From the time when video games were first introduced in the 1970’s to this time, it has evolved to become one of the most entertaining and thrilling things to hit the homes and not to forget, a profitable venture for all game manufacturing companies. Video games are enjoyed by a wide range of audience and it really has no age limit, from the 5yr old kid to the grandpapa, almost everyone enjoys it. Nearly everyone has played a video game before.

And I believe everyone has his favorite. However with the current trends in gaming it is really just too difficult to stick to one game for a long time, especially if you are one of those who fit snugly into the classification of gaming enthusiasts. Now take note of the fact that video games are not the same as computer games. Computer games as the name implies are games played on the computer whereas Video games are played using special gaming systems- things will get clearer as you read on.

To start of, a walk down gaming history lane should come in handy. .

A Brief History
The Facts
1. In 1971 Nutting Associates introduced the first commercial arcade video game.
2. In 1972 Magnavox introduced the first home video game system dubbed The Odyssey.
3. In 1985 Nintendo introduced the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).As a matter of fact the NES was the first gaming system that really revolutionized gaming and set the pace for development of future games.

A look At the Gaming Systems
Gaming Systems have come and gone, but which ones are really making news. We shall discuss only two in this issue.

The Play station 3
Play station was first introduced in 1994 by SONY. There are currently over 13,000 video game titles available worldwide. The Play station is equipped with a special CPU called the Cell Processor. The amazing thing about this processor is that it has a microprocessor that is made up of 234 million Transistors. One gets a better measure of the power of the cell processor when one compares its specs to those of a dual core Pentium Processor Extreme Edition released in 2005 which has only 200 million transistors. In addition, the Cell Processor has a 3.2 GHz Power PC Core equipped with 512 kb of L2 Cache.

The Play Station 3 has a special processor dedicated to graphics, called the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).It’s a 550 MHz, 300 million transistor graphics chip. Again the number of transistors in the GPU is more than the total number of transistors in both the central processing units and the graphics processing units of the three leading current-generation systems, combined.
What all this means is that the quality of graphics in the Play Station 3 is……. (Judge for yourself). It can actually simulate real life to the minutest detail as never before.

The Play Station 3 comes in two configurations, the 20GB and the 60GB hard drive models. One more thing that is going to be new with the Play Station 3 is the online gaming service that would be introduced with it. This is a move that the manufacturers, SONY hope to use to maintain their market dominance as they face very tight competition from Microsoft’s XBOX 360 which currently has more than a million subscribers to its online gaming console and also NINTENDO.

The XBOX 360
Microsoft released the Xbox 360 in 2005.This is an upgrade of the Xbox which was released in 2001.Many modifications were made in the form of hardware, features and as a matter of fact the new Xbox 360 is far more than a video game console. The Xbox 360 is a total media center that allows users to play, network, rip, stream and download all types of media, including high-definition movies, music, digital pictures and game content.

Two types of the Xbox 360 was released; the Xbox 360 Premium Package and Xbox 360 Core System. The Xbox 360 Premium Package comes with a wireless controller, an HD AV cable, an Ethernet connectivity cable, a headset and a removable 20-GB hard drive. The Xbox 360 Core System is "plug and play" -- in addition to the console, it includes a wired controller and an AV cable. Unlike the Play station 3 the Xbox 360 has a multi-core processor running three 3.2-GHz PowerPC cores which is made up of only 165 million transistors with 1Mb of L2 Cache.

The GPU of the Xbox 360 is a 500MHz ATI Graphics processor card with 10MB of embedded DRAM.

The Xbox 360 currently enjoys tremendous online subscription to its gaming console, the Xbox 360 live, although it still kind of lags behind play station 3 which still holds the market dominance in terms of overall patronage.

These are some of the cool features of both The Play station 3 and The Xbox 360, the leading gaming consoles on the market. With these games comes a wide variety of games from which to select from. So if you were given the choice between The Play station 3 and The Xbox 360, which would it be?

For more information check out playstation3.com and xbox360.com