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Ben Kuchera has a great article over at Arstechnica on his side-by-side comparison of the PS3 and Xbox 360 at the invitation of Microsoft. Obviously, the Microsoft execs want the 360 to come out on top, but it appears both systems got a fair shake, and Arstechnica has a pretty good reputation for being objective about this kind of thing. The worthwhile bit of the article is on the second page, detailing Microsoft's sexy secret weapon - an upscaling converter chip named Ana.

The importance of that scaler is hard to overestimate. It gives the 360 a built-in advantage over the PS3 and it's something Sony needs to work on as soon as they can. Whether it is a software or hardware solution, they're running at a disadvantage on anything but a 720p-native HDTV in terms of games.

To me this is a major blunder on Sony's part - the HDTV market is simply too scattered and confusing to the average consumer right now to not give as much effortless flexibility in resolution management as possible.

I did appreciate that Ben pointed out my biggest complaint with the 360 right now - the pitifully small 20GB hard drive. This is just not a reasonable amount of space if Microsoft really wants consumers to start purchasing and downloading arcade games, demos, movies (in HD!), TV shows, music and supplimentary content. Though it appears this limitation may soon be overcome.