PS3 vs 360 - who cares?

An article on techy website Anandtech - which has since mysteriously disappeared - claims that there's no point arguing about the relative merits of the PS3 and Xbox 360, since neither will be as good as next-gen PCs.

The article's author, Anand Lal Shimpi, writes that "both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are much closer competitors than you would think based on first impressions.

"The Xbox 360's Xenon CPU features more general purpose cores than the PlayStation 3 (3 vs. 1). However, game developers will most likely only be using one of those cores for the majority of their calculations, leveling the playing field considerably."

Shimpi says he's talked to a load of game developers who've had first-hand experience of writing code for both consoles, asking if they reckon either will beat PC performance. "The answer is actually quite frequently found in history; as with anything, you get what you pay for," he writes.

"Both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 offer multi-core CPUs to supposedly usher in a new era of improved game physics and reality.

"Unfortunately, as we have found out, the desire to bring multi-core CPUs to these consoles was made a reality at the expense of performance in a very big way."

Shimpi goes on to declare that it's all about "clever marketing": "Both consoles are marketed to be much more powerful than they actually are, and from talking to numerous game developers it seems that the real world performance of these platforms isn't anywhere near what it was supposed to be.

"It looks like significant advancements in game physics won't happen on consoles for another 4 or 5 years, although it may happen with PC games much before that."

But it's not all bad news, says Shimpi - the GPUs in both consoles look "promising", and "the ability to finally run at HD resolutions in all games will bring a much needed element to console gaming."

However, Shimpi goes on to conclude that in the future, "the PC paired with the right developers should be able to bring about that revolution in game physics and graphics we've been hoping for.

"Consoles will help accelerate the transition... But it looks like it will take PC developers to bring about real change in things like game physics, AI and other non-visual elements of gaming."

Genius techno analyst or PC fanboy? Decide for yourself by reading a copy of the full article - complete with all the techy bits - here.