Xbox 360 VS Playstation 3 - The console war of the 2000s

[moonbits]

360 was glorious from 2005 to 2009
I bought a PS3 on 2008 for MGS4

The PS3 fucking sucked balls but the games were great.

 

[Deleted member 623180]

I was waiting on the PS3 since I was a PS1 and PS2 fanboy.

I got tired of waiting when I saw "Dead Rising" advertised as a 360 exclusive. At that time, I'd never played anything like it and I've always been a big zombie movie fan. So I broke down and got a 360.

I loved my 360 once I got Call of Duty 3. That had me hooked on the online gaming scene. I eventually got a PS3 but sold it after about a month because I was so invested in the 360 and Clan Gaming at the time.

So for me, Xbox 360 was a clear winner in that era.

 

[DanCalibur]

Oh yeah, the great war for the second place. I choose the Xbox 360 not because it was better or anything but because you could mod it to run backups. I remember modding a cheap LiteOn DVD recorder to download and burn my own games.

 

[MajesticSiN]

I was Team PS3

 

[PhaseJump]

Xbox 360 perfected online gaming and the games performed better.

PS3 was a dog's breakfast. Overpriced, buggy games that looked like shit by comparison, dual shock being dismissed as something you shouldn't want or need, the PSN store would lag and crash the console occasionally needing to be reinstalled, you needed to use the PSN store on a PC to actually see some of the games that were missing from the console side, every time you would go to play something it would likely need to download and then have the extra space to unpack updates.

Red Ring of death was more acceptable than the experience of using a PS3. Sony lost their minds with the PS3, then the Vita, screwing everybody. I don't even understand how PS4 or PS5 found success. The only selling point they had going for them was free online, but they paywalled it. They never secured it, leading to the big outage and data breach. The only games worth playing on modern Playstations are typically indie games that were already on Steam. Their first party stuff is big cinematic recycled or remastered ports. Online multiplayer was never Sony's strong suit. They shut it down anyway in their own games.

Playstation doesn't deserve it's customer base. I'll never buy their brand again.

 

[Don Patch]

Low key, I skipped that whole Gen. Was just doing other things.
Looking back and having played things from then I'd have to say PS3.
Honestly, the Wii.
...Honestly, the DS....

But to stay focused, the PS3 has/had some really great titles.
The 360 more-or-less felt like a sports-game/War-games machine nearly exclusively (LIVE Arcade, not withstanding). Does nothing for me.

Post automatically merged: May 23, 2025

... I prefer the symmetrical joystick layout.

Parallel joystick brethren!

 

[Frickinfrik]

Xbox 360 perfected online gaming and the games performed better.

PS3 was a dog's breakfast. Overpriced, buggy games that looked like shit by comparison, dual shock being dismissed as something you shouldn't want or need, the PSN store would lag and crash the console occasionally needing to be reinstalled, you needed to use the PSN store on a PC to actually see some of the games that were missing from the console side, every time you would go to play something it would likely need to download and then have the extra space to unpack updates.

Red Ring of death was more acceptable than the experience of using a PS3. Sony lost their minds with the PS3, then the Vita, screwing everybody. I don't even understand how PS4 or PS5 found success. The only selling point they had going for them was free online, but they paywalled it. They never secured it, leading to the big outage and data breach. The only games worth playing on modern Playstations are typically indie games that were already on Steam. Their first party stuff is big cinematic recycled or remastered ports. Online multiplayer was never Sony's strong suit. They shut it down anyway in their own games.

Playstation doesn't deserve it's customer base. I'll never buy their brand again.

Hey now, the PS3 was great. Also I think the 360 “killed” online gaming because it was the first game console to force you to pay for online multiplayer, nobody likes paying for that. Also the 360 was prone to hardware failures and it became a joke in the last few years of it’s life. Also the PS3 had amazing exclusives, don’t know what you’re talking about.

 

[PhaseJump]

Hey now, the PS3 was great. Also I think the 360 “killed” online gaming because it was the first game console to force you to pay for online multiplayer, nobody likes paying for that. Also the 360 was prone to hardware failures and it became a joke in the last few years of it’s life. Also the PS3 had amazing exclusives, don’t know what you’re talking about.

I already explained what I am talking about, and I said the red ring of death is a preferable experience by comparison. The PS3 was half baked from the start.

The original Xbox required a subscription for Live and multiplayer. The 360 made it better, gave us gamertags and achievements, games on demand. Arcade brought back classic games and they allowed for indie devs to publish XNA stuff.

"Killed" online gaming? When? Show us all when online gaming died? Xbox unified and brought it as a centralized thing to the masses. Not even Sega Net, Heat.net, or Steam on PC came anywhere close to what Xbox rolled out to everybody OG Live and when they rebooted it with the 360.

There were amazing exclusives on both. Playstation completely shit the bed as the market leader with the PS2, and they sold a busted and inferior experience with the PS3.

 

[RomaniMajorasMask]

I was lucky to have access to both. I had my own personal 360, but my brother has a PS3 he hardly used.
It was a good time. I get how some people would dislike people fighting over the consoles and which is better, but that competitive nature is what I feel drove companies to do better! Like, fucking SELL an Xbox to me, a PlayStation to me.

Xbox One and PS4 never had that competition anymore. Microsoft gave up on exclusives, which made Sony practically the definitive console for a good while. Especially if you liked anime games. Hell, I feel around that time, you would have been better off getting a Nintendo console rather than an Xbox.
It's a shame too. I loved Xbox. But it feels in recent years it really let itself go.

 

[moonbits]

PS3 was a dog's breakfast. Overpriced, buggy games that looked like shit by comparison, dual shock being dismissed as something you shouldn't want or need, the PSN store would lag and crash the console occasionally needing to be reinstalled, you needed to use the PSN store on a PC to actually see some of the games that were missing from the console side, every time you would go to play something it would likely need to download and then have the extra space to unpack updates.

Installing games was a pain in the ass, not even PC was that slow. OMG Snake smoking for 2 hours installing a videogame thanks Sony.

 

[iamthemilkman]

Bought all 3 at launch. I waited in line at Wal-Mart for the Xbox 360 (In-store in the electronics department and not outside, thankfully), pre-ordered the Wii at my hometown mall's Gamestop, and had my PS3 pre-ordered online. I was working at Hot Topic at the time, as well as working at my uncle's construction company, so it was the first time in my life that I was making some money and was able to afford all 3 with my own money.

Xbox 360 was my main console. Wii and PS3 were pretty dire for a while there. I could only play so much Twilight Princess, Red Steel, Resistance: FoM, and Motorstorm. Xbox 360 was firing on all cylinders in 2006 and 2007. Wii and PS3 did finally get some new games worth playing with Super Mario Galaxy and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune in 2007, though. That said, the PS3's lack of an achievement system for a while and lack of Dualshock feedback really did suck. Their online was woefully inadequate, and third party games -- especially Unreal Engine 3 games -- almost always ran at a lower resolution and worse framerate.

Post automatically merged: May 23, 2025

I don't think the Xbox 360 was a competitor for the Playstation 3.

The 360 was the PS2 of that generation. It's the console that had Halo during its peak with Halo 3, had Bioshock first, had Mass Effect first, had timed exclusive Call of Duty map packs when the best Call of Duty games were launching, etc. PS3 took many years to recover and it eventually outsold the 360, however 360 was the mainstream console choice for most, if not all, of that generation. It had way better online, too.

 

[nobitakun]

Hey now, the PS3 was great. Also I think the 360 “killed” online gaming because it was the first game console to force you to pay for online multiplayer, nobody likes paying for that. Also the 360 was prone to hardware failures and it became a joke in the last few years of it’s life. Also the PS3 had amazing exclusives, don’t know what you’re talking about.

I can't argue what actual numbers show. People don't mind paying for playing online as long as they receive extras that are worth it. You describe it like you were just paying for playing online, nothing more, and the monthly subscription was aeons better than the PSN. To sum things up, with 360 you got better online stability and the games that were free as a Gold member are yours forever, even if you cancel your subscription. On the contrary, PSN Plus free games can only be played as long as you have a valid subscription, so you are "renting them".

I don't like paying for playing, but clearly Microsoft knew how to make things with 360, until One came out and screwed everything up.

Also, it's true that 360 had many consoles with the red ring of death, as well as phat PS3's had their heat issues. But I've yet to see a 360 with HDMI port to fail, and I've seen many of them. My first 360 is Elite, from 2007 and never ever had any issue with it, then I bought an Arcade from 2008, which was a Falcon model, and I also had 0 issues. All my friends, known people and places where I went that had a 360 with an HDMI port never had any issue, so I don't think it was better or worse than PS3.

 

[spacebear]

Initially owned the 360 the year it launched. After my third RROD in 2012 I gave up on the console and sold it along with all my games for a PS3. PS3 still kicking strong to this day. Overall I liked the 360 more but not dying on me multiple times is a pretty freaking big deal.

 

[ThatOneLum]

Bought a 360 near to launch but ended up with a double whammy of making the mistake of buying Sonic 06 and then having my 360 upright and causing it to chew up discs.

Traded it in for a phat 60gb PS3 which I ran until it died a decade later, but ended up having a 360 on and off when friends thought they'd died and gave them to me to "fix". In most cases they worked fine already, people couldn't differentiate between 3 light rrod and 4 light rrod lmao

Both systems had their quirks, pros and cons but it mostly came down to UI preferences in the end IMO.

 

[ohcalypsoh]

I've never been a console/pc loyalist, and I was privileged enough to have parents who would eventually buy me all the consoles when I was a kid while also having a PC they'd let me play games on, so I played a little of everything in both the 6th and 7th gens including PC games of those eras. First console I got was the 360 simply because it released first, though I ended up having a problem with it (it was a non-RROD issue, forget exactly what it was) that required them providing another unit as would happen with RROD. I knew my uncle went through about 5 RROD 360s, and IIRC I looked up the manufacturing date or specific model or something along those lines of the new console I got and whatever source I looked at had it specifically marked as RROD prone, so I decided to go sell the console and games and get a PS3. Initially wasn't as enthused by the PS3 in terms of UI or library, but I stuck with it and it grew on me immensely over time. My old fat PS3 lasted me until just a few years ago too despite having played it pretty regularly all these years. Got me one of those ps3 slims with the sliding top door, and I'm still playing games on it, working my way through the sega genesis collection & replaying dragon age origins/dragon age II. At this point I'm pretty fine with having the PS3 as my preferred console for that gen, though xbox 360 live was my introduction to online multiplayer so I have a lot of nostalgia for that and the early 360's UI. The graphics jump from playing on ps2/xbox/gamecube to 360 was the last time that aspect of games evolution actually excited me, too. Oblivion totally blew my mind back then.

 

[sandogma sandogma]

After PS2 I started getting into PC gaming. I bought a ATI Radeon 9600XT to pair with my Intel Pentium III (which I'm ashamed to admit I swapped with my older Celeron from my former girlfriends mothers new computer). I bought that card primarily for two games, Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. But even with this new and expensive (for me at the time) graphics card, I still struggled running both games at anything other than medium settings (low settings for Doom 3). While I still enjoyed both games, I realized PC gaming really is an expensive hobby if you are trying to experience the latest and greatest.

Then a year later, the PS3 and 360 come out. Up to that point I was team PS3, until the I saw that price. There was no game they showcased that justified the price to me so I was going to wait to later when I could afford it.

Then one day I went to a friends house who recently got a 360 and I saw Gears of War for the first time. As soon as I saw Dom sprinting and the camera switching to "roadie run", where the game camera shifts and bobs as if a cameraman is running behind the character, I was sold. It looked so realistic and I was totally immersed just watching my friend play. It was that game, along with the fact that the 360 and Gears of War combined were still cheaper than the PS3 console alone, that got me to team Xbox... for that one generation lol

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

I think my life changed when I discovered Halo on PC, since then I just wanted am Xbox, but sadly we couldnt afford it. And when we could get something, my parents prioritize my younger brother who wanted a Wii.

I did get all the news and even participate in the console war back then (for the 360 ofc), and finally got my Xbox 360 like in 2010, which was good, but also bad because it was after MS put more corpo control on the platform and the console lose ground to Sony by focusing on the Kinect (I had one, it sucked).

I also got a PS3 in like 2012, my first console bought with my own money. And not gonna lie, I see why people like it so much, I fall in love with the console with games like Gran Turismo 5, Uncharted, KillZone 2 (probably the only good KZ) and the free online.

 

[iisoide]

Honestly I've been an Xbox guy most of my life because I find the PlayStation controller too awkward to use, so I have a lot of fond memories with games on Xbox 360 and OG Xbox. I'll always choose Xbox 360 over PS3, but I do think PS3 had the better game catalogue overall.

 

[hi4all]

Hey now, the PS3 was great. Also I think the 360 “killed” online gaming because it was the first game console to force you to pay for online multiplayer, nobody likes paying for that. Also the 360 was prone to hardware failures and it became a joke in the last few years of it’s life. Also the PS3 had amazing exclusives, don’t know what you’re talking about.

It wasnt. Worse looking multiplatform games with less fps, installing games despite stronger hardware and bigger discs, no achievements in the beginning, online capabilities was a joke compared to 360. PS3 felt for me like a PS2.5, not like a next-gen console.
PS3 defended itself in the end only with exclusive games.

and for that reason now as a retro console it is a better choice to buy today.

 

[Xeno]

I had both but I actually played the PSP and DS a lot more that generation.

 

[Frickinfrik]

It wasnt. Worse looking multiplatform games with less fps, installing games despite stronger hardware and bigger discs, no achievements in the beginning, online capabilities was a joke compared to 360. PS3 felt for me like a PS2.5, not like a next-gen console.
PS3 defended itself in the end only with exclusive games.

and for that reason now as a retro console it is a better choice to buy today.

360 was worse than ps3 imo, it had so many setbacks that kept me from buying it:

No HDMI support out the box, for the first model.

Couldn’t connect online out the box for the first model, had to buy an accessory for that.

Had to pay for online multiplayer. As opposed to free.

Smaller disc space, meaning some games had to be shipped with multiple discs, thus eating up the 360’s storage.

Was massively prone to hardware failures such as the RROD and the E74 error, because Microsoft thought it was a great idea to rush the 360 to the market before the Wii and PS3 came out. Also, Microsoft poorly handled the whole RROD situation.

The Kinect. Need I say more?

By 2009, Microsoft gave up on titles people actually wanted and started to shove Kinect down our throats.

Also, Microsoft gave the axe to the 360 Marketplace, while the PS3 Store is still up and running to this very day.

If I wanted either console back then, I most certainly would go for the PS3. It may have had a very rough start, but it pulled itself together and put up a tough fight.

 

[hi4all]

360 was worse than ps3 imo, it had so many setbacks that kept me from buying it:

No HDMI support out the box, for the first model.

Couldn’t connect online out the box for the first model, had to buy an accessory for that.

Had to pay for online multiplayer. As opposed to free.

Smaller disc space, meaning some games had to be shipped with multiple discs, thus eating up the 360’s storage.

Was massively prone to hardware failures such as the RROD and the E74 error, because Microsoft thought it was a great idea to rush the 360 to the market before the Wii and PS3 came out. Also, Microsoft poorly handled the whole RROD situation.

The Kinect. Need I say more?

By 2009, Microsoft gave up on titles people actually wanted and started to shove Kinect down our throats.

Also, Microsoft gave the axe to the 360 Marketplace, while the PS3 Store is still up and running to this very day.

If I wanted either console back then, I most certainly would go for the PS3. It may have had a very rough start, but it pulled itself together and put up a tough fight.

most of these arguments are just nitpicking, both early solutions from Sony and Microsoft were weak, but the truth is that Microsoft introduced a real new generation to gamers, which Sony only clumsily tried to catch up with. this paid online that you are talking about was a breath of fresh air in consoles, something that did not exist before at such high level, and set trends and standards that are still relevant today. ps3, on the other hand, from the very beginning was a colossus on clay legs that had to be improved all the time.


from what you say it seems to me that you did not have any of them at that time.
if this is really the case, there is no point in continuing to talk.

 

[starseeker300]

I'd say between the two, I'd pick 360. Games generally ran better on 360 and it had a better controller, also in my opinion 360 had a better library, granted yeah it missed out on a few things like the kingdom hearts remasters and dishonored but it got other stuff like halo, ff13 trilogy, skyrim, lego games, borderlands, batman arkham asylum and city

 

[iamthemilkman]

Low key, I skipped that whole Gen. Was just doing other things.
Looking back and having played things from then I'd have to say PS3.
Honestly, the Wii.
...Honestly, the DS....

But to stay focused, the PS3 has/had some really great titles.
The 360 more-or-less felt like a sports-game/War-games machine nearly exclusively (LIVE Arcade, not withstanding). Does nothing for me.

Post automatically merged: May 23, 2025

Parallel joystick brethren!

I thought the 360 library was a lot more diverse than the PS3's. It was getting all of the Raiden games, the Cave shmups, the Qute shmups, etc. It was getting a lot of Japanese support back then with weird releases like Tenchu Z, the best version of Deadly Premonition, the Ninety Nine Nights games, Cavia's incredibly weird Bullet Witch, From Software's forgotten action game Ninja Blade, Mistwalker gems like Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon, etc.

 

[Ethernoh]

Had both, was swamped at work so I didn't have much time to play, used the 360 for multiplatform as it was cheaper over here, PS3 for exclusives.