07-09-2007, 04:07 PM
After what seems like an eternity, the PlayStation 3 is finally ready for the UK. Unlike in the US, the PS3 is only available in one version in Europe -- the high-end model with the 60GB hard drive, built-in Wi-Fi, a multiformat memory card reader and silver trim. It retails for £425. We expect the basic 20GB version, without those features but still with HDMI and Blu-ray, to appear at some point.
That's not the only difference, however. It recently emerged that unlike the US and Japanese models, the European PS3 would not include the PS2's 'Emotion Engine' chip, which enables all PS2 and PSOne games to play without a hitch. Instead, Euro PS3s will use software to emulate the older consoles, and although the majority of previous generation games should play fine, some will not. Sony has promised to improve the list regularly with firmware updates. A full list of compatible games can be found at the official PlayStation 3 Web site.
What matters though is that the PS3 is finally here, and the final product, expensive though it is, is very impressive.
Design
The PS3's sexy shape and futuristic look is ample evidence that Sony's renowned design standards are alive and well. One look at its glossy black exterior and touch-sensitive power and eject buttons on its face, and you can see what you're paying for.
Like the Nintendo Wii, the PS3 has a slot-loading disc drive
Like the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, the PS3 can stand vertically or lie horizontally in an AV rack, though because of its curved top, it's not meant to have any other components resting on top of it.
As for its dimensions, the PS3 measures 99 by 325 by 274mm, a similar size to the Xbox 360. The PS3 does weigh more, but there's no external power supply -- you just plug the power cable into the back of the unit and you're good to go. For those of us who own an Xbox 360, and have had to struggle with its massive brick of a power supply, this seems like a remarkable feat on Sony's part.
Media card readers are located beneath a flip-up door, and four USB ports are nearby
As opposed to the more typical tray loader, the PS3 has a slot-loading, Blu-ray optical-disc drive on the front, which contributes to the unit's slick appearance. Discs slide in and eject smoothly enough, but how the mechanism wears over time, we can't say -- but the odds of snapping off or damaging the Xbox 360's disc tray aren't exactly negligible.
On the front, you'll find four USB ports for connecting (and charging) controllers and other accessories, including USB keyboards, thumbdrives and the PSP. There's also a built-in memory card reader behind a door that supports not only Sony's Memory Stick family, but Compact Flash and SD/MMC cards as well.
You'll find HDMI -- but no USB -- on the rear panel
Around the back you'll find ports for Ethernet, HDMI output, optical digital audio output (SPDIF), and the proprietary PlayStation AV output for analogue audio and video. A composite AV cable ships with the unit, and because it uses the same connector as the PlayStation 2, that system's S-Video and component cables should work with it as well (to get hi-def video, you'll need component or HDMI).
Controller makeover
The single controller that comes with the PS3 is very similar in looks to the traditional PlayStation 2 Dual Shock gamepad, but there are some notable differences. For starters, it's wireless. You can connect as many as seven (!) controllers via the system's built-in Bluetooth, which Sony's claims offers a 20m range.
The wireless controller recharges by connecting via the included USB cable
Recharging the built-in battery simply requires connecting the included USB cable between the console and the controller. You can continue to play as the battery juices up (Sony pledges 30 hours of gameplay between charges), but the cable's short 1.5m length will put you right on top of the TV.
That said, the controller has a standard mini-USB port similar to the one found on many digital cameras and PC peripherals, so using a longer cable -- or a USB extender -- shouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, the battery isn't removable, which means that when it inevitably dies you'll have to replace the entire £35 controller if you want to play wirelessly. By comparison, the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii controllers offer user-replaceable batteries.
The big omission from the controller is force-feedback support: the PS3 controller offers no vibration or rumble control, which is a bummer.
The replacement is something called 'SixAxis' motion-sensing control. Games developers have incorporated it many of the new games in one form or another. For example, in Tony Hawk's Project 8, you can steer your skater and control his movements by tilting the controller from side to side and forwards and back. Sony's NBA '07 basketball game also makes interesting use of the tilt feature, allowing you to control a player's attacking moves and fakes.
Unlike the PS2 controller, the SixAxis controller has a centred Home button, which functions much like its counterpart on the Xbox 360 controller. You use it to return to the console's main menu screen, as well as to sync the controller to the console and start it up or shut it down wirelessly.
The SixAxis controller: not rumbling but tilting
Familiar interface
If you own a Sony PSP, you'll immediately notice the similarities between the PS3's interface and the PSP's cross media bar-style graphical-user interface (GUI). You navigate horizontally through top-level selection categories such as users, system settings and media options -- photos, music, videos, games, network and friends. When you select a top-level category, a vertical list of sub-options appears.
The interface is polished and generally user-friendly, but you do have to drill down a few levels to reach certain features, and getting to some functions isn't quite as intuitive as it should be. Still, the overall design is slick enough to be called Mac-esque, and -- at least from an aesthetic standpoint -- is more appealing than the Xbox 360's Dashboard and Nintendo Wii's Channels interfaces.
Digital media hub
The PS3's media features are extensive -- so much so that the console could be a worthwhile purchase even for people who never even deign to fire up a game. For starters, the PlayStation 3 hits the shelves as the most affordable Blu-ray player you can buy.
The PS3 can also read digital photos from a variety of USB devices. A few different slide show styles are available, including a unique 'photo album' view that splays the images across a white work surface as if you'd dumped them there and spread them out.
As for music, the PS3 supports most of the major music formats and like the Xbox 360, has a built-in music visualiser. As with the photos, you can import songs from a flash memory card or a USB drive, or rip songs directly to the hard drive from a CD. It cannot play back music from attached iPods, nor can it stream from other music players that incorporate copy-protected music formats.
On the video front, the PS3 plays Blu-ray discs in full high-definition as well as DVD movies. It also supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/H.264 video files from flash, USB or discs. If you transfer the videos to the PS3's hard drive, thumbnails on the video menu are shown as 15-second video clips, rather than just as still images of the first frame of the video.
Brilliantly, you can stream video from your PS3 to your PSP using the Remote Play feature. Sony hasn't yet provided a way to convert videos from its PlayStation Store to a portable size for your PSP. But we've been told to expect tighter integration with the PSP both offline and online in the future.
Taking a page out of the PSP's book, the PS3 also has a built-in Web browser. You can connect a USB keyboard to make typing in URL addresses easier. Likewise, a USB mouse lets you point and click your way through a Web page, just as if you were on a PC. The system will eventually allow you to pair the PS3 with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which is probably the ideal setup for living-room use. We were able to pair a Plantronics mobile phone headset with no issues, so the Bluetooth function definitely works for third-party products.
Movie watching
Watching on one of the finest large-screen TVs available, a 60-inch Sony Bravia, we watched several scenes from Mission: Impossible III on the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player and PS3. Interestingly, load times were essentially identical at 40 seconds on each player. That isn't terrible, but this is obviously an area where Sony can make some improvements in the future with a next-generation drive that's faster.
As for the picture, it was quite comparable to what we saw on the Samsung, and navigating the disc was a fairly zippy process. In other words, at first glance, the PS3 seems to stack up fairly well against Blu-ray players costing significantly more, although prices are beginning to drop.
Furthermore, the PS3 is the first AV device to hit the market to utilise the HDMI 1.3 specification. That doesn't mean much now -- HDMI 1.3 TVs are only beginning to come on the market. But in the future that should enable the PS3 to pass hi-def video and next-gen surround-sound audio (such as Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD) to compatible AV receivers via a single HDMI cable.
If we have one complaint with the PS3's media features, it's that it doesn't upscale standard DVDs to hi-def resolutions, a feature that's standard on other Blu-ray and HD DVD players. Instead, they default to 576p (progressive scan). There are strong rumours that this functionality will soon be added in a firmware update, however.
Accessing Blu-ray and DVD menus with the PS3 controller is functional, if awkward. Unfortunately, you won't be able to program a standard universal remote to control your PS3 -- it lacks an infrared port, so it needs to receive commands via Bluetooth. Not coincidentally, Sony offers a Bluetooth-compatible remote.
The PlayStation Network
Sony's PlayStation Network is similar, in functionality at least, to Microsoft's Xbox Live service, including typical online gaming features along with community and messaging, as well as voice and video chat further down the road. There's one big difference: PlayStation Network is free. Xbox Live has a free entry-level service, but to play online multiplayer games you have to upgrade to the Xbox Live Gold service, which is around £35 per year.
The promise of free online play is obviously a big plus in Sony's favour. That said, Xbox Live has been around for years and has had time to mature, and the majority of Xbox 360 games offer some form of online play. Not all of the initial PS3 titles offer online gameplay, but there are some showcases -- Resistance: Fall of Man is designed to handle online fragfests with as many as 40 players per match.
Microsoft has its Xbox Live Marketplace, where you can download games, demos, video content -- including, in the US, full-length movies and TV shows in high-definition -- as well as game themes and additional game content. The PlayStation Store will offer similar options and functionality but it will probably take several months to flush out and reach a level of richness approaching that of Xbox Live.
Also, keep in mind that despite the PS3 online play being ostensibly free, Sony and its third-party publishers -- just like Microsoft and Nintendo -- will aggressively push 'micro-transactions' (paying small amounts for additional levels, in-game extras, retro games and other goodies). Instead of the points-based payment system found on Microsoft and Nintendo's networks, Sony says it will stick to real-world currency -- pounds and pence -- so users can simply transfer cash to their PlayStation 3 Wallet via credit card or with prepaid gift cards.
A recently announced development in the PS3's online offering is Home, a virtual world where you can create and customise an avatar and your own apartment, meet friends, voice chat and interact with strangers. There will be plenty of scope for downloadable clothes, furniture and the like, although user-generated content will be moderated for public consumption.
Invite your mates round to your swanky gaff in Home, the PS3's customisable virtual world
How Home will interact with other elements of the PlayStation Network remains to be seen, but there is the potential for some impressive cross-pollination -- such as walking into a cinema in Home, paying for a ticket and then watching a streaming hi-def movie.
Cell inside
The PlayStation 3's 3.2GHz Cell processor was built from the ground up primarily for the PS3. It consists of a single PowerPC-based core with seven complementary processing units.
The key thing to know about the Cell is that it has the juice to run a new class of gameplay physics that will allow developers to create spectacular effects and eventually provide a whole new depth of realism to games. Cell is paired with PlayStation 3's RSX 'Reality Synthesiser' graphics-processing unit -- a gargantuan 550MHz, 300-million-transistor graphics chip based on Nvidia's GeForce 7800 GTX graphics technology. You're looking at a very high-end PC here.
What's impressive about the PS3, in fact, is that with all this power under the hood, the system runs as quietly as it does. After running for three hours straight, we found that we could still place a hand over the back of the unit and not be scorched -- the system runs pretty warm, but not blazingly hot. For such a quiet system, this is very impressive. While the 360's tendency to overheat has been exaggerated, its cooling fan and DVD drive are far noisier, sometimes to the point of distraction.
Play time
It's very hard to tell the difference between titles that are already available on the 360 and their PS3 counterparts, because they're ports of the same game. Where you start to see some of the promise is in Sony's in-house titles, such as Resistance: Fall of Man and NBA '07. Formula One Championship Edition is another title that jumps out at you graphically.
The long and short of it is that the PS3 clearly measures up to the Xbox 360 in terms of its graphics prowess. That said, there really isn't anything available yet that's unique or so far beyond what the Xbox 360 offers that you think, "I have to get this system to play that game." The reality is you're going to have to wait for that killer app. (Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, due later this year, is currently generating plenty of buzz and will almost certainly be a PS3 exclusive.)
Conclusion
The big question, of course, is whether the PS3 is £150 better than the Xbox 360. From a purely gaming perspective, the short answer is: no, not today. As with any new gaming system, you're going to have to wait at least a year before you see game developers begin to get the most out of the PS3, and right now, there isn't a game out there that's able to beat the best titles on the Xbox 360.
The PS3 is a versatile and impressive piece of home-entertainment equipment that lives up to the hype. In terms of design and in-the-box features, however, the value is evident: the PS3 is well worth its hefty price tag.
That's not the only difference, however. It recently emerged that unlike the US and Japanese models, the European PS3 would not include the PS2's 'Emotion Engine' chip, which enables all PS2 and PSOne games to play without a hitch. Instead, Euro PS3s will use software to emulate the older consoles, and although the majority of previous generation games should play fine, some will not. Sony has promised to improve the list regularly with firmware updates. A full list of compatible games can be found at the official PlayStation 3 Web site.
What matters though is that the PS3 is finally here, and the final product, expensive though it is, is very impressive.
Design
The PS3's sexy shape and futuristic look is ample evidence that Sony's renowned design standards are alive and well. One look at its glossy black exterior and touch-sensitive power and eject buttons on its face, and you can see what you're paying for.
Like the Nintendo Wii, the PS3 has a slot-loading disc drive
Like the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, the PS3 can stand vertically or lie horizontally in an AV rack, though because of its curved top, it's not meant to have any other components resting on top of it.
As for its dimensions, the PS3 measures 99 by 325 by 274mm, a similar size to the Xbox 360. The PS3 does weigh more, but there's no external power supply -- you just plug the power cable into the back of the unit and you're good to go. For those of us who own an Xbox 360, and have had to struggle with its massive brick of a power supply, this seems like a remarkable feat on Sony's part.
Media card readers are located beneath a flip-up door, and four USB ports are nearby
As opposed to the more typical tray loader, the PS3 has a slot-loading, Blu-ray optical-disc drive on the front, which contributes to the unit's slick appearance. Discs slide in and eject smoothly enough, but how the mechanism wears over time, we can't say -- but the odds of snapping off or damaging the Xbox 360's disc tray aren't exactly negligible.
On the front, you'll find four USB ports for connecting (and charging) controllers and other accessories, including USB keyboards, thumbdrives and the PSP. There's also a built-in memory card reader behind a door that supports not only Sony's Memory Stick family, but Compact Flash and SD/MMC cards as well.
You'll find HDMI -- but no USB -- on the rear panel
Around the back you'll find ports for Ethernet, HDMI output, optical digital audio output (SPDIF), and the proprietary PlayStation AV output for analogue audio and video. A composite AV cable ships with the unit, and because it uses the same connector as the PlayStation 2, that system's S-Video and component cables should work with it as well (to get hi-def video, you'll need component or HDMI).
Controller makeover
The single controller that comes with the PS3 is very similar in looks to the traditional PlayStation 2 Dual Shock gamepad, but there are some notable differences. For starters, it's wireless. You can connect as many as seven (!) controllers via the system's built-in Bluetooth, which Sony's claims offers a 20m range.
The wireless controller recharges by connecting via the included USB cable
Recharging the built-in battery simply requires connecting the included USB cable between the console and the controller. You can continue to play as the battery juices up (Sony pledges 30 hours of gameplay between charges), but the cable's short 1.5m length will put you right on top of the TV.
That said, the controller has a standard mini-USB port similar to the one found on many digital cameras and PC peripherals, so using a longer cable -- or a USB extender -- shouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, the battery isn't removable, which means that when it inevitably dies you'll have to replace the entire £35 controller if you want to play wirelessly. By comparison, the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii controllers offer user-replaceable batteries.
The big omission from the controller is force-feedback support: the PS3 controller offers no vibration or rumble control, which is a bummer.
The replacement is something called 'SixAxis' motion-sensing control. Games developers have incorporated it many of the new games in one form or another. For example, in Tony Hawk's Project 8, you can steer your skater and control his movements by tilting the controller from side to side and forwards and back. Sony's NBA '07 basketball game also makes interesting use of the tilt feature, allowing you to control a player's attacking moves and fakes.
Unlike the PS2 controller, the SixAxis controller has a centred Home button, which functions much like its counterpart on the Xbox 360 controller. You use it to return to the console's main menu screen, as well as to sync the controller to the console and start it up or shut it down wirelessly.
The SixAxis controller: not rumbling but tilting
Familiar interface
If you own a Sony PSP, you'll immediately notice the similarities between the PS3's interface and the PSP's cross media bar-style graphical-user interface (GUI). You navigate horizontally through top-level selection categories such as users, system settings and media options -- photos, music, videos, games, network and friends. When you select a top-level category, a vertical list of sub-options appears.
The interface is polished and generally user-friendly, but you do have to drill down a few levels to reach certain features, and getting to some functions isn't quite as intuitive as it should be. Still, the overall design is slick enough to be called Mac-esque, and -- at least from an aesthetic standpoint -- is more appealing than the Xbox 360's Dashboard and Nintendo Wii's Channels interfaces.
Digital media hub
The PS3's media features are extensive -- so much so that the console could be a worthwhile purchase even for people who never even deign to fire up a game. For starters, the PlayStation 3 hits the shelves as the most affordable Blu-ray player you can buy.
The PS3 can also read digital photos from a variety of USB devices. A few different slide show styles are available, including a unique 'photo album' view that splays the images across a white work surface as if you'd dumped them there and spread them out.
As for music, the PS3 supports most of the major music formats and like the Xbox 360, has a built-in music visualiser. As with the photos, you can import songs from a flash memory card or a USB drive, or rip songs directly to the hard drive from a CD. It cannot play back music from attached iPods, nor can it stream from other music players that incorporate copy-protected music formats.
On the video front, the PS3 plays Blu-ray discs in full high-definition as well as DVD movies. It also supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/H.264 video files from flash, USB or discs. If you transfer the videos to the PS3's hard drive, thumbnails on the video menu are shown as 15-second video clips, rather than just as still images of the first frame of the video.
Brilliantly, you can stream video from your PS3 to your PSP using the Remote Play feature. Sony hasn't yet provided a way to convert videos from its PlayStation Store to a portable size for your PSP. But we've been told to expect tighter integration with the PSP both offline and online in the future.
Taking a page out of the PSP's book, the PS3 also has a built-in Web browser. You can connect a USB keyboard to make typing in URL addresses easier. Likewise, a USB mouse lets you point and click your way through a Web page, just as if you were on a PC. The system will eventually allow you to pair the PS3 with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which is probably the ideal setup for living-room use. We were able to pair a Plantronics mobile phone headset with no issues, so the Bluetooth function definitely works for third-party products.
Movie watching
Watching on one of the finest large-screen TVs available, a 60-inch Sony Bravia, we watched several scenes from Mission: Impossible III on the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray player and PS3. Interestingly, load times were essentially identical at 40 seconds on each player. That isn't terrible, but this is obviously an area where Sony can make some improvements in the future with a next-generation drive that's faster.
As for the picture, it was quite comparable to what we saw on the Samsung, and navigating the disc was a fairly zippy process. In other words, at first glance, the PS3 seems to stack up fairly well against Blu-ray players costing significantly more, although prices are beginning to drop.
Furthermore, the PS3 is the first AV device to hit the market to utilise the HDMI 1.3 specification. That doesn't mean much now -- HDMI 1.3 TVs are only beginning to come on the market. But in the future that should enable the PS3 to pass hi-def video and next-gen surround-sound audio (such as Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD) to compatible AV receivers via a single HDMI cable.
If we have one complaint with the PS3's media features, it's that it doesn't upscale standard DVDs to hi-def resolutions, a feature that's standard on other Blu-ray and HD DVD players. Instead, they default to 576p (progressive scan). There are strong rumours that this functionality will soon be added in a firmware update, however.
Accessing Blu-ray and DVD menus with the PS3 controller is functional, if awkward. Unfortunately, you won't be able to program a standard universal remote to control your PS3 -- it lacks an infrared port, so it needs to receive commands via Bluetooth. Not coincidentally, Sony offers a Bluetooth-compatible remote.
The PlayStation Network
Sony's PlayStation Network is similar, in functionality at least, to Microsoft's Xbox Live service, including typical online gaming features along with community and messaging, as well as voice and video chat further down the road. There's one big difference: PlayStation Network is free. Xbox Live has a free entry-level service, but to play online multiplayer games you have to upgrade to the Xbox Live Gold service, which is around £35 per year.
The promise of free online play is obviously a big plus in Sony's favour. That said, Xbox Live has been around for years and has had time to mature, and the majority of Xbox 360 games offer some form of online play. Not all of the initial PS3 titles offer online gameplay, but there are some showcases -- Resistance: Fall of Man is designed to handle online fragfests with as many as 40 players per match.
Microsoft has its Xbox Live Marketplace, where you can download games, demos, video content -- including, in the US, full-length movies and TV shows in high-definition -- as well as game themes and additional game content. The PlayStation Store will offer similar options and functionality but it will probably take several months to flush out and reach a level of richness approaching that of Xbox Live.
Also, keep in mind that despite the PS3 online play being ostensibly free, Sony and its third-party publishers -- just like Microsoft and Nintendo -- will aggressively push 'micro-transactions' (paying small amounts for additional levels, in-game extras, retro games and other goodies). Instead of the points-based payment system found on Microsoft and Nintendo's networks, Sony says it will stick to real-world currency -- pounds and pence -- so users can simply transfer cash to their PlayStation 3 Wallet via credit card or with prepaid gift cards.
A recently announced development in the PS3's online offering is Home, a virtual world where you can create and customise an avatar and your own apartment, meet friends, voice chat and interact with strangers. There will be plenty of scope for downloadable clothes, furniture and the like, although user-generated content will be moderated for public consumption.
Invite your mates round to your swanky gaff in Home, the PS3's customisable virtual world
How Home will interact with other elements of the PlayStation Network remains to be seen, but there is the potential for some impressive cross-pollination -- such as walking into a cinema in Home, paying for a ticket and then watching a streaming hi-def movie.
Cell inside
The PlayStation 3's 3.2GHz Cell processor was built from the ground up primarily for the PS3. It consists of a single PowerPC-based core with seven complementary processing units.
The key thing to know about the Cell is that it has the juice to run a new class of gameplay physics that will allow developers to create spectacular effects and eventually provide a whole new depth of realism to games. Cell is paired with PlayStation 3's RSX 'Reality Synthesiser' graphics-processing unit -- a gargantuan 550MHz, 300-million-transistor graphics chip based on Nvidia's GeForce 7800 GTX graphics technology. You're looking at a very high-end PC here.
What's impressive about the PS3, in fact, is that with all this power under the hood, the system runs as quietly as it does. After running for three hours straight, we found that we could still place a hand over the back of the unit and not be scorched -- the system runs pretty warm, but not blazingly hot. For such a quiet system, this is very impressive. While the 360's tendency to overheat has been exaggerated, its cooling fan and DVD drive are far noisier, sometimes to the point of distraction.
Play time
It's very hard to tell the difference between titles that are already available on the 360 and their PS3 counterparts, because they're ports of the same game. Where you start to see some of the promise is in Sony's in-house titles, such as Resistance: Fall of Man and NBA '07. Formula One Championship Edition is another title that jumps out at you graphically.
The long and short of it is that the PS3 clearly measures up to the Xbox 360 in terms of its graphics prowess. That said, there really isn't anything available yet that's unique or so far beyond what the Xbox 360 offers that you think, "I have to get this system to play that game." The reality is you're going to have to wait for that killer app. (Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, due later this year, is currently generating plenty of buzz and will almost certainly be a PS3 exclusive.)
Conclusion
The big question, of course, is whether the PS3 is £150 better than the Xbox 360. From a purely gaming perspective, the short answer is: no, not today. As with any new gaming system, you're going to have to wait at least a year before you see game developers begin to get the most out of the PS3, and right now, there isn't a game out there that's able to beat the best titles on the Xbox 360.
The PS3 is a versatile and impressive piece of home-entertainment equipment that lives up to the hype. In terms of design and in-the-box features, however, the value is evident: the PS3 is well worth its hefty price tag.