PS3 Impressions Yes Another One....

Inuyasha · Post by **Inuyasha** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 4:45 pm

I've been reading that MS is making a killing this Holiday season on sales of the 360 due to rebates, specials, and hard to find PS3's.

Basically, the X360 and PS3 are almost like identical consoles so having one covers probably about 90 percent of the non exclusive games.

As for BluRay, if it is the choice in the future, then I can probably pickup a ps3 in 3-4 years for 200 bucks.

JRod · Post by **JRod** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 5:38 pm

Inuyasha wrote:I've been reading that MS is making a killing this Holiday season on sales of the 360 due to rebates, specials, and hard to find PS3's.

Basically, the X360 and PS3 are almost like identical consoles so having one covers probably about 90 percent of the non exclusive games.

As for BluRay, if it is the choice in the future, then I can probably pickup a ps3 in 3-4 years for 200 bucks.

And by then a blu-Ray player will be 80 bucks everywhere.

Badgun · Post by **Badgun** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 5:45 pm

bdunn13 wrote:I have two Blu-Ray titles shipping today from Netflix..... The Omen and Windtalkers. They should be here tomorrow. Will post some impressions after watching them.

I watched National Lampoon's Christmas VAcation last night and while it looked better than the average DVD, it didn't come close to the beauty of Ice Age 2 and Superman Returns. I've got Sleepy Hollow tonight and hopefully Kingdom of Heaven will be here tomorrow. I'm just a lot more excited about watching Blu ray than I am HD-DVD.

bdunn13 · Post by **bdunn13** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 5:56 pm

I did not know Ice Age 2 was Blu-Ray.. I have never seen it. I will have to add it to my queue.

Thanks,
BD

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 7:19 pm

Kingdom of Heaven is suppose to be one of the best-looking Blu-Ray discs and best-looking discs period.

On the format war, even if one format folded, there's a good chance the surviving one will never achieve the success or get as many titles as DVD.

While HDTV adoption rate and sales are very high, the mass market doesn't always go for the best quality. Look how long VHS reigned while LaserDisc was a niche format. Look at the popularity of lossy music now.

On the other hand, if Sony is able to sell anywhere near the number of PS3s as it did the previous consoles, Blu-Ray should get support for a long time even if HD-DVD "wins" the format war (of course, if PS3 gets that kind of an installed base, it's difficult to see HD-DVD lasting).

LAking · Post by **LAking** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 9:12 pm

While HDTV adoption rate and sales are very high, the mass market doesn't always go for the best quality. Look how long VHS reigned while LaserDisc was a niche format. Look at the popularity of lossy music now.

Laser Disc sucked because the disc was the size of an old school LP and many movies required switching between multiple sides and discs. At least the new formats have the benefit of looking and working exactly like SD-DVDs.

That being said i really fear that neither format will take off like DVDs did and i'll never get to watch many of my favorite films in HD. Oh, the horror, to be stuck with SD for another 10 years.

black_dynamite · Post by **black_dynamite** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 12:57 am

Seeing as this is a PS3 impressions thread I might as well post my thoughts about the PS3.

I got my PS3 at Best Buy but in order for me to do so I had to wake up mighty early in the morning (4:00 am to be precise) and I headed out to Best Buy at about 5:30am and got there at 5:45am.

I know it sounds crazy to wake up this early for a console but hey I wanted it and I knew what I had to do. I was monitoring Best Buy yesterday because they announced that on the 8th that they would have shipments of both the Wii and the PS3 so I figured I should see how many people were lined up. The lines starting forming at 6pm yesterday and lucky for me I was able to get a spot in line and scored a PS3 (6 hours of sleep without having to wait all night in the cold, here in Vancouver, Canada it's pretty cold right now).

Unfortunately I was only able to get the 20gb since they only had 6 60gb PS3s and they had about 14 20gb PS3s (how screwed up is that you'd figure they would have more 60gb models than 20gb but that's the way the cookie crumbled for me).

Setting up was easy and like everyone said the console is definitely heavier than the PS2 and maybe a little heavier than the 360. First thing I did was pop in NBA 2K7 (which I purchased as well as another Sixaxis controller) and the game rocks on the PS3. The console is in my room right now and hooked up to a component television (I haven't tested this out on the HDTV yet, I'll do that later tonight) and to me I'm figuring that Sony really wants you to play their games on HDTVs. Don't get me wrong NBA 2K7 looks great but I guess it's just my opinion but NBA 2K7 through component video on standard TV looked better on the 360 than it did through the same set up on the PS3. Maybe it's just me but I'll test it out on the HDTV and play it with HDMI in 720p.

I then registered for the Playstation Network and downloaded the update. The update didn't take too long to download and install, and signing up wasn't too long either (although I think I'm going to be investing in a USB keyboard because typing with the PS3 in their PSP format really blows). I downloaded the Motorstorm demo and it took quite some time to download (I'd like to hear from the others who have PS3 how long it''s taken them to download demos because downloading Motorstorm took almost 2 hours). I've played the demo at EB and I thought the game looks unreal.

I haven't checked out the Bluray movie player yet but when I hook up the PS3 to the HDTV I'll try it out. Unfortunately my HDTV is not 1080p so for movies I'll have to settle with 1080i. When I've checked up the movie player than I'll give my impressions.

bdunn13 · Post by **bdunn13** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 2:56 pm

I watched The Omen and Windtalkers this weekend, both on Blu-Ray.

I could not hardly tell a difference between a normal DVD and Windtalkers Blu-Ray. I was pretty umimpressed with the quality.

The Omen was much better but not nearly as pretty as the trailer I saw for Blackhawk Down. I noticed the bit rate on both titles was around 16Mbps. The audio however on both titles was fantastic. Having lossless audio is great.

I am not sure if I am getting a Blu-Ray movie this weekend or not.

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:01 pm

Blu-Ray movies from Sony are known to be using MPEG2.

Especially if it's a single-layer (25 GB) disc, the bit rate is said to be too low.

Releases from Paramount and Fox should be better and there are double-layer releases like Kingdom of Heaven.

Some movies have peak bitrates around 40 Mbps.

bdunn13 · Post by **bdunn13** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:05 pm

Yeah, all three titles I have seen so far have used MPEG2(Talladega Nights, Omen, Windtalkers).... Talladega Nights had the highest bit rate from what I saw (around 36Mps I believe).

No idea why sony would not want to pimp the quality out if they had the chance. Its their format they are trying to sell.

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:14 pm

Well the MPEG2 encoding and authoring tools and infrastructure are mature and can encode in real-time or better than RT. Detractors say Sony has a lot of patents in MPEG2.

Not sure if that's the case with VC-1 yet but Sony won't be using any MS tools.

Warners and Paramount are said to be using the same VC-1 encodes for HD-DVD on their Blu-Ray releases as well.

Fox is using AVC H.264, which requires more CPU to encode and decode. Panasonic put out some tools just a few months ago so it's behind the other two codecs.

The early Sony releases on MPEG2 didn't fare well in comparisons. Meanwhile, MS worked with studios to practically hand-tune HD-DVD releases and the results were great for HD-DVD.

But lately, HD-DVD releases have shown banding while Blu-Ray releases have been improving, with the introduction of dual-layers and studios like Warners, Paramount and Fox using better codecs.

It's a tossup so you have to watch the reviews before buying.

RandyM · Post by **RandyM** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 10:08 am

Are there any Blu-Ray players that will read VC1 encoding?

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 10:15 am

Yes VC-1 is part of the spec so any Blu-Ray disc which has a VC-1 stream has to be readable.

But the PS3 also lets you download files like trailers and aparently, in that case, only MPEG2 and AVC.264 codecs are supported.

Obviously they have software to decode VC-1 but are not supportig for playback of downloaded files. Should be feasible to enable that in a firmware update but for political reasons, they probably won't.

greggsand · Post by **greggsand** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 3:29 pm

ExtremeGamer wrote:
Badgun wrote:
ExtremeGamer wrote: Are you kidding me? I borrowed Madden for the PS3 and played my 360 version, they look identical. I don't see how you or anyone can say you have to be blind to not see the difference.

Resistance is amazing, and Motorstorm looks amazing, I'll give you that. But the graphics are going to be marginally better, if better at all for the multiplatform games.

And why did you buy Madden for the PS3? You complained, and complained about how bad it was for the 360, why waste the money to get the PS3 version? Just to compare?
Did I ever say I bought it? And I still stand bythe fact that it is a horrible representation of the game of football. The very first play from scrimmage was a pass near the sideline from Brunell to Randle El, I had Terrence Newman in perfect position to make the tackle so I pushed forward and hit the square button and at first glance it looked like he completely whiffed on the tackle. Randle El turns a 6 yard pass into a 78 yard TD. Wondering how in the world I missed the tackle I went back and watched the replay and not to my surprise, I didn't miss the tackle...my guy dove clean through Randle El. Right through the 82 on his back and out the front of his chest. It's good to see that EA's been hard at work fixing all the problems for the last three months.

I also stand by the fact that it looked noticeably better on the PS3. The grass looked a lot better and the colors were a lot more vibrant than the 360 version. IN the 360 version, the Cowboys' helmets look almost grey, but in the PS3 version they look silver as they should.

Why do you come in here and attack someone's opinion anyway? This is a PS3 impressions thread, not a "I must defend the 360's dignity" thread.
Attack your opinion? You said "You would have to be blind" that's a pretty bold statement. Defend the 360? I own a PS3...

I've played both Madden versions of the PS3 and 360, and I'm sure I gave them more time than you did, since you hated both so much, and they are virtually the same game. But you have the special PS3 version I guess. I have the 360 version of Madden up right now, the Cowboys helmets look silver to me. To each their own.

What I don't get: if the PS3 games are supposed to be superior, why do most of the "shared titles" between 360&ps3 get lower reviews on the ps3 than the 360?

Badgun · Post by **Badgun** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:56 pm

greggsand wrote:
ExtremeGamer wrote:
Badgun wrote: Did I ever say I bought it? And I still stand bythe fact that it is a horrible representation of the game of football. The very first play from scrimmage was a pass near the sideline from Brunell to Randle El, I had Terrence Newman in perfect position to make the tackle so I pushed forward and hit the square button and at first glance it looked like he completely whiffed on the tackle. Randle El turns a 6 yard pass into a 78 yard TD. Wondering how in the world I missed the tackle I went back and watched the replay and not to my surprise, I didn't miss the tackle...my guy dove clean through Randle El. Right through the 82 on his back and out the front of his chest. It's good to see that EA's been hard at work fixing all the problems for the last three months.

I also stand by the fact that it looked noticeably better on the PS3. The grass looked a lot better and the colors were a lot more vibrant than the 360 version. IN the 360 version, the Cowboys' helmets look almost grey, but in the PS3 version they look silver as they should.

Why do you come in here and attack someone's opinion anyway? This is a PS3 impressions thread, not a "I must defend the 360's dignity" thread.
Attack your opinion? You said "You would have to be blind" that's a pretty bold statement. Defend the 360? I own a PS3...

I've played both Madden versions of the PS3 and 360, and I'm sure I gave them more time than you did, since you hated both so much, and they are virtually the same game. But you have the special PS3 version I guess. I have the 360 version of Madden up right now, the Cowboys helmets look silver to me. To each their own.
What I don't get: if the PS3 games are supposed to be superior, why do most of the "shared titles" between 360&ps3 get lower reviews on the ps3 than the 360?

I think mainly because they are straight ports and nothing new has been done. I'll be curious how Oblivion looks when it comes out in January. The 360 version was beautiful but had horrible draw-in...it will be interesting to see if the same thing happens on the PS3 version.

Another good measuring stick should be Assassin's Creed, which I'm pretty sure was in development on the PS3 first. Now that both versions are coming out on the same day, it will be interesting to see which one, if any, is better.

Personally, I'll probably buy the 360 version if for no other reason than getting the achievements.

RandyM · Post by **RandyM** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 8:14 pm

I think that aside from exclusives, Sony PS3 owners can just look forward to more of the same.

Let's ASSUME for the moment that the PS3 is more powerful than the 360. Even with that, most game developers I've read interviews with have talked about the challenges of programming against the kind of parallel processing approach that Sony's cell processors need. And consider the development tools - whatever Sony ships vs. the tried and true Microsoft Visual Studio that is a very mature, well supported development IDE.

Given studios' focus on the almighty dollar, my bet is that most cross platform software is going to be written for the XBox 360 and the code ported to the PS3 as efficiently as possible. It happened in the other direction for years with the XBox and PS2. I can't tell you how many times I got an XBox game and wondered why it didn't really look any better than the PS2 version. It's just the realities of development budgets.

Exclusives, of course, will be excepted from this 'trend', but I think as far as games are concerned, for the PS3 and XBox 360, we're looking at a serious case of gaming parity.

Randy

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 11:55 am

I've been downloading every demo and trailer (games and movies) on the Playstation Store.

Now I find that you can create a second ID and log into the Hong Kong store, where they have some free content not available in the US store, namely a couple of GT HD trailers and the RR7 Demo. Also the Afrika game trailer.

HK store is suppose to have the GT HD Demo for free on 12/24.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... ost9076550

TRI · Post by **TRI** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 1:49 pm

wco81 wrote:Here is the release calendar:

http://ps3.ign.com/index/release.html

Of those games releasing in the next 6 months, the only PS3 exclusives I'm interested in are Motor Storm, The Show and maybe fLOW (download).

Bit nervous about The Show because SCEA's record on migrating to a new platform is dismal (GameDay for PS2).

Was hoping for Heavenly Sword by spring. This is a sleeper title which I think will have great graphics and gameplay similar to God of War. Probably better if the controls are responsive. The developers are cool guys and they deserve the success that God of War achieved.

Of course I will have to look at the VC and EA sports games due in the next year, including NBA Street and Virtua Tennis. There is the distinct possibility that multiplatform sports games will be developed on the X360 primarily and ported to PS3. Or that they won't try to utilize the advantages of the Cell (more CPU for physics and AI) or Blu-Ray. At least not for a long time.

Other thing is, there was always more activity online for the PS2 version of EA games. That may take a long time for the PS3, if they ever catch up. The Madden league I'm in are starting to get rev'd up about moving over to the PS3, after most members had said all year that they couldn't afford it the first year.

Key game will be GTA of course. There was a story that Sony let the time-exclusive slip away due to preoccupation with the hardware schedules. But if Sony has any smarts left, they should try to get the PS3 version to stand out, like using Blu-Ray to have additional levels on the disc as well as offer download additions which the X360 will have. Pay TakeTwo whatever it takes to run a lot of the game from the hard disk, to make level loading as seamless as possible.

Please explain to me how AI is going to be better on the PS3 with less CPU memory cache and only one PPE? Remember that the SPEs have no branch prediction and are useless for things like AI. So all the general purpose code must be cramed into only one PPE with about half the memory cache. There is truely not a lot more that developers can do with AI on the PS3 that can already be done for the XBOX 360 so taking advantage of the CELL really means doing a few things better on the PS3 than is possible on the XBOX 360 but NOT general purpose code.

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 3:02 pm

Please explain why anyone would have a serious discussion with you on Sony or EA when you've been predicting their doom for what, 10 years now?

Spooky · Post by **Spooky** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:33 am

Okay...I caved!

I am now a member of the dark side.

Took in a bunch of trade-ins, returned a few games and was able to get the 60GB PS3 for a grand total of $125. Once I figured out I could pull this off and it was going to be cheaper than an HD DVD add-on for the 360, I decided to go for it. (I understand that I could have traded in all the stuff for the HD DVD add-on of course, but I was planning on paying for that outright anyway).

I am going to do my initial impressions in the always fun, "Pro's" vs. "Con's" format. So here it goes...

**Please note that I currently have NO Blu-Ray movies to test and only one game to try out (Resistance, of course).**

PRO's:

- It' quiet. I mean, REALLY quiet. This thing will have no problem being the main DVD player for me with it's lack of any disc or fan noise.

- Slick looking machine when in my media center. I was always a bit skeptical of the consoles look but now that I have it in place of where my DVD player was, it looks really cool.

- "Dashboard" / menu interface. I like the PSP style interface.

- Input / Output / Wireless options (HDMI, USB, BlueTooth, internal WiFi. ect...)

-

CON's:

- Un-intuative navigation / options. While I like the PSP style interface, the setup and configuration for most things is not very intuitive at all. The 360 is much more user friendly and easy to navigate from that standpoint.

- Initial setup times. I didn't mind having to connect the controller via USB to begin, but the firmware update download took 30 plus minutes to complete (both download and installation). I am also very frustrated with the keyboard interface for all of the online setup. It is a phone/text messaging type setup rather than the more traditional keyboard setup like the 360 has. The online registering was not too bad though.

- The funky video output resolution and conversion quirkiness. The latest firmware apparently helps this, but I still just want everything to output in 1080i like I have my 360 set up. It will not convert any 720p sources to 1080i (yet).

- NO STANDARD DVD UPSCALING!?!?!?! I was shocked at this and naively just assumed that it would upscale standard definition DVD's to 720p or 1080i. No such luck. I mean, the $175 Sony DVD player that I am replacing with this thing does upscaling. I would hope that Sony is going to be addressing this in a future (very near future) firmware upgrade. I thought for sure I could replace my older Sony DVD player with this thing but now I am concerned.

- Online store is a bit clunky. Not nearly as nice as the 360's.

- Very cheap feeling controller. Just not digging it. While it is very nice to have the PS2 style controller wireless now, it just feels too light and flimsy (especially the back triggers).

- No rumble in the controllers. This bothers me right off the bat. The lack of feedback when shooting is very noticeably absent.

So there you have it. Some cool things, some not so cool. Of course I understand that I have barely even scratched the surface with this thing and I am planning on picking up a couple Blu-Ray movies today to do the big test so I'll post more when I have them!

wco81 · Post by **wco81** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:43 am

Didn't you get Talledega Nights in the box?

I've downloaded some game and demo trailers. There are a bunch of game demos you can download. They take even longer than the updates so be prepared to start a 800 MB download and leave it for an hour.

Supposedly, DVD upscaling is coming in a software upgrade some time in the future.

I just plugged in a USB keyboard and voila, no texting input needed. People are plugging in wireless keyboards and mice and it just works.

Post by **ScoopBrady** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:49 am

You did it Spooky?

When we were chatting the other night you seemed content on waiting a bit. You did mention maybe trading some stuff in and pulling the trigger but I thought you'd hold out until next spring. That's a good deal though, I'd definitely pick one up if I only had to shell out less than $200 for it. My plan remains to sell some stuff to pay for the console (I have a couple of barebones Dell servers I'm trying to unload and possibly my bass amp since my playing in a band days are behind me) and get one by the summer. Thanks for the impressions.

Spooky · Post by **Spooky** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:54 am

wco81 wrote:Didn't you get Talledega Nights in the box?

I've downloaded some game and demo trailers. There are a bunch of game demos you can download. They take even longer than the updates so be prepared to start a 800 MB download and leave it for an hour.

Supposedly, DVD upscaling is coming in a software upgrade some time in the future.

I just plugged in a USB keyboard and voila, no texting input needed. People are plugging in wireless keyboards and mice and it just works.

Did not get the Talledega Nights movie. They are not shipping with that anymore.

Yep...for got to mention the LOOOOONG as download loads times. They have got to improve that.

bdunn13 · Post by **bdunn13** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 1:01 pm

I hated the phone input interface at first too. However, once I got use to it I found I was typing faster on that than on the QWERTY keyboard.

Badgun · Post by **Badgun** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 6:52 pm

Spooky wrote:
wco81 wrote:Didn't you get Talledega Nights in the box?

I've downloaded some game and demo trailers. There are a bunch of game demos you can download. They take even longer than the updates so be prepared to start a 800 MB download and leave it for an hour.

Supposedly, DVD upscaling is coming in a software upgrade some time in the future.

I just plugged in a USB keyboard and voila, no texting input needed. People are plugging in wireless keyboards and mice and it just works.
Did not get the Talledega Nights movie. They are not shipping with that anymore.

Yep...for got to mention the LOOOOONG as download loads times. They have got to improve that.

Just to play devil's advocate, I don't think the download times are any longer than anything on Xbox Live. A 800 meg file is going to take a while on either system. Also remember that you're comparing a lot of these things to an interface and system that's had a year to grow.

Let's see where Sony is this time next year before we start throwing rocks at them. But I do agree with some of your points. If they could take care of upscaling dvds and downloading in the background, then I would be happy for awhile.