Xbox 360 vs PS3... by a man who knows nothing about gaming

I’m not much of a gamer. I don’t have a games console. But my girlfriend’s son does. In fact, since yesterday, he’s had two.

He’s been a PlayStation fan for years, having upgraded from the PS2 to the PS3. I like the PS3. I like the amount of technology that Sony has squeezed inside, including WiFi and a Blu-Ray DVD player. And I like the games. In fact, I grew quite attached to Resistance: Fall of Man and its story (to say nothing of the multiplayer shoot-people-from-around-the-world mode).

Anyway, there’s now an Xbox 360 in the house as well. Playing Halo 3 on a friend’s Xbox convinced our PS3 fan that he’d also like an Xbox.

My first impressions weren’t good. Unlike the PS3, the Xbox 360 doesn’t have built-in WiFi. So that’s an extra £50 for an adaptor. Then I noticed that the controllers don’t come with rechargeable batteries – unlike the PS3. And, perhaps the worst difference, the Xbox wants you to pay for online gaming against other people – again, unlike the PS3.

Installing the wireless adaptor wasn’t straightforward. Plug and play? Not a chance. Instead, we realised that you needed to run an installation CD with drivers on it. Now, it may be because we plugged in the adaptor first – or it may have been a different problem – but we couldn’t get the Xbox to read the CD. Mixed Media Disc, it told us. That’s all. A flashing green light on the adapter told us it was looking for a network… but nothing more. There wasn’t a wireless option in the console’s network settings.

So we went online. “Turn on your Xbox 360 console and then insert the installation disc”, said Microsoft. “Turn off your Xbox 360 console by pressing the power button. Then, turn on the console. The update process should start automatically. If the update does not start automatically, you already have the correct drivers. In this case, you do not have to take any additional action.”

Wrong.

We then found that other people had also had problems, which wasn’t particularly reassuring.

Anyway, we eventually solved the problem by changing the console startup settings to boot from the disc. (We’d also cleared the memory cache but I don’t think that had made a difference).

Having finally got the machine online and registered for a month’s free Xbox Live Gold membership, it was time to play Halo 3. You know what? It’s a lot like Resistance: Fall of Man. Perhaps I’m naïve but I was surprised at just how alike they were. Which also means I’m looking forward to it.