http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/arts/20game.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

A Weekend Full of Quality Time With PlayStation 3

Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.

Ever since Mr. Stringer took the helm last year at Sony, the struggling if still formidable electronics giant, the world has been hearing about how the coming PlayStation 3 would save the company, or at least revitalize it. Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun.

Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise.

Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the world’s most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the world’s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other.

The PS3, which was introduced in North America on Friday with a hefty $599 price tag for the top version, certainly delivers gorgeous graphics. But they are not discernibly prettier than the Xbox 360’s. More important, the whole PlayStation 3 system is surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online.

I have spent more than 30 hours using the PlayStation 3 over the last week or so and may have played more different games on the system — 13 — than probably anyone outside of Sony itself. Sony did not activate the PS3’s online service until just before the Friday debut. Over the weekend a clear sense of disappointment with the PlayStation 3 emerged from many gamers.

“What’s weird is that the PS3 was originally supposed to come out in the spring, and here it came out in the fall, and it still doesn’t feel finished,” Christopher Grant, managing editor of Joystiq, one of the world’s biggest video-game blogs, said on the telephone Saturday night. “It’s really not the all-star showing they should have had at launch. Sony is playing catch-up in a lot of ways now, not just in terms of sales but in terms of the basic functionality and usability of the system.”

Sadly for Sony, the best way to explain how the PlayStation 3 falls short is to explain how different it is to use than its main competition, Xbox 360. When I reviewed the 360 last year, I wrote: “Twelve minutes after opening the box, I had created my nickname, was in a game of Quake 4 and thought, ‘This can’t be this easy.’ ”

I never felt that way using the PlayStation 3. With the PS3, 12 minutes after opening the box I realized that Sony inexplicably does not include cables to connect the machine to a high-definition television. Keep in mind that one of Sony’s main selling points has been that the PS3 plays Blu-Ray high-definition movie discs. But high-definiton cables? Sold separately. The Xbox 360, by contrast, ships with one cable that can connect to either a standard or high-definition set.

Then, before you are even using the PS3, you have to connect the “wireless” controller to the base unit with a USB cable so they can recognize each other. If you bring your PS3 controller to a friend’s house, you’ll have to plug back in again. The 360’s wireless controllers are always just that, wireless.

If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesn’t seem too complicated, but the PS3 can’t do it.

In that sense it often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3’s online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, you’ll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you can’t download in the background while you go do something that’s more fun (like play a game). On the Xbox 360, not only are files downloaded seamlessly in the background, but you can also shut off the machine, turn it on later, and the download will resume automatically.

The PS3’s whole online experience feels tacked-on and unpolished. On the Xbox 360 each user has a single unified friends list, so you can track your friends and communicate with them easily, no matter what game you are in. On the PlayStation 3 most games have their own separate friends list and some have no friends function at all. There is a master list as well, but in order to communicate with anyone on it, you have to quit the game you are playing.

There are some high points. The multi-player battles in Resistance: Fall of Man are excellent. The arcade-style action in the downloadable Blast Factor is suitably frantic.

But the list of the PS3’s disappointments remains, from its undersupported voice chat to its maddening cellphone-like text messaging system. (In frustration I ended up plugging in a USB keyboard.) Overall, Sony seems to have put a lot of effort into cramming as much silicon horsepower under the hood as possible but to have forgotten that all the transistors in the world can’t make someone smile.

And so it is a bit of a shock to realize that on the video game front Microsoft and Sony are moving in exactly the opposite directions one might expect given their roots. Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sony’s PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3’s deficiencies.) The thing is, if people want to use a computer, they’ll use a computer.

Through the decades of the Walkman and the Trinitron television, Sony was renowned as the global master of easy-to-use, seamlessly powerful consumer electronics. But recently Sony seems to have lost its way, first in digital music players, in which it ceded the ergonomic high ground to Apple’s iPod, and now in home-game consoles. For now Sony’s technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun.

As a practical matter, given the limited quantities Sony has been able to manufacture, the PlayStation 3 will surely remain sold out throughout the holiday season. If you can’t find one, don’t fret. Sony still has a lot of work to do. As Mr. Grant of Joystiq put it: “Maybe in six months it’ll be finished. Maybe by next fall I’ll be able to do all the cool stuff. I’m still kind of waiting.”



纽约时报认为ps3存在的问题：

1、PS3标榜蓝光播放与高画质影像输出，但玩家打开包装盒却找不到高画质传输线
可以连接，须另外购买

2、无线手柄第一次使用需要用USB线跟主机连接认证，如果带到朋友家使用也要
找到USB线再重插一次

3、PS3无法在进行游戏时播放自己想听的音乐

4、PS3无法在后台下载文件，你在下载文件时只能看着的下载进度发呆，如果下载大文件的
话你可能要发呆20-40分钟，无法中断续传也无法玩游戏

5、PS3 网络并不友好，好友名单与每个游戏的好友名单完全无关，每个游戏玩家须个别建立好
友，也无法在游戏中邀请原本的好友加入游戏


总结：也许PS3性能非常强大，但是易用性却非常糟糕，缺乏很多必要的功能。

前3项都不是问题的问题，后面两项似乎都可以改善，希望SONY能做到

硬件方面设计的比XO好,软件方面就不及了

不算新闻了吧。。。

还是美国的宽带NB，只用发呆20-40分钟……
据说熊猫同学一呆就是两天……

现在看了wii我觉得ps3的缺点除了贵其他都满厚道哈哈哈哈最起码没有因为有6轴而整出创意第一的ps2机能的ps3

某些功能很烂

下载的时候不能进行其他功能确实很傻，碰到国内这种网络，为了个烂泥摩托demo，整晚整晚的发呆。

3、PS3无法在进行游戏时播放自己想听的音乐

目前能边游戏边听自己音乐的好象只有XO吧.........这不是PS3不好,而是XO太好.

都是鸡蛋里挑骨头的理由

如果没有360，这些缺点根本就不是缺点。既生瑜，何生亮。
希望sony快点出补丁。也希望黄狗早日成熟，能取代Xbox+XBMC在客厅里的地位。

360一开始显然也没有后台下载功能啊，是后期升级改进的。360的断点续传么。。。。跟不能断点续传貌似区别不是太大也。反正我这里每次都要重新扫一便，运气好可以接近上次下的百分比，运气不好一样重新来过

1。送了线，你还可以说sony没送个电视机，不厚道；
2。有几个人二到把手柄带到朋友家去；
3。这功能重要么？难实现么？
4。不能后台下载不能续传说明软件设计人员脑子被门夹了；
5。这功能应该补充进去，虽然个人认为用处也不大

引用:

原帖由 happyzw 于 2006-11-22 09:20 发表
360一开始显然也没有后台下载功能啊，是后期升级改进的。360的断点续传么。。。。跟不能断点续传貌似区别不是太大也。反正我这里每次都要重新扫一便，运气好可以接近上次下的百分比，运气不好一样重新来过

其实一开始是有后台下载功能的.........就是这个功能不是人人知道用法..........:D

1、PS3标榜蓝光播放与高画质影像输出，但玩家打开包装盒却找不到高画质传输线
可以连接，须另外购买

这个有点扯过头了.本身就是通用线材.有高清显示设备,没有线材的人还玩什么高清啊?