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PS3 Launch Details Announced
Sony's conference offered up reassurance that a number of their titles will be playable at this year's E3. The controller will sense movement, allowing the player to move an onscreen avatar 'naturally'. They also released the system's launch details. The North American PS3 launch will occur on Nov. 17th, 2006. The 20GB HDD version will retail for $499, and the 60GB HDD version will go for $599. They promise 4 million launch units by December 31st. Update: 05/09 03:57 GMT by Z : Apparently, not only does the $499 system have a smaller harddrive, but it has fewer features as well.
My two cents:
1.) I'm honestly surprised they're this far along with these titles. They may actually make the November launch.
2.) Even through an internet feed, it was obvious the only truly next-gen title there was Heavenly Sword (from the great folks at Ninja Theory). The EyeToy stuff looked cool, but isn't something I'm likely to try out any time soon. Most of the games could have been 360 or even late-lifetime Xbox titles.
3.) I won't be able to review games for this system at the launch price. There's no way I'm dropping $599 for a game console.
4.) The controller orientation thing is ... I don't have the words. Awkward? Cash-in? Cynical? Whatever their intent, it just seems like a bad idea.
Wow, Sony as ever shows their originality. I mean, a motion-sensing controller? Who in the hell would have thought of that brilliant idea? Wasn't this one of the same companies who wrote off Nintendo's idea as a gimmick? Wow, ironic the innovation that Sony comes up with. Let's hope for their sake that they didn't take too much away from Nintendo's idea... last thing they need is another company suing them over technology theft in their controllers. BTW, I wonder if Immersion could claim this Dual Shock like controller in violation of their patent too.
As much as the patent system needs to go, companies like Sony almost make you want to have it.
Sony, say hello to third place. Consumers, say hello to an emergency price drop scheduled for Spring 2007.
The motion-sensing demo was hilarious. The guy's ship was shaking like crazy, and it was comical seeing him try to keep both hands on the controller while twisting it around. There's a good reason the Wii controller looks like a remote.
The Sony guy also said that they had their hands on the tech for a couple of weeks, suggesting they havn't been working on the feature for a large duration of development. (*hint* *hint*)
The Sony guy also said that they had their hands on the tech for a couple of weeks, suggesting they havn't been working on the feature for a large duration of development.
Yeah, that was very telling. This was an obvious last minute effort to confuse the market. As sparse as the clapping was throughout the rest of the presentation I almost expected them to get booed when they pulled out the controller.
Am I the only one here who really likes what he sees? Great HD graphics, Blu-Ray, hard disk standard on ALL models, online, wireless controllers, PS2 and PS1 full compatibility... this is a nice system. I know it might be expensive for some of you, and you'll have to wait to be able to afford it, but in the long run it'll be nice to have all those features in the baseline system so game authors can design around them. This definitely looks like the best-of-breed for this generation to me.
E pluribus unum
Ha! The Joke's on Sony for taking the bait..
Nintendo folks have been saying for some time now that there is still a big secret to be revealed about the Wii. The controller, on the other hand, has been public for some time. Nintendo execs are no fool. They knew that if the public liked the Wiimote one of the other companies would quickly follow. Sony has just hung themselves with their half-assed knockoff attempt.
Now, Sony is really going to feel the fool when Nintendo reveals the true secret of the Wii tomorrow...
It's a little early into E3 to start prophesizing the downfall of Sony, the revival or Nintendo, or the evil dominion of Microsoft. We've seen a pre-E3 press conference for Sony. This is about equivalent to the first segment of the pre-game show. However bad or good the pre-show conferences are, there'll be plenty within the conferences themselves to sway things one way or another.
That said, the impression I've gotten from Sony's press conference is not a good one. The two reasons are as follows.
1) "Innovation" - Sony's best bet for hurting Nintendo was to give their idea no credence. They wouldn't look bad for writing off Nintendo's ideas as gimmicky. Microsoft already ignored Nintendo, Sony simply had to follow suit. Instead, they've copied Nintendo and called it "Innovation". Now when people go to shop for a next gen console, they won't be able to write Nintendo off as a gimmick. Even if Sony did just as good a job as Nintendo, they're $300-$400 more expensive. While the move covers their bases of Nintendo takes off, they're still the copycats and that hurts them.
2) "At What Cost" - $499 hurts. Because that hurts, Microsoft was kind enough to have a core package that was cheaper, lacked features, but didn't hurt so much unless you intended on using live a lot. Sony has another package too, costing $599. That there is good one two punch to the wallet. To top it off, the difference is a 20gb harddrive versus a 60gb harddrive. Last I checked, the price difference between those sizes was not $100. Is there something I failed to garner from the coverage?
Overall, Sony hasn't started off well, meaning they'll need to work doubletime to impress me this E3. However, it's entirely possible they'll succeed. With Nintendo and Microsoft still to come, there's no telling what will happen.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
It's not that they took the concept of Live. I wasn't at all upset that 3rd parties and MS hopped on the wireless controller bandwagon after the Wavebird, and I wasn't at all upset about Live clones persay. It's more their history of doing this.
The playstation itself was a joint Nintendo/Sony project for an SNES CD addon. When it fell through they launched their own system.
The original PS controller basically amounted to an SNES controller with extended grips and double the shoulder buttons.
When Nintendo debuted the N64 controller, Sony added in 2 analog sticks, because twice is better. It took until the PS2 for anyone to do anything with it. This is one of their only two contributions, and it wasn't motivated by any gameplay reason. It was motivated by "twice is better."
The PS2 introduced backwards compatibility outside the handheld arena. Score the second thing Sony gave us.
Their first-party titles were all derivative of other dev-houses genre-creations, and had nothing noteworthy until they had the cash and cache to begin absorbing developers like Verant and Polyphony Digital.
The controller they just debutted to try to take the wind out of the Revolution/Wii is a wireless version of a PC gamepad MS debuted years ago, only in a standard dual shock form-factor.
It's not that Sony rips people off, it's that that's pretty much all they do, and if it was up to them we'd never see anything new or evolutionary. They have one success that's not an accidental good side-benny from stealing ideas from the competition, and they've pretty much rode on Nintendo's coattails for the past 14 years.
The playstation brand is a knock-off brand, slightly prettier of course, and they want to charge you a premium for it.
Then you factor in Sony Media, and the fact that they always seem to be calling the shots at big Sony, and torpedoing anything good Sony Electronics comes up with, plus the rootkit fiasco, and it's just not a company I want to financially support. They exemplify everything bad about Japanese corporations. And we're talking about everything percieved as bad about japanese corporations in the 50s.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
The Sony guy walked up to the mike and said one thing that got the crowd going: "$299"
Somehow, I think that Sony is opening themselves up to exactly what they took advantage of.
I don't want a 360, and I'll probably buy a Wii-volution on release day (as I did with GameCube), but I'm going to hold off on the PS3 until it significantly goes down in price. At least the stripped down PS3 will be more usable than the stripped down 360. (I don't need HDMI, and I don't need WiFi in the console.)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
As I suspected, Sony is trying to dilute Nintendo's innovation. I think most of us here are savvy enough to know that the PS3 controller is going to be far inferior to the Nintendo's "Wii-mote". Yet, how many of your regular consumers are going to know the difference?
I don't think Sony's goal was to out-do the Wii controller's feature and functionality. All it needs to do is dumb it down. Same goes for the Xbox Live experience. Let's deliver crap offerings of our competitors' features so that we can say "meeee tooo!". All they have to hope is that enough consumers figure that the PS3 offering is "good enough".
I cringe at the following scenario, which I know is going to happen:
ME - *trying to explain the Nintendo Wii controller to a non-gamer friend*
FRIEND - "Ohh, so it's like the PlayStation controller I've heard about?"
ME - *cries*
-- jchenx
Okay. I have to admit that while I had heard about the nunchuck accellerometers, I did not know that they announced a small speaker in the Wiimote.
Now that I know about it, I'm even more excited though... why? Well, hopefully Nintendo will be using the speaker the same way that Logitech did in their "iFeel" mouse. The mouse came and went many years ago, but was still cool though completely unsupported. The speaker in it was used to give tactile feedback as you moused over buttons and desktop items. By modulating low frequency sounds, they were able to generate quite a few physical textures. In my opinion, this feedback scheme produces much more natural feedback than the basic rumbling that console controllers use today.
This technology would also play excellently into the wiimote strategy -- using bits of tech that are not new in themselves, but have never before been brought together and well supported in a single device.