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For the three major games console manufacturers, November and December are the most crucial months of the year. The killer combination of Christmas and a deluge of quality games drive a lot of us to drag out our wallets and lay down the cash, and the decisions we make now will have a huge impact on the industry in the year to come. This year the stakes are higher than ever: with all three of what we used to call the ‘next generation' consoles now established in the UK, Sony and Microsoft will be looking anxiously to see whether their sales are picking up or beginning to plateau, while Nintendo will be hoping it can hold or build its astonishing momentum with the DS and the Wii.
Of course, we don't care whether some corporate VP wakes up smiling or weeping on Christmas day. We just suspect that with new games and new deals coming online, many of Trusted Reviews' readers will be looking to buy new console hardware. That's why we felt now was a good time for an update. Which formats are thriving? What problems do they face? What should you buy, and why? We'll cover each platform in turn, and - as the software is so important - take a look at the games that might help you make up your mind. We're concentrating on the exclusives that prove so crucial to selling systems, so bear in mind that there are a lot of other games coming this Christmas and next year that will make each format even more attractive.
XBox360
In the two years since its launch, Microsoft's second-generation Xbox has sold around 13.5 million units worldwide and currently boasts the largest software line-up of all the new home consoles. The new HDMI enabled Arcade pack which replaces the old Core system keeps the entry level below £200, the Premium and Elite systems offer higher end options at £249 and £299, and between them Microsoft has every reason to expect a bumper Christmas.
Everyone knows that the 360 has its issues. The console has suffered from severe reliability problems, culminating in an embarrassing turn on Watchdog. Microsoft is doubtless hoping that the phrase ‘red ring of death' will eventually fade into obscurity. The 360 is also the noisiest console on the planet, despite a switch to a quieter DVD drive and the move to the 65nm falcon chip. Nor is there an absolutely fool-proof way of getting either (though buying an Elite or a Halo 3 system will certainly help).
Yet, despite these problems, the 360 is currently the safest bet for the average gamer. Its media playback features aren't as slick as the PS3's, and it's still slightly galling that the Elite doesn't feature a built-in HD-DVD drive, but the 360 now outputs to 1080p and boasts HDMI as standard (though only a handful of games are native 1080p resolution), so it's not dramatically behind the PS3 in any vital respect. The 360 has two huge points in its favour. First, Xbox Live. Sony's online options are improving, but Microsoft's service is well established, has great features, and is closely integrated into just about every 360 game released these days. Meanwhile, titles like Halo 3 and Forza Motorsport 2 have pushed Live functionality to add content sharing and community features that would have seemed unbelievable two or three years ago.
More importantly, the 360 has the widest and best games line-up of the moment. It plays host to the finest driving, RPG and FPS games around, with PGR4, Bioshock, Halo 3, The Orange Box and Gears of War already out and Mass Effect just around the corner. It still has vacancies for classics in the Japanese RPG, platform game and survival horror departments, but Rare's forthcoming Banjo Kazooie, Mistwalker's Lost Odyssey and Remedy's Alan Wake have a chance of filling them. Meanwhile, strong support from EA, Sega and Konami has ensured a line-up of sports games as good as anything the PS2 or PS3 can muster.
The main complaint about the 360 is a lack of family titles. The console has earned a reputation with the hardcore (and specifically US hardcore gamer) but it has yet to cross over into the mainstream audience that lapped up the PS2 and is currently lapping up the Wii. If you're looking for something you can share with the kids, you might want to bear this in mind. The other question is whether we have already seen the 360's best. With no showcase X07 event this year, we're only left with the likes of Banjo-Kazooie, Alan Wake and Lionhead's Fable 2 to get excited about in terms of system exclusives. Microsoft needs some new hard-hitters if it wants to maintain the 360's momentum.
Which version should you buy?
Now that it comes equipped with HDMI, the £249 Xbox 360 Console Pack is the one to go for. The £300 Xbox 360 Elite is worth the extra if you're interested in exploring TV and movie downloads when the relevant Xbox Live Marketplace service launches (hopefully this year), but the cheaper system gives you the best balance of price and features.
Three good reasons to go Xbox 360.
Halo 3
The most hyped blockbuster game of the year, but this time the hype was (mostly) justified. The single-player campaign builds on Halo's strengths to form the biggest, baddest Halo yet, while the online options are streets ahead of anything else on a console.
Mass Effect
It comes from the team behind Baldur's Gate and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It features stunning, near-photorealistic graphics, the most advanced facial modelling and conversation systems yet seen in a game, and gameplay that mixes tactical action, space exploration and deep RPG mechanics. Could this be the new benchmark for console RPGs?
Project Gotham Racing 4
Thanks to a killer combination of cool cars, thrilling handling and superb real city tracks, PGR4 is THE driving game of the moment. Others offer more realistic racing or stronger customisation options, but nothing beats Bizarre's latest for stunning spectacle or the sheer, fierce joy of speeding and swerving through the streets.
SonyPlaystation 3
Pity the poor, picked-on PS3: it has become the console equivalent of the kid at school who gets bullied because he talks posh and wears a smart blazer. Nobody liked the initial price, some have been apathetic about Blu-ray and everyone keeps wondering when some really great games are going to arrive. Disgruntled developers keep crawling out to moan about how hard the Cell CPU is to program and why the nVidia graphics processor isn't quite as good as the Xbox 360's Xenos. Sony itself has had to backtrack from its ‘people will pay a premium/every PS3 is elite' stance to ‘lets make this thing more affordable - what can we cut back on?' Hence the new £299 40GB option.
All of this obscures the fact that the PS3 is now selling well. Current reports suggest it's actually out-selling the 360 in many territories, including the UK. It's also - in hardware terms - the most powerful and luxurious of the new consoles. It's quiet, solidly built and boasts excellent multimedia support, built-in Blu-ray movie playback and a fine interface modelled on the PSP's. It has more games that run in native (not upsampled) 1080p, and while the PlayStation Network isn't as solid or friendly a service as Xbox Live, it is a huge improvement on the PS2's online services. With the new Home 3D community front-end, the PS3 could be an online force to be reckoned with. Finally, the disappointingly lightweight, rumble-free Sixaxis will be replaced by the more solid, rumble-enabled Dual Shock 3. It's a good platform, and getting better all the time.
The real problem is this: at the moment, Sony still has very few games that demonstrate any tangible hardware advantage over the Xbox 360. Games like Heavenly Sword and Motorstorm have looked amazing, but the former is flawed and the latter a bit shallow. Many cross-platform games look no better or actually worse on Sony's hardware, and the PS3 doesn't have so many of the big name exclusives that have driven 360 sales. Still, there are also two good reasons why you shouldn't discount the PS3 (and three if you count Blu-ray). First, there are some great showcase games arriving this Christmas and in the coming months: the new Ratchet and Clank and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune have to be seen to be believed, and Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue and Final Fantasy XIII are on their way. Secondly, there's still a lot of untapped power in Cell and the PS3 architecture. Sony has already proven with PS2 that a console can last more than the usual three-to-five years and dish out great games at the end of its lifespan. The PS3 could still be going strong when 360 owners are upgrading to their next console. Buying one now is a bit of a gamble, but the odds are in your favour.
Which version should you buy?
Save the cash and go for the £299, 40GB model. You may struggle to find a 60GB model anyway, and neither the extra hard disk space nor the two addition USB sockets is really worth the extra outlay. The only reason to think twice is if you have a huge library of PS2 games that you definitely will go back and play (be honest about it) or if you're planning to get involved in the PS3's mooted movie downloads or PVR features (in which case 60GB isn't going to go that far, anyway).
Three good reasons to go PlayStation 3.
Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction
The more consistent of the PS2 platforming duos (sorry Jak and Daxter, but there it is) return in a tour-de-force of leaping, swinging, gliding and - best of all - blasting. The graphics are approaching Pixar quality, and the weapons are even more spectacular and silly this time around. Dazzling.
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Crash Bandicoot/Jak and Daxter creators Naughty Dog hit out with a new franchise mixing Hollywood blockbuster action with Tomb Raider-style adventuring shenanigans. Beautiful visuals and believable animation are guaranteed to have an impact. Here's hoping the gameplay delivers the same knock-out punch.
Little Big Planet
Tired of the old franchises? After something new? How about an ingenious, physics-based, platform game where players grab and use objects to get themselves through. Not different enough? How about a game built from the ground up for players to cooperate, and where players can dynamically edit the level and the objects as they play. How, indeed, about a game where players are continually swapping new levels, characters and objects they've just built themselves? Little Big Planet could be the start of something very special indeed.
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo is sitting pretty at the moment. One year after launch it can still sell every Wii console it makes, and barring some disaster demand will only increase in the run-up to Christmas. With over 13 million units sold worldwide, it is already catching up on sales of the Xbox 360, and may well have overtaken it in the few days between me writing this and you reading it.
To see why the Wii is so big, you only have to see one in action at a gathering of family or friends. Put Wii Sports on a big screen, and everyone from six to sixty-six is soon up and having a go, and they're all having a good time. There's something very immediate and intuitive about the best games on the Wii. You don't need to be able to master two sticks, eight buttons and four triggers - if you have a vague idea of how to swing a tennis racket and you're prepared to look a bit foolish, you can have fun.
The combination of this and a low entry price have made the Wii's major failings almost irrelevant. At launch, Nintendo cheerfully admitted that the Wii wasn't a monumental step forward from the technology in the GameCube, and the games released so far have borne this out. The Wii's Hollywood GPU can cope with more sophisticated operations than the GameCube's Flipper, and the Broadway CPU is believed to run 50 per cent faster than the GameCube's Gekko, but we're still essentially talking about 480p visuals with few of the effects we take for granted on the PS3 or 360.
This really isn't a deal-breaker. As anyone who has played Metroid Prime 3: Corruption or Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess can tell you, the Wii can still produce some fine looking games, and various Wii developers have dropped the usual obsession with photo-realism in search of clean, cartoon styles that look fantastic on an HDTV screen. And while Dolby ProLogic II audio is a step backward in fidelity from the 5.1 Dolby Digital supported by Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 titles, that's not something that seems to be ruining anyone's experience.
The one fly in the Wii ointment is the quantity of quality games on the system. There are dozens of Wii games out there, but a huge number of them are either ropey ports of PS2 or 360 games with Wii controls shoe-horned in, or sporadically entertaining party games in the Wii Play/Mario Party/Rayman Raving Rabbids vein. Worse, of the nine or ten really good games on Wii, only five or six have enough gameplay to keep you glued to the screen for more than a few hours at a time. The Wii is a great console when you're entertaining the kids or you have a few mates around, but will it be gathering dust the rest of the time?
A few games say ‘no.' Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess is one, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (after a shaky start) is another. In a few weeks we'll know for sure whether Super Mario Galaxy can better both - early reports suggest it can. And now that the Wii has built a massive audience, developer support is phenomenal. Expect more great games as next year goes by.
Overall, the Wii is the easiest console to make a judgement on. If you're looking for something to entertain your family and you're happy playing more serious games on a PC (or you already own another console) then go ahead and buy one. Old-school Nintendo fans, meanwhile, should already have voted with their wallets. If, however, you're left un-fussed by Mario and Zelda and you'd rather have a great selection of sports games, racing games and action games, then you're better off with the 360 or PS3 - the Wii will leave you wanting more games with more meat. I still think you're missing out, though.
Three good reasons to go Nintendo Wii.
Super Mario Galaxy
Mario unleashed on a whole galaxy of planets in a 3D platform game that aims to go where no platform game has gone before. Visually this looks like the Wii's most appealing title yet, and early word is that this is the follow up to Mario 64 that Super Mario Sunshine failed to be.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
The first hour or two is shakey, but Corruption blossoms into a crazily compelling first-person action adventure, featuring some of the finest Wii graphics to date and the best FPS control system on this - and arguably any - console.
Wii Fitness
Due next year in the UK, Wii Fitness is the Wii game that ships with the balance board; the bathroom-scales like peripheral that uses your body weight and distribution to control the on-screen action. Daily tests and game-like exercises have proved popular in the likes of Brain Training and Big Brain Academy, and they should get everyone involved here. 2008's big Wii craze?
For the rest of the review which includes DSLite, PSP slim and lite please go to the website
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