Ill copy and paste reviews of them and then wirte my review.
Xbox360 review:I recently had a Microsoft Xbox 360 on loan to have a play and review. Here I give you an overall impression of an XBox 360 from the time we had it for.
The package sent contained, the unit itself, power supply, two cordless controllers, 6 games and the remote.
Games
The games included with the package (from top left to bottom right) were: beatem' up, Dead or Alive 4 (DOA); first person shooter, Far cry Instincts:Predator;car racing game, Project Gotham Racing 3 (PGR); first person stealth game, Perfect Dark; and the role playing game (RPG) Kameo and the first person shooter, Call of Duty 2.
I won't go into great details on the games, but will say this for Kameo: it's always good to see a new idea come forward and I think the developers of this game have done well. The game appears to have a lot of playability to it by providing the gamer with a host puzzles and the means to solve those puzzles through use of their morphing character. Throw in some good old beatem' up action and here's a game that combines a number of genres and does it well. The interface was pretty easy, the in-game camera was good (ie, wasn't annoying) and the game moved at a reasonable enough pace to hold the interest of myself and my friends, which is hard to do these days.
Perfect Dark is also worth mentioning, in that it's a Splinter Cell style game that offers a slower pace to the action with the use of your available arsenal/toolkits to move through the levels.
As for the others, none of them particularly took my fancy. There wasn't anything I would say makes them stand out. I've evolved past a game simply needing nice graphics for me to be interested, there has to be some substance that I can get my teeth in to, not that I'm saying nice graphics aren't good. Of course, all of this differs from person to person, much like art.
Returning back to the console itself. The construction of the 360 is good. It has smooth curves and looks attractive in the cream/white.
It's quite a heavy beast, especially when compared with my PlayStation2, Nintendo Gamecube or even my old xbox.
Inputs & Outputs
It comes with a massive external power supply that even has a light to indicate it's operational state.
The power adapter ends in a large connector, with small release buttons on either side:
This clicks nicely when plugged in and eliminates the risk it of coming loose. Though this left me wondering why it was designed like this as I don't know to many people who move their consoles around, especially seeing that the risk of "cord yank" is eliminated by the controllers being wireless.
The audio/visual outputs have a TV / HDTV (High Definition TV) switch, which shows there is high res support out the box. The connector I had also came with a SCART adapter for the component plugs. Now if only I could get someone to send me an HDTV...
Once I'd connected all the various plugs (including Ethernet) I fired up the console. The splash screen comes up almost instantly and once through the animation brings up the four tabs; XBox Live, Games, Media & System.
360 menus
The "XBox Live" tab allows you to go online, message your friends and interact with the "Live" component of games.
The "Games" tab shows you information about games you've played, trailers and demos.
The 360 takes a new profile approach to storing your game info. When someone picks up a controller, they must "sign-in" as a profile user. This means that you can have multiple people with multiple profiles all playing through the same console. Of course this caused a moment of confusion when we stuck in the first game (PGR) and simply wanted to start racing head to head with one another.
There was actually a requirement to read what the instructions were saying! At first this is even somewhat annoying, as you simply want to game and you're suddenly presented with the concept of signing in and setting up your profile. However, once you get used to the idea, you realise the benefits and it becomes second nature.
"Media" tab lets you use the 360 as a pass through to playback music, watch DVDs, manage your media player and interact with the hard disk add-on (and I will come back to this tab later):
Finally, the "System" tab gives you access to all aspects of console configuration, including parental locks, refresh rates (50/60Hz), memory card management, network settings, etc etc.
Media Playback
Returning back to the Media tab
I was quite interested in having a play with this. Unfortunately I discovered quickly that you must be running Windows Media Center edition on another PC to actually support "Video" playback (obviously for DRM). However, I figured that "Windows Media Connect" should be enough to allow some audio/picture streaming and a quick look online confirmed this.
I downloaded the latest version (which requires Windows Genuine Advantage validation) and setup some specific folders to share, rather than exposing everything. It was trouble free actually, and once completed I could play music through the 360 and view a slideshow of pictures (even together if you wish).
Music Player
The music player is again fairly basic. List by genre, artist or album, then play specific tracks or the album, create/edit playlists of combinations. I didn't see a short cut for random playing of a genre but then again I didn't look to hard.
The music player supports a huge amount of visualisation options that can be changed with the should triggers. They can also be switched into full screen mode.
Picture Viewer
The picture viewer is fairly raw and simply orders all folders alphabetically, flattening the folder trees, which the shows all folders by their name. You then navigate into the folder and can view specific pictures, or opt for a slideshow.
There are delays as it copies large picture files from the remote computer to the 360.
However it is nice that the 360 performs display rotations and scaling for the TV. It does a good job of sorting all this out, so it offers you a convenient way to view your digital pictures with friends rather than simply gathering around a laptop or PC.
Controllers
The controllers themselves were fairly weighty but it is nice to use wireless controllers and I noticed no lag between my actions and the response.
A nice touch is the green light around the 'x' symbol which has four quadrants, one for each controller. A quadrant is turned on depending upon which controller you are active as.
The green light around the power switch on the console then copies this by lighting it's quadrants to match the active controllers.
Had they the room a battery compartment could have been placed inside each handle themselves, and sealed them with a screw cap. Unfortunately the battery compartment appears almost as an after thought on the underside of the controller. Kinda like, "Hey! It's wireless, where are we going to put the batteries?!".
There are also interface connectors front and back to add in the Live headset directly to the controller. The controller takes two AA size batteries.
Summary
Overall my impressions of the 360 were positive. The only downside that I would have to note would be the loud noise the ROM drive makes as it's streaming off the game disks. It is quite noisy, so playing quietly at night (with the sound turned down) really isn't an option.
I personally didn't notice the console getting hot, but only ran it for about 4 hours when playing with it.
As with all consoles during their initial release the developers are still exploring the limits of the hardware. Though this should be faster with the 360 as it's based on PC hardware.
"Lost Planet" which is an RPG trailer included with the console was an example of this. It certainly punishes the console as a number of in game screens were noticeably dropping frames, still it does look nice and appears to have an interesting enough plot (graphics aside).
If asked whether I'd buy a 360? Yeah, I probably will, but not until their price has come down considerably. Of course by this time, the console will be into it's n'th iteration of hardware revisions and with luck the ROM drive will be a lot quieter. Of course coupling it with Windows Media Center would be interesting to provide a more complete entertainment centre experience.
Pros
Next generation console, with more "visually" appealing games
Wireless controllers out of the box
HDTV support
Hard disk expansion add-on
Cons
Noisy ROM drive
Requires Windows Media Center edition to stream movies from another computer
Wii review now
In a blatant rip-off of Sheir's rather masculine article about how the PS3 sucks and will come in third, I will take a virtual sh*t on his pick for next-gen success, the Wii. Label me a Ninten-hater if you'd like (even though I've owned every Nintendo console since the SNES, including Virtual Boy), but I hate the Wii and it sucks. Why does my opinion matter? Because I'm better than Sheir who is better than you. Get ready for a major slap-to-the-face, fanboys, because your *** is grass and I'm a bovine. So, you people (meaning Nintendo sympathizers who were unwillfully coerced into favoring the Wii by Nintendo's hoarde of subliminal-messaging trolls) may say to me, "But why? Why does the Wii suck?" Don't worry, friend. In time, I shall enlighten you as to its utter suckiness. First off, I'll begin with the obvious, the crapola that is the Wiimote/nunchuck combo. Seriously, who designed this piece? From the likes of it, I'd say some non-gamer woman who picked up an Xbox controller and said, "I don't get it. There are two control sticks?" Good work, ho. Now I have another remote to lose under the couch. And a nunchuck? I've nunchucked quite a few in my day (most of the time on Halloween while dressed up as Michelangelo), and I can say from experience that this is no nunchuck. A nunchuck is something you kill someone with; I'm pretty sure the reps over at Nintendo would not like for their patrons to kill people with their "nunchuck." Oh and for the record, motion sensitivity, shmotion shmenshamivity. "Not that there's anything wrong with that." But, come on, who came up with the ideas for some of the motions for the controller for this thing? Let's start with Madden '07. Hmmm... you snap the nunchuck up, like the center would to the quarterback, in order to snap the ball. Easy enough, right? Why the hell would any sane person want to make the motions that a quarterback, running back and reciever make? Because you don't have enough friends to get out there and play actual football? Go outside, throw an actual ball to an actual person and actually have fun with it, instead of simulating fun with the mondo piece of craptard that is Madden '07. And how about with other driving games, let's say Excitetruck. First off, the name is absolutely horrid. Excitebike was bad enough but Excitetruck? Why doesn't Activision take Tony Hawk's name and plant it on other game franchises that they create? Imagine this: Tony Hawk's Pro Shopping Cart Racing Adventure of Suck! Also, who wants to play a game where you actually have to steer? I get sick enough driving around town doing chores and such without having to play this borefest. Go ahead, disagree with me. But you are still wrong. The Wii will come in last because it rhymes with "thrii" which can be put into its adjective state, third. (Disclaimer: This article was meant to be funny and meant to bash Cheir because he obviously is two bricks short of a load. This is not flamebait and please do not treat it as such.)
PS3 now
here was only one part of the release of the PS3 that I thought they might be able to compete with the XBox 360 and that was the online. Ever since I saw the John Carmack interview two E3s ago, I knew that the difference between the graphics of the machines wouldn't be exploitable by most game programmers. But I did that since XBox Live has been around for 3 years, that the Sony guys might be able to take it to the next level. But according to this NYT review, they have flubbed it horribly.
If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesn’t seem too complicated, but the PS3 can’t do it.
In that sense it often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3’s online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, you’ll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you can’t download in the background while you go do something that’s more fun (like play a game). On the Xbox 360, not only are files downloaded seamlessly in the background, but you can also shut off the machine, turn it on later, and the download will resume automatically.
The PS3’s whole online experience feels tacked-on and unpolished. On the Xbox 360 each user has a single unified friends list, so you can track your friends and communicate with them easily, no matter what game you are in. On the PlayStation 3 most games have their own separate friends list and some have no friends function at all. There is a master list as well, but in order to communicate with anyone on it, you have to quit the game you are playing.
That's not only subpar, that's shameful. I spent many hours last week getting addicted and unaddicted to the the triple threat of online shooters releasing for the 360: Gears of War, Call of Duty 3 and Rainbow Six Vegas. The online shooting world is so hot now even the Rainbow Six Vegas Demo has captivated folks on my friends list. The full game debuts Wednesday.
I feel sorry for PS3 diehards, but not so very sorry. Actually, I wish there were a way to get them onto XBox Live, just so I could have the pleasure of fragging the lamers.
Please note I am not responabile for these reviews I just copyed and pasted it off the internet useing google.