Microsoft has tried to catch up with some of the titans of the gaming world, such as Sony with the release of the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 offers many new features that players will love:

Free limited subscription to online gaming – This allows players who have not been participating in online gaming a chance to see what is available at no charge. All Xbox 360s come with Live-aware – This means you can get a friend invite or see who is online and what they are playing from your Xbox 360. The button in the middle of the controller makes all this very easy.

It offers great media features including listening to music while you play games, the ability to create custom playlists and your own custom soundtracks, the ability to rip songs from original CDs to your Xbox 360 and stream music from your MP3 player to your Xbox 360. You can also create slideshows of photos to share with friends and family. Xbox 360 has a wireless controller. No more tripping over the wires, although it can support two wired controllers through USB ports in the front. The game console is not only great for gamers, but developers as well. It is a powerful machine with an unprecedented amount of RAM – a feature added on the request of developers.

But, Xbox 360 still has some problems that need to be worked out:

Their Japanese third party support is lacking – While some Japanese developers offer software for the Xbox, it is small in number when compared to what the same developers offer for Playstation. While the controller is wireless, it eats batteries rather quickly. Standard alkaline batteries only last about thirty hours, so if you buy Xbox 360, invest in rechargeable batteries to save yourself some money in the end. When they were set up in WalMart stores before days before the launch, many suffered what is known as the Xbox “360 screen of death,” an error screen. The Xbox 360 had also had some problems with overheating. Some report the Xbox 360 system as being very noisy when playing an Xbox 360 disc.

Many people are eagerly awaiting the release of Playstation 3, which may occur as soon as November of this year. It has been said that the Playstation 3 has an outward feel (which allows it to stand vertically or horizontally on its own), as opposed to the Xbox 360’s inward feel. It is a much larger console than the Playstation 2 and closer to the original size of the Xbox. Game discs slide into the console like CDs slide into a car player.

Here are a few attractive features of the Playstation 3:

It is always on, so you can access your Playstation 3 from anywhere as long as you have an Internet connection. With a Playstation Portable, you can connect to your Playstation 3 and transfer media such as music and movies. The Playstation 3 appears to be much more powerful than that Xbox 360, Ninetindo Revolution, and Playstation 2. Initial reports say it will be twice as fast as the Xbox 360. Developers and publishers of over 230 games have announced titles for Playstation 3 games.

Here are a few reported cons and problems with the Playstation 360:

Comes with only 256 MB, less than the 512 MB the Xbox 360 will come with. Their Playstation Network Platform (the online service) is still in development and may not be ready by the time Playstation 3 is released.

The launch of the Playstation 3 has already been delayed due to disk problems.

Both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are incredible gaming consoles. It seems that although the Xbox 360 came out first, the best bet is still the Playstation 3. The strongest point of the Xbox 360 is its online functionality, but Sony may be working on something similar to Xbox Live right now. However, Microsoft is closing the gap with Xbox 360 and probably will eventually catch up with Sony in gaming consoles. For some users, it may come down to something as simple as which one is more compatible with the games they already own.