Xbox360s vs. PS3: The Hardware throwdown. And the winnder is. . ..

[Squilliam]

Badassbab said:

FinalEvangelion said:

There could be a multi plat test also.  The exclusives are usually tailored more to the hardware of the console.  I think most people can agree that PS3 has edge on the technical stuff.  There are very few that try to argue that the 360 is better, technically.

True but I've seen middleware engine games on 360 such as the RAGE engine and the Unreal Engine beat anything that the 360 first party offerings have produced. Also developers have to use Direct X on 360 while with the PS3 they can program to the metal. This is because MS want to ensure backwards compatability with the next console. MS may have to abandon that if they want to go another 5 years.

Microsoft won't have to abandon it. They simply won't need it. When they started this generation they targetted 4-5 years as their console life-span so the replacement console would obviously have a much better shot at backwards compatibility if they used a hardware abstraction layer. Now if they are targetting 7-8 years for the replacement console and have a fair idea of whom their next vendor is, they can obviously relax those restrictions if they wished to because their next generation hardware would be significantly more powerful than they expected at the start of the generation.