Anyway, because I’m in the minority of people who has had a PS3 a lot longer than a 360 (rather than the other way around) I thought someone somewhere might find it interesting to get my impressions, comparing to the PS3, with what will hopefully be a balance between “more comfortable with the old” and “oooh new and shiny it’s the best ever”.

I should point out that my 360 is used.  It’s a launch model, and is fresh back from Microsoft repair (red ring, what else?  Also, “red ring” is a dumb term because the three lights of death do not actually form a ring, do they?)  This shouldn’t really have an effect on my impressions, I just wanted to make sure it was known.

First impression wasn’t great actually, because it came without the power cord that runs from the power brick to the outlet.  How can I blame Microsoft for that?  Because they made it a proprietary cable, for no reason at all.  And you can’t buy them separately, from what I found.  Your only option for an official cable is dropping ~$100 for a new power brick.  Or buying a 3rd-party cable from eBay for 10 bucks.  Or doing what I did, and take some tools to any of the billion computer power cords around the house, channeling out a groove to make it fit into the power brick.

With that out of the way, Microsoft scores points for the AV cable they include, which includes both crappy old composite and decent-baseline-for-HD component plugs.  Compare this with Sony, who give you just the composite cable, so you’re already having to spend more money to get HD output.  Still, at least you can go and buy a standard HDMI cable for cheap (just like you can with newer 360 models).

Once I actually had everything hooked up, I have to say I was a little disappointed at the picture.  Oops, I accidentally knocked the cable to SD output, not HD, let’s just fix that and.. hmm, well I’m still not blown away.  My PS3 (hooked up via HDMI) is crystal clear on both 720p and 1080i, but the 360’s component output has some softness, particularly noticeable on text.  Unfortunately I can’t do a real comparison because my 360 doesn’t have HDMI, and I don’t have component cables for my PS3.  I’m willing to accept that my modest HDTV (Olevia 337H) does not perform well with the component input, but I’d like some sharper text..  perhaps VGA on the 360 would be better?  Still not digital like HDMI but I’d like to give it a try when I have some spare cash.  As a sidenote, the Wii has been bumped down to s-video because of the 360, and it pains me to say there’s not that much of a quality drop

So I don’t like the 360’s blade/dashboard/interface that much.  It works, but it feels slower than it should be, and is very big and bright and.. gamey?  Sony’s XMB interface feels much slicker and streamlined, and works great on the PSP and PS3.  Navigating the dashboard could be more intuitive too - I don’t like how it manages multiple profiles.  The PS3 has it simple, a list is presented when you boot up.  For the 360, I have to actually pay attention to which profile is logged in, then log out and log back in as separate operations.  The Live Arcade store was infinitely better than the PS3’s online store when it launched, but since the new Playstation Store arrived I think Sony again has the edge.

That’s just presentation, however.  As far as content goes, Live Arcade has so much more.  Of course, the 360 has been a year longer than the PS3, but if you look at what gets released each week, it seems like the 360 still gets more (and more interesting) demos.   Microsoft has also shown their willingness to put on specials, like E3 week (not that E3 means much anymore) with fresh content.  Aside from that, every single Live Arcade game gets a trial version, so there’s plenty of stuff to try.  I do prefer Sony’s use of actual dollar amounts rather than Microsoft’s intentionally confusing Points, but I’m sure with time it’ll be an automatic conversion between 800 points and ten bucks.

Our living area has plenty of electronic noise, with up to three computers going, but the 360 is so much louder than them.  And if you’re playing something from a disc, it’s even louder.    The PS3 can get a little “blowy” when the fan kicks in, but it’s still nothing like the 360.  That’s the main reason why the PS3 will remain as primary media player (and I prefer the PS3’s Bluetooth remote to the little 360 remote, with its awkward controls at times), although the Windows Media Center Extender stuff could be interesting; I’ll be giving the Netflix Streaming Plugin a try for sure.

Hmm, what else?  Well there’s the controller..  while the Xbox had a terrible d-pad and the 360’s is somehow worse, I do think Microsoft’s offering is far superior to Sony’s SIXAXIS / Dual Shock 3 for most everything else.  I’m already pretty pissed off with Sony because my SIXAXIS battery has apparently died after just a year of use, and then there was the whole “rumble is last-generation” ridiculousness.  Advantage Microsoft - even without motion control.

So despite the PS3 and 360 being more or less the same (yes, that’s a gross oversimplification) there are still enough differences to make it worthwhile to have both systems if you’re lucky enough to be able to do so.

Plus there’s that little thing known as games

Hope you got your GTAIV from somewhere other than your usual Nottingham branch of GAME, Greg.

_{Why yes, this is a sneaky attempt to get jbury’s post to show up in a Google search for Greg Stephens..}

Play more with Konami ID

hahahaha.
LET ME IN DAMN IT, I WANT MY METAL GEAR ONLINE

Still, the redesign of the piece code to use the GL-like API certainly was time well spent.  Piece manipulation is much smoother now, and I can go back to shuffling tiles around instead of the fade out/in I had to settle for with the software blitting.  I think I’ll make a release soon.

Well, honestly, the DS isn’t particularly suited to streaming/decoding mp3s while doing anything else, like running a game loop.  I’m using Noda’s excellent AS_Lib (essentially a wrapper for Real’s Helix decoder) and it’s playing back, but I can only handle low bitrates and mono.  This isn’t really a problem considering the poor audio playback from the DS without headphones, but I’d be happier if people could just drop the mp3s they want into the music directory without having to reencode.

So I need to speed up Puzl itself.

Puzl expends most CPU time rendering the pieces.  The original version of Puzl (a minigame in my upcoming Paniq title) used the DS’ hardware sprites, which was unsurprisingly much faster.  I switched to software blits because I was running out of addressable sprite memory for very small jigsaw pieces, and running out of sprite memory period for the biggest pieces.  Blitting it myself frees me from sprite memory restrictions but means I’m responsible for transparency and boundary checks, further slowing down rendering.

My solution is to move to the 3D hardware.  Each jigsaw piece is a textured quad, and performance should be much better.  I say should because I haven’t actually written the texture part yet - but the plain quads are certainly nice and fast.  An added benefit is that I should be able to use 16-bit color for the images instead of the paletted version I use now.

Yeah, now that I think about it I don’t have the memory for that

I figure I may as well use my blog again. I’ve looked at it several times a day for the past two years (it’s still my homepage because I’m incredibly lazy) and while I’m now active on other blogs (such as Gaming with Children) there are still times I’d like to jot down my thoughts about my personal projects.

One of which is Puzl, my first homebrew game for the Nintendo DS. The first version has been entered into the NeoFlash Spring Coding Compo, and I’m crossing my fingers to at least get a top 10 place and snag a sweet motion controller for either the DS or PSP. There’ll be a lot more Puzl posts in the future.

Speaking of the DS, one of the new toys I’ve gotten since the blog was last active is a DS Lite. Technically it was Amy’s, but she never uses it, so now this incredibly sexy piece of hardware is mine, ALL MINE! Other new toys? Oh, a Wii and a PS3. And my primary development platform is now OSX. Yeah, lots to talk about now.

I never did finish the game in a week, though

Here’s a pic. Exciting, huh?

Yes, I wrote that mainly to remind myself in the future.