This week is a big week, in turns of entertainment. Friday, the Playstation 3 comes out, and the Wii comes out on Sunday. Most of you probably knew that. But what about the Zune? The quote, "IPod killer" which Microsoft is making. Let me spill my thoughts and information on the subjects.

Tuesday, November 14, Microsoft released the Zune, the MP3 player that will go head-to-head with the IPod. Now you all know that me and Microsoft aren't friends, but I had to take a second glance at it. A good place to start is their website. They actually compare the Zune with the IPod, and they did a truthful job. The Zune isn't compared with IPod in general, but the 30GB Ipod. Which it should be. The Zune has a 30GB storage capacity, and $249.99. Just like the 30GB Ipod. So what seperates the two? Well I'll tell you.

First off, the Zune has a 3 inch screen that looks really impressive, by what I saw at Target with their display model. The IPod has a 2.5 inch screen, so I guess the Zune does have a slightly bigger screen. Now it's still small, and I wouldn't buy it for the video, but I also wouldn't buy the Ipod for the video, just because the screen is too small. But I suppose if you travel a lot, it is a nice feature to have. According to their website, the battery life is the same as the Ipod, 14 hours. The size of the Zune, depth wise, is .58 inches, compared to the .43 inches of the Ipod, so it will be litte bit bulkier in the pocket, and is .3 inches bigger in heighth, but is the same width as the Ipod. It weighs 5.6 ounces while the Ipod weighs 4.8 ounces. But, like i said before, I think the video quality is better than the Ipod's, so if you are buying for video, I think the Zune would be the better choice. I quote when i say, "like watching a mini HDTV."

But, I'm actually looking into buying something smaller, and for the music, so i think I might go with the Nano. BUT some features caught my eye while looking at the Zune. First, Wi-Fi file sharing. I can transfer music with other poeple with a Zune. That would be sweet for when I go, "Dude you have to hear this song" and I just transfer it to his Zune. It can also transfer video and pictures through Wi-Fi. But that has some limitations, such as the song will be deleted in 3 days, which kinda turned me away. The Zune features virus protection, which Microsoft has not been good at, so we'll just have to see how that goes.

So in the end, I'll probably buy and 8GB Nano, and have something small. But for you guys that travel and want video and such, I suggest the Zune.

Now for the Sony Playstion 3, and the Wii. If you have lived under a rock for the past year, then let me update you.

Last year Microsoft released the XBox 360. Well come Friday, Sony will release their next gen system, the Playstation 3, and on Sunday Nintendo will release their Wii (pronounced "we")... that just sounded wrong.

On a side note, theirs gonna be a lot of jokes about how, "I'm gonna go straight home and play with my Wii." End side note.

Let's begin with the head-to-head comparison.

The Playstation 3 obviously wins the hardware round. It boasts a 8 independent processor cores, which means it can compute really really fast, allowing game developers to do more. But at the same time, it makes it harder to develope games. The graphics are supposed to be insane, if done right by the developers. With the Wii, well the hardware upgrade from the Gamecube isn't that great of an upgrade, but non-the-less it's an upgrade. From what I've seen, the PS3 graphics are really really good. At the same time though, the Wii's games that I saw looked pretty good too. Better than the Cubes at least. It's definitly noticeably different from the Cube. But both graphics I've seen is from trailers from E3, and such. The Plastion 3 definitly wins the hardware competition, but lets face it, the PS3 looks like a George Foreman grill, and it weighs 11 pounds, while the Wii is about the size of 3 DVD cases stacked together, and is the smallest Nintendo console.

And lets not forget the price difference, $499.99 for the core system and $599.99 for the premium of the PS3, while the Nintendo Wii is $249.99.

Now let's look at what really sets the two systems apart: the controllers. The Playstation 3 has a controller that look familiar to the PS2. It's wireless this time around, but it doesn't have the Dual Shock anymore. Instead they have 6 degrees tilt detection. The PS3 can support up to 7 controllers over bluetooth, but why would you use 7 players for a game on one TV? I just have to ask that question. The Wii, brings a new controller to the battle field. A remote, or referred to as the Wiimote. It looks like a remote, except it features a D-pad, an A button, a trigger B button, 1 and 2 button, + and - button, power button and it features a speaker right in the controller. It also features a sensor, so you can point at the screen and it knows where you are pointing. There will be ad-ons to the controller, such as the NunCuck, which has a trigger button, and an analog joystick. Another ad-on is the Classic control, which is similar to the SNES controller, except it has two analog sticks. The concept might sound weird and not good, but in practice, it's wonderful. The Nintedo Wii wins the controller round.

For the Online, I was glad to hear Sony is staying Free. It sounds similar to XBox Live! but like I said it's free. The Wii is offereing an online service, which is a modified version of Nintedo Wi-Fi for the DS, but no games in 2006 are expected to use the online compatibility. Nintendo also will use the online service to push updates even when the system is off.

The PS3 boasts their Blu-Ray drive, which some people might buy it just for that since the players alone are $1000.

The PS3 is also backwards compatible back to the Playstation, but to read the old memory cards, you'll need to buy a $15 memory card reader. The Wii is offereng backwards compatablity on the system back to the GameCube, but Wii will offer downloads for their old games all the way back to the NES, and Sega games. You'll have to pay for the games to download them though.

The Wii will not be released with the ability to play DVDs, but they are coming out with systems that do that in 2007.

That's all the comparisions I'm gonna do. If you want more information, here's a list of sites: PS3 Vs. Wii Head-On, Wii.com [link removed], Playstation.com, Wii's World.