Next Gen Systems Comparison: Price Per “p”
A lot of people have made a lot of comparisons of the three next-gen consoles - price, games, fun factor, and even screen resolution have been compared, but I’ve got one more metric to throw out there. Price per “p” or the price per line of progressive-scan resolution. All three consoles seek to provide the most value to their customer. PS3 is high priced, but more featured. The Wii is the cheapest and has less technical prowess. Sitting somewhere in the middle seems to be the Xbox 360, or is it? Which system really delivers the most technical/graphical value for your gaming dollars? Hopefully with the price per “p” metric we can decide once and for all which system is the “best value”.
To start with the formula is very easy. Price per “p” is calculated as the price of the system divided by the lines of resolution it will output in progressive scan mode. I chose progressive numbers because those are easier to do a direct comparison on. The Wii supports up to 480p, the Xbox 360 supports 720p, and the PS3 supports 1080p. (note: the 360 now supports 1080p via an upscaler, but that is just upscaling the games’ native 720p resolution, so it’s not a fair comparison).
Based on the cheapest bundles, here are the scores:
Wii - 0.5208333 ($250/480p)
Xbox 360 - 0.4166666 ($300/720p)
PS3 - 0.4629629 ($500/1080p)
Based on the more expensive bundles, here are the scores:
Wii - 0.5208333 ($250/480p)
Xbox 360 - 0.5555555 ($400/720p)
PS3 - 0.5555555 ($600/1080p)
So, the best graphics value of the cheaper bundles is the Xbox 360 core system with a price per “p” of just under 42 cents per “p”. Surprisingly, the PS3 $500 edition beats the Wii in price per “p” by a few cents. However, looking at the full-priced systems the Wii gains the lead in graphics value again, which is no real surprise.
Now all of this is assuming that you have a HDTV, but what if you are among the 90+% of people who don’t have a HDTV? Then all you are getting is 480i or (240p by comparison), so a new calculation is needed:
Wii - 1.041666 ($250/240p)
Xbox 360 - 1.25 ($300/240p)
PS3 - 2.08333 ($500/240p)
Looking at how things fare on a SDTV, which is still the standard for the vast majority of video gamers, the value proposition for the next gen is completely different. The Wii wins hands down.
In conclusion, the Xbox 360 is the best HDTV value and the Wii is the best SDTV value, but before you start arguing some of the finer points of this comparison, I’ll head them off right now. Yes, I realize that the PS3 game library will be mostly 720p and not 1080p, but even giving the PS3 the benefit of the doubt in the 1080p arena doesn’t make it that much better of a value. Also, the Wii is bundled with a game and the other systems are not, so it’s probably an even better value than the numbers show.
Just for kicks, let’s calculate what the numbers would be for the 360 doing 1080p. The scores would be 27.777 cents per “p” for the 360 Core and 37.037 cents per “p” for the 360 Premium. For you 1080p users out there that makes the 360 a WAY better deal than the PS3.
November 6th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
360 supports 1080p with the newest Dashboard update
November 6th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
True, I added the last paragraph to reflect that.
November 8th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
ps3 is wayyy better than 360.
November 8th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
First, how can you include 1080p on the PS3, but then only include the 1080p numbers for 360 “just for kicks” at the bottom of the article? Change your numbers up top. The 360 does not “just” upscale from 720p; developers can choose to output at a native 1080p *exactly* like the PS3.
Also, you fail to mention that some sort of HD cables are not included in the 360 base package or either PS3 package. You need to include some base value for those costs if you want to compare prices for output resolution.
Still a stupid comparison
November 8th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
But your forgetting that the PS3 comes with Blue-Ray and if you want the HDDVD for the 360, that’s another $200. So even if you can’t play all of the games in 1080p right now, at least you could watch movies in 1080p without needing up conversion.
November 8th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
If your going to do the math, do it properly. Resolution has two dimension, but one as you are attempting to work with. If you take a look at the pixels, which cover the full 2 dimension of resolution then you get
Wii - ($250/480p) = 250 / 0.30E6 pixels
= $833 / 1E6 pixels
Xbox 360 ($300/720p) = 300 / 0.92E6 pixels
= $434 / 1E6 pixel
PS3 - (500/1080p) = 500 / 2.07E6 pixels
= $290 / 1E6 pixels
As you can see the PS3 cost under the $300 range for 1E6 pixels, the Xbox 360 is about 50% more than that, and the Wii is almost twice that!
November 10th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Yes, I realize that this is a somewhat silly comparison, but for the last year there have been TONS of fanboys and Sony execs who said that the PS3 was better because it could do 1080p, and the 360 couldn’t. Now the argument is that the 360 is just “upscaling” to 1080p and that it still only does 720p natively or something bogus like that. Anyhow, 99% of people don’t have 1080p and probably 80-90% of households only have SDTV, so the SDTV comparison is probably the best of the three.
Also, bundling blu-ray isn’t a good thing unless you have HDTV w/HDMI. Again, most people don’t have HDTV and most HDTV’s that have been bought up until 6-8 months ago don’t have HDMI, so with the HDCP evilness, Blu-Ray HD movies will be locked down to HDMI sets in 2 years, so component connections won’t be allowed to watch HD movies in HD. It’s really quite a joke unless you are in the less than 10% of households with a HDTV and HDMI. Actually, it’s probably far far less than 10%.
November 13th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Honestly, I don’t think we care about “most people”. you were comparing the technology/hardware not what people have in their house and whether or not everyone can use those features.