When I finally broke down a purchased a PS3, the first thing that struck me about it from the perspective of a long time Xbox 360 owner was how quiet it was and how few moving parts it seemed to have. You can barely tell its on most of the time. Compared to the (non-slim) Xbox 360, which glows like an alien mothership and buzzes, hums, whirs, and beeps like it's practicing its R2D2 impression, the PS3 is practically inert.
And that doesn't even touch on the biggest mechanical difference between the consoles: the PS3 has no disc tray. Meanwhile inserting a disc into an Xbox 360 requires roughly the same number of moving parts as a steampunk war robot, emits just as much noise, and compels the same fear that it will someday turn on you.
Well, according to
MCV, the
Xbox 720, or whatever it's called, will one up the PS3 by eliminating the physical disc drive altogether. That's right, the rumor is that it will ditch discs in favor of digital-only distribution. That seems to be in line with the rumor that it won't play used game - because you can't trade in downloaded games.
I can't help but wonder if Microsoft really thinks it's worth cutting the high-speed Internet-impaired out of their next console generation just to satisfy their dark desire to ensure no one else makes a dime from a new videogame but them.
[via:
ign.com]
