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PS3 - Lateness With Linux?
ZombieRoboNinja writes "The New York Times is reporting that Sony's press conference has confirmed the delay of the PS3, which is now slated to come out in November. More interestingly, the article claims that PS3 will ship with a 60-gig hard drive, built-in network card, and Linux!" Serious stuff here, with Sony's shares falling on the delay confirmation. There was a lot more news handed out at the conference than just the delay. Next Generation has details from Ken Kutaragi's 10 Point Breakdown. From the NYT article: "'We were discussing selling it in September, and some even said put it out in July,' Mr. Kutaragi said. Some analysts were immediately skeptical of this explanation, saying Sony needed to get the console out as soon as possible to combat Microsoft's head start, and the expected release this year of Nintendo's next game console, Revolution. They said Sony may be trying to buy time to bring down the production cost of key components, particularly untested technologies like Blu-ray and Cell. While Mr. Kutaragi did not reveal a price on Wednesday, analysts say Sony will likely try to sell PlayStation 3 for about $500." Please see related links and commentary below for more coverage.
My two quick cents -
- If they're not releasing in Japan until November, I find it highly unlikely they'll be releasing in the states until 2007. Previous PlayStation launches have always been staggered Japan first, U.S. second. I don't care if they say they're launching worldwide; At this point I think they're spinning to keep people happy.
- If they're not out in the U.S. until 2007, they'll probably be the last next-gen console to do so. So far Nintendo says it's on track to launch this year. Sony isn't getting finalized dev kits out until June. Even just with that metric on the table, Nintendo looks to be in a better position than Sony at the moment.
- At $500, there are going to be a lot of indifferent customers come March of '07. This will be especially true if, over a year after launch, Microsoft cuts the price of the 360 to coincide with the PS3 launch. If you have to choose between a solid platform that costs $300 (and already has a stable of games available) and a brand-new system that is two hundred bucks more with far fewer games, which one do you think most people will buy?
A functioning link to the NYTimes article.
Also interesting is the component pricing total that reveals why Sony will most likely have to take a loss of hundreds of dollars per console to remain competitive.
My work here is dung.
Sounds to me like Sony shot themselves in the foot by muffing a Christmas release of the PS3 so they're gearing up the speculation by promising the kitchen sink like they did with the PS2 to try and keep anybody from buying something else in the meantime.
Sony seems to use Linux for the PS3 - and at the same time, Linus says he won't use GPL3 for Linux due to the DRM clauses.
Interesting coincidence, don't you think?
I'd be willing to pay more for a gaming console if I had control to produce my own content [e.g. programs, games, whatever].
I'd pay 800$ for a PS3 if it meant I could ssh to the thing and play with the cell processor or beam media to it or something.
If all I can do is play games then I wouldn't pay more than 200$ for it. Cuz at that point I'd just play my xbox1 out of spite.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Not just too late, but probably counterproductive. With the level of DRM Sony has hinted at in the past for the PS3, I think a lot of Slashdotters will consider the fact that Linux is facilitating it to be more of an insult than anything.
Boom!!!
If there was any question about just how dead the 360 was yesterday, today it should be perfectly clear. With sales falling to only 160k units last month, I can't imagine how far they will fall by next month.
This holiday season is going to be a battle between Sony and Nintendo the likes of which have never been seen before in the console market.
The holdup of the AACS stuff for BluRay means that Sony is stockpiling the components for the PS3 and will have millions of units ready to ship by November this year. Sony could have shipped about 500k to Japan in June/July but decided to go with a worldwide release in November. Too bad for Japan, no change for the US, and good news for Europe.
Linux being standard on all PS3s is wonderful. There are going to be 120+ million Linux machines out there serving as people's media servers over the next five years. Nice.
E3 is going to be insane with Sony and Nintendo focusing on showing off their system's games for launch.
The final bit of info for the battle between Sony and Nintendo is what price is the Revolution going to be released at.
We are about to enter the golden age of console gaming in a few months...
If you don't need a special 'Linux Kit' to run Linux on the thing, it hardly matters whether or not it's included. THAT is the question which must be answered.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But will our old PS1 games be freely portable to use on this emulator, or will we have to buy them again in order to get them onto a memory stick via the indicated "e-distribution?"
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I actually love how Kutaragi-san is putting it all on the line. Global launch, standard hard drive, free online service... Oooh Weee! Sony is either going to astound the analysts with one of the most successful product launches ever, or go out in a blaze of glory that may cripple the company. Either way, you gotta love the balls to the wall attitude. This is going to be really interesting to watch.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
They will probably try the PVR thing again, but for less money. The unit almost assuredly is not coming with video capture hardware.
There is little to no chance that the PS3 will play UMD movies, which are on UMD, which you can't put in a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player, which all use a classical CD form factor.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Your post made me think these things are long overdue for an acronym:
YAPP - Yet Another PS3 Post
YAPA - Yet Another PS3 Article
YAPS - Yet Another PS3 Story
I think YAPP takes the cake.
More and more, the PS3 is reminding me of the ADAM computer. For those who don't remember, it was the successor to the colecovision video game system, and it was going to be both a video game system, AND an affordable home computer system. Unfortunately, it tried to do too many things, didn't do enough of them well enough for the money, and flopped. (Also, the controllers attached to the SIDE of the main box, so that when you pulled them out, little kid that you were, you broke the machine.) Anyway, these similarities may only be superficial, but a much better comparison may be the LISA computer by apple. We will see...
Shipping with Linux does not balanace out unlawful virus DRM root kits.
Think about it though: shipping with Linux might just create a vector for undermining the DRM on the Blu-Ray HD movies playable on this console.
Face it: consumer electronics running Linux is a big neon "hack me" sign that you don't get with other proprietary consumer electronics operating systems.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If Linux support is going to be native (instead of requiring a bunch of hacking and modding), does this mean they are open to indie game development?
With their PSOnline service (or whatever they're calling it,) they could give low-brow development kits (or sell them for a small fee,) and all people to upload games to a server. Having a lot of free, smaller games would really add to the service.
With Sega releasing the Dreamcast as early as they did (relatively), Sony is really fighting an uphill battle here. Whether or not the PS2 is better than the DC, the "next-gen" war is already heavily favored to those who actually make their products available.
Sure there are some Sony fanboys who would refuse to buy Sega products I'm sure, but then factor in the Nintendo Gamecube release later this year and well... I just don't see how they can really expect to win major market share with this platform.
Not a fanboy, but look how that worked out last time.
Does anyone know how the XB360 sold in Japan? According to what I hear, Japanese customers are quite loyal to their local manufacturers, so I would consider it likely that (unless that changed with the X360) Sony tries to pick up the battle with Nintendo instead. The one against MS is pretty much over by the time they could push the console on the market.
By then, the X360 will be "old" already. It's more likely that they will try to match with the Nintendo Revolution instead of trying to fight the X360. Simply because those 2 consoles will be the ones to share the XMas market for this year.
For the X360, you either already have it, you're going to buy it within 6 months or you don't care about it. Who's gonna get a 360 for XMas? Hardly anyone. It's "old" by then.
On the other hand, both the PS3 and the Rev are going to hit the market roughly around XMas this year. And usually people only buy ONE console per XMas, not both.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What does E17, a window manager, have to do with being able to run Duke Nukem Forever? Maybe you mean Wine will have been able to run Duke Nukem Forever if it will have been released?
Also, it's unlikely that E17 will be officially stable by then. I keep up with the mailing lists and I know there's way to much work left (even though no new features will be added).
Agreed. People who don't believe this need a touch of history.
Back in the 1980s, most TVs were much smaller than what they sell today, and much lower quality. You had a lucky few with big screens (greater than 30"), a significantly larger slice with screens in the 20-30" range, and the majority of the population with screens ranging from 12-20".
It's absolutely amazing how times change. My computer monitors even going back to the mid-1990s dwarf my family's old 14" TV, and have much better sharpness, bandwidth and color fidelity. You can buy 27" TVs at Walmart for less than 150 bucks that have visual quality most of us could only wish for in the 80s.
So, it's no surprise that VHS was considered good in the 1980s, when you consider that the average TV of the era was tiny and crappy. The 1990s started the wave of cheaper, larger, higher-fidelity televisions that showed the limitations of VHS, and by the end of the decade the market was hungry for DVD.
Unfortunately, the market hasn't changed much since DVDs were introduced. Screen sizes are up a bit, but HDTV technology is still too expensive for your average Walmart buyer. Even if HDTV suddenly dropped to the price range of your average Walmart buyer, you'd still have to wait 5 years or so for a potential market to build up.
HD-DVD and Bluray are in a very similar position to Laserdisc...not a huge improvement over the cheaper alternative, and selling to a very limited market. When only 5-10% of the market even owns equipment good enough to tell the difference, and they have to shell out $500+ to experience it, you've got limited room for growth.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.