Xbox, Playstation, wee—er—Wii
After spending a little bit of time with and Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii, and seeing some demo videos of the PS3, I think I figured out what separates these products.
Microsoft wanted the Xbox 360 to be an extension of Windows; a Hardware product that was exclusively and irrevocably tied to the Windows OS. They have largely succeeded in that score. The Xbox will play video and music from your PC, but only if that PC is running Windows Media Center, and only if the stuff you want to stream is Microsfot DRM or no-DRM. What this really means is, no iTunes. Everything streamed to the 360 is encoded, or decoded, or recoded, or something, to end up with a Microsoft only format that only the 360 understands, and that is what is then translated to your screen/speakers.
On the other hand, Sony made a Blu-Ray player that also acts as a sort of home-PC. They are obviously hoping that for some people, A PS3 will be good enough for them to not even need a PC. So their product is really positioned as a PC/DVD player that plays games.
And then we come to Nintendo. On paper, everything about the Wii loses to both the big boys. It is cheaper, the graphics are not nearly as good, it’s half the size, and heck, it doesn’t even play DVDs; though this feature is promised for early 2007. So why is the Wii selling like a 1980 pet rock? The Wii is fun. That’s really it in a nutshell. You pick up that ‘wand’ controller and swing your arm and bowl a ball, and the ball on the screen, and the arm on the screen, match you motions so closely it is stunning. Standing up to bat and as you wiggle the wand the bat on screen amplifies those motions just as if you were holding a real bat. In Call of Duty III, you hold the Wii controllers as if you were holding a rifle, aiming by looking down the ‘barrel’ of your ‘gun’.
Call of Duty III is a great benchmark, because the same game is on all three platforms. It looks MUCH better on the PS3 and the Xbox 360 (and I couldn’t tell a difference between them, though others claim the PS3 is clearly better). So, fine, for the first few minutes the Wii looks pretty weak. And then you start playing. You find yourself jumping and crouching and whirling around and suddenly the graphics don’t matter much because playing the game is so much more involving on the Wii.