For all the negative press that the PlayStation 3 and to a larger extent Sony have managed to whip up there is one thing I feel the need to commend Sony on if only because it so greatly contrasts the 360. The PlayStation 3 is quiet. My 360 is not.

Now granted the 360 is a fairly quiet system when you’re playing XBL arcade games. However, once I toss in a disk and choose to play it my 360 sounds like it is getting ready to lift off the rack I have it sitting on. The noise has a wonderful side effect of dulling just about any game’s opening cinematic and the effect really doesn’t diminish much as time goes on. The rushing sound of the 360’s disk drive spinning isn’t the kind of white nose that I stop noticing over time. In fact when a game’s gets quiet rather than the effect the developer was looking for more often than not I find myself noticing my 360. What is tha… oh my 360 is awfully loud.

Now anyone who knows me knows I play a fair number of games on my PC, and historically the PC hasn’t exactly been the quietest appliance to own. Even so the PC’s has quieted down substantially over the years and the simple fact that PC games are installed to the disk means that loud DVD drive access is at most an occasional issue during gameplay. Also my PC typically sits under my desk and that makes my PC substantially quieter than my 360. Even if I still have an issue with the noise my PC makes there are options available to me to reduce the noise further.

Microsoft is notorious for building numerous prototypes of various devices that will never see the light of day before settling on a final design. It’s hard to imagine while testing there wasn’t some feedback from a few people that said Dude, that thing is kind of loud. I suppose for effect the audio may have been cranked up, even so I would hope someone raised the issue. Personally I’m not always in the mood to crank up the sound so covering the 360’s disk noise with the game’s nose isn’t exactly my favorite solution.

Someone certainly could raise the issue of load times. Hey you idiot, do you want a quiet system or fast load times!?!? Perhaps that’s not the right way to approach it but it’s a valid point. The answer is that I want both and I don’t think it is that is an unreasonable request.

In the meantime I’m stuck with my not so calming white noise machine / 360. I’m giving some serious thought to building a sort of enclosure that allows for ventilation and muffles at least some of my 360's inherent wooshyness.