Xbox 360 Maxed out, PS3 isn't


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For someone to seriously struggle to use a gaming controller they most certainly are not an average gamer, they must never have seen, touched or used a games console in their life, let alone a TV remote with buttons.

There's a big difference between knowing what something is and being comfortable using it. There are a lot of lapsed gamers out there who haven't played since the NES era. Going from a cross pad, Start:Select:B:A to two analog triggers, two digital shoulder buttons, four face buttons, two function buttons, a home button, a cross pad, and two analog sticks (both of which double as buttons) is a big leap.

Particularly for non-gamers. There's a reason that regular gamers have better spatial skills than most non-gamers, we're training parts of our brain that other people don't use much unless they spend a lot of time putting groceries in paper bags.

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He's got a point. Maybe someday if they max out the PS3, it will run games as well as the 360 has since launch.

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There's a big difference between knowing what something is and being comfortable using it. There are a lot of lapsed gamers out there who haven't played since the NES era. Going from a cross pad, Start:Select:B:A to two analog triggers, two digital shoulder buttons, four face buttons, two function buttons, a home button, a cross pad, and two analog sticks (both of which double as buttons) is a big leap.

Particularly for non-gamers. There's a reason that regular gamers have better spatial skills than most non-gamers, we're training parts of our brain that other people don't use much unless they spend a lot of time putting groceries in paper bags.

Yeah okay, but we were never talking ergonomics, just the ability to use, more specifically Ricardo said to "connect a controller".

Particularly for non-gamers. There's a reason that regular gamers have better spatial skills than most non-gamers, we're training parts of our brain that other people don't use much unless they spend a lot of time putting groceries in paper bags.

And I agree with this, this is the point I'm making, there's a big leap between a non-gamer and an average gamer. I'd expect an average gamer knows how to connect a controller to a console and/or in most cases know how to connect their console to the internet.

A lot of my friends are average gamers, they own a 360/PS3 or both, play games in their free time, but they don't partake on internet forums/watch E3/argue about what consoles are better/etc. They just go out and buy a game or two every now and then and play them. Simple care free gaming, something a lot of us have probably forgot how to do :laugh:

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Yeah okay, but we were never talking ergonomics, just the ability to use, more specifically Ricardo said to "connect a controller".

And I agree with this, this is the point I'm making, there's a big leap between a non-gamer and an average gamer. I'd expect an average gamer knows how to connect a controller to a console and/or in most cases know how to connect their console to the internet.

A lot of my friends are average gamers, they own a 360/PS3 or both, play games in their free time, but they don't partake on internet forums/watch E3/argue about what consoles are better/etc. They just go out and buy a game or two every now and then and play them. Simple care free gaming, something a lot of us have probably forgot how to do :laugh:

You're still not seeing who the majority is. You're thinking about tech oriented people like us.

Regular people don't even know what an ethernet cable is. This is what I've come to know based on people I get to see everyday. Honestly, this girl at work today thought a "server" was one of those communication towers. Normal people (as I like to call them) have no idea about technology. They're like tech muggles.

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I do agree with Gil, the Non-tech savvy people shouldn't be given much credit because most of them are completely clueless when it comes to technology and IT.

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You're still not seeing who the majority is. You're thinking about tech oriented people like us.

Regular people don't even know what an ethernet cable is. This is what I've come to know based on people I get to see everyday. Honestly, this girl at work today thought a "server" was one of those communication towers. Normal people (as I like to call them) have no idea about technology. They're like tech muggles.

The majority of who? The world?

Unless you have an interest in a gaming console you aren't going to buy it. Me asking my Granda what the Xbox 360 guide button does can't be passed off as a "majority/average user cannot connect a controller" conclusion.

The majority of people buying an Xbox 360 will either research/read or actively find out how to use their console, and I'm willing to bet 95%+ of the people who've bought a 360 out of the 30 million knew what a controller was and how to use it's basic functions.

As for "regular" people not knowing what an ethernet cable is, they might not know what it's called, but they'll know it's the "internet cable". Or will go and ask in a shop for a cable to connect their PC to their modem/router.

My mum calls our wireless router "the internet", yeah she ain't pro-John on terminology but she knows how to use it, and how to connect to it wirelessly. That's all that really matters, not knowing it's an CAT5e cable.

Again, I don't know why so many forum users wear tinted glasses that make them think they are leaps and boundaries above average users. If anything in most cases all we know better is the correct terminology for everything and how to do 95% of things without reading manuals.

Of course if you referred to a modem/router on Neowin as "the internet" you'd be flamed/made fun of/called an idiot, but that's the lame teenager hardcore attitude, average users don't need to experience that and therefore won't care if they are naming terminology wrong, just as long as they can use it.

We're not talking about "tech muggles", we're talking about the average users. As I pointed out, average adheres to someone with a basic understanding of the product they are using.

If you got an average mark in school, it means you passed, not as good as the person with the high mark, but you didn't fail like the person with the low mark.

Look at the amount of people playing games over Live or at least connecting to Live, you can only do that with your 360 hooked up to the internet...

Edited by Audioboxer
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The majority of who? The world?

Unless you have an interest in a gaming console you aren't going to buy it. Me asking my Granda what the Xbox 360 guide button does can't be passed off as a "majority cannot connect a controller" conclusion.

The majority of people buying an Xbox 360 will either research/read or actively find out how to use their console, and I'm willing to bet 95%+ of the people who've bought a 360 out of the 30 million knew what a controller was and how to use it's basic functions.

As for "regular" people not knowing what an ethernet cable is, they might not know what it's called, but they'll know it's the "internet cable". Or will go and ask in a shop for a cable to connect their PC to their modem/router.

My mum calls our wireless router "the internet", yeah she ain't pro-John on terminology but she knows how to use it, and how to connect to it wirelessly. That's all that really matters, not knowing it's an CAT5e cable.

Again, I don't know why so many forum users wear tinted glasses that make them think they are leaps and boundaries above average users. If anything in most cases all we know better is the correct terminology for everything and how to do 95% of things without reading manuals.

Of course if you referred to a modem/router on Neowin as "the internet" you'd be flamed/made fun of/called an idiot, but that's the lame teenager hardcore attitude, average users don't need to experience that and therefore won't care if they are naming terminology wrong, just as long as they can use it.

We're not talking about "tech muggles", we're talking about the average users. As I pointed out, average adheres to someone with a basic understanding of the product they are using.

If you got an average mark in school, it means you passed, not as good as the person with the high mark, but you didn't fail like the person with the low mark.

Gaming has gone way beyond the hardcore market. I've seen a lot of couples choosing their guitar hero, their buzz, their Wii fit and such.

They know crap about the console, for them it's just the player for their game, just like a dvd player.

If you happen to look outside the hardcore market you'll notice that people are more interested about the fun games they like, than they are about the console itself. Then you have those who know a bit more about their consoles but are still a bit intimidated about technology.

In the end, the hardcore demographic is probably the smaller slice in all of this. That's how I see the gaming market in 2009 anyway.

Not saying I'm right, but it's how I see it.

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Gaming has gone way beyond the hardcore market. I've seen a lot of couples choosing their guitar hero, their buzz, their Wii fit and such.

They know crap about the console, for them it's just the player for their game, just like a dvd player. If you happen to look outside the hardcore market you'll notice that people are more interested about the fun games they like, than they are about the console itself. Then you have those who know a bit more about their consoles but are still a bit intimidated about technology. In the end, the hardcore demographic is probably the smaller slice in all of this. That's how I see the gaming market in 2009 anyway. Not saying I'm right, but it's how I see it.

Of course that's right, 140 million people own a PS2.

The largest gaming forum on the internet, NeoGAF, only has like 200,000 members. If you add all the more prestigous gaming forum member bases on top of that, like IGN/Gamespot and even crappy GameFaqs, considering dupe accounts across sites, you'll probably struggle to hit a few million. The hardcore as we know it are a minority, all the console wars is a minority, all the metacritic chest thumping is a minority.

Like 70% or more of the PS2 owners are probably average gamers buying their console for some select software/because their friends have it/because it was advertised heavily on TV at christmas/for their kids/because it was cheap/because a sales person convinced them.

However discrediting a "majority" of people to the basics of struggling to use a controller, or know how to hookup their 360 to their existing internet connection is going a bit far IMO.

Within the 30 million people who own a 360 many may have spent hours or some time getting their internet working, but they'll have got it going eventually. Not many people will have returned their 360 to Best Buy quoting they couldn't use the controller or didn't know how the internet worked.

Just because some of the more average gamers spend a bit more time learning things than us doesn't mean they're helpless or need to be discredited of the ability to do things we do. Chances are over a few days/weeks they'll use every feature we do on Live, they'll just take a bit more time than us to learn it all.

This all came out of the PS3 hard drive argument I think - If anything the issue with replacing your PS3 hard drive isn't as much the process of doing it, it's being made aware of it/educated that you can do it. Removing the screws is easy, seriously, the majority of people with a PS3 will have some understanding of a screw driver. The drive you need to buy isn't a brand name or anything specific speed/size wise, it's being told it's a laptop drive. Sony do tell you in the manual you can replace the drive, and their tech Support will tell you also, but I don't think it would hurt to put a flyer in every PS3 box advertising it in detail more effectively.

Edited by Audioboxer
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Are you a broken record man? Getting really tired of reading the same replies from you over and over.

Sorry I strained you that much. I just find it important to have games feel properly on their platform.

I like my console for racing, I like my PC for FPS. They should both feel correct. The PS3 blows in smoothness compared to the 360. Those games feel like a 360 port. There is no way NFS was designed for the PS3. It just feels wrong.

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While i feel that the Xbox 360 won't be able to match the graphical power of the ps3 in the long run, i feel that it's far from maxed out. EA is saying they have maxed it, but I haven't seen any EA games that look as good as ones like Gears of War 2, or such.

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Sorry I strained you that much. I just find it important to have games feel properly on their platform.

I like my console for racing, I like my PC for FPS. They should both feel correct. The PS3 blows in smoothness compared to the 360. Those games feel like a 360 port. There is no way NFS was designed for the PS3. It just feels wrong.

Ok fine, I understand your frustration but you don't need to post the almost exact complaint everytime you visit the forum ;)

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Sorry I strained you that much. I just find it important to have games feel properly on their platform.

I like my console for racing, I like my PC for FPS. They should both feel correct. The PS3 blows in smoothness compared to the 360. Those games feel like a 360 port. There is no way NFS was designed for the PS3. It just feels wrong.

On the opposite side compare Burnout Paradise on PS3 and 360. Criterion is well known for their longstanding preference to develop on Playstation hardware as their first target platform and then port to others. I'm interested to see what their next project will look like on 360 and PS3 based on their comments that 360 hasn't been fully tapped yet.

If any team out there has experience tapping the untapped, it's Criterion. Check out Black (very late stage Xbox and PS2 game), it's downloadable on Xbox Originals, and plays in 16:9. Very impressive game. Only runs at 480p, but you could easily confuse it for an early 360 title.

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Hardware specs aside, as I think both systems are equally matched at the end of the day. The other key factor is complexity. As far as I know and have heard, MS makes it as easy as they can for any dev out there to work on the 360. Even going so far as to open it up to novices through XNA which makes it yet again more simple and hassle free.

We've never overcome the fact that the PS3 is a complicated mess to work with, be it due to the cell, or the limits the RSX may have etc. To this day I don't remember one dev, even one of sonys in-house ones, coming out and openly saying the ps3 is easy to work with. Devs in the end of the day don't have all the time in the world. Most have to get something out in 1-2 years tops. Only the really big ones like say Square, can take more time because they know for sure that their next FF will sell millions anyways.

So, either way, are they both maxed out? No. But I think when they are, they'll still be close graphically.

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