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Large PS3 Launch, Nintendo Resolutions
ConfusedFX writes "GameDAILY has published a news article featuring Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo's Executive Vice President of Sales. He had several things to say about Nintendo's 2006 strategy, one of which, 'We will sell more units than Xbox 360 did here in the United States in our launch window.' He commented about Xbox 360 owners spending nearly $800 at launch; he wants the Nintendo Revolution to be 'affordable' to the average gamer. Additionally, GameDAILY has posted an interview with Andy Parsons, senior VP of Pioneer Electronics, written by The Digital Bits. Some analysts expect the PS3 to launch with around 1 million units -- Andy says he's heard differently from Sony. 'If Sony ships the kind of numbers we expect them to this year, that will provide a very rapid growth of players out there hungry for titles. We've been hearing between 4 and 7 million units could ship.'"
Revolution will come out within a month of Thanksgiving weekend (aka black friday), and it will launch for $250 or less... probably right at 200 I'm thinking... It will sell fairly well, but people will be confused by it at first... They will probably just sell around a million units in the US at first to the few people who get it... of course, overtime I think it will explode, but the kind of people who spend "$800" on an Xbox 360...ie...the first wave buyers will be too obsessed with their PS3s and the Xbox360's second gen of titles.
As for the PS3 it may or may not go so well... There are 3 factors, cost, quantity and the quality of launch titles as comparable to the 360's games that are already out before launch... I can see it going for as high as $499.99, but if they go any higher it'll probably flop. If they can't get at least a million units to the US before Christmas that could be another major stumbling block (they couldn't handle the PS2 launch). And launch titles almost always suck, so they better be working their asses off to get some sort of must have title at launch. Another problem is that by the time PS3 comes out developers should finally be figuring out how to write a little parallel code for the 360, taking advantage of all 3 cores, and start really exploiting the power of the system, so PS3's graphical prowess may not be as apparent as people think it will be.
A few more here... Halo 3 probably won't be out by the launch of the PS3, but I can almost guarentee we'll see a few trailers, if not a demo even by then... Zelda: Twighlight Princess will probably be released around June and won't take advantage of the Revolution anymore than any other Gamecube games will...and the redesigned DS will probably come out right around the same time too.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
Err, huh? Most of the rumours I'm seeing put the architecture of the XBox 360 and Revolution to be identical, with the following differences:
Triple core 3.2 GHz CPU in XBox 360, dual core 2.8Ghz CPU in Revolution
500Mhz R500 core for the XBox 360, 600Mhz R520 core for the Revolution (this seems to more be the order they were designed in, rather than an indication of features)
48 shader pipelines for XBox 360, 32 for Revolution
512MB shared RAM on XBox 360, 512MB system and 256MB graphics for Revolution
So... the Revolution will probably have more memory, be slower in CPU terms, and a close match in graphics. It will probably be cheaper, but I'd imagine Microsoft will be looking at a price drop not long after the Revolution is released.
Revolution rumours mostly taken from:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050923-534