The three faces of Sony is their hardware business, Sony Pictures in the movie industry and Sony BMG in the music business. The main problem appears, however, in their software department. While the hardware business is trying to create open, innovative hardware, the two content businesses Sony Pictures and Sony BMG is trying to prevent that hardware from being used in piracy. Here is where the customer gets completely forgotten. We then see failures such as the rootkit fiasco in their CD publishing part and the Walkman relaunched that was supposed to smash the iPod but failed completely because of unusable software as it was too ridden with DRM and copy protection technology making it impossible for customers to use. The Walkman’s price was slashed by more than half, but little did it help. The software was useless and people kept returning their Walkmans as they saw them as broken.

Sony, however, learned nothing from this. They still struggle with technologies that Sony Pictures and Sony BMG wanted to push in order to control their customers. Think of the many failed formats Sony has tried to push: ATRAC, MiniDisc, SACD, MemoryStick and so forth. ATRAC is a perfect example here. When the rest of the market had already accepted MP3 as the standard and Microsoft was pushing WMA Sony kept forcing their poor customers onto ATRAC and nothing else. After several years of being practically the laughing stock of the MP3-player market with a ridiculously small percentage they finally yielded to MP3 and released the Walkman player which could play both formats. However, the software was so riddled with DRM og copy protection technologies that it failed completely. Hardware is only as good as its software. Why didn’t they learn?

Even though music has been distributed over the Internet for nearly fifteen years Sony BMG and the rest of the music industry still hasn’t found a digital strategy. In this field Sony is also showing its many faces. It wants to give its customers as many options as possible, but also to completely control their use. This can be seen clearly in the fact that Sony is one of the companies pushing the hardest for the power to use selectable output – a technology that takes away a lot of the consumers rights without asking. So on one side Sony wants to push HD content in all your equipment – on the other side Sony wants complete control to fully disable all your equipment and remove the ability to display the HD content.

Then came the PlayStation 3 and Sony’s newest push of technologies. Now it wanted its customers onto the Blu-Ray path, so that it could force new copy protection technologies onto its poor customers. Another HD technology riddled with DRM. However, when one focuses too much on technology and marketing and forgets about software, which has always been Sony’s soft spot, one is set up for a major disappointment – especially when one is as arrogant as Sony Entertainment. The PlayStation 3 didn’t quite know what kind of machine it wanted to be. It wanted to be a game console, but also a media center and a Blu-Ray player… but as everyone knows: The Jack of All Trades is a Master of None… And that also happened with the PlayStation 3, who is suffering greatly on the market today.The holiday sales has shown that in this time around Sony is way behind its two competitors…

What Sony failed to do Nintendo did to perfection. They focused their console on a major market and didn’t put everything into the console – only what the market was asking for. The result is remarkable – especially compared to the once master of the market, Sony. Even their newest competitor, Microsoft, understood where they needed to beat Sony. Microsoft didn’t have Sony’s innovation in hardware or even remotely their experience in this field. When it comes to software, however, Microsoft is million miles ahead of Sony. They made the right tools for developing software on their platform and they made a brilliant working network service in Live far ahead of Sony’s PSN, which most of all looked like a small afterthought from Sony in hindsight of Microsoft’s success. Microsoft success came from ensuring a lot more titles than Sony did – especially when it came to exclusives, where Sony was once master. Sony simply forgot that consoles are about games. At the same time Microsoft is cutting prices making it harder for Sony to sell consoles, who are already seen as expensive…

Times has changed. Hardware is no longer everything. These days a console is measured by its software and in that field Sony is having serious problems – not only with its countless delays, but also with the quality of the software, which almost always fails to live up to the hype. A clear example of Sony’s problem with software is that every game studio claims that it is much simpler and thereby cheaper to develop on Microsoft’s Xbox platform compared to Sony’s PlayStation platform – even such former Sony exclusives as Square Enix.What is Sony’s response to this criticism? Well, even more strange… They claim that they have made it difficult to develop on the PlayStation 3 on purpose to make it last the ten years they somehow expect this console to last – even though it is far behind all its competitors in every way… sheeesh!

The strangest thing about this is that Sony doesn’t seem to learn anything. They keep on lying through their teeth and spinning numbers in their marketing. They keep on screwing their customers with DRM and copy protection and the removal of consumer rights, using lobbying. One would think that a company that makes a PR nightmare like the CD rootkit would learn something, but it doesn’t seem to happen. What Sony needs a common sense czar…

The best way to illustrate what you get with Apple is using the beach. When you buy a normal bambus PC you get a large, confusing beach, filled with occasional litter and you don’t really know when the Sun will shine. When you invite your friends onto your beach they often can find the way or take a long time getting there – arriving frustrated.

With Apple you get a sandbox filled with the most pretty, delicate sand. The Sun is always shining and there is no litter. Taking a trip to the beach for you becomes a breeze and an enjoyable experience. Then the problem starts. Your friends wants to visit you, but the only way they can get into your sandbox is to buy one themselves – then everything works perfectly.

The second problem comes when you want to buy a grill for bringing on your trip to the beach.  On the normal beach you can just go to any store and buy any grill you want, but not with your sandbox – only one grill is available… and it’s from the same guys who sold you the sandbox and the price is outright ridiculous. The same problem appears when you want to buy a ghettoblaster for playing music on your beach, a parasol for protecting against the sun and it continues making you pay more and more for products for which you have no alternative. No other ghettoblasters is allowed in your sandbox, sorry!

The third problem arrives when you start to get bored with your expensive ghettoblaster and your grill and you want to play something in your sandbox. You go to the Sandbox Store, but find little of the games your friends are playing on the beach. The games you can choose from are expensive, comes out years after the beach guys have enjoyed them for years and no one else are playing them anymore.

The fourth and final problem comes after a while. When you have seen anything there is to see in you little sandbox you want something bigger. You start poking around the corners and suddenly you realize that you are not on a beach, but rather on a small fenced-in pierce of sandbox with high walls around and a artificial sun hovering above. When you want to dig a small hole to build a sandcastle in your sandbox with your expensive sandbox(tm) shovel you can only dig down ten centimeters because the sandbox is no larger than that. Suddenly you realize that this is not a beach, but only a sandbox – and a very expensive one… and then you realize why I don’t go for Apple’s products

The lesson here is simple – Don’t fence me in!

Nintendo, however, in spite of their great sales is left with a major problem – attachment rate is extremely poor for the Wii… Only first-party titles sells okay – the rest is rubbish … Apart from one third-party developer, Ubisoft, who is apparently doing it right! Since the Wii is the best selling console one should think that developer studios would focus more on this platform, but this has not been the case – apart from a load of showelware… which doesn’t yield good sales for the publisher or a good console-reputation for Nintendo either!

To sum it up: Another formidable christmas season for Nintendo, though they still need third-party developers in the same class as Ubisoft to earn real money on their console over time. Microsoft is boosting their sales and are doing remarkably well. Sony is still crawling around in their low sales trying to spin a good story out of their poor-performing next-gen “wonder” of a console!

For Sony the most important focus became to win the HD war that was raging between the two competing formats: HD DVD and Sony backed Blu-Ray. The inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive in the PlayStation 3 was a brilliant move in this war, but made the PlayStation 3 expensive and difficult to manufacture. Combined with the expensive and likewise difficult to produce Cell processor the price of the PlayStation 3 was way higher than that of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, while also lacking the ability to output enough numbers of SKU’s. However, what Sony forgot in this battle was the games. A few exclusives – especially compared to the Xbox 360, have ensured that a lot of faithful Sony fans shifted sides. Game developers also preferred Microsoft’s wellknown Xbox platform for developing, compared to Sony’s new Cell-processor, that required a completely new way of thinking and heavy investements of time from the game studios. The outcome of this strategy was that games was now developed on Xbox and ported (often poorly) to the PlayStation platform afterwards. Adding to the trouble was the fact that backward compatibility was less than Sony had promised – which was a big problem as the PlayStation and especially the PlayStation 2 had a lot of faithful following. All these factors played their part. Suddenly Sony was no longer the sole leader of the console scene, but is still tracking behind Microsoft and especially Nintendo. In this generation Sony wanted to win the HD war and forgot about the games and especially the developers.

Sony didn’t see Nintendo as a competitor. They only focused on graphics – not on gameplay. That was a big mistake. Games often sell on their graphics, but last on their gameplay – only a good gameplay will ensure a classic among games. Nintendo focused on gameplay and an entirely different audience, not the hardcore gamers that both Sony and Microsoft aimed for – but the casual gamer… and won big time! Now they are suffering on two accounts, however. They didn’t get third party developers behind them – and apart from Nintendo’s own titles, which were of good quality, the games that did hit the Wii was showelware. Bad ports and lausy gameplay with no depth whatsoever. The other problem, which is beginning to haunt the Wii is the lack of good graphics. Developers are abandonning the platform because of its limitations and because only Nintendo sells well on the Wii. When gameplay isn’t good people go for graphics – Nintendo can offer none of those at the moment… Even though the Wii is still selling good Nintendo have lost the gaming audience and have only the casual gamer left – which will hurt them a lot in the next generation. Nintendo was too fast in becoming, like Sony in the last generation, arrogant in their success. I think what Nintendo needs these days is a good “Wii-ality Check”

The third party in the console war, Microsoft, has had a rough start with the RROD-problems and became the difference between Sony and Microsoft. Sony betted on the hardware, but Microsoft betted on the software. Both companies did what they have always done best. Naturally both companies spent entire fortunes on spinning both their hardware, their sotware, their platforms and their sales. Sony wasn’t ready for as serious a challenger as Microsoft had suddenly become. Microsoft on the other hand was first out the tube a full year before Sony and Nintendo and got a good headstart. This would later become highly important as this allowed Microsoft to improve their design, cut down production costs, lower prices faster and especially gather a consumer base, which is what developers look for in a platform. This got the third party developers onboard and a few years into the war it is apparent that Microsoft won the third party war with their HD console and are now cutting the prices because they can afford to. Furthermore their game attachment percentage is way higher than Sony and astronomically higher than Nintendo, which is what gaming consoles are all about.

In terms of network playability Microsoft was lightyears ahead of Sony’s PSN with their Live! services and Nintendo has barely to get their console online yet! This is also important for players – because players recruit more players to a platform and help them form their opinion.

Now the war for value is on – Microsoft already have the developers, the titles and the best online service… All with the lowest price point of the three consoles. All these factors mean that Sony is too far behind ensuring that Microsoft is now outselling Sony 2 to 1  – even though they entered the game a year earlier…

Sony might have made the best Blu-Ray player on the market this generation around, but Microsoft won the gaming platform. What Sony is left with is an all too expensive gaming console with too few titles and a good HD player for a format that is about to die before the next generation anyway. Wrong bet, I suppose!

My guess is that Sony is preparing a price cut. They simply cannot let this continue. Every day Microsoft improve their user base compared to Sony’s the developers get another reason to publish games for that platform. What Sony needs to remember is the effect they themselves created with the PlayStation 2. When your friends got a PlayStation 2 that’s what you want as well!

The great question here is what will Sony do if Microsoft keeps cutting the price of the Xbox 360?…

It quickly became apparent that despite of a much longer implementation period than usual the quality of Vista was very untested and it was found to be quite a limited product in many ways not expected, like for example simple file copying which can still cause memory problems – something never experienced before in a Windows system. The system was also a giant memory hog, crawing a large machine and hardware needs that was largely unexpected. Combined with extremely poor driver support from hardware vendors this has had the effect that the Vista is very unpopular in the business market. Among the professionals in the industry the support for Vista is clear: 90% doesn’t want Vista! The enterprise has acted harshly against Microsoft and persists on getting downgrades instead of buying Vista. Even when it comes to Microsoft’s own bosses and managers it is obvious that they doesn’t like or want their own product and its hazzle and performance issues as well… Peculiar isn’t it? When so many bosses agree that the product is not ready why didn’t they react and give the developers and hardware vendors more time? It is already been considered among many in the enterprise to skip Vista completely and wait out for the next version of Windows that is scheduled for 2009/2010, which would give Microsoft a seriously long period of financial income trouble!

Microsoft has already reacted in many ways to the poor acceptance of Vista. They have lowered the prices for a relatively new product quite fast, which was obvious since Vista is priced far too high for its value and still is. They have also allowed for a downgrade program among retailers so that people can still get Windows XP – a five year old version they prefer over Vista. Meanwhile the performance problems of Vista is displayed to the public when Windows XP already run circles around it currently and are about to get a significant boost with the upcoming Service Pack 3. So much for closing the performance gap… And that’s not even Windows XP’s best feature compared to Vista – Compability is, however! Vista is simply a nightmare in terms of program and driver compability at the frustration of its users.

To put it frankly Vista is the worst public image nightmare Microsoft has ever spawned – The biggest blunder Microsoft ever made! Customers are mad and feels deceited and are even suggesting that they should be offered Windows XP free (which might in a way actually be a clever strategy for Microsoft since they would feel good value and be tempted to try Vista every time they become annoyed in XP). Microsoft’s PR nightmare can be seen around the world, where for example C|Net has put on the top ten of worst technologies ever released, or hear the many reactions to Vista, which say beyond any doubt that this is a major issue for Microsoft. It hasn’t made things easier for Microsoft that they also fails with DRM and screw their customers in the middle of this uproar. What is even more ridiculous is that Microsoft with Vista has tried to keep the pirates out even more drastically, meaning more trouble for the few people who actually buy Vista, like for example a simple driver update can cause a reduced mode and require re-activation in Vista. For the paying customers it is simple: WGA needs to go!

It is a publicity nightmare that just keeps on expanding, the lost image is getting harder to recover for each day in this facade. Steve Ballmer has to feel the pressure at the moment and should seriously consider resigning. His first major release as head of Microsoft shows a company in dire straits, with no sense of quality or timing or pricing and ends up loosing an enormous part of the enterprise and core business market. Microsoft needs to remember that Vista is not just Vista. With this great failure the entire eco system around Windows is troubled – meaning trouble for important business partners, hardware-vendors and especially Microsoft’s other products, while playing perfectly into the hands of their competitors. Microsoft simply lost sight of value for money and quality. A clear example of the new low at Microsoft is that they have even lost their regression tests, which led to a human-error messing up Windows Update completely for all customers – how can that happen with a professional company like Microsoft with their experience?

There are many suggestions to what Microsoft can do to get out of their Vista problems. Personally I think Steve Ballmer expects everything to pick up nicely when Service Pack 1 is released, but he is about to get disappointed. When the first companies that tries to adapt Vista after SP1 is ready and they fail because Vista is still too far from production quality and those stories hit the net it will be down-graded business as usual for Vista and Microsoft. The many broken promises of Vista has let focus slip onto the alternatives for a while. Mac OS X is getting massive publicity – combined with the popularity of iTunes and especially the iPhone. Linux is also getting focus again as it can suddenly provide a great value for money on current hardware and are in many ways better for business than Vista. The wolves are gathering and they are chipping away at Microsoft’s business model on more than one front. Microsoft’s profitable Office is also getting attacked. While Microsoft is left with a quality assurance problem, a marketing nightmare, a strengthened set of competitors Linux on the other hand is still doing what Microsoft was famous for many years ago, which is innovating…

What can Microsoft do? Well, first of they need Steve “Throwing Chairs” Ballmer to pack his chairs and leave. Then they need to get their quality assurance back in place. Then they should start innovating again. Cut away the overweight slow performer that is Vista and make a proper operating system. Get back into the leading seat and embrace change and standards and show the world and your competitors that you can compete on equal terms – not just because of your de facto monopoly. Set the customers in focus for once. Lower the price much further for Vista – and perhaps offer a driver garantie so that people don’t get frustrated with their first time with Vista. Get the drivers to market and ensure their quality. Get the application support back in focus. Add some real value to Vista, like for example WinFS, better integration, innovation… And for gods sake make more efficient code – enough bloat has gone into this thing already… Cut away the bloat, optimize it and you might even end up adding real value for your customers.

While Nintendo is starting to face realities its competitors is moving in on it… Microsoft has prepared the XBox360 to be made with 65 nm. in production in both CPU and GPU in its FALCON chipset, improved both cost, stability and noise on their console. Microsoft needs stability in their console because of the massive bad publicity caused by the RROD-problem on the XBox360. The problem for Microsoft is that it will take long for people to forget this problem. Sony is slowly gaining momentum, but occasionally falls back because of some of the funny limitations in the PlayStation 3, like its incapabilities to do advanced AI, which is seen in both Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed, compared to the XBox360.

Both the PlayStation 3 and the XBox360 has been put through price cuts that has given especially the expensive PlayStation 3 a boost that is slowly building up to a momentum… The question now remains: When will the price cut from Nintendo come on the Wii? … They earned money on the Wii and its tons of controllers from day one, unlike Sony and Microsoft, who is still loosing money on each console sold. Now the price of the Wii is too close to that of the XBox360, which has a lot of excellent second-gen titles, whereas the Wii is in a software drought that many owners is starting to lament. The Xbox360 also has two other advantages compared to the Wii: First of all they can produce enough consoles and secondly they have a use for their network capabilities – Nintendo simply isn’t using the network capabilities of the Wii: No online games, no multiplayer games, no real online content… only a couple of old games and a small browser. The Wii has finally passed the XBox360 sales, but in order to keep this momentum they need a price cut on the Wii – and they need HD… if they want to stay the leader in this console war!

However, having followed the console war and its major battles over the last year or so it has led me to an understanding of the different strengths and weaknesses of the different next-gen consoles as I decided whether to try a real console or not… The three consoles will be evaluated only on their strengths and weaknesses as gaming consoles, not as DVD players or HD Players or HTPC’s or whatever… I’ve got a PC for that!

Microsoft’s XBox 360

Pros: Got many titles, got 2. gen titles, got many exclusives, a working welldesigned network solution from the beginning in Live, A powerful design, HD gaming, Rumble controller…

Cons: RROD, Noise, Clumsy, Ugly external powersupply, No Harddrive, No rechargeable batteries, Proprietary Points system, No Built-in Wireless networking …

In the future: 65 nm Falcon chipset (CPU+GPU), Excellent exclusive titles such as Halo 3 and Mass Effect, Bridging PC and XBox 360 Live gaming…

Sony’s PlayStation 3

Pros: Born with a harddrive, Low noise, HD gaming, Upgradable HD…

Cons: Expensive, Inconsistent Design (CPU not designed for gaming with a last-gen graphics solution and not enough videomemory or memory all together), Few titles and not many exclusives, Too many “XBox360-conversion” titles, Unready online experience, Large, Lots of “Technology” push, Too much focus on Mediacenter rather than on Gaming Console…

In the future: Rumble controller, More titles but still no Must-have titles, 65 nm. CPU…

Nintendo’s Wii

Pros: Fun, Cheap, For-everyone, Innovative gameplay, Small, Silent

Cons: Too few titles, Too low quality in titles, No online experience, Expensive controllers, No rechargeable batteries, No HD Gaming, Proprietary Points system, No real additions in the firmware updates…

In the future: Better titles but still too few, More wacky controllers…

For the moment I can see no reason to buy a console for gaming. I am keeping my Wii for the social aspect, and might keep it if they can muster better titles and some use of the networking capabilities. I might even upgrade it if they make a HD solution for it, while keeping it small and silent, but they need better titles. If the XBox 360 keeps pushing good titles, that doesn’t make it to the PC scene the optimal solution for me is not to buy an XBox 360, but rather to start working on a emulator for a PC… Their solution is still to clumsy and noisy – and rather unstable consideration the RROD! Sony’s solution simply is too much push-technology and PC-wannabe, and not enough gaming console or good titles…

Things, however, doesn’t stay static long in this business. Sony is preparing for their European launch in march, while Microsoft is preparing their new revision of the XBox360, which is known as the Black XBox360 – adding HDMI, 120 GB Harddisk and a better and more quiet DVD-drive to their console. The specs will make it surpass that of the PlayStation 3 as a multimedia hub, but they still need to counter the succes of the Wii, which they have already admitted has forced them to rethink their strategy. Meanwhile Sony has run into a massive amount of bad press when they announced that the european version of the PlayStation 3 will not include the Emotion chipset, that emulates PS2-games, and the european version will only emulate PS2-games using software – even with no price reduction to counteract… Simply a more poor machine for the same money! They need to increase the value-perception of the PlayStation 3 and one way to do this is to add a technology people want. That technology is Rumble in the controller, which was a feature loved by fans in the PS2. Sony has recently settled their lawsuit problems with Immersion, and now it probably won’t be long until they announce a new version of the PS3-controller – with rumble – even though they have already claimed that rumble is a last-gen technology to spite competitors who had rumble in their controllers…

Sony’s problems seems to be massive all around. The game publishers are not happy with their game sales on the PlayStation 3 – especially since it is very expensive to develop for the PlayStation 3. This is probably because the PlayStation 3 simply isn’t selling – so there is no real market to sell games to. This is a battle of content and price – and Sony is behind on both! Sony has shipped more than 4 million PlayStation 3’s, but only 1.5 million of those have been sold at this point. While Sony is trying very hard to deny this they simply end up looking comical and in the end the game publishers will feel the lacking impact of the PlayStation 3 on their game sales anyway. This is a very bad circle for Sony, who more than anyone needs hit titles for the PlayStation 3 – but who will make that when the competitors have a much larger market? This could be the beginning of the end for the PlayStation brand – a brand that by itself created a whole new market, which is now a multi-billion dollar market… They simply did too much wrong in the case of the PlayStation 3 – and were too arrogant to admit it and fix it!

Sony, instead, can sit back and watch Nintendo dominate the war well into the 2008, according to analysts… Sony and Microsoft is battling over the hardcore gamers, who only look at specs and content, while Nintendo got the rest with their Wii-concept!

The content-providers are waiting eagerly the outcome as they are experiencing dropping DVD sales and need the next-gen format out the door and into the shops, into the consumers home so that they can supply the consumer with the same movies over again in better quality!

Often, however, consumers take a while to adapt a new standard, especially when that standard is not decided yet. The problems inflicted on the consumer who chooses to adapt too early are numerous:

• 1st Generation players are often not capable of fully supporting the standard
• Problems with DRM-subsystems are often found after the first batch of players is sold – Even in software players, like CyberLink HD, who is currently having massive problems with DRM in HD content.
• Region coding is often decided at a late hour, which means that the newly bought player might not have the region-support it needs for 2nd generation titles. The example lately is that HD DVD has only recently announced that they will not enforce Region Coding in their format, even though the first batch of HD DVD players has been out for more than six months.
• The DRM might suddenly need to be changed when anti-DRM schemes opens the current locks on the player, like AACS is already facing at this point in the HD war.
• You might end up with an expensive movie-collection in a format that didn’t win the war and therefore is no longer supported by the mainstream production lines or the content-providers…

While the players in this battle of formats continue to improve in the end you are betting a lot of money on an expensive player, that might not support the titles of tomorrow and buying a lot of movies that might be able to play in the player of tomorrow…

In the mean time a third alternative has come into the light of day. Albeit a bit late, but interesting none the less! HD VMD is entering the race for the next-gen DVD format by supplying a cheap alternative to the HD DVD and Blu-Ray alternatives. With prices around 200$ for a player, compared to 500$ for an HD DVD and lately 600$ for a Blu-Ray, this must be said to be a cheap technology. It supports a high read speed that surpasses that of both HD DVD and Blu-Ray and can support from anywhere between 20 GB disc up until 100 GB disc in the future – In summary: The technology is ready enough for HD content. They have started out slow with India and China as their main markets, moving into Eastern Europe, but lately decided to go head to head with the two big formats and are now entering Nassaq and trying out retail in the USA, with the backing of Warner Bros. The breaking poitn for this alternative will surely be how they will use the technology of the HD VMD on the handling of HD content like extra materials, interaction and subtitles. But even more important will be the backing of the content-providers, who desperately needs to get the customers into the next-gen buying frenzy – and the cheaper price level that actually competes almost directly with that of DVD players might just prove to be what the doctor ordered! The technology behind HD VMD is being demonstrated next week in Barcelona, where Dr. Levich will demonstrate how a HD VMD disc can be played in a standard off-the-shelves dvd player. What I find intriguing about the HD VMD, apart from the price, is the speculation that it will also support Open Source codecs, as well as the standard HD codecs, such as VC-1. Werther it will be a contender in the big format war of our day is not easy to predict, but I think the technology at least will be good alternative on the PC drive-side of the business, which might also prove a good entry strategy for the HD VMD format into the real war of delivering HD content on players in consumer’s homes.

I still think that this battle is a battle that will last too long for the disc to become as popular as the CD or the DVD. In the end we are not far off the real technologies like HVD (or their fast-to-market alternative, InPhase), which is where the real revolution lies in terms of durable storage for delivering HD content, if the Internet doesn’t prove to be the next-gen format that HD content will be delivered through in the future… (or their fast-to-market competitor,

If you take the country I live in, Denmark, as an example you could, if you choose to go the XBox360 way, instead of buying the new PlayStation 3, buy this for the same price as a new PlayStation 3 (based on the prices in Coolshop):

• XBox 360 Deluxe (20 GB version, headset, cabels, wireless controller, etc.)
• Extra Wireless Controller
• Final Fantasy XI
• Need For Speed : Most Wanted
• Condemned: Classics
• F.E.A.R.
• FIFA 06: The Road to World Cup
• GUN
• Kameo : Elements of Power
• Hitman: Blood Money
• King Kong
• Madden NFL 06
• Perfect Dark Zero
• Ridge Racer 6
• Tomb Raider: Legend

Then, if you wanted to buy a PlayStation 3 you would naturally want to buy and extra controller and a game… On your alternative XBox360 yoy could instead add the two major entertaining game titles: Gears of War and Lost Planet : Extreme Conditions! The choice seems pretty clearcut for me, if you are a gamer and buy the console to play games on… There are no really good games for the PlayStation 3, it is more expensive, it has less of the real community-features and there are tons of problems with it…

If you want a multimedia hub the answer is more tricky. The XBox360 already has DVD playback ability, but the software behind the scenes make it a poor choice. However, it does not suffer from the freezing problems troubling the PlayStation 3 during movie playback. Furthermore the PlayStation 3 has had a big problem with downscaling instead of using the 1080i output. Sony has tried to fix this problem, but coul not fix the hardware and was forced to make a software solution, which is certainly not the ideal solution to that problem!

As game consoles the two are almost evenly matched. The XBox360, in my analysis, is the strongest and the one with the best technical design. The PlayStation 3 suffers from poor design and limitations (not only in memory). The thing that sets the two apart, that in my opinion is the most critical choice is the fact that Microsoft understood that this generation of consoles are different from the last generation in more than horsepower. The main difference is not HD or better graphics, but the fact that our consoles are no longer isolated game machines that you only play with your friends when they come to your house – it is an online community connector! … And Microsoft understood this and did it right with Live!, which Sony only saw this too late in the designs and are now trailing far behind trying to catch up!

The game is already on between the two contender for HD gaming on the next-gen consoles and cost-efficiency is an important factor. Both Sony and Microsoft knows that improving the manufacturing process is the key to gaining some better margins – especially if the competitor lowers prices and you need to follow suit… For this reason the battle for reaching the 65 nm. manufacturing process is ON! Microsoft is well in the lead and has been since they started a year before Sony with their launch. They hold the key, both in terms of price and in terms of game titles! Sony is struggling to get exclusive titles, especially titles that could prove that the PlayStation 3 is a more powerful machine than the XBox360. Meanwhile Microsoft can sit back and wait on Sony to try and lower prices, which they would immediately meet with lowering prices on the XBox360 or making good-valued bundles, like they did during the Christmas sales. It isn’t funny being Sony these days!