So I just got a PS3 for Black Friday and 5 games: Little Big Planet, God of War Collection, MGS4, Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena, and GT5: Prologue (Is GT5 ever coming out? This is the Duke Nukem of racing games.) After spending a good amount of time this weekend playing it, I've noticed a subtle difference between the design philosophies behind the 360 and the PS3. Namely, how each console prints money and the quality of games on both. I doubt this is anything new or shocking to anyone whose had either or both of these systems, but I think it's worth noting.

On the money thing: Sony bills the PS3 as the system that can do everything. It does a lot of things for sure, but not everything equally well. The media integration is excellent for people looking for another place to store their music, photos, and videos. The controller is excellent (although the SixAxis functionality is kinda gimmicky). The PS Store and online connection controls are robust and well thought out, unlike the 360's blade system. In short, the PS3 is a good value.

However, they are very blatant about microtransactions. I tried Home for about 10 minutes before I was literally pissed off at how much advertising there was in this Sims-like (barely) experience. They charge .99 for each item you want to add to your virtual me, which is actually a pretty reasonable price...until you realize what you are buying. Granted, there are some cool items - the Ryu getup from SFIV, for example - but the Home experience is minimalized by the other, much cooler things about the PS3. Your Home avatar is only accessible through Home and not the main hub of the system. If this is how they are promoting games, demos, trailers, etc., count me out. I prefer Major Nelson's inane previews and Jessica Chobot's "tips" to this. At least they use actual money, and not Microsoft-style banana dollars, in their pricing.

The 360, in my experience, has been good about offering free things when possible and suggesting paid DLC when I might actually want it. Where the blade system is bad about indexing every bit of this content (it takes a while to find and access content for games that aren't currently the new hotness), it makes up for it by promoting deals on semi-older Arcade titles and map packs for games people actually play. There is free stuff on the PS store, but you have to really look for it beyond demos (not very many compared to the 360).


Dollah bills, y'all.

On the quality of games: One of the main reasons I purchased a PS3 was to play some exclusives. Of the 5 games, 4 of them are PS3-exclusive (God of War Collection is an exclusive, on a technicality). These games are really good. I haven't had a bad experience playing any of the exclusives and they represent the kind of quality I was looking for.

However, I was somewhat disappointed by the lack of PS3 exclusives when I was taking up Gamestop on their "Buy 2, Get 1 Free" deal. I literally searched for about 20 minutes looking for games I could only play on the PS3 and the good majority of them were multi-platform titles (which is how I ended up with Riddick). I would have purchased Valkryia Chronicles if they had it, but it looks to be somewhat rare. I'm not sure why, but I find the 360 has more 360-only titles. Going into my PS3 purchase, I was worried about this disparity, but hey - at least I finally get to know what happens to Solid Snake.

Also, the good games are really good, but the mediocre games...are really bad. Riddick is easily the least favorite of the 5 I got, mostly because it feels like a phoned-in effort by the developers. I liked Escape From Butcher Bay a lot (especially for a game based on a movie premise), but Assault on Dark Athena is so...meh. I felt like I could have been playing this on the original Xbox/PS2 and thought much better things about it. The mediocre games on the 360 can be really bad (The Last Remnant, anyone?), but at least they have redeeming qualities/interesting ideas. If I'm playing a game on a Blu-Ray disc, I expect more than Betamax-style design logic behind it, ok? I want the graphics to blow my mind, the loading times to be minimal, and the games to be FUN.


This is so 2004.

There are other things worth comparing between the two consoles and I don't want to start a flame war, but these are really the two things that popped out in my mind. Feel free to disagree. I'm very happy to finally own all three of the current gen consoles. Also, any games worth buying that are PS3-exclusive?