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Smaller Playstation 2 Theorized
Tim Grube writes "According to Gaming Horizon and several other industry insiders,
Sony will be
celebrating their fourth-year anniversary of the Playstation 2 on October 26th
by releasing a smaller, more compact version of the game system with the new
name PStwo.
Some analysts believe the PStwo will retail at $149.99, the
current price of the Playstation 2."
Ah.... of course, I just bought my new PS2 last month... the main reason I bought the PS2 was for San Andreas (I decided to buy early), so it's probably a smart idea to launch it at the same time as GTA. The PSTwo might sell a little bit... but it's not going to be huge is it?
Does this mean the PS1 will finally disappear from our shelves?
It seems console companies always put out these small, streamlined versions... that lose some features that nobody's using or that they don't like. Power LED, keyboard slot, mystery connection that nobody knows what it's for, MIL-CD support, that kind of thing.
Any bets on what we're going to lose this time?
I'm also curious what Sony will do about the names if they ever decide to revamp the PSX or PS2 a second time. PSOne-2 and PSTwo-2? They could just leave the names alone i guess, but they only seem willing to reuse names on entirely different products.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I've owned 3 PS2's, all of them have had problems, I sent my first one (one of the originals that Sony admitted to having problems with), and got one of the second generation ones, sent it in for repair 4 times before they switched it out for a third one, after having to send it in several times for repairs I finally just decided to go with a gamecube, which has served me faithfully for 2 years now. :P
There are still a lot of PS2 games that I have missed out on though, being a huge RPG fan, and Star Ocean has had me considering trying a 4th PS2. I haven't though because other people I know have not had any better luck with their PS2s, and I don't want to get burned again. If these things are going to be redesigned and manufactured differently, then I might consider getting one.
BTW - anyone know what the backwards compatibility features of the PS3 are supposed to be? If it'll play PS1 and PS2 games then I might just wait to get a PS3, but if it'll only play PS2 games then I'll shell out for a PS2 so I can play my PS1 games on it, since I have a huge collection of great PS1 games, and ePSX on Linux might as well be an XBox emulator, it has microsoft-esque stability
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
You do know that if you call up Sony and say anything about a "disk read error" that they will have you ship them your PS2 and send you back one with a new DVD-ROM and/or a new mobo with all the latest firmware updates and DVD player software right?
Creative Demolition
Instant access to the entire GC library coupled with a fairly low price ($200?) would make it the obvious choice.
That said, I'm still getting a DS over the PSP. However, the more I think about it, with Nintendos lackluster console sales and their continued dominance in the handheld arena, it might be smart to let MS and Sony duke it out with the PS3 and XBox2, while releasing a P(ocket)GC rather than a GC2.
OT, but does anyone know a general rule to solve the equation n^n = x? For example, if n^n = 3125, how would you solve for n? (in this case, n=5)
On a related note, how come Nintendo doesn't do this and utterly destroy the PSP? Like you said, the DVD disc would never work for a handheld, but the GCs discs are already the same size as Sony is plannign for the PSP. The GC is already fairly small, and by now they must be able to put the whole thing onto a single low power draw board.
Instant access to the entire GC library coupled with a fairly low price ($200?) would make it the obvious choice.
Most Sony consoles, or at least the two that have existed so far, begin their life cycles as serious loss leaders. Sony loses tons of money for the first two years, at which point their slow refinements to the manufacturing process finally begin to draw a small profit. By the system's fifth year or so, they're actually out of the hole and profiting from the hardware itself.
Nintendo, on the other hand, based on what little they've told us in the past, likes to make at least some money on their consoles, and they're probably making a small profit on every GameCube they sell right now. If they were to make it a handheld competitor to the PSP, they'd have to start losing money on it and bet that they can make it up in software sales. The problem with that is that even though they could conceivably make up the difference in software sales, they're a much smaller company than Sony or Microsoft. If they produced a loss-leading console or handheld and Sony happened to royally kick the crap out of it, the one-two punch would probably knock Nintendo right out of the hardware business.
Halo wasn't the greatest game ever. It had some really, really serious problems. Chief among them, I'd say, were a devastating lack in variety of weapons and enemies, and over-long and under-varied missions, which could drive the player to the verge of insanity with sheer boredom. However, what it did have was potential. The multiplayer is a blast; probably the strongest console fps for multiplayer (although Timesplitters 2 is also good). Some sections of the game, particularly the all-too-short bits where you got to play with the vehicles, were great fun. It also had a decent plot and game-world, which verged on being actual science-fiction at times (rare in games), as opposed to an action game in space. As such, if the developers have figured all this out and worked to correct the flaws, Halo 2 could potentially be awesome.
Console multiplayer is pretty big these days, in my experience. X-Box Live seems to be noticably busier than it was 9 months ago when I first signed up for it. The biggest X-Box Live games tend not to be the fpses, like Halo, but rather the genres which don't get much of a look-in on the PC. MechAssault and Crimson Skies are both among the most popular games, although fpses such as Halo and the Rainbow 6 games are obviously still significant. Over on the PS2, there's SOCOM, Final Fantasy XI (which is, so far as I know, pretty much the ONLY online game on any platform to have had a significant impact in Japan) and, hopefully very soon now, Gran Turismo 4. The only console without a decent and popular online lineup is the Gamecube.
Let me back up this speculation with one more fact:
Sony has more or less recently stopped sending retailers Playstation 2 systems. This has been going on for at least two months and word is, we're not going to be getting any more in the next month, either. So of course you have to wonder, if they do intend on releasing this PStwo, what would be the point of supplying the market with more older models? Exactly!
Can't wait to see what this thing looks like (and if it has a broadband adapter built it...and where the HDD will go and if it actually plays media!)
If that PStwo still accepts a HDD, has a network adapter and will work with the Linux Kit, I might very well get one of these. Could be a sleek little desktop computer!
And for 150$ it wouldn't even be expensive. I just hope it will be less noisy than the original PS2...
Don't whistle while you're pissing.
Soon they'll start selling DELL x86 laptops with a big sticker on the top that says xboxone.
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
You could probably hack something together with existing parts, but you'd spend alot more than $200 to build it. (The screen on those XBox controllers sucks by the way). Search on google for the guy who made a PSOne portable unit and see how much he spent to do that.
On another note, a Nintendo made GC portable would be a huge hit for obvious reasons (great graphics, huge preexisting game library, etc), but if they made it also compatible with mini cd-r/w's (maybe not dvd-r/w's, for sake of copy protection/piracy concerns) so you could use it for an mp3 player and possibly other media playback, it would be a pretty slick system.
So, the PS2, which was of a fairly tolerable size, is possibly getting a miniaturized update ala PSOne, whereas the Xbox, hulking brick of technology that it is, is almost certainly not getting such an update.
*AHEM* Microsoft, the only reason I haven't bought your system is because it's massive. Cumbersomely large. I don't have a lot of room to spare for these things, and I live in a fairly rural area with comfortable living space. Imagine what it must be like for people who live in an overcrowded society where the average apartment size may be smaller than your kitchen, and space is at a premium.
Good thing you're not trying to capture any portion of that market.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Prove to me that Sony has sold all their consoles at a loss.
I guarantee you cannot cite adequate evidence to support this. You don't know what you're talking about and you're just repeating the same old crap that gets posted in the games section all the time. Not all consoles are sold at a loss - get over it.
Most of the reliable sources (newspapers, magazines) don't have the stories available for the PlayStation and PS2 in easily-searchable sources like Google news, but a quick search turned up two interesting bits about their current plans:
As per 1Up's article, Sony plans to sell the PSP at a loss. And if you Ctrl+F for the word "loss" in ZDNet's PSX story, it will not only tell you that the PSX was planned to sell at a loss, but that it is generally an industry standard, much like the razorblade entry.
makers typically sell hardware at a loss and make their profits from royalties on game software sales. That model gets shaky, however, when you start cramming nongame functions into the same box, Cole said.
"They've been able to get the price way down on game systems, because they can make it up on software," Cole said. "With these kinds of hybrid devices, you're selling to people who aren't necessarily going to buy a lot of games. But you can't necessarily expect to charge a premium over the existing products it's intended to replace."
The only thing I can't really prove is that Nintendo actually sells theirs at a profit. That's mostly from print sources like EGM's Quartermann column.