Honestly, if you need a translation from the technical specs they're probably meaningless to you ... They only thing you would need to know is that both systems are similar enough in processing power that there is practically nothing that one system can do that the other can not.

@ pexthewex

The majority of the industry is still behind Blu-Ray, with regard to movie sales, the gap between Blu-Ray and HD DVD is widening in Blu-Ray's favour, the latest stats for the US:

"December 9th, Nielsen Video Scan's official numbers summarize an enormous 76:24 advantage for Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray titles accounted for eight out of ten spots of last week's best high-definition sellers, with Pirates 3 leading strong at number-one."

76% Blu-Ray for the US, similar or better figures for Europe, for Japan/Asia HD DVD is a non-factor.

But for gamers Blu-Ray is mostly interesting with regard to games potential, the extra space available on disc and default harddrive is very useful for developers from a technical perspective and games potential. DVD was already maxed out by the PS2 with games like God of War 2, the XBox 360 and PS3 have far more memory and are far more powerful resulting into ever more resource demanding games. New game engines can stream high quality textures from disc apart from just audio, continuously streaming high quality textures like streaming 7.1 quality audio take up a lot of space.

@ HappySqurriel

I greatly disagree, for example deep color over HDMI and 7.1 lossless audio technically isn't possible with the 360. From a long term perspective the PS3 is far more powerful technically and I think the original poster asked for clarifications on this.

MikeB said: @ HappySqurriel Honestly, if you need a translation from the technical specs they're probably meaningless to you ... They only thing you would need to know is that both systems are similar enough in processing power that there is practically nothing that one system can do that the other can not. I greatly disagree, deep color and 7.1 lossless audio technically isn't possible with the 360. From a long term perspective the PS3 is far more powerful technically and I think the original poster asked for clarifications on this.

So if you have a $5,000+ audio system you can notice the slight difference between the audio capabilities of the PS3 and XBox 360 ... and you may notice that the PS3 is slightly more vibrant ... Wowzers!

My point was that the average user will be playing their PS3 or XBox 360 with Stereo sound or an inexpensive surround sound system, they are likely not going to have ideal lighting conditions so that will impact their image more than the differences between the systems, and do not have the technical background to evaluate the graphical differences between the games.

Even if one of the systems is more powerful, all that would be required (at worse) to port the game would be to reduce the size of the textures slightly (and unnoticeably) and to reduce the polygon detail slightly (and unnoticeably); the only people who would notice the differences are people with a computer graphics background who were looking at both versions at the same time.

@ HappySqurriel

No, 7.1 audio solutions aren't that expensive (by at least a factor 10) and prices will drop in course of time, you can already buy excellent 7.1 quality audio headphones for the PS3 for a few hundred bucks.



Believe me, in time even you will notice, probably not with regard to multi-platform games but surely with regard to platform exclusives.

Hmm... i personally think the Xbox graphics are better on some games than the PS3. but thats just me.

Ok then, so if his choices are based on the fact that HappySquirrel thinks they're basically the same powerwise; choose the PS3.
Simple really; more value for money and it won't have a 15-20% chance of breaking.

Bottom line hardware ps3 > X360

MikeB said: @ HappySqurriel So if you have a $5,000+ audio system you can notice the slight difference between the audio capabilities No, 7.1 audio solutions aren't that expensive (by at least a factor 10) and prices will drop in course of time you can already buy excellent 7.1 quality audio headphones for the PS3 for a few hundred bucks. only people who would notice the differences are people with a computer graphics background who were looking at both versions at the same time Believe me, in time even you will notice, probably not with regard to multi-platform games but surely with regard to platform exclusives.

There are plenty of people who claim 7.1 isn't much of a step up from 5.1 in most instances, much like 1080p is only beneficial for sets over 40in.

http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback103.html 

Now you can go on and on and on about how 7.1 gives the PS3 a major advantage, but that fact is most people wont care and instead decide a purchase based on game selection. Furthermore, the quality of the system in use and the way its set up will make a far bigger difference to the end user than wether or not a game is 7.1.

Re multiplat games; That sort of difference really helped the Xbox and GC win last gen  

MikeB said: @ HappySqurriel So if you have a $5,000+ audio system you can notice the slight difference between the audio capabilities No, 7.1 audio solutions aren't that expensive (by at least a factor 10) and prices will drop in course of time you can already buy excellent 7.1 quality audio headphones for the PS3 for a few hundred bucks. only people who would notice the differences are people with a computer graphics background who were looking at both versions at the same time Believe me, in time even you will notice, probably not with regard to multi-platform games but surely with regard to platform exclusives.

I'll put this to you another way ...

In 2005, when the XBox was released, Microsoft ensured that there was demostations for the XBox 360 in (pretty much) every Walmart that were running Project Gothem Racing 3. A phrase I heard countless times was "It looks exactly like an XBox game" ...

People couldn't tell the difference between

And

And you expect them to notice the difference in color depth?