Sony's PS3: Streaming, Browsing and Gaming Stumbles

Continued from 'Sony's PS3: I'll Give It A C(-)'….

I also prefer the user interface of the PS3 to that of the Xbox 360, which is garish in comparison and which both my wife and I have historically found difficult to navigate to a particular desired outcome. Then again, I also own a Sony PSP (PlayStation Portable), so the Crossbar GUI is a familiar one. In the PS3 case, though, it's a bit more complicated….eight main options across the screen, with 11 vertically arrayed settings (for example) sub-options, each of them with multiple sub-sub-options.

I'd hoped to test the PS3's ability to stream content housed elsewhere on my LAN, but the console thwarted my plans. In spite of the fact that I have several UPnP-compliant servers running on my network (the Infrant ReadyNAS, both via the native software stack and after the additional installation of TwonkyMedia, and the UPnP-inclusive Yahoo Music Engine running on multiple PCs), the PS3 saw none of them, reporting that UPnP was 'not available'. Conversely, the Xbox 360 sees them all, as does the Nokia N800 tablet I've got in for review and as does each PC's Yahoo Music Engine build.

Not that it would matter much, frankly; the PS3 currently supports neither of the two audio formats to which I've ripped my CD collection; Windows Media Audio and iTunes (i.e. files with m4a name extensions). This is baffling to me, since even the PSP (and, for that matter, the Linux-based Nokia N800) supports WMA files. And although the PS3 claims to handle AAC content, it apparently can't deal with iTunes tracks' Quicktime wrapper format; the Xbox 360 has no such problems playing non-DRM'd iTunes files.

The PS3 browser is barely adequate. It choked, for example, on EDN's web pages, incorrectly translating single-page Javascript into multiple open windows (some of them blank). I can't stream MP3 files directly from webpage links; the PS3 instead insists on downloading them to the hard drive. It doesn't know what to do with PDF links. And although it played some YouTube content just fine (yes, I admit that I giggled hysterically while doing this), other clips (and other sites) locked up the browser. I could go on, but I think you get my drift. By the way, I recommend tethering a keyboard and mouse to the console if you want to do any sort of serious web browsing on it. L-e-t-t-e-r-b-y-l-e-t-t-e-r data entry using the game controller and neutered multiplexed-character mini on-screen keyboard will quickly drive you quite insane.

First and foremost, the PS3 is a gaming console, so I don't want to short-change that portion of this writeup. The Sixaxis controller's motion-sensing features have definite potential, much of it as yet untapped by developers (and thereby suggesting that the rumours of motion sensing being a late-stage addition to the controller design are likely true). I agree with Ben that motion-sensing makes the otherwise lame Blazing Angels tolerable, and I'm actually more enthusiastic about its use in the MotorStorm demo than he was. But in comparison to the Wii, it's woefully underutilized in currently shipping titles, and the elimination of rumble feedback previously found in the PS2's controllers is equally lame (no matter how hard Sony might try to spin it).

Graphically, most of the games I played were stunning. But I saw nothing that left me feeling that Xbox 360 developers couldn't accomplish the very same thing with their hardware, either visually or in terms of overall gameplay. In fact, Resistance: Fall of Man is a mere shadow of the Xbox 360's current showcase title, Gears of War (which I also rented from GameFly for purposes of this review). Sony fanboys will inevitably protest, "but Gears of War came out a year after the Xbox 360 launched; Resistance: Fall of Man is a launch title", to which I'll respond "exactly". Because the Xbox 360 came out a year ahead of the PS3, it's at least a year further down the developer learning curve (arguably even more so, if developers' laments about the PS3 being so much harder to program than the Xbox 360 are true), and it always will be.

The online experience, both in terms of infrastructure and implementation, is another area where the PS3 offers a poor substitute for the mature Xbox Live service that's now been honed through two Microsoft console generations. Compare, too, the ~150 native titles now shipping for the Xbox 360 against the ~2 dozen titles now available for the PS3. And what about backwards-compatible titles? Sony initially heckled Microsoft's plan to handle backwards-compatibility via software emulation, but cost-reduction pressures are forcing Sony to head down that very same path (beginning in Europe, but inevitably spreading to all geographies over time). Sony initially promised support for all PS2 titles, a boast which it wasn't even able to deliver on before it stripped out the Emotion Engine chip. Microsoft, in contrast, never claimed full backwards-compatibility and therefore doesn't now have to back-pedal.

Continue reading with 'Sony's PS3: Final (For Now) Thoughts And Reader Invitations'….