Video games used to be a simple matter of plugging in a game cartridge or inserting a CD, and that was it. Today’s game consoles, however, are aiming to be more than just gaming platforms. The big seventh generation consoles, the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360, try to be complete multimedia experiences as well as simple game consoles. While you can just insert a disc and play, there’s a lot more going on under the hood.
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360’s interface system is known as the Xbox 360 Dashboard. The unique look of the dashboard is almost like looking through a filing cabinet – there are multiple tabbed entries, known as “blades.” These blades each cover a different aspect of the system.
The default blade is the games blade. Here, users can view their recently played games and achievements, launch whatever game disc is currently in the console, or launch games that they’ve downloaded. This is the first place users will see their “gamercard,” which represents them online and shows their reputation and overall score as a gamer.
Other blades include the Marketplace and the Xbox Live blades. These are both for online interactions. Through the Marketplace, users can purchase new content for their games or for the dashboard itself, including expansions for major games, small arcade-type games and new Dashboard themes. Through the Xbox Live blade, users can find and interact with their friends who are online.
The other two blades are the system blade, which allows the user to modify his or her system settings, and the media blade. Through the media blade, people can record music from their CDs or movies from DVDs and store that information on the Xbox hard drive for future listening or viewing.
Playstation 3
The PS3’s operating system is pretty sparse by comparison. It closely resembles the interface that was used for the Playstation Portable, Sony’s handheld gaming system. Rather than blades, users simply can select options from a horizontal menu, and each selection has a dropdown submenu with expanded options. The primary categories are: Users, Settings, Photo, Music, Video, Game, Network, PlayStation Network, and Friends.
The photo, music, and video sections are similar to what the Xbox offers in its media blade. Network, PlayStation Network, and Friends options are comparable to what you’ll find in the Xbox Live and Marketplace blades. Naturally, Users and Settings are where you control the system’s internal settings, and the Game menu is where you interact with your games, both on disc and downloaded games.
Which is Better?
The Xbox’s operating system is somewhat flashier than the Playstation 3’s, but both have relatively similar functionality. Both of these systems will get you wherever you need to go, but the Xbox 360’s is much nicer to look at it. Microsoft is a company that has been built on producing operating systems, and the 360’s wonderful interface really shows that.
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