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Rumor Control on the PS3's Pricetag
Gamespot's 'Rumor Control' this week is pretty interesting, covering the topics of the PS3's supposedly high pricetag, the possibility of the 360 coming pre-loaded with games, and a confirmation of the Inquirer story we ran earlier regarding the cost of ATI's exclusivity agreement with Valve. From the article (re the 360 preloaded game): "The preloaded 'game' in question is actually an interactive application titled Neon, created by lightsynth guru Jeff Minter of Llamasoft. The program is a music visualizer, similar to that used on Apple's iTunes, in that it creates psychedelic patterns and colors based on sound that is fed through the system (which in this case will be music on the 360's 'outrigger' hard drive or a portable music device)."
The later revisions of the original gray-box PlayStation also had a controllable visualizer that you could activate by pressing 'select' while playing a CD. It was actually pretty cool for something stupid you would never use. I was kinda surprised that the PS2 doesn't do anything similar. That block is kinda stupid, I think, but all my music is MP3s, so what should I care?
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The article uses the word "probably" when discussing the agreement. Since when is "probably true" make something confirmed fact?
So the submission title says that Playstation 3 isn't going to be expensive, then the submission body is being critical of the Xbox 360. Hello, fanboy article submitters.
Anyway, Sony has become their own worst enemy with the Playstation 3. It's pretty obvious that they were forced to announce the PS3 because of the Xbox 360 announcement. They've now got a marketing nightmare where interest in the PS3 could peak too soon if they're not careful - because of their glacial pace, they're going to be seen as being late to the next-gen party:
(1) They don't want to be talking about the PS3 because they're not ready:
While speaking at ELSPA's International Games Summit in London last week, Reeves declared that the Sony PlayStation 3 is going "underground" until next year. You heard the man: no more talk of this PS3 nonsense. Everyone go pick up a new PlayStation 2, I guess, and stock up on PlayStation Portables while you can.
(2) The president of Sony Computer Entertainment himself said that it would likely be expensive:
He said the PS3 is "for consumers to think to themselves 'I will work more hours to buy one'. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else." Take that however you want, but the impression it gives off is that consumers may be a bit surprised at its price tag. Analysts have been pegging it at just under $500 to build with Sony selling it at $399.
The light synth on the Jaguar CD did indeed own. It was worth getting the cd attachment just for that. Which is fortunate, as there weren't really any cd games worth purchasing made for the system ... Minter also made Tempest 2000, which was probably one of the better games for the system (and probably the best selling game for the console). T2k is the only reason why I still have it sitting around here somewhere...
Jeff Minter is to light synths as id is to first person shooters, so it shouldn't be surprising that his latest project kicks some serious llama ass.