By Mark Thompson
Over the next 18 months the 3 giants of the Games Console worldwill be battling it out in stores and homes across Europe,America and Asia for the title of the world greatest GamesConsole. The stakes are high in this multi billion dollarbusiness, not just for the console sales but for the games salesthat go along side it. Since the launch announcements of all 3consoles in May at the E3 conference in LA. The 3 combatantshave been vying for the millions of column inches that have beenwritten about the Next Generation Consoles. Each Press releasehas been hotly followed by another press release from a rivalcompany so much so that extracting the facts from all the hypehas been nearly impossible. At the launch press conferencesMicrosoft boasted that the Xbox 360 could do9-billion-dot-product-operations per second. Sony then came outand said that the PS3 could do 51-billion-dot-product-operationsper second however Sony had combined the CPU and GPU performancenumbers whilst Microsoft only reported its CPU performancenumber. When the consumer is up against this sort of publicityblizzard it is best not to believe a thing until you can checkthe facts for yourself.
So what do we know?
Well for the Xbox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3 we have lots oflists of hardware and specifications which actually don't meanvery much in isolation. The main thing that need concern us arethe processor speeds and they are both stated as being 3.2 GHzThe only time that the hardware will mean anything is when weget to run them side by side and then if experience is anythingto go by the difference in real life performance won't benoticeable and will just be used by the press departments tobattle it out.
Despite all the press releases and information that has beenspewing out of the headquarters of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendowe actually know very few facts.
We know that in all likelihood the Xbox 360 will be on theshelves in time for Christmas, Amazon are currently takingpre-delivery orders and are quoting a release date of November28th. The prices have been set at $299 for the Core System and$399 for the Xbox 360, the difference being that the Core systemdoesn't have the external hard drive required to save games anddownload new content or the headset required to play online onXbox Live! Why 2 prices? and why a version that hasn't goteverything included? This looks very much like a product of themarketing department trying to get a product at the historicallyimportant sub $300 level more than anything and this maybackfire on them in the long run.
Next to hit the Shelves will be Sony's Playstation 3 supposedlyin spring next year once again we have very few facts to go on,Sony are continually releasing press releases and mentioning inpublic that the price will be high and the figure of $500 hasbeen mentioned but many industry experts suspect that this is aploy so that when they release it at $300 or $350 it will looklike a bargain. The final console to hit the shelves will be theNintendo Revolution some time late in 2006 and 2007. Since the"launch" at E3 this year very little has been said about it byNintendo. It seems at this time the "Launch" was just a way todeflect some of the publicity away from Microsoft and Sony.
One fact is certain, If Microsoft do get the Xbox 360 onto theshelves before Christmas it will be this year's biggest sellingChristmas gift. So until you get your hands on one of theconsoles.. Question everything
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