by Icy Wed Aug 22, 2012 2:40 am
I try and be just meh about this. But lately I've had extensive time on every console and personal not family time at that. Enough time to actually analyze each console's strengths and weaknesses both from a consumer and developer (assume the publishers are first party all the time for the sake of this). And before I get into this, I must state that 98% of the time if the game is MADE for the PC Version; the PC version is better in utterly every respect. It not working on your set-up is not an excuse.
Let's go down the list shall we?
Wii Pros/Cons/Final verdict: It's nintendo, familiarity and likability is guaranteed. Market saturation is not valid, as anyone picking up a second rate title from them will know it. Parent's are no longer annoyingly ignorant and can usually tell. Neither is it the family console anymore. Pick it up if you like the games, but actual opinion is morbidly neutral.
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360 Pros: Massive indie support. A lot of healthy and good ones. As well as games from far more genre's from niche or underdone genre's due to said support. The very literal definition of a pick-me-up-game-console. Really only good here for devs and casual gamers with more time on their hands.
360 Cons: First Party games are actually lacking so so much, most I've seen are basically ports. And they all play klunkily. You don't need twitch hands to play, you need the ability of premonition due to the rather odd lag. Odd pricings that don't add up at all, and practically forces you to crap cash if you decide to take it seriously. No thanks, if I wanted to do that I'd play an F2P game.
360 Verdict: Unless you have friends to play it with, stray the hell away. The PS3 is super cheap now, rendering that previous argument null and void. Again, if you like it. You like it and get it... but these days unless you want an indie market thats more saturated than the PC could ever dream of, you've better options...
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PS3 Pros: Generally a high quality check on most titles. Bugs are not really present in most games in a catastrophic manner unless you would expect them, such as Skyrim's Gamebreaking Bug's that made certain areas or parts of the game inaccessible for some players (Bethesda is known for those bugs on launch; period). The Playstation Network titles are more often than not of quality gameplay and mechanics, even if they don't fit your preferences. The stability is there.
Subjectivism may appear and will do so at times in off the shelf titles. As well as replayability concerns like in other titles. So it's not perfect, but the PS3 does have a particular baseline that it rarely dips below.
PS3 Cons: That same stable baseline means that game's that have the same degree of replayability tend to stagnate meaning you'll rarely either play a game to finish, or get bored and only play it once however much you may have enjoyed it.
With the forced quality control checks, you'll only get niche' titles once in a great blue moon. Meaning that if you are a casual gamer that doesn't have a lot of cash or can even spend cash well, you won't get the most out of these games as unlike the 360 where indie games start off between $1-$5 (regional equivalents are not figured iirc), they average between $9-$20 on the PS3.
PS3 Verdict: So it's good, if you can stick to a particular game for a long length of time that has less than admirable replayability as the content is seldom good for more than a single playthrough, often times even for multiplayer games. Not to say that there aren't, oh there are plenty. But it is less than with other consoles.
(Anyone mention the network glitches, and me and Rodrigo will go all tomahawk on ya'll).
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Up-next I guess I'll compare control schemes if it's actually warranted or wanted.