- Hey guys, this is Austin!
This might seem like a weird comparison,
but there are a lot of reasons
why you might wanna consider picking up
an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in 2017.
It might seem obvious to pick up a PS4 or Xbox One,
but not only are they both
way more expensive than these guys,
but they also lack true backwards compatibility.
So the Xbox One comes closest,
as it does support some Xbox 360 titles,
but the issue is, not only is it not the full library,
but you still have to actually download the games,
even if you do have the 360 disks.
If you have a slow Internet connection,
that could take a while.
The PS4 is even worse.
Now, technically, you can play some PS3 games
using PlayStation Now, but not only do you have to buy that
and pay for it every month, but it's also streaming.
It is really not the same as playing it
on the native consoles.
These are the final editions of the consoles.
One of the nice things about having such a long lifecycle
was that there were not only three editions
of both the PS3 as well as the 360,
but there were also years and years of great games,
and they're actually both still supported
with a lot of their online services.
This is the Xbox 360 E.
It came out in 2013,
and while it was a pretty minor improvement over the Slim,
mostly it was just a little bit smaller
and dropped a USB port,
but it is still the full 360 package.
The PlayStation 3 Super Slim, on the other hand,
is a noticeably cheaper version of the original PS3.
Now, to be fair, it is quite a bit smaller
and was a bit cheaper, but the issue was,
instead of having a slot-loaded Blu-ray drive,
instead it has this cheap feeling door.
It just doesn't feel like quality
or sound like quality.
While by today's standards, the hardware isn't amazing,
it's easy to forget that these consoles
really were the first ways
that a lot of people experienced HD gaming.
If you never tried the PS3 or Xbox 360,
you were missing out on a ton of amazing games.
The nice thing is these are incredibly cheap today.
So if you wanna pick up a used 40-gigabyte fat PS3,
it's only going to cost you about 60 dollars.
Sure, it's going to be big and a little bit loud.
However, when you consider that the Super Slim
with a 12-gig drive is about 100 dollars,
60 bucks looks like a great deal.
The 360 is also pretty reasonable.
So you can pick up a 4-gigabyte 360 E for about 80 dollars
or what's a much better idea is
to pick up something like this 250-gig version
which is only going to cost you about 100
and is way more usable.
What's easy to forget
is that you can pick up an entire stack of games
for these consoles for really cheap.
So, games like Rise of the Tomb Raider are about 20 dollars.
You can pick up Red Dead Redemption for 15,
Forza Horizon for 10,
and real classics like Modern Warfare 1 for seven,
and Halo 4 for five dollars.
There is crazy, crazy value in getting a last gen console.
The real question here is
what is it like to use an Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2017?
First off, we have the Xbox 360.
This interface is a lot better than it used to be.
So, you can go through all the different apps
and music and games and whatnot, but more importantly,
it is much, much faster than the stupid Blade interface
that it launched with back in 2005.
There actually have been a lot of major revisions
to the Xbox 360,
but where it's at now is actually pretty decent.
One nice thing about the 360 is that it still supports
most of the major video apps.
So, there are a couple missing, but for the most part,
you have all the basics like Netflix and YouTube.
There's Hulu, Amazon, Twitch.
Look at the crispy HD video from Mr. Jimmy Champane
who may or may not be editing this video right now
and is probably putting an obnoxiously large call-out
to his channel on the screen right now.
So, here we have Gears of War 3.
Now, this is a game that, well yes,
it looks a little bit dated compared to modern standards,
is really impressive,
considering that this is running
on a console that came out in 2005.
Now, look at the light effects here.
This looks really good for an Xbox 360 game.
Next, we have the original Forza Horizon.
This is another game that I feel like runs
way better than it should, considering the hardware.
Yes, it doesn't match up to Forza Horizon 3
running on the Xbox One or PC, but it's still a lot of fun.
I feel like these are some of the best
open-world racing games ever.
To be fair, a lot of these games, including Forza Horizon,
is actually going to be backwards compatible
on the Xbox One.
They look fairly similar,
but there's definitely something nice
about playing these games on the original hardware.
Next, we have Rise of the Tomb Raider.
This was one of the last major AAA games
that came out for the Xbox 360,
and it holds up surprisingly well.
Seriously, it doesn't look quite as good
as something like falling down a mountain
or quick time events,
but it actually holds up reasonably well
compared to something like a PC or PS4.
Next, we have the PS3.
One of my favorite parts of this console was always the XMB.
Not only is it super fast,
you can fly through admittedly a lot of different menus,
but one of the cool things is, it's all natively 1080p.
So, a lot of the Xbox 360 stuff is actually 720,
that's upscale.
As far as games on the PS3, first we have Gran Turismo 6.
It's weird to think that this is
the most recent Gran Turismo.
However, it looks decent.
It might not be quite as nice looking as Forza,
but it's hard to argue with the physics
and just how nice this game feels to drive.
Next, we have The Last of Us.
Not only is this one of the best games for the PS3,
but it is one of my favorite games ever.
It really does go to show what they were able
to pull out of the PS3.
I know I keep saying this,
that "Oh, look, the graphics look better
"than you would expect,"
but this is really one of those cases
where you can really see
that they pulled every little bit of power out of the PS3.
A big reason for this was the Cell processor.
Now, it made the PS3 very powerful,
but it also made it really difficult
to actually take advantage of that power
because it was so different,
which is why some games don't look so great on PS3,
but exclusives like this
can actually look really impressive.
Thanks to the power of the Internet,
both the PS3 and 360 are surprisingly usable today,
and if you missed out on the full decade worth
of amazing games for these consoles,
it's pretty cheap to pick it up.
You should give it a try.
So, what do you guys think about these consoles in 2017?
Let me know in the comments below,
and I will catch you in the next one.