah, I hate it. But at least it's only encryption. Did you really think they were going to leave that out? And who friggin' cares anyway? We cracked that, there are Bluray rips re-encoded to h264 for all you pirates.

You know what, the PS2 dev kit ran Linux. The PS3 has a BUILT IN menu item to install an "alternate OS" of your choice such as Linux or BSD. The PS3 has real, bona fide USB ports and Bluetooth connectivity. It is the most standards compliant hardware of the bunch.

So Sony didn't lay out a complete register by register specification with all the source code. You know what? No large company has done that yet. Even Intel and AMD, for all they thrive on having someone else write the software, have nebulous black holes of missing specifications for some pieces of hardware they make. The fact that Sony's electronic entertainment division has opened up as much as they have is pretty inspiring, even if it isn't a triumphant victory for openness.

Compared to Microsoft and Nintendo, Sony comes out on top in standards compliance and openness. If you don't care, you want to bitch and moan about Sony just to bitch and moan about Sony while letting Microsoft and Nintendo off the hook, do it somewhere else. This is about Playstation 3, a video game system. We're talking about Sony in the context of video game systems here. Or if you want to expand, video playback devices. Which it is no different than pretty much any other Blu-ray, HD-DVD, or DVD player. The Wii plays by the rules for DVD, and the Xbox 360 plays by the rules for DVD and, when expanded, for HD-DVD. They all play by the DRM rules or they wouldn't be able to legally sell them in most countries.

Re:Oh cool!

[donscarletti]

I mentioned that PS3 supports Memory Stick and Blueray, as well as the competing SD, CF and DVD formats, it does not support either UMD or Beta though, I don't know why they are interesting to the topic. Who cares if it supports Sony's formats if it supports other ones also? Sure, Sony have a movie buisiness and movie buisinesses are evil here, but is that really a problem here? When Nintendo were censoring all the religious, sexy and violent parts out of their games, Sony came in and said anything goes. When Microsoft was paying to keep games off their competitors platforms, Sony kept comparitively to the highground. When Microsoft had recently made a console out of an off-the-shelf Celeron and Nintendo was researching how to re-release an overclocked Gamecube, Sony decided to try something crazy and released an 8 core asymetric processor with system RAM clocked to 1.2GHz and a 50GB optical medium. That's why this generation I switched from being a Nintendo to a Sony fanboy. Sure, Sony supports DRM, but they also support Linux, you've got to hack the others to get that. Honestly, I care more about Linux than I do about DRM.

Re:Oh cool!

[BLKMGK]

I stated that they push proprietary formats - and gave examples -> UMD, Beta, and their memory stick. This logic appears to have escaped you. I do not care so much about the PS3 as I do Sony as a company that is as close to evil as most any other save maybe Microsoft. For that reason I do not support the PS3, well that and it pushes yet another of Sony's formats they would like to see rule the world so they can receive unending royalties. If that hardware were made by someone else and wasn't pushing a proprietary format I might even own one, alas that is NOT the case. You're looking at a game console, I'm looking at the entire cmopany and deciding to not buy or support said console - there's the difference.

So the PS3 runs Linux in a crippled VM - what of it? As I said, they won't intentionally give you access to the metal underneath. I'd hardly call that "support".

P.S. The 360 isn't using a Celeron. The original XBOX used a P3 and last I checked no one was putting anything out back then that stored 50GB optically. Hell the 360 was out before the PS3 by a decent margin, the PS3 is almost a generation later and yet they get compared. Sounds like maybe Sony wasn't as far ahead as you seem to think...

Similar PC Project

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a few spare gigs and a crapload of bandwidth you can get a similar open source project which wasn't as impressive looking last time I ran it but which will let you use the full blue marble dataset:

http://www.andesengineering.com/BlueMarbleViewer/

Less than interesting

[Kenoli]

*yawn*

Re:Less than interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. What a bunch of pointless hype. Where's the fun in a "visualizer" that seems to show little (if any) connection to the music that's playing? Might as well just watch a pre-rendered video, or have the globe move about randomly and not bother pretending it is related to the music. Watching the user vids showed this to be a complete and utter waste of time.

Good visualizers for Windows or Linux?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Any recommendations for good (and free, but not necessarily Free) music visualizers for Windows or maybe linux?

This is slashdot, so I'm sure no one will believe me, but I'm looking for something I can put on my projector and will look cool projected onto the bodies of drunk, semi-naked dancing girls. Yes, being semi-naked is not enough, they gotta have cool computer graphics on them to be interesting.

Re:Good visualizers for Windows or Linux?

[Abcd1234]

I maintain that GOOM is one of the most effective visualizers I have ever seen. TBH, this earth visualizer, while somewhat pretty, is pretty friggin' boring, if you ask me. There seems to be very little actual algorithmic interpretation of the music... just a slow animation of a photorealistic earth model. Woo woo. But GOOM! The stuff it does continues to surprise me, and it's been running on my MythTV install for over a year, now.

Re:Good visualizers for Windows or Linux?

[killeena]

I think the answers may depend of invites to this party. :)

There are some good visualization plugins for Winamp...
http://www.winamp.com/plugins/browse/1

Re:Good visualizers for Windows or Linux?

[Pojut]

The Milkdrop plugin for WinAmp is positively insane...especially if you have a fast video card with a nice widescreen LCD monitor...crank up the resolution, FSAA, and texture size in the options and it looks unbelievable

Re:Good visualizers for Windows or Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot, so I'm sure no one will believe me, but I'm looking for something I can put on my projector and will look cool projected onto the bodies of drunk, semi-naked dancing girls.

It's true. I don't believe you. You lie!

Re:Good visualizers for Windows or Linux?

[sammyF70]

for Windows, I'd say R4.

Re:Good visualizers for Windows or Linux?

[Breakfast Pants]

Someone wake me up when hardware can do this.

My take as both a PS3 and 360 owner

[elrous0]

I own both a PS3 and 360, and generally prefer the 360.

I will say that the PS3 hardware is DEFINITELY superior to the 360--much more solid build, wifi built in, runs quieter, more powerful, built-in blu-ray drive, etc. (with the exception of the PS3 remote, which sucks, and the PS2-style controller, which doesn't fit my large hands as well as the 360 controller). I agree that the PS3 will get stronger if it's given time and if MS doesn't pull something like releasing a "Xbox 720" in the next 2 or 3 years. The PS3 is much more "future-proof" than the 360, but suffers from a dearth of games and developer support (thanks to Sony's arrogant treatment of them early on).

The 360 is definitely superior right now, though, especially in America. If you want to play online with friends and play the best titles, it's the only way to go, really. But the 360 has plenty of problems which could hamper it in the future. The bonehead decision not to make the harddrive standard (a rare step BACKWARDS for a console generation) means that developers can't count on it for caching. This has already caused problems on titles like "Mass Effect" (which is plagued by texture "pop-in" because the game can't cache textures on the hard drive). And the fact that it is stuck with a standard DVD drive will become an increasing problem as it ages (developers are already "hitting the wall" at the 8GB limit).

Basically, the PS3 has the hardware muscle to pull away from the 360. But they need to start with some serious developer support. And, right now, they're not getting much. So far Sony has made a lot of promises about software, but delivered mostly just delays and excuses. If they don't get some serious developer support in 2008, they're not going to survive long enough to pass the 360. They've already lost two Christmases in a row. One more and they're going to be looking at the impending release of a Xbox 720 before they ever even get off the ground.