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Ken Kutaragi's Famous Last Words
When we look back on this E3, I think one of the moments we're most clearly going to remember is the dead silence in the Sony press conference following the price announcement. Eurogamer and GameDaily has coverage of Phil Harrison's spin work, trying to recover from that moment, discussing how Sony is not ripping off Nintendo and Microsoft probably won't meet their 10 million units goal. More interestingly, they discuss an interview with Ken Kutaragi conducted by a Japanese website. From that piece: "SCEI president Ken Kutaragi has defended the PlayStation 3's high price tag once again, declaring that not only will consumers be prepared to pay the cost but that the console is 'probably too cheap.' In an interview with Japanese website IT Media, partially translated by IGN, Kutaragi said: 'This is the PS3 price. Expensive, cheap - we don't want you to think of it in terms of game machines ... For instance ... Is it not nonsense to compare the charge for dinner at the company cafeteria with dinner at a fine restaurant? It's a question of what you can do with that game machine. If you can have an amazing experience, we believe price is not a problem.'"
... I don't know about the rest of you, but I never, ever eat in really expensive restaurants. As good as the food may be, it's simply not worth the additional cost. Which is why I'll be getting a Wii and not the PS3.
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
The weak dollar is an interesting point, in Canada the 20 gig PS3 is priced at $550, and the PS2 was priced at launch at $450, which is less of a jump than the U.S. launch prices of $500 for the PS3 and $300 for the PS2. The U.S. dollar has fallen a lot in the past five years, I'm surprised more Americans aren't upset about this, in Canada almost every fluctuation in the currency is front page news.
Microsoft probably could have gotten away with charging $599 for the Xbox360 last Novemeber. Probabaly would have solved a bunch of the early problems with massive back-orders and bad press from not being able to supply enough units. Had they done that and waited for E3 to drop the price--I am thinking there would have been a second surge of XBox360s sales. BTW--of what use is HD-DVD/BlueRay? Why do I need it? Regular DVDs have been doing just fine. I can even make my own DVDs. Since gaining the ability to burn CDs and DVDs--I am going to be reluctant to adopt any technology where I have to depend on someone else to create my content. Is HD-DVD supposed to provide better games or higher quality movies?
The PS3 is understandably expensive. Unfortunately that doesn't excuse the price. Sony decided to put the Blu-ray in, I'm guessing, not so much so that people would actually use it, but so they could make claims of supremacy over HD-DVD. I suspect the plan was, come a year or so from now, quote some high number of Blu-ray players in homes, most of which would be PS3's. Even though I doubt most of those PS3's would ever have had a high def movie in it, because there's still an overwhelming majority of the population who don't have an HDTV. It's one thing for people to have a player, it's another for them to actually use it. Microsoft had a better plan, offer options and upgrades. Start with a $300 system... add a hard drive... add a HD-DVD... add who knows what to come. Eventually you have a really expensive system, without a huge onetime outlay of cash, and without being forced into an all or nothing proposition. Then of course there's the controller. I won't claim the took the idea from Nintendo, but I think it was a bad idea. Nintendo was trying to simplify controls with motion sensing, whereas Sony decided to add it on top of an already complex button laden control scheme. I don't want to have to try to move the controller with my thumbs on both sticks and finger on the shoulder buttons. Even for someone whose been gaming since the 2600, and falls right into the target market, that's a bit much.
You can subtract out the effect of the force feedback on acceleration fairly successfully, but not perfectly. It'd cause the controller to noticably drift, probably in a matter of seconds of force feedback, so that where a straight controller was driving the car straight a moment ago, now it's 5 degrees to the right. It'd add up fast. Expensive precision components might limit this to an acceptable degree but it'll be too expensive.
The reason Nintendo can "get away with" having force feedback in their controller is they have a second (and probably third and possibly fourth) point of reference in the sensor bar, so they can correct drift by referencing this other point (or points). (I don't have inside info, but the bar is presumably a bar because it has a position sensor on each end, or it'd be a "sensor button", and since accuracy is probably a big deal, I'd add one in the middle for another reference point; not as good as having a non-colinear reference point but still better than just 2; how much better would depend on a math analysis.) Or, more accurately, they never have drift problems because they don't have to try to trust the controller in the first place, just the sensor bar's assessment of the position and velocity, and the controller's report of acceleration.
So, my conclusion is Sony removed their rumble because it was far too late to add a sensor bar to their package, and so the only other choice was dropping force feedback. Their controllers will still need periodic re-zeroing, although clever programming and a bit of guesswork can minimize the need to do this explicitly. Still, it could have some tricky cases; if you've ever powered up your console while an analog stick wasn't centered, you've experienced this already. Make sure your new PS3 controllers are correctly horizontal when powering them up.
You're right, a lot are. But how many people made a fortune selling short-supplied, under-priced XBoxen on Ebay? I think Sony just wised up and realized that, if anyone's going to make that kind of coin on your console, might as well have it be the manufacturer.
This way, they can keep selling the PS2 as well, for quite some time.
It's my understanding, and I could certainly be wrong, that the sensor bar is only used for DPD functionality. Everything else is just accelerometers in the wiimote and nunchaku. I still haven't given much thought to how this works. My previous ideas, inspired by the Ars Technica article, are probably bunk. But I have heard that some games don't require the sensor bar, and that's enough to make me think that it's only needed for the DPD.
Everyone is talking about the PS3 as a game console. What if the PS3 ends up being more than just a game console. What if the cell turns out to be a very viable 2nd PC?
What if you had some very good web-based applications? Off the top of my head, I am thinking Google Calander, email, and earth. If there was a good word processor and some other office software, then the PS3 just might be that alternative PC.
A $599 PC / Video Game / HD DVD / Media Player might just be worth the price of admission.
What do you think?
Wrong again. The FCT flag, optionally used on both HD DVD and Blu-ray, is up to the content publisher to use. It seems most won't - and at least not Sony - according to themselves.
Btw, it's HDCP, not HDMI, you're talking about.
it's in my head
I'm actually surprised that they don't subsidize the consoles in the same way as mobile telephones. After all, a nice mobile handset can cost $500, yet you only pay $150 because you sign up for a year with a provider. Why not do the same with consoles. Chances are that once you've got someone for a year, they're going to stick with you anyway so it's just a way to lower costs and get more subscribers.
I'll be buying one. I think is just the fact that game consoles are being marketed to more gen x'ers and not starving college students and kids anymore.
Since when did operating systems become a religion?
You obviously don't live in California. Chez Panisse and the French Laundry don't have much of a dress code apart from "reasonable".
Wrenching the subject back to the topic at hand, if Kutaragi is telling people $600 is "too cheap", he's in for a nasty surprise come shopping season. Sony's already 5 million seats behind the curve compared with X360, their reputation sucks after the rootkit fiasco, and the PS3 is a pain in the ass to program by all accounts - that'll slow down game development, notwithstanding the guys from Japan treating the American division like stupid gaijin every time they jet over from Tokyo. I don't usually root for Microsoft, but Sony needs to be taken down a notch.
And the damn console isn't even a good value as a Blu-ray player: $600 for crippled HD resolution? No thanks.
Can you confirm your specs on the Wii from a source that hasn't been discredited as making shit up? The site that first gave those specs has made stuff up in the past and isn't considered reliable. Note that neither gamespot nor wikipedia speculate on the actual chips inside.
This is a gaming machine and Sony accidentally confused it with a media center. Let's not forget that it reads media nobody even has, so it costs even more $$$ to use as Sony intends.
As my friend said: "Why does it cost sooooooo much???? I don't need all that extra stuff. I don't care about blue ray. I just wanna play games..."
She's about as hardcore as you can get when it comes to being a fan of PS2 games. She'd been saving up for a year to buy the new PS3 so she could play the next MGS. Now she's considering getting a surf board instead. I actually convinced her to wait on the surf board and see if she changes her mind about the PS3.
I watched sony kill a loyal fan.
Good game, price point.
Meanwhile, I'm gonna get a Wii. Why? Because I hate having games nobody can figure out how to play without hours of practice. I just wanted quick, fun games that my friends and I could pick up. Then I heard the Wii will only cost $150-$200? I'm sold.
**I wasn't even in the market for a new system.** I will not be surprised if Nintendo grabs a significant marketshare of people who are in the same boat as me. And then there's the Sony defectors. And the people who want Xbox and Wii. And then the Nintendo fanboys.
Nintendo is going to make a KILLING this Christmas.
The production costs for the PS3 are very high. Even at these high retail prices they are taking a significant loss, probably $200 per console. They simply cannot sell it for less without taking a real bath. Holding out and expecting it will magically go down to $400 soon is not a good idea. The only way it gets cut in price like that is desperation for a failing console, which seems likely at this point.
7 53283
I used to design consumer electronic devices for a living, and the price breakdowns I have seen for the PS3 are so obviously wrong that they arent worth talking about.
Have a look at this comment for opinion on the PS3 cost:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=177857&cid=14
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I'm completely willing to pay Sony's asking price for the PS3. People knew it was going to be expensive, and what do you know, it is expensive.
In Canada with our once devalued dollar, the PS2 would launch at $299 USD and we'd be paying $499 CDN for it. But thanks to the poor American dollars, and the rising Canadian dollar, as PS3 launched at $499 USD is now only $549 CDN. So really for Canadian, the PS3 isn't expensive at all. It's only $50 more than the PS2 was at launch!
The PS3's price hype has worked tripley against Sony:
1) It seems to have stifled the PS3's momentum
2) It has drawn attention away from a -completely- underwhelming showing of the Xbox 360. (In terms of future games, I'm very disappointed in what's coming out for the 360.)
3) Its taken attention away from PS3 games that at least truly appear to distance the PS3's technical abilities from the Xbox 360 (MGS4, Heavy Rain, Assassin's Creed, a handful of tech demos)
Ultimately though, I think people -want- the PS3. They're underwhelmed by the 360, and they want the PS3 to be spectacular. They've been waiting for it forever. It will be flying off the shelf when it launches whether Sony deserves it or not.
Yeah, but the Xbox at least got a Media Center Extender option and had Live.
The PS2 phased out the IEEE 1394 ports, and the hard drive/LAN adapter was used for... Final Fantasy XI?
There's the problem. MS actually figured out how to sell more than just a console, Nintendo figured out how to make a profit selling just a console, and Sony... hyped up a piece of crap which was crippled more and more with each hardware revision.
And let's not talk about how many of those 100 million shipped PS2's were replacements for burnt-out DVD drives.
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Where does 'crippled HD resolution' enter into it? I thought they were deleting the HDMI port from the cheaper PS3 to save on build costs. The A/V Multi Out is probably similar to the PS2 where you had a choice of composite or component video cables. With component, you can get full resolution (1080i) HDTV just like you can with HDMI, only difference is the signal may lose a tiny bit from not being 100% digital. Then again on most consumer display devices you'd never know the difference anyway.
Now, if you're one of the extremely few 1080p owners, then you may have a point.