XBLA vs. PSN vs. WiiWare/Virtual Console

Finally, Nintendo - and another area where the Wii desperately needs to smarten up its ideas. The Wii Shop Channel is an awkward and counter-intuitive tangle of slow-loading menus, lists within menus, shops within shops. The lack of demos is a recurring complaint, and one that needs to be addressed. Clearly this would be easier for WiiWare than the Virtual Console, but even there some sort of time limited trial version of a ROM could surely be arranged. The problem is compounded by the rather poor descriptions. A small video of the game in action, or just a gallery of screenshots, would go a long way to help potential customers get a feel for what they're actually buying.

Unfortunately, the Wii Shop's problems don't end there. With no background downloading and no way of queuing multiple downloads, buying more than one game is a time-consuming exercise in frustration. Not only do you have to sit there and watch Mario do his little "biddy-bee-deep" coin collecting while a file downloads, afterwards you're dumped back to the safety warning screen and forced to navigate all the way back into the store to find the next game you wanted. Maybe it just bothers me because I have to do this every week, for every new release, but it's still an ugly and archaic system.

Advantage: Xbox 360 and PS3

Quality

And here's the tricky part. Who has the best games? There's no realistic way of grading such an impossibly wide array of games, drawn from twenty-plus years and countless previous formats as well as brand new titles, but in the interests of science and hundreds of angry comments, I'm going to give it a shot.

Let's start with Nintendo, since it's taken a beating in the last few rounds. The Japanese company is at a clear advantage with the Virtual Console, since it puts a vast swathe of gaming history within its grasp. As has been mentioned several times already, Nintendo hasn't been a particularly thoughtful custodian of this legacy, with some unfortunate PAL problems and apparently little effort to sort the wheat from the chaff. Even so, any downloadable games service that can boast multiple Zeldas, Metroids and Marios is never going to struggle when it comes to quality.

Some of the greatest games of all time reside on the Virtual Console, and while the petty-minded may bleat about having to pay three quid for a Commodore game when they can download the ROM for free online, the ability to have so many classic games in one place, available for armchair play, is worth the slightly steep prices. WiiWare doesn't have that advantage, of course, and while the early releases boasted some absolute gems, there's a distinct feeling that the shovelware is starting to creep in. Here's hoping that we see more games like My Life As A King and LostWinds, and less like SPOGS Racing.

Sony, it seems, is still on the fence here. The PlayStation Store hasn't yet found its killer app; the must-have game that drives every PS3 owner to dust off their credit card. Super Stardust HD certainly comes close, but given that it's so often talked about in relation to Geometry Wars something uniquely Sony is clearly required. On the other hand, the PlayStation Store distinguishes itself by not having any truly horrible games either. The early line-up wasn't hugely impressive, but there was nothing as crass as Shrek N' Roll, or as craven as Pokémon Ranch. Things have improved considerably since, with most new titles earning solid 7s and 8s, so it seems that Sony is doing something right. I do hope it continues to exercise control over the PSone games that get added to the "Classics" folder though. The first-party additions have been hard to fault - anyone who doesn't love Crash Team Racing deserves to be drowned in wee - but recent uploads from the likes of EA and Ubisoft have certainly lowered the tone. More genuine classics like G-Police, please, and less tripe like Street Skater.

However, for all the crap that has been pumped out under its auspices, it's arguably Xbox Live Arcade that is host to the widest selection of truly great downloadable games. Admittedly, Microsoft is on a roll at the moment following the staggering run of Geometry Wars 2, Braid, Bionic Commando Rearmed, Galaga Legions and Castle Crashers, but don't think we've forgotten the dark days when a half-hearted port of Time Pilot or Joust was all we had to look forward to. A return to that ethos would be a grim mistake but, even with that cavalier approach to quality control, when you look through the list the gems outshine the lumps of coal. Any service that can offer faithful versions of Prince of Persia, Doom and Bomberman alongside the best of the current indie games scene is in an incredibly strong position. Don't mess it up, Mr Microsoft.

Advantage: Xbox 360

Conclusion

So what have we learned? More importantly, who won? Well, I would argue that the 360 currently has the advantage in four of the areas discussed, with the PS3 edging it out in terms of the overall shopping experience, as well as having a much better quality-to-crap ratio. The Wii Shop, on the other hand, is over-priced and horrible to navigate, but does let you buy The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros 3 and Metroid for just over a tenner.

One thing is for certain - there are stinking great piles of money to be made from downloadable games, and there's no way that any of the Big Three console companies are going to stop trying to find ways to make their pile the biggest.