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Sony's PS3 Strategy Brilliant or Insane?
1up's Jeremy Parish has a piece wondering out loud about the sanity of Sony's PS3 strategy. From the article: "The veil of mystery surrounding the PS3 is downright maddening, and a little worrying. Consider that by March 2000, the company had already set the PlayStation 2's October 26th release date in stone. Yet here in March 2006, Sony has only been willing to commit to a 'spring 2006' launch for its latest console. Less than ten days from winter's end and gamers are left scraping together scraps of conflicting information trickling from the company's various divisions to try and get a sense of the bigger picture." We may find out which side of the coin they're on tomorrow; The current rumour is there will be some sort of big announcement about Sony's next-gen console on the 15th.
It's brilliantly insane! Or is that insanely brilliant? It's one of the two...
This guy's the limit!
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I call it INSILLIANT!
Insane? Brilliant?
Maybe they're just confused and trying to cover for a botched launch.
No matter how brilliant they may be, or how badly they screw up, I wouldnt expect this to be the end of the PS. Fanboy support alone should get them near at least a break even point. I think their biggest threat these days would be the hype over the xbox360. If MS can get a major hardware volume release, combined with a couple of good games just before Sony deploys they should be able to slap down the Sony marketing a bit.
In any case, it should be interesting.
The BR drive is slowly killing the PS3. Sony chose to push their new format rather than do what is good for the gamer.
This "poor man's blu-ray" will not fit into any market. Home theater enthusiasts will buy a professional HD player and the average gamer could care less.
What is making this decision so horrible is the fact that these Blu-Ray drives will push the PS3 to around double the price of the 360 even when selling at a considerable loss. The Cell processor, while powerful, in the real world doesn't have much on 3 3.2 ghz processors (besides a lot of $$$). Sony has an advantage over Microsoft in terms of "branding," but Sony has made a ton of poor architectural decisions.
It is simply inevitable.
All Sony has to do is turn out a powerful console equivalent to the xbox360 and sell it at the same price the xbox360 was at during release (make no mistake, this was on average $800+ after the console plus all the force-bundled crap) and they're set. Sony has 2 generations of backwards compatibility to ride on, games coming out still for the PS2 (see Final Fantasy XII, the be-all and end-all of console moving franchises,) and the fact that Playstation is still a very powerful brand.
The XBOX360's lead time has proven to be little advantage, as Microsoft seems to have lost in Japan entirely as a result of not having crap for games available, and is having supply issues abroad. 6 months will not make the xbox360 any better unless better games come out for it, and they don't have any console-moving titles coming out save Halo 3, and that won't help them in Japan.
Unfortunate turns of events with the PS2. But they realized one thing : just as in music and film, it's not the actual content that sells, but the hype and marketing!
Um, were you paying attention for the last five years?
It's clearly the content that sells, *not* the hype.
The 360 has a lead, yes, but it was far less than awesome.
Sony could be holding back to make sure they were actually ready, rather than follow MicroSoft's strategy of getting out the door as quick as possible, which lead to few original games, lousy ports, buggy hardware, and a serious lack of support for their previous generations' releases.
The big announcement of course being that Sony is skipping the Playstation 3, ditching the Cell and going right to Playstation 4 which is powered purely by marketing.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
This sums it up nicely, we'll know which it is only after the release
Bruce Feirstein:
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
Sony have known for a long time that the Xbox 360 would be first to market. Rather than watch their potential customers make a huge investment in a competing system they are obviously going to do whatever it takes to make buyers wait for the PS3, which means constantly dangling the carrot of a possible huge announcement in the near future infront of the gaming public... which is exactly what they are doing. Hardly 'brilliant' or 'insane', their strategy strikes me more as 'bleeding obvious'.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
"see Final Fantasy XII, the be-all and end-all of console moving franchises"
Complete BS. Not many at all care in the states about the FF series. I've seen about 2 billion Halo LAN parties - I've never seen a FF lan party.
Zelda/Mario single handedly kept the Gamecube in the black.
1) What was Microsoft supposed to do? Wait until AFTER Christmas to release just to have a few more consoles? It was a business decision to make a select few who got the console early happy rather than make EVERYONE wait. There is no sense in having unused consoles in a warehouse waiting for others to be made.
2) The 360 has set a record for most games sold per console up to this point. There are a TON of games released already with 9.0+ ratings. COD2, PD0, PGR3, GRAW, FNR3, etc. With Elder Scrolls 3 coming out in a week the 360 will have an absolute ton of top-end titles.
3) The console costs $300, you lost all credibility when you claimed almost 3x that. There are a ton fewer broken 360's than PS2's when it hit the market.
There is an article here practically every day that has a headline basically asking "has Sony lost its mind?"
Everybody seems to be missing the fact that the PS2 outsold the 360 in January. Sony does not need to rush to market with the PS3 when there are still some KILLER titles coming out this year. I'm not trying to be a troll, honest, but please stop posting these insufferable articles.
I'd have to say Sony is playing this rather smart. Whether they wanted to or not, they avoided the Christmas 2005 ("Q3/Q4") season, traditionally the biggest hype and buy time of the year. Fortunately for Sony, the XBox360 has been relatively uninspiring so far. Console players are typically kids (or people with lots of free time on their hands), so things like "spring break" and "summer break" are good times to get your marketing message out.
My vote is for brilliant. Sony controls the media, so sony controls the market.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
8) ???
9)Profit!!!
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Did you see the E3 keynote speeches for MS and Sony? (they're floating around torrent sites) The MS speech was pure marketing bollocks and the Sony speech was technobabble bliss. I don't think the MS BS riled up anybody's panties.
We have had countless reports on how shittily designed the PS2 was. The only console we had to turn upside-down to have it read disks!
I've never heard of anyone turning their PS2 upside-down to read discs. My PS1, on the other hand...you had to turn it upside-down, on its side, or on some weird angle, until you found the perfect reading angle in order to get it to work.
Anyway, Sony's not alone in manufacturing shittyness. My brother's Xbox's power supply blew shortly after the warranty expired. Quite common, I've been told. They wanted $150 CDN (about $130 US) to fix it. THIS is why I fully-support external power supplies, or "wall-warts" as some people call them: if it dies, you can easily replace it for around $20.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
While I think the premise is interesting, the article has some really loopy conclusions. First, there seems to be a lot of MS love, considering the author's assertion that Nintendo is now a distant third and the 360 is primed to take over the market. The 360, which is plauged by issues and being outsold by the PS2?
Plus, his idea that every decade the industry just changes itself is a little bit absurd. The changes he cites came about for different reasons. Atari failed because of public indifference to "games" (hence "entertainment system"). Nintendo's failure was more technical than social, even against trumped-up charges of mistreatment regarding developers (which were serious, to be sure, but definitely not the main reason everyone jumped ship). Just taking periods of time and saying "hey, they're similar!" and then basing your entire analysis on that is ridiculous.
As for the secrecy potentially being a huge problem for Sony, I agree completely. He should have fleshed that idea out more, however, rather than just throwing around poorly-informed speculation.
...Yes.
While I can't be sure what their release srategy is, Sony knows that they control the majority of the console market. With this, they can continue to play and prod with release dates, demos, and specs. With each new tidbit, they make the fans drool all the more over the system, increasing the hype. (To be fair, Nintendo does the same to us Nintendo fanboys, only we get less promises and specs, and at a much slower rate.)
However, one has to wonder how long they can hold this off. I'm sure PS2 hardware sales are already dropping as game stores start pushing for reserving a PS3. Eventually, the numbers will reach over into game sales (where Sony makes up profit loss on the console), becuase no one will be buying a new PS2, and thus won't get Grand Theft Auto 10 or whatever. If they hold off too long, this could give them a big bite, though I'm sure that software sales will surge (including PS2 titles) when the PS3 comes out- assuming it has backwards compatibility.
In fact, the same thing is happening across the board, excluding the XBox (360). As news of the DS Lite travels, regular DS sales will slow as people decide to hold off for a few months to get The Next Best Thing. Same thing goes for the Gamecube and the PS2.
I think we are seeing what happens when products try to be all things to all people. The muddled information about the PS3's launch is understandable because everything else about the system is so muddled. How much will it cost? Will it be backwards-compatible? I've not seen answers to those are very simple questions yet.
And I think the reason we don't know the answers to the simple questions is because Sony hasn't yet answered all the hard questions internally. It just doesn't seem like there is a solid plan or a road map for the PS3 other than being "faster." Why are they using blu-ray? What is the H-D plan for the PS3? Why are they using bluetooth? What are their online plans? I should not have to dig through countless gaming sites to find out these details.
I think Sony has taken a lot of things for granted with the PS3. It could be that the installed base of the PS2 has clouded their thinking. But Sega proved that a next-gen machine had to have more than just technical superiority to succeed (and they were first to market with the Dreamcast!)
Sony needs to get the public informed about the PS3, and they need to do it soon. Else, the XBOX 360 may do to the PS3 what the PS2 did to the Dreamcast.
Yeah, how do you sell hype? "Ill take one bag of hype please."
:)
I own a DS, Dreamcast, n64, ps2, xbox, and 360. I love my 360 more than all the rest put together (other than maybe the portable GBA RPGS on the ds:) Maybe I'm a fan boy, but the 360 kicks some ass. Too bad theres not more games. Once forza hits for the 360, its all over
"Something's wrong with you...and I hope we never do meet again." - Deftones When Girls Telephone Boys
Between the awesome lead XBox 360 has been able to gain given its earlier release date, this may be the end of Playstation. The next-gen Playstation sounds like it is a potentially superior product. But on one side, there's XBox 360 and the potential release of Halo 3. On the other side, theres Nintendo Revolution and its very unique controller. If Playstation doesn't find something to set it apart from these other two consoles, I believe Playstation's days are numbered.
Class excercise:
1)Replace every instance of "xbox 360" with "dreamcast."
2)Replace every instance of "revolution" with "gamecube."
3)Replace game references with similar titles available for dreamcast just prior to PS2 launch.
4)Go searching for the resultant string in the archives of gamer forums and see how many matches you can come up with.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
We have had countless reports on how shittily designed the PS2 was. The only console we had to turn upside-down to have it read disks!
We have had countless reports on how shittily designed the Xbox 360 was. The only console for which we had to suspend the power supply from a string to keep it from overheating!
And by the way....that was the classic problem of the PSX, not PS2. The PS2 was more notorious for just giving random read failures. But consoles in general have always been horrendously unreliable...ever blow into your NES? I'm on my second PS2 right now, and my roommate is on his second Xbox (not 360).
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
It seems, in fact, that even the components are going to be copied: the bad bad Cell (anyone even remember the supposed promise of the Emotion Engine?) will be used in computers.
They're poorly trying to play catchup on the Xbox Live|SNES/NES download services. Downloading a dual-layer PS2 DVD sounds very bizarre, if their service is ever built to the specifications they listed. Certainly we will have the ability to, one day, get 9GB file via Wifi in Tbilisi, but what's the point now?
And where are the exclusive PS3 titles? Metal Gear, Gran Turismo... I know there are enormous fans of these games, but my inclination is "so what." I'll give you Symphony of the Night, but can anyone name another PS1 game that anyone truly cares about playing again via their download service? It seems that most of their decent earlier games (as in 8 years ago) are available for the N64. Sony simply does not have the franchises that Nintendo has cultivated and Microsoft has basically bought for Xbox Live.
Even the bluray will be available in other devices. (That, of course, bodes well for the bluray format, but does it really matter with the PS3?)
The PS2/Revolutionalike controller scheme honestly reminds me of the 32X, and we all know how badly that went.
I was about to write, "Like every videogame war, it comes down to the games..." but I attended E3 in 1999 and remember the amazing promise of the Dreamcast's games, which gave the system the most quality-game-heavy launch in the history of videogaming since the NES. With the iPod now the gold standard in consumer electronics, it's about creating a complete experience for the user, and I can easily see the PS3 as all-things-to-all-people.
Xbox360 is a 1.5 upgrade. PS3 is copycatting. Combine this with the rootkit fiasco, the accompanying media hype (always impossible to meet) that blurays require a DRM-friendly HDTV, kaboom.
Nintendo all the way. I don't doubt a great deal of hype accompanying it, but it will be more of the "look at this weird thing" variety, much like the DS, and look at the DS now.
The problem with your analogy is that Microsoft is on a little more stable financial footing than Sega was. I'm not agreeing with the OP, but this Xbox 360 = Dreamcast is just silly since MS != Sega.
Swi
No kidding...I am so frigging sick of the ramp-up marketing madness surrounding the consoles...its just plain disgusting. I'll be glad that there's no information on it. It all comes down to the games, now whatever marketing buzz you can generate over your system. Gamers will look at marketing and say "oh cool" but they won't make their buying decision based on that alone, the majority of them may be stupid, but not THAT stupid.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It's not an analogy. He's pointing out a fill-in-the-blank troll. (and Netcraft says my Xbox 360 takes 17 minutes to copy a file)
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
are we overrating the importance of halo 3 here? Halo 1 and 2's launches on the original Xbox were totally ignored overseas (Japan isn't keen on FPS) and if halo made any impact on ps2 sales it certainly isnt visible as the ps2 still outsold the Xbox by about 80 million units.
I'd argue the Xbox360 needs another Halo to keep its head above water (how many Xboxes would have been sold with no halo? Odds are they would have been the next jaguar)...but it's not any kind of threat to ps3 sales. Any serious Halo fanboys have already bought the 360 since its a given that Halo 3 IS coming. What the Xbox NEEDS is to get a series that sells well on Ps3 and make it an Xbox exclusive. (GTA..Devil May Cry..Silent Hill...Metal Gear...Final Fantasy...etc)
True enough...MS is a lot stronger competitor than Sega was with the DC. And the other reply to you is correct; my primary objective was to point out the foolishness of the GP saying "this looks like the end of the playstation." I mean, the PS2 is still the top-selling console by a huge margin....it seems at the very least a bit counterintuitive to be reading Sony's eulogy.
But also, I think it is worth noting some of the parallels. The biggest one is failure in Japan....consoles (historically) just flat don't do well when the Japanese don't buy them in large numbers.
And then of course there's the counterpoint to the ridiculous conclusion drawn by the author of this article. He says:
But if Sony's really hoping to make Dreamcast 2.0 a reality, now would be a very good time to change tactics. Relying on obfuscation and hype is only likely to work once, especially for gamers who believed tall promises about the PS2 Emotion Engine's ability to present the most impressive game worlds imaginable but actually received a system only moderately more powerful than the Dreamcast.
This strikes me as completely ass-backwards. After all, it did completely annihilate the DC. Which is to say that a "moderately more powerful" system was plenty. Is this author suggesting that everyone should have just bought the Dreamcast? Or is he suggesting that this time, knowing that the PS2 was only a bit more powerful than the DC, that gamers won't be "fooled again" and will just buy the 360? None of that sounds reasonable to me. It seems to me that a gamer who was looking at history would say to himself, "Well, the last time Sony brought its console out later and said it'd be faster....it was only a bit faster, but the competing product was stone-dead within a couple months. I probably ought to hold out for the Sony console, lest my 360 lose dev support overnight."
Now, obviously, that's not going to happen; MS was willing to buy game developers left and right to get game support for the first Xbox, so even in the worst case they can do that again. And they aren't likely to have to anyway. But my point is that it seems silly to me to suggest that bringing out a faster, better console later "won't work again" because last time it wasn't faster enough. Right?
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
so long as all the blogs and media outlets are talking about Sony, talking about Blu-Ray, and talking about the really cool games that are coming with the PS3, they keep you from wanting to buy an xBox360.
Most people I know are waiting until all the consoles are released before they buy, and I live in xBox360 central (Seattle), so you know it's working.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Beware the ides of March!
BEWARE!
Et tu, nintendo?
Sigh. Like anyone reading Slashdot these days finds this funny. Back in my day... et cetera.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Phil Harrison, President of SONY computer entertainment is going to deliver a keynote address at the upcoming Game Developers' Conference on March 22, titled "PS3: beyond the box"...let's hope this will probably end the silence on the console, apart from the rumored announcement on the 15th.
My sig has been answered.
This PS3/360/NR to-and-fro here is amazing to me because of posts like these. In general most of the points are either valid, (currently) true, or at least arguable... but then you have to go and read stuff like this:
360: "a weak new system... plauged with problems that are of a magnitude never see before in the console market... laughed at by the console world for their miserable graphics."
I mean, jeesh? To be fair, this brand of drivel not isolated to Sony peeps. The same happens on the *other* sides, too (although not as much, weirdly). But it's bothersome because it just spoils whatever cred you came in the room with. Forensics 101 people!
My 2 cents? Well, simply, I like games. Mostly *analog* games like ping-pong, bolwing, pinball, skateboarding, etc. But I've owned an Atari 2600, Commodore 64, SNES, 3DO, Dreamcast and currently own an Xbox (I didn't have a PS1 because I was just starting my career, and knew it would be dangerous;)). I'm a pseudo-early adopter, and I think LIVE is awesome. I play online on my computer sometimes, but IMHO LIVE is just... smooth. Pick-up and play, which is what 'console gaming' is all about. I'll probably get a PS3 and/or NR also, but right now I'd love to get my hands on a 360, but like a lot of people can't find an un-bundled, non-Ebay Premium system to save my life (who wants to support that kind of behavior?). Although availibilty will probably (hopefully) improve within the next month or two. I check the BestBuys here in NYC a couple times a week. I've only gotten close a couple times when they've had some Core systems. And even those have sold out before I could get there. FWIW, I quizzed the sales people at several stores and they surmised that they get at least 50 systems a week (x 4 stores) and they're gone. Poof! Sure there are stores in Japan with THOUSANDS!!!! And I'm sure, too, a bunch in Europe. But for ME (and apparently many others) they're still hard to get in the US. Again NON-BUNDLED and NON-EBAY'd. So all those posters here who claim they're 'everywhere' are hopeful, or secretly Japanese. That kind of statement's factually accurate, but 'journalistically' misleading. Same goes for the graphics. I buy systems with graphics in mind (check: C64, 3DO, Dreamcast) and you'd be crazy not to see the difference graphics-wise 360-to-current gen. Sure, it MAY be only 1.5 gen, blah blah blah, and the PS3 MAY be so graphically powerful that it explodes every other system within a two block radius... but WE DON'T KNOW. All we know is the 360 is here now (at least on display) and PGR, Kameo, etc look darn nice. I actually respect the f* outof Nintendo for essentially going purely the 'it's all about the games' route, and foregoing the graphics pissing contest.
Blah blah blah. I'm rambling. But it is what it is. The 360 is out now, the PS3 isn't. The 360's graphics are better than any current console. The launch certainly was rushed, but wasn't nearly a hardware catastrophe (nor was the PS2 launch). AND the PS3 will be out sometime in the next year-and-a-half. And then only time and money will tell.
The Xbox was killed off early by Microsoft due to their inability to bring the manufacturing costs down over the life of the product. The main culprit was the idiotic decision to include a harddrive. Harddrives don't come down in price. Manufacturers come out larger capacity drives for the same price. And for drives of the size in the Xbox I wouldn't be surprised if the costs actually started to go up due to fact that almost no one uses drives of that size anymore.
Because the massive losses the first Xbox was generating Microsoft was forced to come up with new hardware faster than Sony or Nintendo. And it shows. They pretty much only had time to get IBM to slap a third core onto one of their existing designs and bolt an ATI card to it.
The Xbox 360 has had more things go wrong with its hardware and launch than all other console's combined. I can't think of another console that is anywhere close to the 360.
The 360 has turned out to be the biggest console disaster ever. I would love to hear which console over the past twenty years is even in the same league as the 360 for hardware problems or launch disasters.
what is a decent game in your opinion? People need to calm the f down and to remember the difference between "I don't like a game" and "it's a bad game". As another poster put it, the games have scored consistently high, remarkably so for a launch. Compare these games to Smugglers Run, Timesplitters, and Kessen that came out with the PS2. Oooh, and Summoner too.
Also, for the poster who said they're all sequels, who cares? You think the PS3 isn't going to have the same issue? Or the Revolution? Any launch is going to have a bunch of sequels because they're proven sellers. There will also be a couple of original games, and usually they aren't much good unless your company's name is Nintendo. But the 360 did have Condemned and Kameo, both of which are new franchises and both of which are pretty darn good games.
I just don't understand it when people have such an agenda when they write about games and consoles. It feels like the cold war, but more ridiculous.
Only slightly. Even a megacorp can't allow a division to essentially throw money out of the window infinitely. If the leaders don't think the game division has a chance at becoming profitable it might get the axe. Or at least strict spending limits, which could already severely damage their plans.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
i'd say in PS3's case, all press like this is great press, and the mystery creates 'headlines' like this one on slashdot. people get talking about it, and start thinking about skipping the x360 and saving up for this amazing mystery system. remember the INCREDIBLE ps2 cpu hype? they made it sound like the ps2 had A.I.. It turned out to just be nothing special at all. i just wonder how long before disc read errors start popping up with the ps3..
Your post is nothing but fanboy flamebait.
The Xbox 360 is indeed, the most complex console to date, as has almost every console released, ever. More things going wrong with it? The only thing I've heard of it overheating of the PSU, mainly because of the decision to make it external (and poor design, at that) and people's inability to put it somewhere where heat would not build up.
It certainly isn't the "biggest console disaster ever" - as I understand it, the 360 is setting records for "games-per-unit" sales, and since the hardware is completely sold out everywhere, I imagine that means positive revenue for Microsoft. They were able to sell them like gangbusters last Christmas, even bundled with hundreds of dollars of extras (thereby eliminating the loss per unit in one fell swoop).
The PS3, on the other hand, is going to cost 3 times the Xbox 360 to BUILD. Sony can only hope to **match** the games-per-unit record that the 360 is making, and that won't compensate for the loss they'll need to take just to sell the PS3 and keep it competitive.
THIS is why I fully-support external power supplies, or "wall-warts" as some people call them: if it dies, you can easily replace it for around $20.
Unless it happens to be an XBox 360 power brick, then you're in trouble. It seems that MS doesn't sell replacements.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Unfortunatley for you it's what you've read and not what you have experienced. Best online service intergrated into every game, fully intergrated XBL Arcade of which I spend way too much time with, downloadable demos so I don't have to subscribe to any mags for discs and of course GRAW and the upcoming Oblivion. I've never had a more incredible experinece with a console as I've had with the 360. Now that you've "read" that maybe you can actually visit a friends house who has one and an HDTV and actaully try it.
Wow, on my main Slashdot page these articles are only tiny one-line entries below the "primary" stories. Must suck to be forced to read these articles before you can get to the content that you prefer.
The official statement, issued today through Reuters, is that the meeting will be an event to announce the future of the PlayStation side of Sony's business, which is particularly vague, although if we consider Koei's comments, it is highly likely there will be some mention of the the PlayStation 3. Next week also sees the Game Developer Conference 2006 taking place in the US, where it's known some SCEA developers will be speaking.
Sony's announcement:
Haha, tricked you! The truth is, there is no PS3. Sorry people, but you'll have to wait 6 more years for the PS4. Oh yeah, next week, we're having a conference about the PS4's capabilities
From the conference next week:
The PS4, AKA "Deus ex Machina," will be 100% compatible with 3d projectors, and will use IBM's hologram data storage as its storage medium. Please stay tuned for further updates.
If all you care about is graphics you can get an xbox 360. If you want good games get the Revolution. What is the point of the PS3? The only people that I can see buying one are people who are hooked on GT, or PS2 fanboys who would buy a PS3 if all it did was make toast.
"The current rumour is there will be some sort of big announcement about Sony's next-gen console on the 15th."
"Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.
CAESAR: He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass."
Who's the dreamer now?
I mean, we do know that PS3 is the next generation of Sony gaming platform, Apple seems fit to surprise us every few months with "just one more thing". We don't even know if Apple is truly has a new video iPod that may or may not be released in March or April. If Sony's strategy has been insane, I think most Apple's exec's should be locked away in straight jackets with the key thrown away.
For Sony, the bottom line is that the PS3 is hotly anticipated and we are aware that it WILL be released and basically what it is. If it was released today, you can be assured that they will sell millions in just a few hours. Does Sony really need a firm release date?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How about PS1? Three different PS1s of mine completely broke and stopped reading discs. A friend of mine's PS1 only would read burned games.
Ever blow in an NES?
Off the top of my head, the most reliable game system released recently is the GameCube, but maybe that's because nobody uses them.
I'm not defending Microsoft here, but their biggest issue was supply. Some 360s have defects but is it any worse than before?
rm -rf
"Everybody seems to be missing the fact that the PS2 outsold the 360 in January"
Is that because purchasers preferred the PS2 over the X360, or because there were all of 17 X360s to be had worldwide at the time?
"I actually respect the f* outof Nintendo for essentially going purely the 'it's all about the games' route, and foregoing the graphics pissing contest." This is because Nintendo is unique in the current industry. 1st - They are the only games company to manufacture a console. Xbox & Playstation are devisions of larger companies. 2nd - Nintendo has been in this since the beginning, well not quite the beginning but by that i mean they were there back in the days of crap graphics and sound, 2 button pads for gods sake. They know theres more to this game than "oh shiny". And as for those bemoaning the fact that the rev is basically a gamecube i say good, the gamecube is a nice solid little unit (top loading is a pain) with a quality over quantanty approach towards titles. My beast of a gaming rig is an evolution of an old 386 but that doesent mean there the same machine. TRY RUNNING F.E.A.R. AT MAX ON A 386SX 4MB RAM When all 3 are available to buy i will definatly end up with a REV and one of the other 2, which one though i couldent tell you. I may have come across as a bit of a big N fanby but im not. I got fed up with them after the N64, i got a used gamecube a few months ago just because it was too cheap not to.) The point is the 360 and the ps3 havent done anything for me, but nintendo have captured my imagination and thus my pre-order.
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
i dont see microsoft going anywhere this generation. however, at this point it will be obscenely difficult to convince the japanese to accept the x360, since the ps3 is directly around the corner. unless MS can pull off a major coup [and they prob wont] and steal away most of the ps3 3rd party developers, i dont see a full reversal of the current console standings once the ps3 is released.
i like the [original] xbox for some reason myself. it serves a genuine purpose in my opinion and in terms of my gaming experience. but honestly, i dont see it ever being #1. they just dont have the all encompassing philosophy to be #1.
for all the mud that we can sling at the playstation and the gamecube, there have been a few unique titles. theyve had some genuinely interesting franchises during their lifecycle. the xbox's only claim to fame is xbox live. to a pc gamer, its definitely not unique. so far nothing about the xbox has been "thinking out of the box". it seems like microsoft is bringing the pc to the console world. its a dayum mac mini made for games [read: specifically made for first person shooters].
Microsoft's sales since launch here have been mediocre at best here in the U.S.A. and negligible in japan.
http://www.craxtion.com/content/view/133/2/
They will have to release at least 3 AAA Japanese Style rpgs among other thigns to get the japanese to switch brands and they just need to churn out more quality titles here in the U.S.
Hmmm... Pie...
Ugh, your exaggerating the cost of the blu-ray... The actual pure drive components cost will be bumped down to probably around $30 bucks after Sony ships off their first million or two since it's their factories and their own tech no licensing required for the technology to other companies.
All the expensive chips required to decode the hd stream and convert the video is already there. Sony can probably just design some software to run on their cell to decode whatever mpeg stream blu-ray runs on and they've got other chips already to handle tv output.
Hmmm... Pie...
Balooney. Whereas my friend went through 2 PSXs (he now plays them on an emulator or his PS2), I still got my N64. Similarly, I still have my Gamecube while he's on his second PS2.
I do wish the controllers would last longer though. I've had to buy 3 replacements for my GC and all of my N64 controllers should be replaced. Most of them it's the control stick that gets worn down and very loose.
As for the NES, that was trouble with the lockout chip or something and, no, you're not suppose to blow in it. Not that ever stopped me or anyone.
I'm so sorry i got a ps2, why I only got to play games from my favorite creator Hideo Kojima--Metal Gear series. Numerous obscure but fun japanese rpgs along with mainstream ones like FF, Xenosaga, Dragonquest. How about gran turismo, being able to recreat an old ae86 and tuning it to hell is so shitty. But i guess those and all the other games I've played and the genre of games I play are just mediocre altogether. Why i should have bought a gamecube to play mario party and metroid or something. Why not! I should buy the revolution so i can play Mario Dance party and mario fishing with funny controller thingy (thats not a goddamn revolution in gaming it's a different type of control and it's nothing new in comparison to arcades). I'm not gonna buy a ps3 no matter what. Even if i dislike colorful cute little kiddy oriented games i'll still have a grand total of 4 mature titles to look forward to during the revolution's lifetime.
Hmmm... Pie...
Back in the olden days when I was still a teenager in the year of 1999. I was obsessed with playing japanese rpgs with my psx (the first ps used to be abreviated as such!). It fell down a full flight of stairs (messed up younger sister :( ).
My obsession also incurred the wrath of my parents. Particularily my father who was not happy to see me gaming over 6 hours in a row and proceeded unto ripping the psx out of it's home on my desk causing all the plugs to go off, hurled it onto the wall which caused the cd thingy to pop open exposing my precious Xenogears disc one to pop out onto the ground.
I mouth was wide open in shock but alas my father was not satisfied he grabbed the psx once again and slammed my psx toward the very spot my xenogears CD was resting at. I witnessed the something I did not realize occured with cds, it was as if it had shattered like glass with many small particles along with the bigger chunks.
The most important thing is though, after the situation cooled down I plugged in my psx tried another game and to my surprise it was still running! Hooray i would play with it for another 3ish years at which point the ps2 replaced it (psx is probably still okay, just resting on the shelf).
Hmmm... Pie...
Sony has created the Playstation 3 (PS3), not as a game machine, but as a vessel to float the company into new lands. They are burdening the system with a new movie format (BluRay) unheard of levels of digital rights management for music and video, Memory Sticks and more.
The results are already starting to show. A year ago, Sony promised to launch the PS3 in Spring 2006. Instead, they waited till Spring 2006 to announce that they won't be launching the system until November 2006, in Japan , with other regions perhaps as soon as Spring 2007. Why? Digital Rights Management issues with the upcoming BluRay format.
The other divisions of Sony are dragging the PS3 down. The Playstation Portable (PSP) suffers from the same illness; too many hands in the basket. The PSP was designed around a slow-loading UMD format for distribution of movies which makes the machine less than ideal for game playing. Compared to ROM cartridges, UMDs are too slow loading and consume too much battery time. They make the machine more fragile and introduce problems with additional moving parts. In short, they are a sacrifice to the movie industry arm of Sony; giving up on the optimal game experience for the opportunity to sell you movies you probably already own on DVD.
The delays brought about by making compromises to the core functions of the system will put a great strain on Sony. Currently, their ark is full of holes and loaded with baggage. The flood waters rise. How many gamers will wait until this time next year in order to pick up a PS3 when Xbox 360 games are available today and are getting excellent review scores? How many will pass up the Revolution this holiday season when it is affordable and fun? How high will the waters rise before Sony can launch the ark?
Will it float?
More can be found here: Kamalot Blog
Is anyone coding in any interesting languages like say Mercury, Or Prolog or Lisp on consoles now?
Are any big-title games on PC's being coded in any of the above?
What are you looking here for???
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
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Dude, 4 words for you:
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
THIS is the best game of the bunch, and the first one that really blew me away. Check it out and you'll love your 360 even more...
No reason to lie.
Generally I agree with you...generally. But I think there are certain instances where companies have been willing to indefinitely lose money somewhere, using their lossy division to drive business into profitable divisions. In this case MS could end up making the calculated decision that they need to spend money on Xbox product (even indefinitely) in order to forge ahead with their pervasive windows-device world. It's not a viable piece in that puzzle now, but if they were able to pump up penetration this generation, then next generation (assuming they hold on) they could have a box in a large percentage of living rooms which really only integrates well with MS (or MS-partner) gear like PCs, DVRs, music players, etc. And such a stronghold could conceivably be worth spending billions annually on the money hole of Xbox.
...I'm certainly not saying that's how it'll play out. My best guess is that Xbox will start making money at some point. But I also don't see them dramatically changing the sales figures or market share this generation.)
(Note how many times I say "could"
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
I will admit that Nintendo's equipment since the SNES has been well above par in this respect. On the other hand, they also didn't have the same stringent performance requirements, and thus are easier to stabilise cheaply.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Jak and Daxter was famously written in a LISP variant, and it was a fun game (I didn't like the sequels as much though).
You'll get to play them ALL OVER AGAIN with added Shininess(TM)on the PS3!
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!