Watching people argue over consoles is hilarious, it's like, "what's better, McDonalds or Buger King?" oh wait, they both suck.
PS3 here, but you won't hear any comment from me about one being better than the other. I don't believe in those stories; what I do think is that one is different than the other. More so; I think its for very good reasons as well. In my opinion PS3 has always tried the "geek approach" whereas the Xbox adapted to what I call the Microsoft philosophy. What that is? Well, my opinion obviously; but Microsoft has always tried hard to provide a platform which was accessible to a majority of people, and allowing them to gain the most out of the environment. Please note that I'm not claiming that they're extremely good (or extremely bad) at it. If you go into those discussions then you'd also need to include Apple in my opinion and that goes way beyond the discussion here. But what I am saying is that in my opinion Xbox always went for a more "consumer friendly" approach whereas the PS3... Well, as said above. I think this requires an example... 2 even. I bought myself a PS3 in a multimedia 'package' many years ago. PS3, PSP and the PSEye. It was the "fat" 80Gb model. First of all it should be noteworthy that the PS3 has had an option to "install other OS" for a long time (it has been removed in recent updates). This allowed geeks (there we go again) to actually install operating systems such as Linux onto the PS3. Actually resulting in PS3 systems which were used to control server farms. Either in the means of a software-based router right down to more mission critical approaches such as firewalls. This is a story which has been circulating in many IT related environments. It doesn't even matter if its a true story or a mere rumor / fantasy. Fact of the matter is that this could have actually happened.... The head of an IT department, the person deeply involved with the administrative sides of the matter (reporting to the board of directors for example) steps into the server room just before the Holiday season and spots a PS3 there. Apparently hooked up but seemingly not doing much. Considering he is the head of the department he considers the device heavily out of place; and his son would love to have a game console. So he shuts it off, unplugs it and takes it home. It took no longer than 30 minutes (we're talking about an enterprise-sized environment here) before the whole IT department was in a state of total panic. As it so happened; that "unused PS3" was actually the main router of the company network, and by removing it the manager had basically shut down that entire network. "oops". But there's more, something much closer to home. The PS3 operated with regular hardware; the hard drive is a mere 2.5"" SATA HDD and the system was designed with the intent of allowing the owner the option to upgrade. Better yet: you didn't even void your warranty with this. And it was easy too: Backup all your data (for example to an external USB HD). This feature is provided by the PS3 itself. Remove 2 (or 3) screws; this will open a panel and then you can pull the HD out. Remove the chassis from the HD and attach it onto the new one (screws). Insert the HD and assemble the system again. And this is where things became really interesting. This is where the Xbox couldn't keep up: Go to the playstation website, download the latest firmware and copy it onto a USB stick. Start your PS3, it'll detect the lack of an OS (and an empty HD); resulting directly in it trying to boot itself from any connected USB devices. Boot the rescue environment ("bootstrap environment"), format the HD and let it copy the system onto it. Reboot your system. And now you got yourself a PS3 back to the default (factory) settings but with a much larger hard disk. All that's left to do is to restore your data and off you go. The reason I know all this? I went from 80Gb to 500Gb myself, at a fraction of the costs of getting an entirely new console. This is unheard of where Xbox is concerned. The Xbox one on the other hand now also provides support for firmware updates, but PS3 took the lead here. Also noteworthy is that this new upgrade feature came with nasty side effects as well. But does this make one console better or worse than the other? Nonsense. I can advocate in both directions. You simply don't need to upgrade your Xbox because Microsoft doesn't sell console's which may risk the owner of quickly running out of disk space. And all those "geek features" might be interesting for geeks; what about regular gamers who simply want to play a game? The main feature of the gaming console? Where us PS3 owners sometimes need to skip through the endless "I upgraded my HD and it no work anymore!" in the Playstation forums, the Xbox owners don't have that problem... Better? worse? Nah: different. PS: what about people who own both consoles?
I don't have a preference, though seeing as how my friends and family have usually used the Xbox, I have Xbox. But PC is what I use the most anyways.
