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)."

Comments

This is not the console you were looking for.

[N3Roaster]

Quiet, you. The PS3 does not exist. We don't know anything about such a console.

Damn Sony Jedi mind tricks.

Re:Its about damn time....

[Yocto Yotta]

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?

Submitter is wrong.

[kryogen1x]

...a confirmation of the Inquirer story we ran earlier regarding the cost of ATI's exclusivity agreement with Valve.

The article uses the word "probably" when discussing the agreement. Since when is "probably true" make something confirmed fact?

Hm. Astroturf much?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Hm. Astroturf much?

[Guppy06]

"Uh, a year before the Dreamcast hardware hit the store shelves the president of the very large console dev house I was working at stood up in front of the entire company and, among other topics, stated we weren't going to bother wasting development money on the Dreamcast as it was a deadend platform and that we were going into an all out PS2 development ramp up."

What "big name" company are we talking about here? The only ones I could think of that would hire the likes of you would be Acclaim. You're an AC, why not drop a name?

And I seem to recall that most of the software developers that I care about were involved on the Dreamcast. For example, it looked like Konami's Castlevania game was pretty far along before the plug was pulled, well after the launch of the Dreamcast. I probably would have bought a Dreamcast if that game had made it to store shelves.

"The Dreamcast 360 is aptly named, "

The paragraph following this statement goes off on a tangent (and I'm being forgiving in calling it that) and has utterly failed to answer the question "How do you justify nicknaming the Xbox 360 as the 'Dreamcast 360?'"

"Blah,blah,blah fanboys. Same old every new console cycle. It's like the same dumb indignant fucks posting the same shit every four or five years."

Such as yourself? "Indignant" describes these past two posts of yours very well.

"Console wars are won and lost long before the hardware has hit the store shelves."

That was a decade ago. Now most games are released for all three consoles, so such "exclusive" contracts have little to no meaning in the ultimate fate of a console. "Exclusive" isn't half as exclusive as it used to be.

With all three consoles using both CPUs and GPUs from the same manufacturers, I see little reason to believe that the number of these hardware agnostic games will drop any time soon.

Wait, did you way Nuon?

[Psykechan]

"The preloaded "game" in question is actually an interactive application titled Neon, created by lightsynth guru Jeff Minter of Llamasoft.

I find the name rather funny since the last console projects to contain a Jeff Minter light show built in tanked rather hard.

Granted I can appreciate the Nuon and even the Jaguar CD slightly but I'm really hoping for the 360 to die a miserable death. I can only see Minter's VLM as being another nail in the coffin.

My apologies to Jeff Minter. I don't wish him bad, I just think he ties himself to doomed projects.

Re:Its about damn time....

[nc_yori]

because you'd be out of your mind putting stress on your $200 game console's optical drive rather than your $20 CD player's optical drive? just a thought.

Re:Yay, it comes with a viz.

[NanoGator]

"Shame. I think the viz on my 3DO was one of the better ones to date."

Supposedly the Jaguar CD (remember,the old Atari faux 64 bit system?) had the best light synth. Interestingly enough, it was done by Jeff Minter.

Re:Yay, it comes with a viz.

[Keeper]

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.

At $299, it's a bargain!

[superultra]

This kind of early speculation is kind of useless, because it's all PR right now. Isn't it entirely possible that Sony is using the sub-press to float around a $399 number, then later when they announce the console at $299 gamers and industry will think it's a bargain. By spreading rumors that the console is $399, they're placing a value on it higher than what the xbox is without actually committing to a price point. Hell, why wouldn't you do that?