http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=254437

EDIT: In the future, don't just post links. Either post the content of the article or at least summarize it and give some thoughts on the matter. I put the article in my own reply directly below.

-Onyxmeth

It wasn't so long ago that industry chinwaggers were pondering whether or not digital games distribution could ever take off. Would there ever be a time when players wanted to buy stuff without leaving their armchair, and have the game piped directly into their console? Or were they too fond of those piles of DVD cases teetering next to the telly? We know the answer now, of course, but it's interesting to note just how quickly this once-fanciful notion has become the accepted norm, now that the major console manufacturers have all put their weight behind it.

Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii all now have established and thriving downloadable game systems in place, but each has taken a slightly different route to realise the concept. With gamers now used to the idea of downloading new titles direct to their console, and with The Big Three all well established in that arena, it seems like a good time to cast a critical eye over how each is faring.

But before we start, a word of explanation. After some deliberation, I decided not to include the PC in this feature, even though services like Steam tread similar ground. However, downloadable games are nothing new on the PC, and the open nature of the platform makes it impossible to quantify in comparative terms. Also, the focus is firmly on each console's downloadable games, both new and retro, not online gaming and whether you should pay Bill Gates to do it.

Frequency

With Microsoft staking out Wednesday as their Live Arcade update day, and Nintendo grabbing the weekend-starts-here Friday slot for the Virtual Console (and later WiiWare), Sony were somewhat stuck for choice and had to press on with a rather awkward piggy-in-the-middle Thursday-based update schedule.

Microsoft pioneered the promise of delivering new games every week, and the publishing people have barely missed a week since the 360 launched. Admittedly, some weeks it felt like they would have been better off uploading an old boiled sweet that they found behind the sofa rather than some of obvious filler they've slapped online, but that's an argument for another section. They've successfully conditioned 360 owners to see Wednesday as New Live Arcade Game day and when they've got games worth shouting about, as with the recent run of great-to-excellent software in August, the regularity has helped ramp up the anticipation. The one area where Microsoft still seems rather uncertain is its retro Xbox Originals range. Additions to the list are sporadic at best, with no clear schedule or reasoning behind what goes up and when, and there doesn't seem to be much urgency on Microsoft's part to change that state of affairs. For shame.

Nintendo haven't quite managed to master the anticipation thing, mostly because it rarely lets slip what it's planning to upload, leaving gamers to check the Wii Shop and see what the Nintendo Fairy has left under their pillow. Despite the unusually coy approach to promotion, the Friday uploads are a regular fixture for most Wii owners, with only occasional deviations to accommodate minor inconveniences like Christmas. Now that WiiWare has launched, the update alternates between retro games and new stuff. It's a curiously binary way of handling the separate stores - surely there'd be more sustainable interest in a mixture of old and new each week? This is what it tried on 29th August, but from what we can gather this was not the start of a regular dual-upload for both services.

Compared to the clockwork efficiency of its rivals, Sony's efforts to build up momentum for their PlayStation Store have struggled somewhat. The Thursday updates are regular enough, but there's no guarantee that full games will be part of the package, and even after all this time it doesn't look like Sony's in a hurry to compete with the "new games every week" ethos of the competition. This is perhaps understandable where original games are concerned - quality over quantity and all that - but with a vast library of PSone games largely untouched, it seems strange that retro offerings haven't settled into a familiar routine.

Advantage: Xbox 360 and Wii

Variety

There are two ways of looking at the variety offered by the three download services. One is to consider the sheer volume of software available. The other is to look at how many different genres and gaming tastes are catered for by the games on offer. In the first instance, the Wii is the clear leader with almost 250 games, spanning eight emulated formats, on the Virtual Console alone.

Of course, this breadth of content isn't always matched by depth, and many weeks have felt like titles were being added to bump up the total for an exciting press release claim rather than because the world was waiting with bated breath to play China Warrior again. Just by virtue of the sheer number of games on the Virtual Console, the Wii has most bases covered when it comes to particular genres. There's an obvious bias towards shoot-'em-ups and scrolling fighting games, but that's just a reflection of the eras being emulated. WiiWare is proving even more eclectic, with role-playing city simulations, point-and-click adventures and more traditional puzzle and platform games already on the service.

Xbox Live Arcade isn't too shabby in the volume department either, with just over 150 games to choose from. For any new console owner, that's certainly a reasonable amount to browse through, even if the numbers were pumped up by too many ill-conceived ports of old arcade games and uninspired puzzlers in the early years of the service. Luckily, even Microsoft thinks there's too much chaff, and has vowed to mercilessly cull the weaker games with hammers. Its insistence on banging the online drum also means that there's a greater ratio of multiplayer titles, and even the lowliest game is required by Microsoft decree to at least feature online leaderboards, so you can see if you're better at Tiqal than !!!5kUllV3nOM!!!.

Sony's relatively slow start in the realm of downloadable gaming means that it's not even close to offering the same bulk, but that may not be a bad thing. The early titles were a mixed bunch, with fairly generic games like Snakeball, Feel Ski and High Velocity Bowling all suggesting a console trying to find its virtual voice. Fast forward to now, and titles like Super Stardust, LocoRoco, echochrome and the PixelJunk series feel much more cohesive and suggest Sony is staking its claim as the home of stylish casual gaming. It's also notable that the PS3 is the first console to start delivering larger games via download, with recent well-received games like Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty and Siren: Blood Curse snuggling into the gap between impulse buy downloads and full-priced retail games. The trickle of PSone classics, meanwhile, ensures there's a solid bedrock of the ubiquitous racers, platformers and shooters to be found. There may not be as many titles to scroll through, but the PS3 covers its bases well.

Advantage: Xbox 360 and Wii

Sony's relatively slow start in the realm of downloadable gaming means that it's not even close to offering the same bulk, but that may not be a bad thing. The early titles were a mixed bunch, with fairly generic games like Snakeball, Feel Ski and High Velocity Bowling all suggesting a console trying to find its virtual voice. Fast forward to now, and titles like Super Stardust, LocoRoco, echochrome and the PixelJunk series feel much more cohesive and suggest Sony is staking its claim as the home of stylish casual gaming. It's also notable that the PS3 is the first console to start delivering larger games via download, with recent well-received games like Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty and Siren: Blood Curse snuggling into the gap between impulse buy downloads and full-priced retail games. The trickle of PSone classics, meanwhile, ensures there's a solid bedrock of the ubiquitous racers, platformers and shooters to be found. There may not be as many titles to scroll through, but the PS3 covers its bases well.

Price and value

The PS3 has the clear lead here. Not only because its prices are the lowest, on average, but because they're spelled out in actual local currency rather than hiding the cost behind the velvety curtain of a pre-paid points system. Pricing PSone games at just GBP 3.49 (or EUR 4.30), and making them cross-compatible with both PS3 and PSP, is one of Sony's most commendable decisions - particularly when compared to Nintendo and Microsoft's prices for retro emulations. Sony has a broader spread of prices - one of the advantages of dealing in real money - but this also reflects the move into offering more substantial titles and episodic games. Original new games generally come in around the GBP 4.99 - 6.99 (EUR 6.18 - 8.66) while their mid-range games are usually about half the price of a full retail game.

The one thing you could always say about Microsoft's pricing was that it was steady and reliable. Points are purchased in fixed amounts, with 100 Points equalling roughly 85p in British money, or EUR 1.20. Traditionally, there were just two price points for Live Arcade games - 400 points and 800 points. Things aren't so certain anymore though, with Penny Arcade bumping the price up to 1600 Points, and Puzzle Quest, Braid and Castle Crashers all commanding a premium 1200-Point cost. The latter three games fully justify their price - and it'd be a churlish fool who'd demand independent developers cut their margins just to satiate our modern tendency to demand more for less - but the knock-on effect is noticeable. The 400-Point price tag has all but vanished from the Game Store, with only four games so far this year using the lowest available price tag. There are, of course, occasional promotions when prices are lowered for a selection of titles, but this is too infrequent and random for it to have any real impact on the overall Live Arcade price picture.

Nintendo really suffer in this area, with a rigid price structure for the Virtual Console that bases the value of titles on the platform they appeared on. 100 Nintendo Points have a value of roughly 70p, or EUR 1.00. The cheapest games, released on the NES, SEGA Master System or Commodore 64, cost 500 Points. At the opposite end of the scale, Nintendo 64 games cost 1000 Points and Neo Geo games are apparently worth 900 Points. The problem with this system is clear - for no logical reason, a terrible N64 game will cost twice as much as, say, The Legend of Zelda, simply because of the platform it came out on.

And then there's Nintendo's shocking habit of bumping prices up by 100 Points for their Hanabi Festivals, which make previously unreleased Japanese and US games available for the first time in Europe. We know these are just emulated ROMs, we know the files themselves are not "rare" in any measurable way, and yet we're still expected to pay over the odds. WiiWare seems to be falling into a similar trap, with too many games automatically lunging for the 1000-Point price bracket even when their content doesn't warrant such an investment (Pokémon Ranch, we're looking at you). The best games on the Wii Shop are worth the money, but there's no escaping the feeling that prices on the whole are generally too high and poorly applied.

Advantage: PS3

Ease of use

Another area where Sony is making valuable strides is in the accessibility of its online store. Available via the PS3 or via the internet, it offers a shopping experience like any other online retailer, complete with shopping basket, order confirmation and checkout. Despite a redesign in April the thumbnails can still be a bit slow to load, and more ways to search and order the items would be most welcome, but on the whole the PSN shopping experience is an extremely pleasant one. The only glaring omission is the option to download a demo of all new games. At present, only certain games offer a demo, but there's no insistence from Sony that developers offer this.

Of course, mandatory trial versions are just one of the stipulations handed down by Lord Microsoft for XBLA games, but apart from that important distinction the Xbox 360 Game Store boasts broadly similar features to Sony's. Although, having been around a bit longer, it's long overdue for its upcoming dashboard makeover. Those swishing tabs are getting a bit sluggish with all the info they now carry, making navigation a chore. You won't struggle if you're just looking for the latest releases, but any new owners trying to pick their way through that big pile of titles isn't going to have much fun browsing the outdated system. But it's being replaced, sooner rather than later, so it's silly to grumble about it here.

Finally, Nintendo - and another area where the Wii desperately needs to smarten up its ideas. The Wii Shop Channel is an awkward and counter-intuitive tangle of slow-loading menus, lists within menus, shops within shops. The lack of demos is a recurring complaint, and one that needs to be addressed. Clearly this would be easier for WiiWare than the Virtual Console, but even there some sort of time limited trial version of a ROM could surely be arranged. The problem is compounded by the rather poor descriptions. A small video of the game in action, or just a gallery of screenshots, would go a long way to help potential customers get a feel for what they're actually buying.

Unfortunately, the Wii Shop's problems don't end there. With no background downloading and no way of queuing multiple downloads, buying more than one game is a time-consuming exercise in frustration. Not only do you have to sit there and watch Mario do his little "biddy-bee-deep" coin collecting while a file downloads, afterwards you're dumped back to the safety warning screen and forced to navigate all the way back into the store to find the next game you wanted. Maybe it just bothers me because I have to do this every week, for every new release, but it's still an ugly and archaic system.

Advantage: Xbox 360 and PS3

Quality

And here's the tricky part. Who has the best games? There's no realistic way of grading such an impossibly wide array of games, drawn from twenty-plus years and countless previous formats as well as brand new titles, but in the interests of science and hundreds of angry comments, I'm going to give it a shot.

Let's start with Nintendo, since it's taken a beating in the last few rounds. The Japanese company is at a clear advantage with the Virtual Console, since it puts a vast swathe of gaming history within its grasp. As has been mentioned several times already, Nintendo hasn't been a particularly thoughtful custodian of this legacy, with some unfortunate PAL problems and apparently little effort to sort the wheat from the chaff. Even so, any downloadable games service that can boast multiple Zeldas, Metroids and Marios is never going to struggle when it comes to quality.

Some of the greatest games of all time reside on the Virtual Console, and while the petty-minded may bleat about having to pay three quid for a Commodore game when they can download the ROM for free online, the ability to have so many classic games in one place, available for armchair play, is worth the slightly steep prices. WiiWare doesn't have that advantage, of course, and while the early releases boasted some absolute gems, there's a distinct feeling that the shovelware is starting to creep in. Here's hoping that we see more games like My Life As A King and LostWinds, and less like SPOGS Racing.

Sony, it seems, is still on the fence here. The PlayStation Store hasn't yet found its killer app; the must-have game that drives every PS3 owner to dust off their credit card. Super Stardust HD certainly comes close, but given that it's so often talked about in relation to Geometry Wars something uniquely Sony is clearly required. On the other hand, the PlayStation Store distinguishes itself by not having any truly horrible games either. The early line-up wasn't hugely impressive, but there was nothing as crass as Shrek N' Roll, or as craven as Pokémon Ranch. Things have improved considerably since, with most new titles earning solid 7s and 8s, so it seems that Sony is doing something right. I do hope it continues to exercise control over the PSone games that get added to the "Classics" folder though. The first-party additions have been hard to fault - anyone who doesn't love Crash Team Racing deserves to be drowned in wee - but recent uploads from the likes of EA and Ubisoft have certainly lowered the tone. More genuine classics like G-Police, please, and less tripe like Street Skater.

However, for all the crap that has been pumped out under its auspices, it's arguably Xbox Live Arcade that is host to the widest selection of truly great downloadable games. Admittedly, Microsoft is on a roll at the moment following the staggering run of Geometry Wars 2, Braid, Bionic Commando Rearmed, Galaga Legions and Castle Crashers, but don't think we've forgotten the dark days when a half-hearted port of Time Pilot or Joust was all we had to look forward to. A return to that ethos would be a grim mistake but, even with that cavalier approach to quality control, when you look through the list the gems outshine the lumps of coal. Any service that can offer faithful versions of Prince of Persia, Doom and Bomberman alongside the best of the current indie games scene is in an incredibly strong position. Don't mess it up, Mr Microsoft.

Advantage: Xbox 360

Conclusion

So what have we learned? More importantly, who won? Well, I would argue that the 360 currently has the advantage in four of the areas discussed, with the PS3 edging it out in terms of the overall shopping experience, as well as having a much better quality-to-crap ratio. The Wii Shop, on the other hand, is over-priced and horrible to navigate, but does let you buy The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros 3 and Metroid for just over a tenner.

One thing is for certain - there are stinking great piles of money to be made from downloadable games, and there's no way that any of the Big Three console companies are going to stop trying to find ways to make their pile the biggest.

I think the ps3 has a greater variety of games than it is given credit for in the article.

I thought they gave PSN plenty of credit in the variety portion. However this is a comparison article and they'll only give it credit in direct comparison to two other services that happen to have a lot more variety and number of titles.

XBL>PSN>WW/VC

Castle Crashers > everything

Good article, I think xbla wins mainly because its been around the longest, in the coming years it'll get harder to judge. All three systems have their merits thankfully.

I thought the assessment overall was pretty fair you can quibble with something here and there. XBLA has been on a roll lately and in my humble opinion as wella s the authors currently the best, though PSN and WII are doing a great job also

Rather logical when given the experience each company has with its console online experience.

I would like to add that, even though it's not game related, the video store on both XBL and PSN add some value to them, hopefully they'll both continue to grow and improve as our internet speed improves, and add more movies, preview trailers, subscription options, etc...