So the PS3 is out and everyone's excited. The next-gen console war has just begun! The first question that people have asked me once they learned that we have a PS3 at office is "Is it better than the Xbox 360?" The thing is it's just too early to have a strong opinion on that as of now.

The Xbox 360 has had a year's head-start and the PS3 has just recently seen the light of the day. The initial games on every console at its launch are strictly ho-hum, primarily because the developers are usually still familiarizing themselves with the console architecture. Besides, the PlayStation 3 is not an easy console to program for.

The current line-up of games may not hold a candle against the kind of eye-orgasms that games like 'Gears of War' provide on the Xbox 360, and chances are that no game till late 2007 (or later) will be able to make full use of the PS3's processing power.

Rest assured that once the developers figure out how they can exploit all the raw power the console has to offer, we may just start seeing games that are beyond anything we can imagine today. Let's just hope it doesn't get too late by then.

Aalaap Ghag
Channel Editor – Gadgets and Gizmos

When we first got it in our labs—I have to say I wasn’t jumping up and down as much as I expected to when I found out that we were buying one. The following reasons are NOT why this happened:

The console is a little big, but it still looks fabulous. I love the silence of the powerful machine. I love the fact that there’s no external power brick to deal with. I love the USB connectivity (just hook up a keyboard and you can type away) and I love the fact that it uses the same old PS2 A/V cable port, which means you can pick up a standard PS2 component output cable and it’ll still give you 720p (or even 1080i, if you will), although it’ll be analog. HD on the cheap!

One of the reason why I didn’t actually get a kick out of it is the fact that the controller shape is exactly the same as the old one, so it really doesn’t feel new in your hand. It’s also too light to actually feel 'real' and it has no vibration. No vibration is a big, BIG minus point for me. Some of the cheap, third-party controllers I’ve used with my PS2 had extra vibration and I used to love that. Without vibration, I don’t feel like I’m in the game anymore.

So am I going to break my PS3 piggy bank and buy the console? Not yet. First of all, the higher end version costs more than twice of what I’ve saved up, so I can’t buy it even if I wanted to. Secondly, I don’t just want to play much of FPS games; I’d rather wait for some more racing/third person titles.
One year, my shiny black friend, one year.

Varun Singh
Executive Editor

The PS3 shows that Sony still knows how to design products that are the benchmark for how things need to be done. Unlike the XBOX 360, which is a litany of industrial design disasters, the PS3 is a smooth, sophisticated device which outlines how future electronics will look and behave.

It’s got an integrated power supply, unlike the 360s’s external power brick, rechargeable wireless remotes, unlike the 360s buy-recharge-pack-separately stuff, a nice slot loading drive (which is the right way to go to make sure the console has a longer life—thanks to less dust entering the body), and it is quieter despite being more powerful. Also, the controller feels light, great, and responsive, and with the SixAxis functionality, it really more than makes up for the rumble feature (and you won’t fling it into your TV).

Also, I don’t understand all the hungama about the PS3 being overpriced. For $100 more than the full 360, you get a console which has everything the 360 has (Wireless controller, 20GB HDD etc.) and features a Blu-Ray drive + HDMI output + 7.1 surround output support, making it the perfect home entertainment device. It’s also got Gigabit Ethernet, which will be an absolute necessity for HD transmissions, as WiFi and 100Mbps Ethernet just don’t cut it for True HD via PC.

Sure, the software is a bit inadequate as far as features are concerned at this point in time, but that can be updated, and adds a lot of innovative stuff, as we’ve seen with the XBOX 360, and Sony’s own PSP, where they’ve added dozen’s of features after the launch.

The launch games aren’t that hot, but wait till the "System Sellers" like MotorStorm, GT-HD, Tekken, GTA, Final Fantasy etc. start to come out and explore the boundaries of what is possible with the PS3, and you’ll see it eating up the XBOX alive.

One reason why Gears Of War looks so good is because it’s already exploring the edges of what is possible with the XBOX 360, as programming with DX is so much easier than writing your own renderers in the PS3, but that also enables programmers to really innovate and explore what they can do with the Hardware, and that was the reason why last-gen PS2 titles always looked better than the XBOX titles, because programmers wrote their custom renderers for shader effects, and made games like God Of War & Shadow Of The Colossus look so hot!

In my opinion, the XBOX 360 has three years of life left in it, and the PS3’s got five, and by the end of this generation, the PS3 will be the winner, but that itself may prove to be the undoing of the PlayStation brand. If the third generation XBOX comes out in three years, it will be significantly ahead, and since Sony would still be in the mid-terms, Microsoft will take a lead, and run with it for two more years, before the PS4, if there will ever be one, catches up with it.

Like I mentioned earlier, we didn't get a chance to try out a lot of the stuff like the blu ray movies, online functionality and media capabilities. Expect that in Part II...soon.