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Now that I've had over 2 weeks with the PS3, I'm perhaps in a position to offer some thoughts on how things stand with the new generation. The opinions below are based on significant hands-on experience with each of the new consoles although obviously, due to the length of time that it has been in the wild, I have had significantly more time with the 360 than with the other two machines.

Rather than going through this machine by machine, I'll try to take a more thematic approach to my breakdown.

Hardware - physical appearance

Yes, yes, I know, this is an awfully superficial criterion to judge consoles by. Nevertheless, as it's likely that all three of these will be sitting in my living room for the next 4-5 years, I feel justified in giving some weight to it.

Both the PS3 and 360 are significantly larger than has previously been the norm for consoles. The 360 is about the size of the original Xbox (which is to say - large). It's a rather striking white box, with generally pleasing curves and a fetching set of blinkenlights. The USB are well placed and the DVD drive tray is easy to reach and feels relatively robust (a perpetual concern for me after I managed to accidentally snap the lid off a Gamecube). Unfortunately, that's about it as far as the good news goes. The white casing means that I actually need to put a bit of effort into keeping the thing clean, particularly as it does seem to be an absolute dust-magnet. Far more serious, however, is the amount of noise that the 360 generates while running. Even while idle or playing a relatively lightweight Live Arcade game, the machine sounds about as loud as my desktop PC. When playing a proper game, it can take on the noise profile of a light aircraft. This gets blotted out during hectic action games, but can grate for anything slower paced. Worse still, playing a DVD also appears to get the fans going at full pace. The 360 also runs quite hot and has a huge brick of a power supply, which can, fortunately, be hidden out of the way.

The PS3 is even larger (and heavier) than the 360, although happily it has an external power supply and needs only a "kettle" power cable. That said, it's also much more aesthetically pleasing than the PS3 and, despite being the size of a small desktop, is a remarkably pretty piece of hardware. Again, controller and USB ports are well-placed and the "buttonless" front-piece also feels quite slick. The Blu-Ray drive does not have a pop-out tray (which I consider a plus) and feels remarkably solid. Sony clearly knew that, given the outrageous price of their new flagship, they needed to make it look and feel like a premium piece of kit and they've definitely succeeded in this. It's quieter than the 360, although it does seem to throw out even more heat (although this doesn't actually seem to impair its functioning).

The Wii is small and unassuming to look at, which is quite welcome in a way, given that space is now at a premium under my TV. Indeed, given it appears to have *very* similar dimensions to an internal DVD drive for a desktop PC, I'm sure it's only a matter of time until combined PC/Wii case-mods start appearing. The DVD drive is, like the PS3's Blu-Ray drive, recessed into the machine, with no cup-holder tray to worry about. Moreover, the Wii is virtually silent and appears to put out very little heat. That said there are also some big downsides. The beige colour looks a little dated and reminds me of an old bargain-basement PC. More importantly, for a console with wireless controllers, the Wii does seem to generate an impressive number of cables, some of which are irritatingly thin and feel as though they'd be disturbingly easy to snap while vacuuming around the TV.

If I had to pick a winner in this category (which is highly subjective), I'd probably go for the PS3. I can appreciate the Wii's approach though. As for the 360 - the noise issue is something that MS really do need to look to address, perhaps with a later revision of the console.

Hardware - performance

One of the more significant categories, I think this is going to be a key factor in determining how well the machines stand up in the long-term. While it was possible for the PS2 to dominate the last generation despite a significant technological disadvantage, due to its huge installed base, none of the three competitors this time appears likely at this point to build up the huge lead that this would require.

The Wii is the clear loser here, frankly. Its launch titles, including the vaunted Zelda, look worse than several PS2 games (Kingdom Hearts 2 and Final Fantasy 12, I'm looking at you). Poor texture detail and low polygon counts look as though they're going to be the norm on a machine that, even by Nintendo's own admissions, doesn't significantly outperform the Gamecube. With HDTVs becoming more popular, I can see the Wii's weakness in this regard becoming more significant over the next 12 months.

When it comes to the 360 and the PS3, the picture gets a little more complicated. Right now, the best looking game on any platform (and I'm including high end PCs here) is Gears of War on the 360. On balance, it does indeed look better than Resistance: Fall of Man, despite some stylistic differences that make direct comparisons between the two games awkward. Of course, GoW was a game for a year old system, whose quirks and capabilities were well known, while R:FoM was a launch title. Thinking back to the 360's launch titles, there's no denying that Resistance looks better than those. In the long term, I suspect the PS3 will open out a bit of a performance advantage, but I can't see it managing to put much in the way of clear blue sky between itself and the 360.

Interface

All three manufacturers have clearly put a lot of effort into the front-end interface for their machines this time around. Long gone are the days of the "two options and a swirling thing" front menu from the PS2.

However, that said, Sony's offering here isn't much better looking. It's heavily modelled on the PSP's front-end, which was never the best looking or intuitive menu at the best of times and this shares its flaws. It's made worse by the fact that the colours are extremely muted. I (in the UK) imported my PS3 from the States. On firing it up, I spent the first 5 minutes twiddling with settings, thinking that the image was only coming through in black and white. Eventually, I noticed that a couple of the icons tucked away deep in the menus were in colour and realised what was happening. That said, you can access everything you'd want to quite quickly through the front-end and features such as the web-browser and the PSP link are easy to get working quite quickly.

The Wii's front end really turns me off for some reason. I think it's partly that I don't like using the wii-mote as a pointer and partly the fact that all of the sounds remind me of something from a malfunctioning 1980s arcade machine. At any rate, most of the "features" here, particularly the whole "mii" business, just strike me as nasty gimmicks.

By far the best of the front-ends is the 360's. Clear, good looking and easy to nagivate, this is the best demonstration of how to "do" an integrated gaming and multimedia front end. More customisable than the other consoles, you can set your 360's front end up to be as muted or as garish as you like. Definitely the winner in this category.

Online services

Simple answer here - 360 wins, hands down. Yes, you have to pay for Live, but frankly, it works out at about £2.50 a month at most, which isn't going to break the bank, so I'm not even going to factor that in. Live is the most reliable, best supported and most user-friendly of any of the online services. Live Marketplace has turned out extremely well, with both decent content for "full-blown" games, and plenty of decent Live Arcade games. These are a blend of ports of classic games and full-fledged new creations. Some of these aren't great and there does seem to be a predominance of top-down shooters, but you can pick up some excellent games at very reasonable prices.

I've had trouble using the Wii's online service so far, due to its insistence on wireless connections. However, it appears to be lacking many of the features of Live and support for online play from the "full-blown" Wii games is nothing short of appalling. The marketplace equivalent looks ok-ish, although the prices seem a little steep for what's on offer.

The PS3's online service has potential, but has yet to really follow through on it. Online play seems to have reasonably good support from the PS3 launch titles and it's easy enough to get set up and play. However, the marketplace is distinctly disappointing so far and I'm not yet sure that Sony have a real over-arching vision for it yet. Time will tell whether it's going to be able to compete with Live seriously.

Controllers

Controllers have turned into one of the key battlegrounds of this round of the console wars, with Nintendo's Wii controller sparking off huge amounts of speculation.

Of course, the 360 was on the shelves already before much of this had really gotten started. The 360's controller is essentially an evolution of the Xbox S-Controller, by far the best controller of the last generation. In fact, as a conventional controller, it is very hard to fault the 360 controller. The weight, size and shape all feel "just right". The layout of the buttons has been improved, with the awkward old black and white buttons being replaced by a new pair of shoulder bumpers. Moreover, the wireless technology works well, with good range and response. As traditional controllers go, it is likely that the 360 controller represents a state as close to perfection as we are likely to get in the short or mid term future.

The Wii, of course, has its "innovative" motion-based controller, with the wii-mote and nunchuck replacing a traditional pad. This was supposed, according to the hype, to introduce a new style of gaming and widen the appeal of the pasttime beyond its core audience.

Frankly, I think this is over-egging things a bit.

The Wii's launch titles have singularly failed to impress me with the controller's potential and have done a lot to highlight its limitations. Everything so far seems to fall into one of three categories. Either the Wiimote is used as a pointer/lightgun (which is nothing new), or else it is used as a direct replacement for a button press (Zelda is particularly bad for this), or finally, it might just be used for a bit of frantic shaking. While the controller is capable of reasonable precision when used at low speeds, this seems to break down badly once rapid motions come into play, making true swordfighting games and some sports games unlikely to succeed.

Moreover, the other aspects of the controller are just plain nasty. The positioning of the buttons on the wii-mote is awkward in the extreme, while the little analogue stick on the nunchuck feels cheap, nasty and imprecise.

That leaves Sony's Sixaxis. This has been derided as a quick and dirty attempt to steal some of Nintendo's thunder and, frankly, on the basis of my experiences so far, it is difficult to disagree. For the most part, the controller looks and feels like a Dualshock 2 without the rumble function. The rear shoulder buttons have been improved and the wireless functionality works well, but that's about as far as the changes go. The same old Dualshock 2 strengths and weaknesses are still there. In particular, the Sixaxis still feels slightly too small to be comfortable. As for the motion sensing functionality - the only thing I've seen this used for is the "shake like mad to throw off an enemy's grip" function in Resistance. I'm not actually sure how sensitive or precise it is, but I suspect the answer is "not very".

Bizarrely, I'm going to say that in a generation that has seen much of the focus shift to controller design, the winner is actually the most conservative of the three contenders - the 360 controller.

Backward Compatibility

The 360 fares badly here. Despite Microsoft's promises, a great many Xbox titles, including some AAA titles, remain unplayable on the 360. Meanwhile, the trickle of compatibility updates appears to have slowed to a drip. This is unacceptable, but I'm now fairly convinced that Microsoft have abandoned this as a priority and are instead hoping that people will eventually forget about the original Xbox, as the 360 continues to expand its games lineup.

It's quite hard to pick between the Wii and the PS3 for a winner here. On the one hand, the Wii has more or less full back-compatibility with Gamecube games, with many games for older Nintendo platforms available for (somewhat overpriced) purchase through the marketplace. On the other hand, there were, to be honest, very few Gamecube games, even fewer of which were actually worth playing. Meanwhile, the PS3 has generally good back-compatibility, but with issues on a few games. The picture here is much better than on the 360 - the issues are less serious and the games affected tend to be obscure titles - but it's not quite perfection. Of course, the PS2 and PS1 had such a vast catalogue of games that back-compatibility counts for a lot more here.

Games - the situation right now

Obviously, the most important aspect of any console is the range of games available for it. A decent range of games can give a huge boost to an otherwise underwhelming console, as happened with the PS2, while a serious games drought can be fatal, as Nintendo have discovered during the last two generations. I've split games into two categories - games out now, and the likely future situation.

It should go without saying that in terms of games you can walk into a shop and buy today, the 360 beats both of its rivals hands down. After all, the 360 has been on the shelves for well over a year, while its rivals have only just clocked up 3 months. While the 360 had a frankly awful range of launch titles, it now has most genres represented reasonably well, with even RPGs (a persistent blank spot on the Xbox) looking like they might catch up.

With games like Gears of War, Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Dead Rising, 360 games have begun to show a degree of polish that truly does set them aside from the last generation's games. As with its predecessor, the 360 does suffer ever so slightly from a lack of true exclusives - many of its key titles, such as Oblivion and Battlestations Midway also appear on the PC - but the last 6 months have been excellent for Microsoft's platform.

The Wii and PS3 both currently only have a fairly typical range of launch titles available. In the case of the PS3, only Resistance: Fall of Man truly comes close to showing off what the machine should be capable of. Admittedly, its graphics can't quite match those of Gears of War, but I'd actually say that the gameplay is slightly better (and certainly much longer). The rest of the launch titles range between the "pretty good but unspectacular" (Full Auto 2) and the "utterly awful" (Gundam Crossfire).

The situation on the Wii is pretty similar. Ironically, the real stand-out launch title here isn't a Nintendo game at all, but rather Rayman Raving Rabbids. Zelda just about qualifies as "ok", but is ultimately visually uninspired and deeply tired in gameplay terms. The rest of the launch titles, including the bundled Wii Sports, are basically dreadful.

Games - looking forwards

Probably the most important category. Right now, the only current-gen console worth buying on the basis of its current games is the 360. A purchase of a Wii or PS3 is an investment on the basis of the future potential of the machine. If a console fails to deliver in this respect, your money will be wasted.

The 360's future looks reasonably bright. MS currently seem to be pursuing the strategy of wooing Japanese developers. Blue Dragon, one of the first real results produced by this strategy, is due out soon. This sits alongside the preferrential treatment that the 360 seems to receive from Western developers with regards to franchises such as the Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon games. Oh, and there might also be a little game called Halo 3. There aren't, if I'm honest, too many other exclusives that really whet my fancy, but there's a good chance that the 360 could turn out to be the best platform to pick up cross-platform games on, much as the Xbox was in the last generation. With a decent installed base, it's likely that developers will continue to show the 360 some love.

The Wii's situation, however, is much more precarious. Already, we're seeing signs that despite all their hype and astroturfing, Nintendo have failed to address the real problem that has seen them lose so much ground. Almost all of the big forthcoming Wii games are Nintendo games - meaning that the same old flaws of insufficient quantity, slipping release date and limited appeal are likely to resurface. Moreover, with several developers already announcing they have no intention to support the Wii (including figures such as John Carmack) and even those who have pledged to release games for it being very short on details, the future for the Wii looks grim. As this generation becomes more established and more games are developed that make fuller use of its technology, the Wii will almost certainly find that it just can't keep up.

And then there's the PS3. Despite its drawbacks - high price, poor launch titles and inconsistent online support - the PS3 remains by far the strongest contender in this area. Simply put, Sony still have the franchise exclusives that really count. With the main-series Final Fantasy games, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo on board, the PS3 gives far more to look forward to than either of the other platforms. This will no doubt go hand in hand with a feeling among developers that, as with the PS2, they more or less *have* to put out PS3 ports of their games.

Summary

In short, right now, the 360 is the best of the 3 consoles. It sits in a sweet spot with regards to both price and availability of games. The PS3 is still too expensive to be a real mass-market propositon given it has yet to conclusively prove its superiority over the 360, while the Wii has a distinctly "cheap and nasty" feel.

However, in the long term, the PS3 will almost certainly redress the balance, as its price comes down and its big franchises start to pump out killer titles. As for the Wii - I suspect it will be forgotten two years from now.

Ok, with my PS3 due to arrive from the States in about 48 hours, I guess I need to finally get out of the habit of calling the PS3/360/Wii "next generation" machines. By the same token, this means that the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube are now firmly "last generation", even though there's still a PS2 game I'm intending to buy (Okami, when it finally hits the UK in a week or two).

Soooo... probably a good time for a quick retrospective on the good, the bad and the indifferent of the last generation. I'll take this by system.

Gamecube

Of the three consoles in the last-gen, I picked this one up the latest (Christmas 2003). I've also used it by far the least. Despite being a reasonably nice piece of hardware, the Cube suffered from a number of serious flaws that, for me, made it by far the least impressive performer of the last-gen.

Let's start with the machine itself. Despite having solid specs, the design of the machine and its peripherals always irritated me. The little flip-lid on the top of the machine seemed so flimsy that I got paranoid every time I touched it. A minor quibble, but this is my journal, so tough.

More serious were the flaws with the controllers. And boy, were these serious. There was a broad consensus in the last gen over what a controller should look like. Two analogue sticks, a D-pad, some shoulder buttons, 4 or so face buttons and a couple of little function buttons in the middle. To some degree, all three manufacturers followed this model. Unfortunately, Nintendo managed to balls it up big time. Rather than giving us a proper right analogue stick, we instead got a shrivelled little yellow nipple. Said nipple was a pain in the arse to use and always felt distinctly lacking in precision. It made many genres, particularly fpses, deeply unpleasant on the Cube. Indeed, for Nintendo's own fps, Metroid Prime, they avoided using the nipple for anything meaningful and instead stuck on a non-standard and deeply unintuitive control system of their own.

I can kind of see the logic behind the unevenly sized front-buttons, but the implementation was frankly crap. The large A-button always seemed to be getting in the way and I lost count of the number of times that I hit it accidentally while trying for one of the little bean-shaped buttons around the edge. To add insult to injury, the cable length for the default Cube controllers was woefully inadequate. This seems particularly daft on a console that was so heavily geared towards multiplayer party-games.

Of course, a console is nothing without a wide variety of decent games and, in the final judgement, the Cube was basically nothing. Nintendo continued their usual habit of force-feeding us their own taste in gaming, which appeals to young children and 40-year-old neckbeards, but not to anybody in between. Zelda: Wind Waker bored me to tears, Mario Sunshine was a dismal reheat of Mario 64, Mario Kart Double Dash was so lacking in concept that it felt like a bad joke and Metroid Prime just didn't stack up to the fpses on the other consoles (or the PC). Super Smash Brothers Melee was a moderately entertaining party game, but soon started to feel pretty shallow. Starfox Assault had a few really decent rail-shooter moments, but chose to sandwich them between huge great slices of mediocre shite. Many first-party Nintendo games suffered from a severe lack of production values, with outdated menus, poor sound and no voice acting generally being the norm.

Third party titles were notoriously thin on the ground on the Cube. Most of them were cross-platform games, which I always picked up for one of the other systems due to the aforementioned controller issues. However, a few decent ones did manage to hit. Two very decent entries in the survival horror genre, Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil 4, particularly stood out. RE4, in particular, was a real genre-redefining game of the type that doesn't come along too often. After playing that, I found it very hard to go back to the Silent Hill series, which I'd previously preferred to Resident Evil by some way. The Star Wars Rogue Squadron games were decent shooters, but as with many games on the Cube, seriously lacking in longer term appeal.

Overall, I felt the Cube deserved its 3rd place final result in the sales and was lucky that the margin between itself and the Xbox wasn't wider. Despite a few gaming highlights scattered in the muck, it stands out as nothing more than a testament to Nintendo's ongoing decline.

Xbox

Ah, the Xbox. Much mocked on its launch (including by myself, if I'm honest) for its clunky design and poor range of games, the Xbox went on to be a surprisingly solid performer. When I picked one up in Autumn 2003, it was just starting to get its second wind, with games like Knights of the Old Republic starting to come out. The Xbox was, of course, also the first console to bow out from its generation, with the 360 appearing in late 2005. There's a good argument to be made that the original Xbox could, in fact, easily have been good for another year.

Despite being heavy, bulky and ugly as sin, the Xbox was a decent piece of hardware. The most powerful machine of its generation, it had some extremely good looking games. The internal hard disk was also a huge bonus and I'm extremely glad that all 3 of the new consoles have chosen to follow in its footsteps there. The decline of compulsory memory cards will not be lamented.

The original Xbox controller inspired much mockery, and rightly so. Despite having all of the right elements present it was, as many commentators noted, way too large for comfortable use by an actual human. Fortunately, the S-controller rectified this nicely and went on to be my favorite controller of the last generation. My only quibble was that the black and white buttons on the front of the controller could have been better positioned - I would have preferred an extra pair of shoulder buttons.

In terms of games, the Xbox eventually went on to develop a very solid lineup, but always suffered slightly from being in the shadow of the PC. The Xbox had very few true exclusives, with many of its big-name games, such as Halo and Knights of the Old Republic, also being available (and often better) on the PC. That said, for cross-platform console games, I would always tend to pick up the Xbox version for preference - it put out the best graphics and on the nicest controller.

Of course, there were a few real stand-out exclusives. Halo 2 remains, to my mind, the best console fps to date and I'll be curious to see how it compares to Resistance: Fall of Man. Jade Empire was a superb (but often sadly overlooked) action RPG, which raised the bar for quality in a number of respects, not least through its superb voice-acting. Forza Motorsport was the only driving game of the last generation to come even close to the quality of Gran Turismo 4 (although even Forza fell slightly short). Panzer Dragoon Orta was arguably the best rail shooter of the generation. The Mechassault games weren't quite as good as the old Mechwarrior titles, but the second installment in particular was excellent. And finally, who can forget the manically bouncing boobies of Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball.

The other killer feature of the Xbox was Xbox-Live. By far the best match-making service around, Live managed to bring online console gaming to a mass audience for the first time. It also introduced downloadable content, which I feel is a very positive development.

Overall, I was surprised by how good the Xbox turned out to be. Microsoft are often called the Borg here on slashdot, but one way in which the analogy really holds up is in the speed with which they react. While Nintendo and, to a lesser degree, Sony were content to sit on flaws with their console for the entire generation, MS reacted time and time again, most notably by their replacement of the original controller, but also through their choice of developers to pursue. A console that should, by rights, have fallen flat on its face went on to provide me with a great deal of entertainment.

Playstation 2

The first console I ever owned (picked one up in Spring 2002) and definitely the console I've bought most games for.

The PS2 was the lowest-spec machine of its generation, which really shows up when you look at games that were developed for multiple platforms. However, some developers, particularly Square-Enix, managed to work wonders with the PS2's hardware, giving it arguably the best looking games of the entire generation. The puny memory cards were a persistent frustration, though.

The Dualshock 2 controller was certainly a decent little controller, if slightly too small to be really comfortable for me. In many ways, it defined the "right" shape and layout of controllers for the entire generation and I note that the new Sixaxis shares many similarities. Oh well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The PS2's real strong point was always its software library. The sheer range of games that appeared for the PS2 was truly staggering. Obviously, a lot of these were shovelware crap, but even if you include only top-notch games, the PS2 still had stunning variety. Certainly, it had the best entries in the RPG genre (Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XII, Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2, to name just the Square-Enix ones), the best driving game (Gran Turismo 4) and the best stealth games (the Metal Gear Solid series). It also had a huge variety of obscure, but nevertheless excellent games, such as the Naval Ops series.

The PS2 "won" its round of the console wars both in sales numbers and in quality. I dread to think how many hours I've clocked up on my little black box (and its even littler slim-line black cousin that I imported from the States to play Final Fantasy XII). With Microsoft making a much stronger play in the current generation, I suspect we'll never again see the console scene so utterly dominated by a single machine.

Next week, I'll post something similar with my thoughts on the current generation machines, once I've had a chance to use the PS3 a bit.