Why X-Box Is Going To Pound Sony Into The Ground
GRAPHICS
The PS2\'s base polygon count is 18 million per second with 1 texture and moderate effects. In order to generate an image the quality of one produced by X-Box, the PS2 would have to render the same polygon 4 times. That reduces the polygon rate to a dismal 5 million per second at best. The XBox on the other hand can produce 50 million 4 texture, transformed, and lit polygons per second. That number is 10 times higher than the PS2. Another thing is texture memory. The PS2 has a total of 4MB of memory for textures. This is, by the way, 1/2 of the Dreamcasts, and 1/48 of what the XBox can theoretically pull off. When porting a game to XBox from PS2, 32MB of XBox\'s 64MB of unified memory would go to the code of the game leaving 32MB available for textures. This alone is 8 times that of PS2\'s, but when you factor in 6:1 texture compression, the number skyrockets to 192MB. Let\'s not also forget the 2 vertex shaders, the XBox\'s pixil shading abilities, and the anti-aliasing with no hit on the hardware. Additionally, the maximum resolution of the XBox is far greater than the PS2\'s. When generating an image with 32 bit color depth, 2 frame buffers as well as a z-buffer, the PS2 maxes out at 640x480, while X-Box can still generate the images at 1920x1080. The XBox also has a fillrate of 4 gigapixils per second compared to PS2\'s 800 megapixils fill rate. Moving on to games.
GAMES
The XBox\'s list of confirmed games is already more impressive than the entire existing PS2 lineup. With titles like Project Ego, Dead Or Alive 3, Tony Hawk 2x, Project Gothem Racing, and Halo all coming exclusivly to XBox, you would have to be an idiot not to buy the system. There are also plenty of other great titles that are coming to the system, and while some of them may not be exclusive to XBox, they are still going to be the most visually impressive, and best controlled versions available. The only place where XBox will lack is in Japanese support, but that shouldn\'t be a big loss. The world isn\'t going to end if XBox doesn\'t get the craptacular Final Fantasy series.
CONTROLLER
Dual Shock is one of the worst controllers that I have ever used, aside from maybe the Nintendo 64. It is so small that it hurts my hands to use for long periods of time, and the 4 sholder button layout is just plain confusing. Factor in the fact that the buttons are poorly labled, the horrible d-pad, and the lack of expansion slots on the controller, and the result just screams BAD! XBox on the other hand has 2 well-placed triggers, 6 buttons on the front for fighting games, and much better and more comfortable layout, and expansion slots for easy swapping of memory cards and addition of headsets etc. The built in rumble is also much greater than PS2\'s attempts at controller shaking. A final nice thing is the 9 foot breakaway cords. If your gaming session gets a little too rowdy, and you yank on the controller a little too hard, than you won\'t pull the console off the table, the controller will simply disconnect.
PROCESSOR, MEMORY, And BANDWIDTH
The main processor chips in at just under 300MHz. While some would argue that this is not a valid argument because of the different archetecture, I would be hard pressed to think that the Pentium III at 733MHz would not be at least equal. Also, the speed of the graphics chips is of concern. The Nv2a clocks in at 100MHz faster than the PS2 graphics chip. 250MHz vs. 150MHz is bound to make a difference. As far as memory is concerned, the XBox has plenty of it, and tons more than the PS2. PS2 has, I believe 36MB of total combined memory compared to a meaty sum of 64MB unified memory on the XBox. One advantage to unified memory is that the allocation can be adjusted to fit the game, and developers are not limited to only 4MB of texture memory. Finally, the XBox excells when it comes to data bandwidth. Information travels through the XBox at 6.4GB/sec, compared to a lowly 3.2GB/sec on PS2.
GAME MEDIUM HARDDRIVE And BROADBAND INTERNET
Another advantage XBox has over PS2 is the harddrive and broadband internet capabilities right out of the box. Developers are a lot more likely to support a feature that comes built in than one that is only available via add-on. Sony has talked about online games, but they do not yet have a modem. The last time a modem addon was tried it was for Saturn in the form of NetLink and it failed miserably. Also, the PS2 hard drive addon actually requires you to install games (Final Fantasy X). XBox\'s harddrive is used solely for save games, ripped music, and memory cache. One last thing to consider in this catagory is that the PS2\'s DVD\'s max out at 4.7GB of capacity, while XBox DVDs are able to carry 8.5GB of data thanks to the DVD-9 format.
AND FINALLY PRICE
PS2\'s price has dropped to $280, and there are reports that it will fall to as low as $250 by the launch of the XBox. Sure, this sounds great, but how about looking into it a bit further. In order to have a system that competes with XBox you would need the console (cough...3...cough), the hard drive, the broadband addon, and a multi-tap. This adds up to $400 ($250 Console + $100 Harddrive [assuming price drop] + $30 Multi-Tap + $20 Broadband Modem). That is $70 more than a DVD equipped XBox! Why would anybody pay $70 extra only to get a system that is at best 1/3 as powerful as it\'s competition?
