As for ergonomics: maybe my hands are crippled after being a PlayStation user for the past 12 years, but I do find it 'perfect'. Maybe my hands fit the size better. Strangely, the first PS controller with sticks that came out during the PlayStation days was a bit larger. I have no idea why they made the little arms smaller again.
There's one more thing that annoys me about the X360 controller: I absolutely can't stand the asymmetrical placing of the analog thumb sticks. I get that some find it more confortable like this, but I'd much rather have them in the same position on both sides. It just feels so much better playing first person shooters (IMO).
This does seem to be a very common issue. People are used to the controller they've "grown up with". I suspect that's one of the main reasons Sony had to ditch the boomerang. Personally, I really love the ergonomics of the 360 controller, and the way they added the Chatpad was genius. The PS3 chatpad seems a little forced, hanging off the top like that. Since I never owned a console before the 360, I never got used to the analog sticks being in the same plane. (Actually, I lie. I owned an Intellivision, the 360 controller is a big step up
from this)
I'm amused you feel the Sony stick is better for FPS games, considering the XBox brand is considered the king of console FPS games
Me, I'm not really a FPS kind of person. I used to get creamed in Quake at university, and I couldn't even get past the first level of Halo 3... on easy... I'm that bad.
Point taken and I agree. However, I am (fortunately) not one of those and inform myself well. There are others too that do the math, even some game stores (always depends in whos favour their selling though), but for the most part and as the selling curves show, most probably aren't.
The other thing about those games (Bioshock, Oblivion, Gears of War)... they might be great games, but for some odd reason, they just don't appeal to me as much as say MGS or other games do.
Well, I didn't like Bioshock either, and I only liked Gears because it was just so beautifully rendered. I played it through just to watch it. (some of these games need "movie mode" where you just watch a playthrough like a movie
) The Ad for gears (
this one) was brilliant and sold the game for me.
But to each his own. My all time favourite games on the platform are Kameo, Mass Effect, Oblivion, Fable and Fable 2, and Jade Empire (which isn't technically a 360 game, it's for the original XBox, but runs beautifully). All of which, except for oblivion, are exclusive. Runners up would be Assassin's creed and Mirror's Edge (Again the
ad sold it) both of which are almost identical on the two platforms.
From what I've seen on the PS3, it's sorely lacking in the types of games I play (RPGs, both western and japanese), and the ones it
does have are also on the 360. For me, games are about story, not about frustrating gameplay. I tend to give up on a game if it gets frustrating, and I play on the easiest settings whenever possible
That's a good point, and any audiophile's choice would be clear on that front. Perhaps as clear as I probably am with my preferences. It's also not a question of me being unaware of some of the X360's capabilities either - I've used one before, I read alot about it and I have friends who own one. It's just that in the areas that are subjective to most (content, appearance, marketing behind it, to a degree technology), I guess I'm clearly on the fence of the PS3 camp. I just like the way they do things better.
Then there's the geek in me, that likes the content they've [Sony] packed in: Bluray, harddrive, Cell. Even if the advantages can be argued to it being a mear potential (maybe even a wasted one) since it's down to how developers use it, the geek in me still finds it great.
I'm with you there. The tech in the PS3 is pretty awesome, although as an ex member of the HD DVD effort, I'm still sulking at bluray
But it's not snazzy tech that makes a console, it's developer support.. ie.. games. And, unfortunately, the snazzier the tech, in general, the harder it is to work with. The 360 has it's share of snazzy tech too. The GPU is pretty awesome, and the tesselation engine is nice too, but again, no one uses it much yet. Some of the hardware and software security design, which I'm not allowed to talk about, is also pretty amazing, and it's a dream to develop on. The amount of control you have is insane. (Try Windows Mobile if you want painful development...)
Also, I haven't managed to get two audiophiles to ever agree on
anything. Some of them still insist they can tell the difference between uncompressed PCM and lossless compression even after double blind tests show they really can't. Some of them believe that copying an audio file from one computer to another one changes the audio, despite binary comparisons proving them wrong. So I tend to take anything they say about the quality of audio equipment with a grain of salt. I mean, these are people that believe
tube amps are the holy grail. Random added white noise for the win.
