Today it became official:  Call of Duty 3 will release November 17th, 2006.  It will come out for the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox 360, and is a Launch Title for the PlayStation 3.

With it’s release, comes the answer all non-fanboys want to know: Which system is better?  It sounds crazier than it seems, but since the game is technically the same across the consoles, (save for graphics downgrade and controller functionality on the Wii) the final tally from reviewers should be quite interesting.

Before we get into the how’s and why’s of this article, let’s forgo a lot of fanboy items off the bat.

First: I don’t care if you read somewhere that the graphics will be “slightly better” on the PS3.  That’s like saying you have a 13-inch penis compared to someone else’s 12 and ¾ inch.  If that ¼ inch helps you sleep at night, more power to you, but I doubt a woman would notice.

(Aside: I look forward to the plethora of e-mails from women who tell me they would notice.)

Second: Since Sony’s online service is unknown, saying Xbox’s multiplayer will be superior is also a stupid argument.  There’s no way to know if Sony will or will not pull together an incredible online experience, so comparisons at this time is shortsighted and unfair.

Finally: The Wii’s superiority with aiming is well known, but unknown with Call of Duty 3.  There could be a myriad of issues that make it a bit more difficult to control as compared to either Mouse and Keyboard or Controller.

No, what I am interested in is how reviewers will compare the game between systems.  Xbox Live Arcade has proven that a great gaming experience can have nothing to do with graphics, and Perfect Dark Zero proves that a great online experience still can’t save a mediocre game.

That leaves game play.

Right now, in my opinion, there’s no clear advantage to any one console, but mark my words, every single gaming site will scrutinize the different versions of this game more so than any other game in history.

They will spin, and talk about how because the experience was better on System A as compared to System B or C, therefore, it must be the superior system.

I’m here to tell you all: It doesn’t mean a damn thing.

Why? See above, where I wrote: “..the game is technically the same across the consoles”.  

I just want you all prepared for the upcoming onslaught of fanboys trying to say how this proves their system is the best.  It doesn’t, it just proves that games can cross platforms a bit easier than we were all led to believe.  

But one thing it will prove is: which reviewers have a bias toward a particular console.

Back in the early days of GameSpot, they would review cross platform games and with regularity Xbox versions would score lower than their PS2 brethren.  With the games containing the exact same features, people wondered what the problem was since the reviews never pointed to anything specific.  After a while, GameSpot came out with the lame excuse: “Since the Xbox is technically superior to the PS2, we were expecting more from it as compared to the PS2.”

That’s like saying the smart kid has to fail because the dumb one feels bad when they fail.

Anyway, that was the early days of GameSpot, they don’t do that anymore, now they give a general review, and then they label which one will give the best “experience” (Read: graphics)

But here we are again, the beginning of a new generation, the Xbox 360 has had a year head start, and this time “PS3 is technically superior to the Xbox 360.” (Allegedly only by a little but let’s not split hairs.) So now if some website starts giving the PS3 version of Call of Duty 3 a lower score than the Xbox 360 version, then you know right there and then that the website is probably only trustworthy for Xbox news.

So again, let’s not start splitting hairs over Call of Duty 3 until all three consoles are out, and all three versions of the games are out.  Any arguments in either direction are nothing but fanboyism.

And fanboys can clean my toe cheese with their tongues.

Semper Fi!