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Microsoft Sides With Nintendo Against Sony
rafemonkey writes "Looks like Microsoft loves the Wii. The Washington Post has an article in which VP Peter Moore says that since the PS3 is so expensive, gamers might as well get an Xbox 360 and a Wii for the cost of one Sony console." From the article: "Microsoft predicted on Tuesday it will have 10 million Xbox 360 consoles in the market before Sony launches the PS3. The high-end Xbox 360 sells for $399, but it does not include a built-in high-definition DVD video player that comes with Sony's PS3. Sony plans to sell a premium PS3 model for $599 when it debuts in North America on November 17, and Nintendo has not yet disclosed pricing for Wii." On that last note there is much speculation that Nintendo is aiming for a $249 price point. Sony's Kaz Hirai has in turn responded that the PlayStation 3 is priced for consumers, who are getting a lot for their money.
"We felt that if you want to save something on your Memory Stick, most people have those readers on their PC, which is easily adaptable to the PlayStation 3 with a USB cord," said Hirai. "The only difference is HDMI - and at this point, I don't think many people's TV's have that. The ultimate result, to my eyes anyway, is there's not a discernable difference between what you get between HDMI and other forms of high definition."
This seems utterly bizarre. Over the course of the PS3's development, Sony has promised quite a bit, and yes they did include most of what they said (Cell, Blu Ray), but one of the biggest bits of HD. And now the president says there aren't enough TV's to warrant putting HDMI on the low end PS3?
Wasn't Nintendo getting flak for just this for the entire time that they said that HD wasn't yet the norm? Granted... Nintendo's max resolution still pales to the PS3's max resolution even without the HDMI.. but BluRay movies with the DRM bit set won't even work at max resolution on the low end PS3. Perhaps this was the point of the delay over the DRM announced previously.
You mean like these:
Activision - Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, Marvel: Ulatimate Alliance, Call of Duty 3
AQ Interactive - Boxing Action
Atari - Dragon Ball Z Budokai: Tenkaichi 2
Atlus - Trauma Center: Second Opinion
Buena Vista Games - Disney's Chicken Little: Ace in Action Disney's Meet the Robinsons
Capcom - Resident Evil series
D3Publisher - SIMPLE series
Electronic Arts - Madden NFL '07, Medal of Honor Airborne
Hudson - Bomberman
Koei - Sengoku Action
Konami - Elebits, Soccer game
Majesco - Bust-a-Move Revolution
Marvelous Interactive / Natsume - Harvest Moon Heroes, Legend of the River King
Mastiff - Mr. D Goes to Town
Midway Games - The Ant Bully, Happy Feet
MTO - SAN-X All-star Revolution
Namco Bandai - Final Furlong, Mobile Suite Gundam, Digimon, One Piece Ulimited Adventure, Tamagotchi
SEGA - Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, Sonic Wild Fire
SNK - Metal Slug Anthology
Spike - Necro-Nesia, Jawa
Square Enix - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
Taito - Turn it around!, Let's go by train!, Cooking Mama -Cooking with International Friends
Tecmo - Super Swing Golf Pangya
THQ - Avatar: The Last Airbender, SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab, Disney/Pixar Cars
TOMY - Battle Action
Ubisoft - Open Season, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Red Steel
Yeah, I sure with they had at least some third-party support. While I'm not necessarily defending the quality of some of these games (I'm not necessarily a Spongebob fan), the point it that third-party support exists.
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
The stripped down 360 costs $399, the higher-end costs $499
Nope.
The core is $299, the "regular" is $399. There are bundles that go even for $800+, but that's not the point.
and that's without the HD-DVD.
For now. MS is already losing money on the XBOX hardware, they'll add an HD-DVD player when the time comes, right now most people don't even have HD-TV, why would you need the HD-DVD? Not to mention games will also be more expensive for HD-DVD since the disks cost more.
Plus, Sony's online play is free,
Sony has an online play? I wouldn't compare the fact that it's free compared to $50, but how much you actually get for it. Given XBOX Live already has built a large community, and is rapidly increasing, the $50 are worth it. Plus Sony is _announcing_ it's free, given the greedy bastards they are we'll see. They'll have a free sign-up but get very little and probably charge the same or more for the equivalent.
All Sony has to do is throw in a couple games and they'd have MS beat already.
Wrong...all Sony has to do is release a console, and then they can actually start playing catch-up
I tend to agree with the article. PS3 has so far nothing to offer me the XBOX360 doesn't. The people who buy Nintendo consoles do it cause they're huge SmashBros et. al fans. The market targeted by Nintendo is different than the one MS/Sony is going after.
Well, "far crappier" is relative. I was mostly comparing to the difference between the core and premium 360, which is essentially a different set of AV cables, and an HD or no HD (which you can upgrade up from). To go from the PS3 core to premium, you'd need to upgrade to the larger HD, buy a WiFi adaptor, buy a memory card/stick adaptor, and buy the HDMI add-on ... assuming they all exist.
... and that won't be known for a while.
As for the question whether or not the TV-out is a big deal, I assume you mean the HDMI output. There's an open question as to whether or not the PS3 core will be able to output Blu-ray movies to their full potential, since it won't be able to utilize HDMI. Technically, you're supposed to use HDMI, but it looks like most content companies are backing off that requirement. Note that MS is in the same boat, since their HD-DVD add-on won't use HDMI output either.
This is mostly a moot point since many HDTVs apparently don't have an HDMI input. The funny thing is that most Sony fanbois *were* downplaying that fact, trying to trumpet up just how necessary HDMI output was, because the original PS3 specs had TWO of them, while no other console even had one. But now Sony and their fans are backpedaling, since the core version doesn't have it, and they're trying to defend the core version as not being totally worthless.
Personally, I don't really care. My HDTV does have HDMI input, but I highly doubt I'm going to be buying that many HD-DVD or Blu-ray discs, until I know which format wins
But if I were to get a PS3 (and I probably will at some point, since I'm a sucker for Square-Enix fans), it seems like a no brainer to get the premium one. The core one has just too many open questions, and it's only $100 cheaper. But $600 is a lot of money, so I'm going to be waiting until well into 2007 or even later.
-- jchenx