You should go read it, or at very least look at all the great cases I took pictures of.

For me the draw of achievement for their replay value and having a standardized and well integrated online experience are huge selling points for me to get a game on the 360 over another platform. I would even go so far as to suffer inferior graphics and sound for the benefits to replay value and ease of use that achievements and Xbox Live offer. So at least in my opinion a Playstation 3 title would have to do something quite spectacular to draw my purchase over the same title on the Xbox 360. The article piqued my interest because I was curious exactly what the Playstation 3 offered that would make these games stand out so head and shoulders above their Xbox 360 counterparts.

After reading the article I was left scratching my head. It seemed to me that the arguments presented in the article didn’t at all match the heavily reported conclusion at the end. Not only did the article not support it’s final claim that the PS3 titles were the superior lot, but the arguments for the PS3 version were on a whole very weak, and based almost entirely on minor and inconsequential factors.

Most of the comments I’ve read from those who were to lazy to read the article themselves assumed that the PS3 was started to eek out superior graphics to the 360, unfortunately that’s not the case. According to the actual article only two of the four games had a noticeable difference in graphics and with both of those game the journalist noted that the Xbox 360 version had the advantage (albeit slight) over their PS3 counterparts.

If there was no real difference in graphics then what was the difference you might ask? Apparently DMC4 was a “clear winner” on PS3 because they thought the controller layout was better… yup, according to GamePro the face buttons on the PS3 controller were easier to hit than the 360 controller. I don’t know how that’s possible really, and personally I don’t care what the journalist says about the controllers I find the PS controller design to be incredibly uncomfortable no matter what game I’m playing.

COD4 was “better on PS3″ because of “dedicated servers” which is untrue, COD4 does not have dedicated servers on PS3, this was such a important point to the article that they even made some huge graphics to hit the point home that the 360 sucks because it didn’t have dedicated servers.

Both COD4 and Burnout revenge were “better on PS3″ because the match making interface was slightly faster and easier to use. Really? is that a worth while selling point? I can see how some x-plat games will have a more streamlined online interface on non-360 platforms because the developers can roll their own, but the 360 is standardized and better than average across the board which, in my opinion, is much better than having a few good online interfaces and a lot of crappy ones. Not to mention, if I’m buying a game based on multiplayer, I’m going to buy the one for the platform that all of my friends own (playing with strangers is overrated), and right now, none of my friends own PS3s.

Most troubling is that, the article completely neglected what I consider to be the two most influential factors when making the decision of which console to buy the game for, Achievements and Xbox Live. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who picked up this gross oversight as Microsoft themselves released a statement in rebuttal.

For multiplatform console owners, Achievements and Gamerscore have to be listed as an influencing factor to purchase the Xbox 360 version,” said Penello in an email to GamePro on Tuesday. “Their success and popularity is undeniable.

Of course GamePro responded to this defending their position:

This feature isn’t about which platform is better, but which version of these four games is better. Achievements, rumble, and Xbox Live are specific to the console, not in-game features. This is why I used graphics, loading times, controls, and online integration as the criteria.

So apparently achievements aren’t in-game features anymore, that’s news to me. While they are integrated with the console and the Live service itself they are still, at their core, features of the game. There is no reason developers could not have added a similar feature on the PS3 counterpart to help boost the replay value. Sony even has a trophy system that will be integrated with home that offers a similar benefit to achievements but again none of the developers opted to use it.

Part of why those features are so important and so popular on the 360 is that they’re supported across the board, when you buy a 360 games, no matter what it is you know for certain that there are achievements to earn, and that it will have Xbox Live integration. There is no reason the PS3 can’t do the same thing except they opt not to and why that shouldn’t be taken into consideration when comparing cross-platform titles is beyond me.

On a whole after reading the article the impression I got was that the author knew what he wanted for the outcome and then wrote the article to support his desired result. I think the PS3 is a capable platform but I think it’s benefits are continually squandered by short sighted development. People continually question what makes a game “next gen” and since the release of the 360 I’ve held strong that it’s a tight integration with the console and a high level of standardization across all games for the platform. Next Gen to me is Achievements, it’s knowing that all games will be released with a list of important features standard, and an online service that builds a community beyond the console itself.

Ignoring the importance of these features and condoning the efforts of developers who neglect to incorporate them into non 360 releases does not do the industry any favors. I want developers to give a good reason to buy a PS3 title over a 360 title and I certainly don’t appreciate journalists who write fanboy articles with the intent to quell buyer’s remorse.

Someone recently asked me about resolutions on 360 games and I started thinking about it and then I started digging since I recalled a few other less notable games running at lower resolutions. I eventually found an interesting French fellow who is dedicated to finding all of the next gen games that aren’t as HD as they claim to be.

Quaz51 of the Beyond 3D forums has an interesting setup he’s got an HDMI enabled 360 and PS3, and a native 1080p display capable of mapping the incoming graphics at a 1:1 ratio. He then uses the built in pause feature of the display to extract a single frame from the game’s actual gameplay. At this point he’s got a pure unadulterated snapshot of the game on his display as it was output from the console. He then takes a photograph of the image at resolutions many times higher using his digital camera and analysis it on his computer. Using basic geometric maths and and a very strong understanding of image scaling and anti-aliasing functions he’s able to determine what the original rendered resolution was and how much AA was used. The process is repeated from several screenshots within the game to ensure accuracy.

His results range from interesting to shocking. You’d be surprised how many games don’t actually support the “guaranteed” minimum requires set by MS, more so, you’ll be surprised which ones they are.

Xbox 360

• Not True 720p

• Call of Duty 3 – 1040×624 – 2xMSAA
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – 1024×600 – 2xMSAA
• Conan (demo) – 1024×576 – no AA
• Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – 1024×600 – 2xMSAA
• FIFA 2006: Road to FIFA World Cup (demo) – 1024×576 – 2xMSAA
• FIFA 2007 (demo) – 1200×675 – no AA
• Halo 3 – 1152×640 – no AA
• in photo mode – 8064×4448 – no AA
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Legend (demo) – 1024×600 – 2xMSAA
• NCAA Football 08 (demo) – 1024×600 – 2xMSAA
• Perfect Dark Zero (demo) – 1152×640 – no AA
• Pro Evo Soccer 6 (demo) – 1024×576 – 2xMSAA
• Project Gotham Racing 3 (demo) – 1024×600 – 2xMSAA
• Ridge Racer 6 (demo) – 1440×810 – no AA
• Tony Hawk’s Project 8 – 1024×576 – 2xMSAA
• Virtua Fighter 5 (demo) – 1024×1024 – 2xMSAA

• 720p with Reduced AA

• Assassin’s Creed – 1280×720 – 2xMSAA
• Bioshock – 1280×720 – no AA
• Burnout Paradise (demo) – 1280×720 – 2xMSAA
• Forza Motorsports 2 – 1280×720 – 2xMSAA
• FIFA 08 – 1280×720 – 2xMSAA
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 – 1280×720 – 2xMSAA
• Half Life2: The Orange Box (demo) – 1280×720 – no AA
• Project Gotham Racing 4 – 1280×720 – 2xMSAA
• Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground – 1280×720 – no AA
• Viva Pinata – 1280×720 – 2xMSAA

• True 1080p Games

• NBA Street Homecourt (demo) – 1920×1080 – 4xMSAA
• Virtua Tennis 3 – 1920×1080 – 2xMSAA

While some of these numbers were generated from market place demos the list is far more expansive than one would have expected. Most interesting is the wide use of the 1024×600 resolution with 2xMSAA. Apparently that resolution is popular due to the size of the Xbox 360′s frame buffer it can be generated without tiling the frames (rendering sections at a time) which makes life easier for the developers. At 2xMSAA the 1024×600 resolution fits perfectly to accomplish this task. Clearly this is popular option for those who feel that their game game would benefit more from 2xMSAA than true 720p and lacking the optimization for both or better. Clearly this resolution isn’t as bad as some make it out to be considering notable games such as Oblivion and Call of Duty 4 were able to sneak it in without anyone so much as sneezing doubt over their graphical prowess.

Another Interesting discovery is that Halo 3′s special overlaid 640p resolution isn’t anything new, because the same technique was utilized on the 360′s first major in house shooter, Perfect Dark Zero. Of course photo-mode in Halo 3 provides massive super-sampling (SSAA) by way of rendering to a 8064×4448 and scaling down. This essentially tiles the image across the frame buffer 7 times. It can afford to do this of course because it’s not rendering in real time.

Anything not listed above can be assumed running full 720p at 4xMSAA, Quaz51 has tested a vast majority of the Xbox 360′s catalog including XBLA titles. The 360 isn’t the only console that’s getting his treatment though, he’s also going over Playstation 3 titles and finding similar results.

Playstation 3

• Not True 720p

• Call of Duty 3 – 1088×624 – 2xMSAA
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – 1024×600 – 2xMSAA
• Conan (demo) – 1024×576 – no AA
• Def Jam Icon – 1152×648 – no AA
• Jericho (demo) – 996×560 – no AA
• MX vs ATV (demo) – 1024×576 – no AA
• Pirates of the Caribbean – 960×720 – no AA
• The Darkness (demo) – 1024×576 – no AA
• Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground (demo) – 1024×576 -no AA
• Virtua Figther 5 – 1024×1024 – no AA

• Not True 1080p

• GTHD – 1440×1080 – no AA
• in Vehicle Selection – 1920×1080 – no AA
• GT5 Prologue (demo) – 1280×1080 2xMSAA
• in garage/pit/showroom – 1280×720 4xMSAA or 1920×1080 no AA
• Pirates of the Caribbean – 768×1080 – no AA
• Rub’a’dub – 1600×1080 – no AA
• Transformers – 960×1080 – no AA
• Virtua Figther 5 – 1024×768 – no AA

• True 1080p

• Blast Factor – 1920×1080 – no AA
• Calling All Cars – 1920×1080 – 4xMSAA
• Full Auto 2 (demo) – 1920×1080 – 4xMSAA
• Go Puzzle – 1920×1080
• Locoroco Cocoreccho – 1920×1080 – 2xMSAA
• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance – 1920×1080 – no AA
• NBA07 (demo) – 1920×1080 – no AA
• NBA08 (demo) – 1920×1080 – no AA
• NBA Street Home court = 1920×1080 – no AA
• Pixel Junk Racers – 1920×1080
• Ridge Racer 7 (demo) = 1920×1080 – no AA
• Stardust HD – 1280×1080 – no AA
• Sudoku – 1920×1080
• Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection – 1920×1080 – no AA
• Virtua Tennis 3 (demo) – 1920×1080 – 2xMSAA

The PS3 renders a few games in native 1080p, though half of them are Playstation Network games it’s still a better showing than the Xbox 360 for the resolution. The Less than 720p group sees pretty much the same cross platform games that were in the Xbox 360 list. Perhaps most interesting here is that the Gran Turismo series, isn’t rendering in True 1080p, similar to Halo 3 it does actually reach it’s proper resolution when in the menus and areas where fast processing isn’t required.

While it’s interesting to look at what the actual resolutions of these games are I think it more proves the point over how over valued the resolution battle is. No one questioned Oblivion, or Call of Duty 4, or Tomb Raider because those games look amazing, and are often used as shining exmaples of the best graphics the 360 and PS3 have to offer. How is it then that the most graphically impressive games have apparently underwhelming resolutions?

The answer is simple, and that is there is much much more to what makes good graphics than resolution. Arguably the horsepower required to pump out those extra pixels could be detrimental to other aspects of the image’s quality. Surely the creators of Halo 3, Gran Turismo, and Call of Duty 4 realized that they could produce an overall more impressive image if they allowed the resolution to suffer a bit. On the other end of the fence games like Ridge Racer 7 and NBA Street Homecourt are lacking a lot of detail and run at much lower frame-rates in comparison to their 720p-ish brethren.

Often tell people that 1080p could actually HURT the quality of their graphics and that they need to stop drinking the Sony “Full-HD” Koolaide. If seeing that list and thinking about how good those games actually look doesn’t convince you then nothing will.

While I’ve been giving the Xbox brand quite a bit of praise I’ve also given the Playstation brand quite a bit of grief. For the same reasons that the Xbox has moved in directions I’ve been pleased with the Playstation brand has moved in directions that turned me off. At my core I’m a gamer, and I’ll buy ANY console the delivers what I’m looking for regardless of my opinion of the company. I’m also not one to waste my money on promises and future potential. As someone who spends easily thousands each year on my hobby I don’t have money to waste on products that I’ll just be sitting on. I can say with confidence that as much as I despise Sony I despise Microsoft even more but like a good consumer I buy their products anyway… lets hear it for capitalism.

With that said I will, and without hesitation, buy a Playstation 3 the very moment there is something that console offers that will compel me to purchase it. I don’t HATE the Playstation 3 but I will call out the brand on their missteps (as I feel ALL good consumers should) and I do the same for the Xbox and Nintendo brands as well, they just give me a whole lot less to complain about.

So why haven’t I bought a PS3 yet? Well, at the moment there are a few interesting things on the console but it doesn’t actually offer me anything that compels me to buy it, this is compounded by the fact that the price is rather steep for an item that doesn’t actually do anything I’m interested in seeing it do. I have the cash, that’s not a problem, and many of the promised features and games seem interesting but as I said before I wont part with the cash until those promises become a reality, I have better things to spend it on like games. After all isn’t that really what we’re spending all this money to play with?
I started thinking about what Sony would have to offer for me to go to the store and buy a PS3 tomorrow. Granted I wouldn’t do it unless I could take the console home and see the fruits of these things with first hand immediacy, this discredits everything that comes out “soon” or “this holiday” or “next year”. Again, there are games that are out now for other platforms that I want to play NOW so blowing several hundred dollars for a Chia-pet is worthless when I already own a few full grown ferns. Even still I don’t think many of these would be all that difficult for them to do, heck they’d be well served to do all of them. So without further ado here are the 6 reasons (none of which exist at the present) I would buy a PS3.

1. At least 6 must-have exclusive and original titles a year. A “must-have” title is defined by ME. Honestly Games like Motorstorm and Resistance didn’t really interest me and I would define neither of them as “Must-have” I’m talking about games that I see a trailer for and start salivating at the mouth thinking about how cool it would be to play it. Resident Evil does that for me, as does the Devil May Cry series, both are titles that helped fuel the purchase decisions of the Gamecube and PS2 last generation. In terms of recently released games The Darkness really excited me as does the up coming Bioshock and lots of other titles, unfortunately I don’t see anything exclusive on the PS3 radar this year that falls into that category.

These games have to be exclusives because I already own every other console, so if it’s a cross platform title there is really no good reason for me to buy a PS3 since I can already play it on something else I own. Online wise the 360 has a more compelling offering and graphically the differences between the 360 and PS3 are marginal at best so neither one of those would get me to buy the PS3 version over the 360 version anyway.

I say these have to be original titles because with the exception of two or three franchises within the Sony brand their franchisees don’t really interest me. Ratchet and Clank, F1 Racing, Jax and Dexter, etc. just don’t interest me. so really they’d have to branch out into new franchises if they’d want to create titles that I’d define as a must have.

I say 6 of these titles due to the console’s price. I’m not going to spend over half a grand just to play one or two titles. I’d need fresh and exciting gaming experiences at least every other month from the box. If the console’s price was lower I could justify less titles but at $500-$600 it needs to deliver strong and consistently. By comparison the Wii only had three available titles I was interested in, but that’s all it needed considering it’s price tag.

2. An achievement system standardized across all games with required developer support and accessibility over the web. I’m an achievement whore, if you read my articles with any consistancy you’ll know that. Though, my addiction to these things aren’t just some side effect of the Xbox Koolaide. Actually this is the way I’ve played games for the last decade years or so.

In college my friends and I started logging what we called a “dead games list” whenever we started a new game we’d come up with requirements and if you played through and met the requirements you “killed” the game and could add it to the dead games list. Essentially the requirements were always that you explored every last little aspect of the game to the fullest and defeated the game on the highest difficulties possible. A fighting game for instance would require you beat the game on the hardest difficulty with every character, as well as unlocking every character, costume or anything else that could be unlocked. If the game was on the dead games list you could be assured that you mastered the game and saw absolutely every thing there was to see.

When MS came out with achievements it was like they built my dead games list into the console itself. And making those stats accessible over the web through Xbox.com gave it legs. I’m now a member of several communities of like minded gamers. Achievements for me are like a gift, like someone finally understood the way I liked to play games and built this system just for me. I know for a fact I’m not the only person who feels this way and I must say every other console on the planet now feels like LESS of a console because they’re missing this feature. Even if you’re not achievement obsessed there is no denying that it can extend the replay value of a game substantially, which is always a good thing no matter how you look at it.

I’ve been following this development on the PS3 pretty closely from the copycat entitlement system, to the now planned trophy system. Like most things with the PS3 it has potential, but I can’t play with potential. I can’t have fun with it, and it’s not worth anything, let alone $600. The trophy system could be the single greatest thing Sony’s done with the PS3, or or could be lame, under-supported niche feature only used by one or two games. Once again I’ll hold on to my money until it proves itself as worthwhile.

3. A guarantee of level of service audio visual fidelity: all developers MUST support 720p and 4xMSAA, online must integrate with the console’s built in profile system. While it’s true that most PS3 games offer 720p graphics or better. There is really no standard to that effect, as an owner of a PS3 there is no guarantee that every game you buy will support that resolution. While it’s highly likely to be the case in terms of 720p it is definitely NOT the case in other areas. The lack of FSAA in most of the games I’ve played is some kind of cruel joke. Playing Ridge Racer 7 and Virtua Fighter 5 and having my eyeballs cut on the sharp graphical jaggies is so very reminiscent of when I brought home a PS2 and questioned it’s superiority to the Dreamcast for the very same reason. This is the 7th console generation, High Def, surround sound, X million FLOPS, and we can’t be bothered to smooth out the edges of the 3d models. Maybe MS’s requirement that developers use FSAA and 720p does tie the hands of developers. But it’s those same requirements that IMO made the Dreamcast and the Gamecube keep a consistently high level of graphical quality across all of their games.

This consistancy goes beyond graphics into other areas including the online experience and a profile with all of your preferences and stats built in. This all falls under what I was saying earlier about stuff that MS is doing in the console space that I’ve been begging for for years. I actually played the PS2 version of DOA2 instead of the Dreamcast version despite the fact that I like the DC controller more and thought the DC version’s graphics were better. The PS2 version offered a profile system. Rather than having no stat tracking at all when we passed around the controller during our weekly tournaments on the DC I could keep a personal profile and not have it messed up by everyone else I was playing with. That was with one game, I’m spoiled now that I have a password protected profile consistent across all games. Once again this might tie the hands of some developers but I say: screw em, because I like it this way and it seems to be the only real way to get some consistancy in the industry.

4. A $300 or less price tag with HD cables and a headset included. I couldn’t write this article without bring up the price issue. The Sony fanclub likes to draw comparisons about how the Xbox 360 is more expensive once you buy an HD-DVD player and pay for Xbox Live or how the Wii isn’t so cheap once you buy three more Remotes and a golden chalice. The fact of the matter is I DONT WANT those things. I have no intention of ever buying the HD-DVD attachment, and if Sony offered the PS3 without Blu-Ray for even $5 less I would probably buy that version over the one they offer now because as long as this format war rages on I’m not going to fund terrorism on either side.

You know what accessories I DO need though? HD-Cables so I can actually use more than 1/20th of the console’s performance power, as well as a headset so I can pretend that my multiplayer games are actually more than just single player games with a really “creative” AI. Interesting enough those are two accessories that the PS3 just doesn’t come with. yeah I know I can order an HDMI cable online for $10 but you know what I don’t want to go to Best Buy, spend $600 on a PS3 to take it home and buy a Cable online while I wait 6-8 for the cable to arrive before I can really play it. Nor do I want to drop the $70-$100 that Best Buy wants to charge me for the same plastic wrapped copper.

Considering that, and considering that there are a few (very few) games for the console that I’d like to play right now the optimal price would have to be $300 with HD cables and a headset included. This ties in with the earlier comment on the number of games the console needs. Either they need more games to justify the price or they need a lower price to justify the games. As it sits right now, neither the games nor the price justifies a purchase.

5. PS1 and PS2 games rendered in HD with 4xMSAA. I do love quite a few PS1 and PS2 games, but I do also own both of those consoles. Really the BC feature of the PS3 doesn’t do anything for me. Upscaling graphics is a sham, particularly when I own a projector with a Faroudja DCDi that can scale the games from a PS2 much better than the PS3′s software scaler ever will.

What would make the BC experience enjoyable would be if the PS3 were to actually render those old games in a higher resolution and apply 4xMSAA on top of it. I remember when I first got Bleem! on my PC it was amazing to see all my favorite PS1 games rendered (not scaled) at 3 times their normal resolution. Everything was crystal clear, there were no jaggies and it was just fantastic. I became disenfranchised by the PS2′s graphical capabilities long before the HD generation and now that I’ve been playing games in HD for almost 2 years even the PS2 games that I’d love to go back and play become hard to stomach due to the graphics distracting from the core experience. If the PS3′s horsepower was used to render the games natively in HD I would drive to the store right now and buy one simply because it would let me experience all of the great PS2 games I missed by letting me enjoy them with real HD graphics.

6. Toshiba announces that they’re retiring the HD-DVD format and gives the market to Blu-Ray. Fat chance of this happening but truth be told it would make me buy a PS3. As I said earlier, I don’t buy into the whole format war. I’ve got thousands saved waiting to pounce on a format and start building an HD collection. I’ve got nearly 500 DVDs in my collection, mostly special editions and box sets. I’m a collector. And there is no way I’m going to drop so much as a dime if I think there is even a hint of a chance that it will become obsolete before it’s time. There are even movies I love that I’ve avoided buying because I want to buy them once, and in HD.

While I’m not the biggest fan of using my game console for movie playback I think a PS3 wouldn’t be that bad of an HD player, especially considering it’s software updatability. Despite the back and forth between the two camps and the doom an gloom surrounding Blu-Ray’s ever growing market dominance it’s still squabbling over peanuts. Sure Blu-Ray might have sold 10K more copies of movie X last month but it doesn’t change the fact that both of them combined were outsold by millions of the regular DVD version. It’s like proclaiming your product has market dominance because it has 1.2% of the market while your competitor only has .9%. Wake me up when things actually start changing beyond these petty marketing games about how perception is the new reality.
So those are the six things that would get me to buy a PS3. If any of them happen I will buy one, mark my words. If you don’t agree with these things, I don’t really care because these are the things I care about, not you. Though I do think that much of the market does at least have a few things in common with this view point. I also don’t think it would be all too difficult for Sony to make these changes. Some of them I’m sure will eventually happen, but I’m not about to buy the console just to sit around and dream about that day. I’ll be busy playing all the other consoles and I’ll buy a PS3 when it’s ready to be played the way I like to play games.

…A Little History
Beyond the basic move to mainstream the original Playstation was one of the first popular consoles to feature CD based games. This is important because CD burners were starting to become more readily available. While the Playstation did feature disc security it was easily broken and the hardware used to break the systems security was cheap as well. The Saturn also saw a modchip appear later in it’s life but the chip was much more expensive and much more complex, the N64 had a backup device titled the 64DD but it cost almost as much as the N64 itself, and didn’t see very wide spread use. It’s debatable which console had the toughest security; though, the popularity of the Playstation saw it hacked the quickest

The combination of a CD based storage medium, and the consoles overwhelming popularity created a perfect storm to bring console modding up to a much more visible level. If you were in high school or college during this time it was rare if you didn’t know someone, or know someone who knew someone who had their Playstation modded. At this point console modding was mostly limited to playing backups and imported games, but there were a few homebrew project here and there.

Last generation Started with a bang in the modding world; the Sega Dreamcast. Despite the fact that the system didn’t use CDs an exploit was found in the way the console booted games that allowed would-be modders to simply burn boot-discs to play their games on CD-Rs. Eventually they were able to combine the boot disc code on the same disc as a game making a properly burned disc playable on any console without modification. In addition to the easy hack the Dreamcast ran on the popular Windows CE platform. With a familiar programming environment and easily backed up discs the Dreamcast saw a literal explosion of homebrew software and other projects. The amount of garage development happening on the Dreamcast was probably the largest seen since the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 days.

While the Dreamcast was short lived in the market the release of the Xbox picked up right were the Dreamcast left off and brought the concept of a modded console to a whole new level. The Xbox was hacked inside 6 months and being that it was really nothing more than a PC in a funny case the development tools were even more familiar than that of the Dreamcast. More importantly the inclusion of a hard drive allowed homebrew and backed up games alike to not only run on a modded Xbox but stored right on the Xbox without the need for disc media. The inclusion of a built in network adapter and optional IR port made the console that much more versatile to the modding community as well. The ease of modding, and overall functionality really bright modding from a niche within certain gaming and hacking circles into the mainstream where it wasn’t uncommon to hear a store clerk talking about his modded Xbox or to even see TV programs and magazine articles featuring modded Xbox consoles with instructions on how to do it.

In addition to playing backups, imports, and homebrew the Xbox gave a boost to the popularity of console case modding. It’s unclear if this was due to it’s similarity to PCs, causing many PC case modders to move over to the Xbox, maybe because the case design lent itself well to modification, or maybe it was simply that those who like to tinker with the guts are also interested in tinkering with the looks. In any case what might have been a very rare occasion in the console modding world became nearly as commonplace as modchips.

The Playstation 2 and Gamecube were also moddable and in many ways the popularity of Xbox modding spilled over to the point where many were trying to make the PS2 and GC more like the Xbox. The PS2 was arguably the most difficult console to mod but it’s overwhelming popularity really pushed the development of modchips and other hacks. When Sony added an optional hard drive it didn’t take long for people to attempt to use it in the same ways that the hard drive was used on the Xbox. Unfortunately the difficulty of programing and the limited flexibility of the console saw it used mostly for backups with a few token homebrew attempts. Even the hard drive could only store certain compatible games. The release of the Slim PS2 put a damper on that as well since it lacked the provisions for a hard drive, and while USB hard drive support was added it was also plagued by the limited compatibility in addition to limited streaming speed which produced longer load times and choppy video playback.

The Gamecube was probably the most easily hacked of the last generation consoles but it took the longest. This is likely do to the Gamecube being the least popular of the last generation consoles as well as the fact that it was the most limited hardware wise. There were a few interesting homebrew projects but most of them were not very user friendly and without an internal storage medium and small amounts of disc space it saw some creative ways to store things including streaming from another PC on the network as well as storage built into modchips themselves. Attempts were made at USB and external hard drive storage but none of them ever reach a point at gaining a substantial foothold

Where are we now? – Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 having launched first this generation was also the first console to make progress on the hacking front. While arguably home to the most sophisticated security system ever put to use on a console some crafty hackers still found some ways through.

The first breakthrough was with the firmware on the DVD drive. The firmware essentially leads the console to believe that the disc being used is an original and not a backup. This actually hearkens back to the Sega Saturn modchips where the chip actually filtered the data coming off of the laser assembly and changed the appropriate bits to fool the console into thinking it was an original disc. Since the 360 essentially uses a PC DVD drive communicating with the console through an SATA cable they were able to hijack the chip housing the firmware and make the necessary changes to the data using the console’s own hardware against it. Perhaps most interesting about this hack is it was based on a security hole originally noticed on the Xbox 1 but ultimately ignored because a higher level security hole (the on-board BIOS) was exploited and offered more flexibility. If the drive firmware on the Xbox 1 had been widely compromised before the 360′s release this hack might not be available to us today.

So far Microsoft has proven that they can detect certain hacked firmware version and certain backed up discs, they’ve followed a similar path to thwart modders by banning the offending consoles from their Xbox Live service. Though, they’ve done little to actually stop people from playing backup discs.

Another breakthrough deals with the Xbox 360′s hard drive. The hard drive in the 360 is a standard 2.5″ SATA “laptop hard drive”. Since MS put it in a fancy plastic shell and jacked the price up they also used custom firmware on the drive. Thankfully more crafty people were able to strip the firmware from the hard drive and allow the use similarly branded PC drives. This became a bit more benificial with the release of the 120GB drive since the converted PC drive gets capped at the size of the firmware being used. This unfortunately is also detectable by Microsoft and can result in your console getting banned from the Xbox Live service.

The most impressive break through on the 360 is an exploit found in a demo disc, apparently it only works in Xbox 360s with older dashboard software and is rather complex to run but, when it is run, hackers have been able to gain full access to the console to run Linux and potentially other homebrew software. Functionally this is very similarly to the exploits on the Xbox 1. Unfortunately however the console is designed to prevent downgrading of the dashboard which significantly limits the usefulness of this mod. There have been some discoveries made in the form of preventative hacks that will allow you to downgrade your 360 in the future but most of those were discovered too late and as a result this hack wont gain much footing from most hackers until a readily available method of downgrading is discovered.

Where are we now? – Playstation 3
The Playstation 3 really hasn’t had much progress on the modding front. There have been numerous rumors about a boot disc but no real proof of it’s existence. The Playstation 3, like the Playstation 2 before it, can run Linux right out of the box. Also similar to the Playstation 2 the Linux operating system is artificially limited in it’s access to the hardware, making it a less useful platform for development. The PS3′s Linux does not allow developers access to the Graphics Processor, presumably to prevent it from somehow being leveraged to run pirated games. This also hinders the development of homebrew games as well as emulators; with early emulator ports showing less than spectacular results. It does offer potential for media applications the PS3 could perhaps be used as a MythTV box or run XBMC once it has been fully ported to Linux. As of right now though, there really isn’t much going on. Most console hackers would agree that the legal Linux distributions are no substitute to full access to the PS3′s hardware.

Where are we now? – Wii
The Wii is probably the most open console so far this generation. The security on the Wii was cracked fairly quickly because it was found to be nearly identical to the Security on the Gamecube. Most of the modchips available are simple microcontrollers very similar to the modchips used in the original Playstation days. The biggest difference between the Wii and the Gamecube is there has been disc security added to the Wii to prevent modification of the disc data. This means that like the Xbox 360 only exact or near exact duplicates can be run. The security is light enough that some games can be patched for patching and playing imported games but it’s tight enough to prevent homebrew.

One interesting development with the Wii has been the built in Gamecube emulator, which works so well it actually allows all of the Gamecube’s homebrew to be played on the Wii. This has revitalized the Gamecube homebrew scene with nearly every major Gamecube homebrew app receiving updates regularly now. Most of these updates include additional features to make use of the Wii’s larger disc capacity and faster processor too. One major problem with this is that the Gamecube emulator doesn’t allow access to many of the Wii’s nice features such as Bluetooth devices, SD card slots, or internal memory, it is still very much just a fast Gamecube with a larger disc.

Another interesting front for Wii homebrew development has been the Opera Web Browser. there are a number of sites that have popped up designed specifically for web browsing with the Wii. These sites are not only formatted to fit the Wii’s browser but they offer literally hundreds of flash based games that interpret the Wii Remote’s pointing feature in the same way that they would interpret a mouse pointer, the Wii Remote’s A and B buttons are interpreted like left and right mouse clicks too. So while an on rails flash shooter might be rather boring with a mouse it can actually be quite fun with a Wii remote. Many of these simple flash based titles look and feel quite professional too. There have even been homebrew media streaming applications that run through the browser.

Hacking developments on the Wii get more advanced every day. Recently an LCD modification was released for the WiiFree modchip similar to the LCD screens many had installed in their Xbox 1 consoles, there have been rumors of modchips also being capable of adding DVD playback and other multimedia functionality; which really isn’t all that far fetched seeing as there were a few Gamecube modchips that added that kind of functionality last generation. There are also many indicators pointing towards full access to the Wii hardware becoming available very soon.

What does the future hold?
The Wii probably has the brightest future in terms of modding. Being the most popular console this generation and having quite unique hardware makes it a perfect console for yet another homebrew boom. While the internal memory is limited (512MB) it is more than enough to house a homebrew media streaming application similar to XBMC or even a small build of Linux. The USB ports and SD media slot allow expandability and the Wii Remote opens up lots of opportunities for homebrew game development.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 have loads of potential too but that potential is mostly limited to aspects of raw performance power and storage space. There’s no doubt we could see games from the hard drive as well as some kind of XBMC-HD on either platform if and when they’re fully cracked. However, that is a big “if” at this point. Also with the exception of graphics horsepower neither platform offers anything really compelling in terms of homebrew game development, and I would suspect that the Wii will get the lions share of those developers if for no other reason than the Wii remote.