I really hate these charts. I'm not sure what possessed people to make Consumer Reports charts for consoles. These are not dish washers, DVDs, cars, or many other consumer products that do the same exact thing. Videogame consoles all play games...different games. They all do vastly different things. Thus they can't be compared to eachother in a comparison chart. There's no comparison point to using traditional controllers on the Wii, or the Wiimote on the 360 and PS3. There's no Gears of War, Mario Galaxy or Metal Gear Solid 4 across all consoles.
When or if we have standardized consoles that can play any game you walk out of the store with, then comparison charts will be useful for game consoles. Until then, this is largely useless as you still need to decide outside of this chart what controller you prefer and what games you want to play, and that degrades the worth of any bang-for-your-buck or best-value-when-optimized charts.
The first thing you have to think of is the end result. Let's say in the case of a dish washer it's to wash dishes. Now all dish wahers can wash all the same dishes you own and any you'll own in the future, so that doesn't need to work into a comparison chart. All you need to decide are the controllables that all dishwashers could compete on like price, power consumption, size, etc. In the end though, your kid's spongebob dinner set is going to be able to get washed in any dish washer you choose.
Now let's say I want to play Mario Galaxy. Give me a comparison chart to show me the console with the best bang for my buck or the best optimized value for playing Mario Galaxy. Then do the same thing for 1000 other games. That is how you build a comparison.
