PS3 to Sell at Over $800 in UK

joe 155 writes "The Register is reporting that ' the PS3 will cost £425 in the UK - over $800'. SCE UK Managing Director Rat Maguire said: 'I don't think it's an expensive machine - I think actually, it's probably a cheap machine. If you think a Blu-Ray player by itself might be £600-700, and we're coming in at just £425, it's a bargain.' Can a console really be viable at this price?"

Comments

Typo of the Century!

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA (emphasis mine):

Interviewed by Eurogamer, SCE UK Managing Director Rat Maguire said: "I don't think it's an expensive machine - I think actually, it's probably a cheap machine.

Now the question is: was this merely an innocent mistake, or actually a subtle commentary by Tony Smith, who is probably pissed that he has to shell out £425 for a PS3?

Re:Typo of the Century!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if he'd called him a Prat it would be a better typo.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[gEvil (beta)]

While it is certainly a humorous gaffe, I think it's part of a larger marketing ploy by Sony. Over the next 6 months, we are going to be bombarded with quotes saying that 600 bucks is "really quite cheap." The thing is, knowing how much the average consumer thinks about things, this Jedi mind trick will probably work. Come November, you'll see lots of people stating with perfectly straight faces that "600 dollars for a console isn't expensive."

Re:Typo of the Century!

[VJ42]

Execpt sitting right next to it will be Nintendo's offering at around £200 (probably nearer £150 or £175). I know which one I'm gonna buy, I had the same choice when I went into the shop and saw the PSP bundle at £270 and the DS bundle at £120. I chose the DS, people will buy the Nintendo, especially as it's going to come out at more than 1\2 the price in the UK, and about 1\3 the price in the US

Re:Typo of the Century!

[Grrr]

was this merely an innocent mistake

So - you're saying "Managing Director Rat" isn't an official job title in that organization ??

<grrr />

Re:Typo of the Century!

[grammar fascist]

You're right! That's embarrassing! It should have been:

Interviewed by Eurogamer, SCE UK Managing Director Weasel Maguire said...

Heads will roll for this.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[icedcool]

Yes this is a marketing ploy. Its based off the authority influence... in that if an authority figure says something it must be true. So I'm sure we'll be hearing how 9 out of 10 game reviewers think that this isn't expensive(while they pocket sony's money). Then they'll play on social proof in that the more people buy it the more it must be true that $600 is the usual amount to pay for a console. Especially this fine "restuarant" of a console.

People are sheep.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[Ced_Ex]

If they repeat it enough, it'll burn right into your sub-conscious.

In fact, proof of this is that I can't remember off the top of my head the last two marketing slogans from McDs when all I can't think of is "i'm lovin it"

That's marketing for you.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[gEvil (beta)]

WMDs imminent threat wuh?

Re:Typo of the Century!

[Kingrames]

Sony's making a horrible mistake.

NEVER TELL THE CONSUMER HOW MUCH IS "CHEAP."

You are supposed to let the market tell you how to price your product. Sony is really taking a shot in the dark here when they don't have to. They're going to lose over 30% of their customers just by telling them (virtually) that they aren't rich enough to play the new playstation anymore.

Seriously, every day I don't see Sony retracting their price estimates, I wonder just what the fuck their shareholders are smoking.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[d_jedi]

It's things like this (and believe me, this isn't the first time..) that really discredit the register as any sort of reputable news site. Their lack of professionalism is not appreciated.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[balloot]

At some point, people will start to think you are fleecing them. Especially when your product is going to sit right alongside two others that are direct competitors which can be had for hundreds of dollars less.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[Ced_Ex]

Or how about... "We're not going there for the oil"???

Re:Typo of the Century!

[Anonymous Coward]

Typo of the Century!

This is going to be one boring century if that's the best it has to offer...

Re:Typo of the Century!

[rolfwind]

I'm buying the Wii, but for different reasons. The controllers seem innovative, may make the games fun. I haven't really ever gotten into games since the death of 2d gaming - games like Contra, Final Fantasies, etcetera. I could never play 3D FPS games simply because I could never control as well - the keyboard (most buttons) were too digital (no finetuned control) and the swivel sticks on many consoles these days too flimsy and no feedback - like steering wheels on arcade driving games generations earlier.

Because of this, the only games the last 8 years I really bothered to play was only Metal Gear Solid (mostly because I loved Metal Gear on Nintendo).

I don't know if I'm the exception in this area, but I hope Nintendo delivers, because if the control manageable - I can finally do some enjoyable gaming again:)

Oh, and the price is nice too. And Nintendo is known for making great games and that's what counts most.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I could never play 3D FPS games simply because I could never control as well - the keyboard (most buttons) were too digital (no finetuned control) and the swivel sticks on many consoles these days too flimsy and no feedback - like steering wheels on arcade driving games generations earlier.

On PCs, where I wasted many hours playing FPS games, this problem has been solved quite effectively by the ASDW key combination (forward+back+strafe left/right) and a mouse aim. This achieves both the precision and the speed of motion required for such games. That is why you will find most experienced FPS players balking at the idea of using controllers, no matter how fancy, as they all inevietably lack one or the other.

Perheaps that Wii controller will offer something new, but I expect it to still suck in FPS scenarios (mid-air hand motion lacks precision even if it has the speed), although it has a great potential for fun in innovative games which were specifically designed for it, which incidentally seems to be the domain in which Nintendo excells.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[Haeleth]

Perheaps that Wii controller will offer something new, but I expect it to still suck in FPS scenarios (mid-air hand motion lacks precision even if it has the speed)

I dunno. Last I heard, even the most technologically-advanced militaries still find mid-air hand motion the most efficient technique for infantry use.

At least, if anyone's started equipping their troops with experimental mouse-operated weapons, they've managed to keep it jolly quiet.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[24-bit Voxel]

With gas going up 30% this year and the value of the dollar dropping 35% since the beginning of this year, I seriously doubt most people think $600 is cheap. Especially considering that it will come with 1 controller and likely be crippled in some other way as well. (For example: $30 bucks for the cable to connect to your super expensive tv to get better than NTSC resolution from it.)

I could get the best gfx card around and a gig of ram for my computer for that kind of money. If the "Next-gen" console has lesser hardware than my damn computer, isn't upgradable, locks my DVD purchases and rentals into a 50/50 crap shoot, what is my incentive to buy that thing again?

Or... if I had to have a new game console, I could buy a Nintendo for 200 bucks that plays every game for every system they ever made and even better, girls seem to love it if E3 was any indicator. With the $400 bucks I saved I could buy 6 or so games for it and the 2nd controller to match.

Hmm... let me think. An overhyped and overpriced system that locks me into a certain format for all future movies purchases from a company that surreptitiously installs rootkits on my computer without my permission or knowledge and demos burned crappy DVD-R's as the genuine McCoy... or... a game console built from the ground up to redefine gaming and put the fun back into it, get people off the couch and moving, 100% backwards compatible with all past games they have made, from a company that has been making fun games (not just video games) since 1889?

Decisions decisions.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I dunno. Last I heard, even the most technologically-advanced militaries still find mid-air hand motion the most efficient technique for infantry use.

That is because there is a drastic and fundamental difference between the field of view, and the types of motion involved. In real life combat you are using a long, two handed weapon, which is most effecively employed from a specific position, either aligned directly with your line of view and resting firmly on your sholder (a posture SWAT team would use) or more likely in a military scenario from a prone or a kneeling position, frequently supported by the arm resting on the ground or some other fixed cover being used. Some militaries also use the weapon's strap which has one end attached underbarrel in such a way that it is firmly tentioned under the elbow to provide further rigidity to the setup.

Contrast this with a small, one-handed, free motion controller, which has dynamics similar to that of a handgun. While it is possible to be used that way, as any military person will tell you, handguns make very lousy weapons as far as aim and range are concerned.

Now restrict the field of view, and thus motion, from 360 degrees to maybe 30 (the screen in front of you, close up) or even 10 (screen further away).

Mouse on the other hand, even though it does not mimick the real-life dynamics directly, still works in conjunction with a natural way our brains process the motion information and you whole arm is usually supported, increasing the stability greatly. That latter part, combined with linear relationship of the motion of the mouse to the motion on screen, and further combined with high precision and repeatability of the readings of the sensor, and thus the motion, as well as a comparatively wide range of such motion, further augmented by low latency of the setup (when compared to joysticks for example) results in an effect similar (actually more precise) to that when using a real weapon. And the mouse does not depend on the range of field of view to correlate with its motion.

At least, if anyone's started equipping their troops with experimental mouse-operated weapons, they've managed to keep it jolly quiet.

Many (if not most) Western airborne and ship-borne combat systems have been utilizing mice (or trackballs) of one sort or another for ages now. For the very reasons I mentioned.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[IgnoramusMaximus]

One more thing I forgot to mention. The Wii controller is most likely using a set of accellerometers to determine movement. The downside of such a system is that its sensitivity (and thus precision) declines along with the decrease in acceleration of the movement. That is if you slowly move the controller sideways with constant speed, it has no chance of detecting motion as the acceleration for the most of the movement range is zero (the movement occurs at fixed velocity). This means that such a controller can only detect tilt (a change of the orientation of the acceleration vector caused by gravity) or jerky motions sideways, and only if these motions are accelerating/deccelerating.

Think this through and you will see that such a controller makes a really lousy aiming device, far worse in fact then an already lousy handgun model.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[Retric]

Not everyone needs to buy on day 1 for the PS3 to be successful. Chances are over the first 6 months they are going to sell less than 1/3 of total PS3 sales as people wait for a good game library and price drops. As soon as they have excess inventory they drop the price and get a new wave of people to buy. Think of it this way you can sell:

10 million PS3's at 500$ = 5 bill

VS.

2 million PS3's at 600$ and 8 million PS3's at 500 = 5.2 bill

Re:Typo of the Century!

[Sparr0]

Bzzt, wrong. Cheap piezo accelerometers are VERY precise compared to what you might be familiar with from just 5 years ago. You do not need 'jerky' movements. Any starting or stopping of motion at all involves acceleration. The gyro in my very small model helicopters outputs digitally in increments of .00001G, and only cost $15.

The concept is very old, it is called Dead Reckoning. You detect .00001G of acceleration in one direction for .1 second, then 3 seconds of no acceleration, then .00001G of acceleration in the opposite direction for .1 second. Despite having no input during the 3 seconds, you know how fast and in which direction the controller is moving from the initial acceleration. High school kids build robots that use dead reckoning for cm-precision self location over 10m+ mazes.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Cheap piezo accelerometers are VERY precise compared to what you might be familiar with from just 5 years ago. You do not need 'jerky' movements.The gyro in my very small model helicopters outputs digitally in increments of .00001G, and only cost $15.

You gotta be kidding. High cost, "precision", military grade, bulky, solid-state accelerometers have 1V per G +/-5% resolution, MEMS type capacitative ones are around +/- 1%. And that does not take into account the fact that most high-precision accelerometers have an effective range of 0-2G (or less). If you increase the range to, say 10G, you do so at the expense of sensitivity. That is why most planes and missiles still use gyro based inertial navigation systems.

The concept is very old, it is called Dead Reckoning.

Dead reckoning is extremely sensitive to the combined effects of the accelerometer precision, its maximum range (exceeding it throws the whole concept out of the window), precision of the A/D converters, sampling frequency and the precision of the clock in the measuring computer. Let me translate this for you: Nintendo = somewhat less then $100k worth of military gear = reasonably precise tilt measurement only + very crude (but possibly fun) motion sensing.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason the console comes with a sensor bar, to detect position in 3d space, on top of the motion and tilt functionality in the controller itself.

Re:Typo of the Century!

[IgnoramusMaximus]

There is a reason the console comes with a sensor bar, to detect position in 3d space, on top of the motion and tilt functionality in the controller itself.

That would indeed be able to resolve the position much better. But how much, it depends on the technology used in the bar. But even if the resolution is sufficient (it will be never close to that of an optical mouse, and if it could, you would not be able to hold your hand steady enough to aviod jitter) all my previous points about the "free-form", suspended mid-air, handgun-style nature of the controller still apply.

Change Your Ads Then!

[eldavojohn]

If you think a Blu-Ray player by itself might be £600-700, and we're coming in at just £425, it's a bargain.'

Buddy, if your logic rests upon the consumer thinking about this being a blu-ray player, then you had better change your marketing strategy.

When I look for a gaming console, I don't care if it plays 8 tracks. I want to be able to play fun games and I would like to do it without too high of a price tag. If you want people to buy it for blu-ray functionality, you better market it as such because the gaming & movie crowds might overlap but one is far larger than the other.

And that's not even bringing up the problems me and my friends experienced with first generation PS2s and their ability (or lack thereof) to play DVDs. I haven't played a DVD in a PS2 for years ... now I've learned my lesson and don't care what a console can do aside from gaming.

Do one thing right and don't bloat your hardware please. You haven't had a spotless track record for testing prior to release and more functionality means a lot more testing.

Do you want me to see this as "The Playstation Three" or "The Sony Blu-Ray Player"? Pick one and make a solid product.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[omeg]

Pardon?

Do you have any idea how many people went to the store to buy a PS2 for the reason that it can keep the kids happy AND play DVDs? Your previous post assumes that the largest part of the market is into this for the games; it might very well be so that this isn't true. I don't know, either, but what I do know is that not everybody is a hardcore gamer who just wants to have a console for the games.

I also don't see what's wrong with playing DVDs in the PS2. I bought a PS2 because I wanted to play games, but also because I wanted to play DVDs. The PS2 does that well enough, right?

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Evangelion]

They can't.

I don't think Sony is capable of NOT trying to control a format. The PS3 is simply thier attempt to get an installed base of Blu-Ray players, fast, and beat out HD-DVD. The rest of the company is simply using the PS division to futher thier own ends.

WHY they need to control a format is up for grabs -- it's possible it's just thier culture, or the dogma handed down by the leaders that has been followed for decades. But this is the exact same thing as Beta, MD, Memory Sticks, and UMD -- all of which failed to get any support outside of Sony products.

The PS3 is expensive, but it's the only player in it's domain in Japan -- the Xbox 360 has, somehow, been less successful than the original Xbox over there.

There's also an interesting column about E3's fallout in Japan that makes the next-gen battle much different over there. It's interesting to note that if the PS3 will be bringing demo/content delivery services to Japan, it would be a revolutionary first, given that Japan's gaming landscape is much different than North America's (difference: Nintendo managed to get game rentals outlawed there back in the day. So game magazines have much more clout, which a demo download service could disrupt.)

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Rydia]

1) The PS2 didn't cost 400 freaking quid
2) DVD was an emerging standard with a huge and noticeable advantage over the popular storage medium of the time (VHS), while BR is not
3) Sony will lose money hand over fist if people just buy it as a player without games. However, this doesn't happen, because people do buy consoles for games. The entire business model is driven by this fact.
4) Did I mention it cost 400 freaking pounds?!

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[nEoN nOoDlE]

When I look for a gaming console, I don't care if it plays 8 tracks

You might not care if the game plays off 8-tracks but remember when Nintendo announced that their N64 system is going to be CARTRIDGES? Nintendo came upon a lot of attack for doing that when the Playstation and Dreamcast were advancing to CDs. So yeah, people care about the medium they're playing on. Whether they care about Blu-Ray remains to be seen, though.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[eln]

The problem is that when the PS2 came out, there was still a significant portion of the population that didn't own a DVD player, so it was a real bargain (especially when decent standalone DVD players at the time were close to $200).

Now, everyone already has a DVD player, and a standalone player can be had for $50. Sure, Bluray is a new technology, but to most people it's just a fancy DVD, and they already have a DVD player. When the PS2 came out, DVD technology had been out for years, and it was in the middle of the transition from "early adopter" product to "mass market" product. Bluray hasn't even really come out yet, and is still in the very early stages of the "early adopter" market.

Basically, while Microsoft and Nintendo are offering game consoles that immediately appeal to the mass market, Sony is putting in a very expensive cutting-edge technology that pretty much guarantees their primary market will be the affluent early adopters. While this is certainly a viable market, it's a much much smaller one. While this may not matter in commodity electronics, in the gaming industry, where the number of units you can sell has a major effect on how many developers make games for your platform, shooting for such a small market can kill a console before it ever gets off the ground.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to mod you up, but I'd rather emphasize your point: It seems as if that the folks at Sony got spooked by the backlash over the high price, so they are suddenly switching their target market. All of a sudden, the PS3 goes from a game machine that plays Blu-Ray DVDs to a Blu-Ray DVD player that plays games.

Functionality issues aside, most product converging two high-tech items have a very limited market appeal. It's the reason why every high-definition TV doesn't come with a built-in DVD player. It's the same reason why people prefer to carry an IPod and a small cell phone instead of getting an MP3 phone. While these products (might) exist, people get more satisfaction out of buying one item at a time. Converging products are also very difficult to market, as people looking for one item don't necessarily need or want the extra bundled features, especially if they significantly increase the price.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[DragonWriter]

Do you want me to see this as "The Playstation Three" or "The Sony Blu-Ray Player"? Pick one and make a solid product.

Sony's been rather clear that their long-term strategy, since, at least, the PS2 was on the drawing board, with the "gaming console" was to move toward an integrated entertainment media platform. Whether you agree with it or not, it seems rather unlikely that their going to suddenly change direction between now and the release of the PS3 and have much effect on what the PS3 ends up being.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[iainl]

"I bought a PS2 because I wanted to play games, but also because I wanted to play DVDs. The PS2 does that well enough, right?"

In a word, no. At least in the UK, they deliberately crippled the player by only allowing it to output DVDs in composite. By quite a large margin, the PS2 is the worst DVD player I've ever had the misfortune to watch.

Now, having discovered this last time, why would I hand over £425 (£425!!!) for the follow-up on the grounds that will output BluRay images. We already know that they've crippled the audio output to DVD quality, why expect the picture to be any better?

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think a Blu-Ray player by itself might be £600-700, and we're coming in at just £425, it's a bargain.

If they think Blu-Ray's going to fly as a format they better get the player cost down. Earlier adopter or not, their market for any content is going to be very small.

Sure they could stop making DVDs and force people to adopt the new format, but you could bet that the number of people bootlegging DVDs would explode.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[minus_273]

"You might not care if the game plays off 8-tracks but remember when Nintendo announced that their N64 system is going to be CARTRIDGES? Nintendo came upon a lot of attack for doing that when the Playstation and Dreamcast were advancing to CDs. So yeah, people care about the medium they're playing on. Whether they care about Blu-Ray remains to be seen, though."

um how old are you? you do know the problem with carts more than anything else was not that they stored less but that they are wicked expensive. Compare a cart to a CD and you see why carts are not as good for something that is not mobile. CDs cost pennies to make and store a lot more.

Bluray may store more but it is wicked expensive hardware and software wise (with hd textures and stuff). The compariosn you are making is true but it is the developers who care not really the consumers. In this case, bluray = carts.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Hey, the Anonymous sonytroll is back, but now he's burdened by facts. He used to just be able to talk about how the XBox 360 would be/is/was a failure, but now he's got to justify why the P$$$$ will be a success, paper launch and all.

Dude, here's a suggestion. If your company is tying its fortunes to a sinking ship...find a lifeboat.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[LWATCDR]

There is a big difference now. Not that many people are gung ho on buying an HD DVD.
Most people already thing that DVDs are high def. I know they are wrong but it DVDs are for the most part "good enough" kind of like MP3 audio.
Now you have two different formats and everyone knows that one will fail. I don't know about you but I am waiting for the shake out and only then will I invest in a HD-DVD player and movies.
I am totally shocked at the amount of really bad press Sony is getting over the PS-3.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[ravenshrike]

Actually, given the price of the Wiiiiiiiiiii! most people who shell out for a ps3 will be able to afford the Wiiiiiiiii! if the games available interest them.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

"They can't.

I don't think Sony is capable of NOT trying to control a format"

http://www.bluraydisc.com/

How exactly is Sony trying to 'control' the BluRay format when it is controlled by all of these companies:

        * Apple Computer
        * Dell
        * Hewlett Packard
        * Hitachi
        * LG Electronics
        * Mitsubishi Electric
        * Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
        * Pioneer Corporation
        * Royal Philips Electronics
        * Samsung Electronics
        * Sharp Corporation
        * Sony Corporation
        * TDK Corporation
        * Thomson
        * Twentieth Century Fox
        * Walt Disney Pictures
        * Warner Home Video Inc.

"WHY they need to control a format is up for grabs -- it's possible it's just thier culture, or the dogma handed down by the leaders that has been followed for decades. But this is the exact same thing as Beta, MD, Memory Sticks, and UMD -- all of which failed to get any support outside of Sony products."

Sigh...

"The PS3 is simply thier attempt to get an installed base of Blu-Ray players, fast, and beat out HD-DVD."

Because everyone knows that a product can't be more than one thing...

"the Xbox 360 has, somehow, been less successful than the original Xbox over there."

The 360 has been less successful than the first Xbox in every region it is selling in...

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

glad to see you haven't let the price thing get you down. rabid as ever!

So I am still wondering are you in love with Sony? Or do you just have unnatural attachments to it as a company?

I mean seriously 600 bucks and it is going to trump the ps2 and destroy every other console this generation?

C'mon who pays you to post shit?

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[interiot]

Those are their words, yes. Their actions have been to release a DVD player that doesn't successfully compete with other DVD players, attached to a console that competed very successfully. Will the PS3 Blu-ray player be the same, or different?

Does it really make sense to try to release an absolute-first-gen player to the mass market (given that most bleeding-edge first-gen buyers are typically both wealthy enough to buy the first round of players, and wealthy enough to quickly upgrade to 2nd or 3rd-gen players that have far fewer bugs)?

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly won't speculate on what the sales numbers will be, that is the job for market analysts and actuaries. The one thing of note with the PS3 (which really hurts it) is that they are launching the system in 6 months (at an outrageous pricepoint) and yet at this E3 there were few playable games that were of any real interest; certainly there were a couple that were alright, but most games seemed to be me too entries into popular (and overdone) genres. To justify the price tag to me I want to see Killzone 2, Grand Turismo 5, Metal Gear Solid 4, Final Fantasy 13, God of War 3, an Ico/SoC sequel, and Grand Theft Auto 4 all being released within the first 9 months; from my understanding all of these games are at least 18 months off.

The sad fact is, of all the people I know, I should be first in line to buy the PS3 (and I was before E3); at this pricepoint I'm waiting for a price drop and some good games to come out. To point out how big of a problem Sony has caused, I own a dual Geforce 7800GTX system (with an X2 4000+), all 4 previous generation systems, a PSP, DS, GBA + GBA SP and even I'm not buying a PS3 at that price.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[MBGMorden]

It's not that they don't care about the media, it's that they don't care about other formats that same media is used for.

Take PS2 for example. I LOVE the fact that they use DVD discs instead of CD's. The DVD's can hold a lot more content and really makes for better games. That being said though, I don't give a flying flip whether or not my PS2 could play DVD movies . I already had a DVD player for that (that cost a lot cheaper than the PS2 did), and I'd get one if I didn't have it. The PS2 was just never any good at it. The few times I did try to use it to play a DVD (the main TV with the DVD player was in use), it skipped really bad, had audio sync issues, and had problems reading many discs. If I had bought the thing to watch DVD's I'd have returned it to the store a long time ago.

The same applies to PS3. If I want a Bluray player, I'll buy one. I'm not going to use some gimmicky substitute included with a game console.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[soft_guy]

The PS2 does play DVDs, but there are some issues with it. For one thing, we had this problem where if anyone messed with the controls while watching a movie, the movie had to be started over from the beginning. That's probably because we couldn't understand how to use it correctly and we were trying to use the dual shock controller to play movies. However, I shouldn't have to be a rocket surgeon in order to play a freaking movie on the PS2.

So, it was far easier just to buy a DVD player.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

"The sad fact is, of all the people I know, I should be first in line to buy the PS3" and "at this pricepoint I'm waiting for a price drop and some good games to come out."

How is that a "sad fact" that you are no different than the tens of millions of current PS2 owners who did the same this generation?

You will buy a PS3 when the right combination of exclusive titles and personal price point intersect.

Sony will sell out every single PS3 they can manufacture until the first price drop.
A decent number of people will pick up Wiis before they buy a PS3.
There are a massive number of major titles being released for the PS2 this year.
A year from now 1080p sets will be cheap, huge amounts of content will be out on BluRay, massive numbers of PS3 titles will be out - large numbers of which are already running natively at 1080p. Sony will have PS3s flying off the shelves even if they don't drop the price after six months.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[timeOday]

The PS2 didn't cost 400 freaking quid

How much is 400 pounds? It used to be that it was about $575, which wouldn't be so bad (compared to the US price, that is). But apparently that's now $800, which is awful. But is that just a sign of the weak dollar, or does it mean that 400 pounds is a lot harder to earn in Great Britain now?

Put another way, the Wii at $250 seems like a fair deal to me if it is good. But if that means it will cost the equivalent of $350 in Great Britain, that doesn't sound so good.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Xugumad]

A few points:

• The PS2 came out at £299, not £425 (or, as I like to call it, almost 50% more).
• DVDs had been out for several years, and not only were an established format, had a sizable catalogue available (1,000+ titles, I believe). Blu-Ray will have been out for a few months, with a catalogue best measured in dozens.
• DVDs showed a clear advantage over the previous format, on almost any TV. Blu-Ray shows a noticable advantage (and even less noticable if you've ever tried an upscaling DVD player) on HDTVs... which are still in the minority even in the US, and very much in the minority in the UK.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

The latest worldwide sales numbers are 1.7 million after six months.

Wow, where do you get your numbers from? ;-) The confirmed numbers were 1.5 million sold (not shipped) in 2005 (so just over a month not 6 months). All of the later numbers I've been able to find are in MS's financial statements, but those tend to reference number shipped not sold. All other numbers are pretty much speculation, but the last somewhat solid numbers for units sold was something like 3.3 million through April (I think.. it was either March or April). Anyway, you are WAY off ;-)

The backwards compatibility thing... well your retarded. Here is the list of original games supported on the 360 through March (and more added all the time). The only original xbox game I have which doesn't currently work is Morrowwind (and I have close to 50).

Manufacturing defects are still rampant with the consensus putting the failure rate at 15-20 percent with huge numbers of people on their third, fourth, and fifth 360 units. And the most troubling is reports from 360 developers complaining about the graphics system which seems like it was never designed to handle 720p but instead 480p.

Have any reputable links to back up either of those made up issues? Didn't think so. Sorry for feeding the troll! I was just a bit board.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[posterlogo]

"...Beta, MD, Memory Sticks, and UMD -- all of which failed to get any support..."

That's a very good point, and quite amazing when you think about it. The implication is that with that kind of track record, Blu-Ray will also fail miserably (by which I mean a very slow, prolonged death that will hurt consumers and hardware manufacturers alike).

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Lithdren]

But why go on and on about how 'great' a deal it is, since its a blue-ray player for ONLY 400 pounds, when normally they're 600-800, when its a video game system, and THERE ARE NO BLUE-RAY DVD MOVIES OUT. This is what I fail to understand. Hell Blue-Ray isn't even guarenteed to be the next gen of DVD. Who wants to buy this thing because its a blue-ray player? nobody, because nobody owns any blue-ray dvds. Who wants to play it was a video game system? Everyone who's looking at it. How many of these people will pick it over the other systems that are MUCH cheaper? Im guessing a vast majority. This thing will sell out on its release in the US of several million units, easy. Problem is it wont go much beyond that unless blue-ray becomes the next big thing.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

The PS3 is (we're told) going to retail at £425 not £400.

This is $797.83 at today's exchange rate, and Sony can stick it up their arses.

The announcement actually caused my mate to go out and buy a 360, when he'd been waiting for the PS3 until now. Morons. You can't rip people off like that and not lose sales - we all know it is £319 in the US, so trying to get us to pay $188 extra just ain't going to work in a post-internet world.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Iguru42]

I bought a PS2 predicated on the fact it could play DVDs but in my experience it played DVDs like ass. If you were going to sit and watch a movie straight through it worked fine but if you needed to fastforward?! Get ready for some tired fingers. ONE FF SPEED! ONE!!!!! WTF! I'm not buying into Sonys BS again. I don't care if the PS3 can make me an effing dinner I'm not buying.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[archen]

It's also amazing that Sony still hasn't learned it's lesson. But there's a reason for that. This is a case of left hand vs right hand. The hardware engineers make various stuff, but continually have their hands tied behind their backs by the "content" people, or someone else at Sony with another agenda. Each time it is the hardware division that pays the price for everyone meddling in their affairs.

Sony is a company with a good hardware division that implement rather innovative products. I'm sure when they drew the PS3 up they said a Bluray player was fine but as it came to crunch time they wanted to dump it. Yet I'm willing to bet it's the 'content' people who wanted to force BluRay down everyones throat and forced them to put it in and jack the price up WAY too high. The content people are DEMANDING their DRM, and again this is going to fuck over the hardware division of Sony.

At this point the best thing this company could do is split. Cut out the cancer that is Sony records/film and let the hardware people make products that WORK without being crippled. Personally I feel this works to my benefit because with BluRay fighting HD-DVD it's likely that neither will win and DVD will stay; which is exactly the result I want. Go Sony!

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[hattig]

about 5 years ago the dollar-pound rate was around 1.4 dollars for a quid.

So £400 would have been $600.

Now it's around 1.9 dollars. £400 would be $760.

Of course, the PS2 launched at $299, I think it launched at £279 over here ($530 with today's exchange rate). That means that in the UK at least, people were willing to pay around $500 for a console (taxes included). If the $499/$599 prices were converted to pounds sterling fairly, they would cost around £329/£389 over here, including tax. The fact that they want to sell the machine for much more than that shows they're being greedy and yet again treating the UK as Treasure Island.

However, from that you can see that if people were willing to pay £279 5 years ago for a PS2, then they'd pay £329 today for the low-end version, it's a 'mere' £50 more. However I don't see them paying £100 more.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

You hit this right in the head. People are so lame justifying the cost by saying that a PS3 costs about the same as a bluray player. So what? How many people bought DVD burners when they were $2K? How many people bought dvd players when they were $700. The market waited until they dropped down below $200 before either technologies became popular. The same will be true for the next generation of digital media. So justifying the cost of the PS3 by comparing it to the cost of something only rich people would even consider buying borders somewhere between utter stupidity and mental retardation. I myself am very happy with DVDs and will not consider any next generation technology until they drop down to below $200, and will probably only buy in when they drop down to below $100. That day is at least 4 years away.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[barawn]

DVD was an emerging standard with a huge and noticeable advantage over the popular storage medium of the time (VHS), while BR is not

And, of course, DVD had already proven that it has a market - that is, there were people willing to pay $250-300 for a DVD player.

Blu-ray drives aren't on the market yet. They might debut at $1000, but if no one buys them there, someone's gonna have to work real fast to drop the price down.

I sure as hell wouldn't buy a glorified DVD player for $1000.

Of course, I do wonder if the PS3 will suck as much as a Blu-ray player as the PS2 did as a DVD player.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I feel this works to my benefit because with BluRay fighting HD-DVD it's likely that neither will win and DVD will stay

Personally, I suspect that neither format will be adopted but not because of the format war (and also not because of another format appearing) but because the factors that led to DVD being adopted are no longer in place.

Even though it was initially released in 1997, DVD adoption in the mainstream market began in 2000 before the PS2 was released; this adoption was caused by the movies that were apearing in theaters and on tape soon afterwords. In the late 90's the movie industry had a lot of reasonably good big budget movies that were being produced where there was a lot of special effects being used; these movies were visually impressive and entertaining,and many people wanted to see them (The Matrix, The Fifth Element, Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator, etc.). People started to buy DVD players and Surround Sound systems in large quantities because they wanted the theater experience at home; even though the cost was quite large a family of four could save money by buying this set-up in a year if they went to a movie together once a month.

Today, more and more big budget movies are doing worse and worse at the box office (and on DVD) because people are growing tired of the same special effects and tired plotlines. How many times can you can you see ancient greece before it gets old; how many space battles do you need to see before they all look the same; and how many monsters does it take before you start calling them "Generic monster #3". The movie industry is going to change in the very near future, they are going to reduce the budgets of their movies and focus more on Drama then on Special effects; if you're watching a movie about a Pimp gone Rapper or about two Gay Cowboys do you really care about the resolution that much?

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Dr_LHA]

Take that $797.83 and divide it by 1.175, and you get $679. So in essence the UK PS3 is $80 more than the US one. A hefty difference for sure, but nothing as bad as the sensationist title this thread has, suggesting to Americans who are used to have the tax added on at the cash register, that theres a $200 difference in price.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

Say what?

April NPD Data

360 = 295,000
PS2 = 205,000
Xbox = 39,000
GCN = 38,000

So uh, yeah, it did both of those things. Also, if you were paying attention to E3 as opposed to stroking your Sony logos, you'd note that they confirmed around 3m sales there, and that they were definitely well in line for 10m-12m by the end of year.

Good work troll, have fun convincing the investors when your game can't scrape a profit :)

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[drinkypoo]

I'd just like to comment that the PSTwo (slim PS2) makes a decent DVD player, but you're 100% right about the PS2. It was craptacular, especially in the quality of output. (I never had any discs fail to play in mine...)

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

360 = 295,000

That can't be right.

Microsoft stated that they had doubled and tripled the number of units they were shipping in April. March was 180k if I remember correctly. They should have sold somewhere in the 500-700k range in April.

If that number is really accurate Microsoft is going to have a hard time even matching the first Xbox installed base numbers.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[drinkypoo]

um how old are you? you do know the problem with carts more than anything else was not that they stored less but that they are wicked expensive.

Games on DVD or CD are not significantly less expensive than games on cart were. In many cases, the prices are rising again. EARLY cart systems charged more for carts, but that's because the technology was relatively new and there were few players. Competition brought the prices down, not moving away from carts.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

How old are you ?

During the cartridge era, games were actually measured in bits (kilo to start, mega was prevalent later). So, the comparison here for, say, Super Mario 64 is not 96MB vs 650MB but 12MB vs 650MB. Now, it's certainly not to say Nintendo wasn't a great memory manager or that they couldn't eventually beat CDs with ROM chips. At the time, an awful lot of the disc space was wasted by grainy FMV and/or RedBook Audio.

Square could've made a Final Fantasy game 3-16 times as long as Final Fantasy 3. Instead, they chose to squander the space on cut scenes and FMW, which the disc media offered at a better price ratio. On the same note, Enix could've translated Dragon Quest 6 and 7 but chose to forgo that money.

On another note, how many CDs/DVDs have you bought scratched out of the case, seen a child mistreat, warped from temperature, or discovered succumbed to disc rot within a few years through no fault of your own? Now, how many hundreds of NES cartridges from 20 years ago that you own or have seen for sale still function perfectly? You have to try damned hard to kill a cartridge where a mere breath out of place can corrupt a disc.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Pollardito]

And that's not even bringing up the problems me and my friends experienced with first generation PS2s and their ability (or lack thereof) to play DVDs. I haven't played a DVD in a PS2 for years

that's interesting, as i'm on the other end of the scale. i don't own a stand-alone DVD player at all, as i have a PS2 doing that duty in my family room and an XBOX doing that duty in the bedroom (as well as several PCs with DVD drives). maybe i'm missing out on some fantastic functionality that a stand-alone DVD player provides, but it seems to me like i saved a couple hundred dollars this way.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[cayenne8]

"... suggesting to Americans who are used to have the tax added on at the cash register, that theres a $200 difference in price."

Not to mention, if you order it online, you can often get it tax free, and with free shipping.

Man...I hope we can keep that up for awhile longer....sure is nice.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Chris Mattern]

> At least in the UK, they deliberately crippled the player by only allowing
> it to output DVDs in composite.

Guh-wha? Are you sure? Or did you just not get the right adapter (the PS2 has a
proprietary video output jack that you need to plug an adapter cable into--if
all you have the composite adapter cable, then composite is all you can do)?
My PS2 here in the US does S-Video just fine, thank you very much.

Chris Mattern

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

How much is 400 pounds?

Its 1/5th of a ton. So you can buy 5 PS3s and then go around saying "Yeah, I bought 5 PS3s and it cost me a ton of cash"...

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Ctrl-Z]

It seems clear to me that Sony's goal is to make Blu-Ray the next big thing, and what better way to help that along than by selling "several million units" capable of playing Blu-Ray discs? This seems perfectly logical given the goal of making Blu-Ray the next big thing, not that I'm defending Sony's choice of goals.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Garse Janacek]

The problem is that when the PS2 came out, there was still a significant portion of the population that didn't own a DVD player

The other problem is that the PS3 costs $300 more than the PS2. If the PS3 were in the $3-400 range and played bluray, people would be happy about it. But right now most of their audience doesn't even have a TV that can take advantage of bluray, so it's useless at any price, let alone at a $300 surcharge.

The PS2 had added DVD functionality, and had the same launch price as the PS1. That's the real difference here.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Tim C]

But this is the exact same thing as Beta, MD, Memory Sticks, and UMD -- all of which failed to get any support outside of Sony products.

That's not entirely true. There are third-party memory sticks available (iirc Scandisk do some, amongst others) and there were definitely third-party MD player/recorders available a few years ago (it's been that long since I cared about them; I have an iRiver now).

However, you would be correct in saying that generally, Sony formats get negligible take-up by third parties.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Chosen Reject]

How many times can you can you see ancient greece before it gets old[?]

If it's ancient before I see it ...I think I need to sit down for this one

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Gonarat]

I think the big question is how much is £400 to the average Joe in the UK? Forget exchange rates.

For example:

In 1997 When Di died, I remember seeing footage with gas being about £0.559 / Liter in the London area. Gas was around $0.999 - $1.099 at the time (depended on where you were). I made around $45K/year at the time. I know the PS2 came out in 1999, but just for the sake of this example say it came out for £279 / $299 at the time.

Now let's go to today. A liter of gas in the UK goes for about £0.999 or so, and a gallon of gas goes for about $2.999 (It may be higher or lower in your area, but these should be ballpark figures) and I make around $70k /year now. The PS3 is going for $599 or £425. Let's put a little hypothetical data together:

Me

1997 - Income $45,000
              Gal/gas approx. 0.0022 percent of pretax yearly income ($0.999 / U.S. gal)
              PS2 approx. 0.62 percent of pretax yearly income

2006 - Income $70,000
              Gal/gas approx. 0.0043 percent of pretax yearly income
              PS3 approx. 0.86 percent of pretax yearly income

Joe Punter

1997 - Income £45,000
              Gal/gas approx. 0.0047 percent of pretax yearly income ( £2.116 / U.S. gal)
              PS2 approx. 0.62 percent of pretax yearly income

2006 - Income £70,000
              Gal/gas approx. 0.0054 percent of pretax yearly income (£3.781 / U.S. gal)
              PS3 approx. 0.61 percent of pretax yearly income

The U.K. income figures do not reflect anyone I know, I just set them up for this comparison, YMMV.

The point of all this is Joe Punter is going to make his decision to buy a PS3 purely on how much £425 is out of his pocket versus how much he wants the console. It doesn't matter to him if £425 = $800, $400, or $2000, the value of the dollar is not going to be a factor when he is at the store deciding on that purchase.

Now if my U.K. yearly salary figures are close to correct, the Joe Punter may be more likely to buy that new PS3 than I would here in the U.S., because in absolute terms it is not that much more expensive for him (of course if the average Punter who made £45,000 in 1997 only makes less than £70,000 now, then my conclusion would be incorrect).

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[spirality]

My PS2 is my only DVD player. I have a first-gen PS2. I did have some issues playing DVDs from the Escaflone series, but since then no problem. One thing I found dismally unacceptable was that because I was using an aftermarket S-Video cable Sony said my warranty was voided when I called them about why the DVD wouldn't play. Poor customer service and companies that don't stand behind their products are par for the course no matter who you buy from these days.

Anyway, my PS3 will be my only DVD and Blu-Ray player. I just hope Blu-Ray wins out...

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Propaganda13]

Here's what I don't understand - I've seen pre-orders for Sony and Samsung Blu-Ray players at $1000 (not sure on release date). Around a half a year later, the PS3 will play Blu-Ray so all of the Blu-Ray manufacturers are going to have to cut their prices at least in half. I guess it's a marketing ploy showing how great a deal the Blu-Ray players are in 2007 compared to the $1000 in 2006.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[aj50]

A friend of mine had his PS2 connected through his VCR (by scart I think, not entirely sure). It refused to play encrypted DVDs.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[kabz]

You didn't convert the salaries:

1997
$45,000 converts to UK Pounds approx 31,250 (pretty damn good for 1997) .0069 % for a gallon of gas .893 % for a PS/2

2006
$70,000 converts to UK Pounds approx 37,000 .010 % for a gallon of gas
1.15 % for a PS/3

I'm assuming that we take the US 'worth' of a salary and translate to pounds, and it looks a *lot* worse for people in the UK, which would be borne out by my experience of living there all my life, until 1997 as it happens.

Looks like life has probably got a lot worse in the UK. Can anyone post average salary figures ?

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[RemovableBait]

I hate to burst the bubble slightly, but £70,000 salary is pretty damn huge. I would try around £40,000 - £50,000 as an above average, normal salary.

It also has to be said that if you are lucky enough to earn £70,000 per year, you only ever see £46,440. Yes, almost £26,000 goes to the fucking taxman.

Based on my ballpark figures (£40k and £50k), the actual in-your-pocket salary is £29,000 - £35,000.

Say the Joe Punter salary is £45,000. The take home salary per year is £31,600; or £2,600 per month. The cost of PS3 (£425) is 1.3% of your total year's salary, and 16% of a month's wages.

Remember also, that if you get a bonus of any sort that you might buy yourself, say, a PS3 with; and you earn more than £30,000... then 40% goes to the taxman. You don't even see it.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

Average wage in the UK is around £20,000, give or take a couple of thousand pounds.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[minus_273]

"Games on DVD or CD are not significantly less expensive than games on cart were."

they may have been for the consumer, but for the developer, the cart was a major part of the cost.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[YU Nicks NE Way]

No -- Microsoft would have shipped between 500 and 700 K units in April, just like they said.

Oops. Here, $onyTroll, let me help you back up. Must feel bad to keep tripping over your lies like that.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[NMZNMZNMZ]

4) Did I mention it cost 400 freaking pounds?!

I knew it was heavier than the original XBox, but that's just ridiculous.

It's funny, laugh.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Gonarat]

p>That's what I was afraid of, but I thought I'd put it out and see what comments I got. I used pre-tax figures because I wasn't sure exactly how high taxes were in the U.K. If an average salary is £40,000 to £50,000 (or worse yet, £20,000 -- see the post below) before the taxman gets his cut, then that £425 price tag does look more like $800 here. Leave it to Sony to price themselves out of the market.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for your info, a litre of petrol here in the UK costs in the region of £0.95 to £1.20 dependent on where you buy it or using the current exchange rate, between $1.78 and $2.25 a litre.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it wasn't funny at all..

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[hkmwbz]

"WHY they need to control a format is up for grabs"

They get a small(?) sum of money every time someone buys a BR player?

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[orasio]

They complained, because cartridges didn't have as much capacity, so games were supposed to be less media-rich.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[orasio]

Well, I respect the right of cowboys to kiss each other, but I will never pay to see that!!!
I'd much rather see a Star Wars III.5, the Jar-Jar Chronicles!!

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Das Modell]

They could make the case from gold and diamonds, and then point out that $50,000 isn't really that expensive when you consider how valuable the case's materials are. What a bargain!

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[stonecypher]

Yeah, like CDs, 3.5" disks, metal tape, DAT, and other Sony formats that Sony tried to keep rights to and therefore never took off.

Oh, wait.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[kirk__243]

Good point, because they don't pay tax in the USA. And I also believe that the average salary in the USA is easily $70,000, without a doubt.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[kirk__243]

But is your $70 000 a true average salary for the USA? I seriously doubt it. Try http://www.census.gov/statab/www/income.html. The median household income is $44 400, plus a little inflation.

No doubt plenty of people earn $70 000, but in the UK plenty of people earn well over £50 000. The average male earnings at the end of 2005 were in fact £31 500 (http://www.incomesdata.co.uk/report/view942.htm).

It's quite common knowledge that UK incomes are relatively high, coupled with higher living costs. And following on from that, their opportunity cost of buying a console at an exchange-rate equivalent price will be considerably lower.

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Babbster]

Sounds like it could have been a copy protection issue. Before I upgraded to a TV with more inputs I had to use a specific VCR that wouldn't activate Macrovision when trying to pass through a DVD signal (with Macrovision encoding, of course). Specifically, I found that one of my VCRs would only activate the Macrovision protection when it was placed in record mode, while the others had the protection on all the time. This worked out fine for me since copying a DVD to a VHS tape is just plain silly. :)

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[Babbster]

...for the developer, the cart was a major part of the cost.

True. As I recall, Nintendo also produced every N64 cartridge, so third-party folks had to pay them for that in addition to the licensing (or as part of same). It was a terrible deal for third parties all the way around unless they could be sure that the game would sell like hot [johnny] cakes...

Re:Change Your Ads Then!

[iainl]

Oops. I forgot about S-Video, it could at least do that. But in Europe, until we started getting HD-ready TVs in the last year or two, 99% of TVs take RGB through a SCART connector, rather than component. Sony deliberately made the DVD playing part of the machine output only the Green part of the RGB signal; if you look at most 3rd-party PS2 SCART leads they actually have a switch on them to flip between RGB for the best possible image quality in games, or Composite so you can watch films in colour.

You could compromise and use S-Video for both, but the PS2's S-Video picture is horribly soft in comparison to the crystal sharp RGB signal.

VAT

[Joe The Dragon]

IS this before or after the VAT TAX

Re:VAT

[Fred Or Alive]

That'll be with VAT, only stuff aimed at businesses quote ex-VAT prices.

Re:VAT

[ZombieWomble]

IS this before or after the VAT TAX

Don't you just hate redundancy in TLA Acronyms?

Re:VAT

[Joey7F]

That is a smart idea, because that way people will be less aware of the taxes they are paying, very similar to the IRS taking more than they are due to "give" everyone money on April 15th.

--Joey

Re:VAT

[JeremyALogan]

Don't you just hate redundancy in TLA Acronyms?

Three Legged Anteatter Acronyms? Never heard of em.

Re:VAT

[aslate]

Actually it means we know how much a product is going to cost when we purchase it, not how much it'll cost plus a little bit. We all know that it's basically 17.5% on most things, slightly odd on petrol, fags and booze, 0% on the rest.

We know what our tax is like, there's plenty of protests about it, especially petrol tax.

Re:VAT

[Joey7F]

Well yes, you do know what the cost will be (which is convenient) but it disguises it a little. If you have to pony up 17.5% on top of the price listed, you can bet that raising it will be considerably tougher.

Americans know (or I hope most do) that a refund means that the government took out more money. I do feel for Europeans w/r/t the petrol tax because that is really brutal (and I thought our petrol tax was high)

--Joey

Prices of other consoles in the UK

[LoverOfJoy]

So does anyone know how much the Wii and the 360 will cost there? If everything there just costs more then saying $800 is meaningless.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[joe 155]

i would think that the wii will be about £200, maybe that with a game, I think you can get a new 360 for about £300. I know we pay loads more for things though. tut.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[Hast]

According to Amazon.co.uk a X360 (non-core) costs £279.99, which is about $525 (it's probably a bit less though).

Naturally nothing has been officially said about the price on the Wii yet.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[Threni]

> So does anyone know how much the Wii and the 360 will cost there? If everything
> there just costs more then saying $800 is meaningless.

Saying $800 isn't meaningless if it's going to cost $800. What the other consoles cost in the UK is irrelevant.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[mausmalone]

There is no price set for the Wii for any region yet (though reasonably it will be between $200 and $250 in the US), and the X-Box 360 costs 279 GBP (roughly $530~ish).

See, the real indication about the absurdity of the price is that in any country using Euros, the price has been announced at 499-599 euros, which is already higher than the US price by a significant margin. That converts to 338-405 GBP. It seems they slapped an extra 20 GBP onto the expensive model for no reason whatsoever bringing it even higher above the already-inflated EU price.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[Fred Or Alive]

The premium Xbox 360 is £280 (~$530), the crap pack is £210 (~$400), the basic (not value / giga pack) PSP is £150 (~$280) and the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 1 both launched at £300 (~$570), although the latter dropped in price very quickly, and Microsoft ended up giving away some controllers and games to early adopters in compensation. All prices rounded up, and include 17.5% VAT.

The Pound Sterling price is slightly (about £10-20) more than the Euro one, those British plugs must cost a bomb.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[arodland]

It would make it meaningless in terms of the tone that the article was written in, which is "what a bunch of idiots Sony are!"

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[DrXym]

It is meaningless because you're converting to dollars and ignoring that the UK price includes VAT (tax) whereas the US price is before tax. You should regard its price in proportion to what other consoles cost in the UK. For example the XBox 360 costs £280 in the UK so that's the price to be working off.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[sa1lnr]

Microsoft Xbox 360 Premium System inc 1x Wireless Joypad, 20Gb HDD and headset - £275 including 17% VAT

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[Gorkamecha]

Is this a situation of selling fridges to eskimos? I don't know anyone, (except sony folk) that are rubbing their hands and saying "oh boy, blu-ray." And if is the "bargin" price of Blu-ray...then how do they really expect it (blu-ray as a tech) to take off?? Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're all full up here.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[ThousandStars]

Before you get too bent out of shape, remember that VAT is mandatory in the EU and adds 17.5% (IIRC) to every purchase. Imagine if every state with sales tax in the U.S. had to post the actual price instead of dinging you at the register and you'll be closer to the EU and British schemes.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[arthurh3535]

Of course, the Wii is also fairly crippled in comparison for all features.

The PS3 will be able to play 98% of all PS1 and PS2 games seamlessly. Can you do that on your Wii or X-Box? (no, not even close.)

You can't even play DVDs or CDs on the Wii, can you?

I suspect that the PS3 is going to sell very well in Japan as semi-entertainment device (blue-ray, DVD and all your old PS games) and will only sell "okay" in the US and UK until the price drops.

But if they can corner the nex-gen movie market this way, they'll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[daBass]

That probably depends on where you buy in Euros; different countries have different VAT and import duty rates. I doubt you'll get it £15 cheaper in Denmark!

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

But Denmark, not being a euro country, doesn't really count.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[Helios1182]

Chances are if you have a collection of games for any system (PS1,PS2,N64,GC,XBox,etc.) you already own the system -- therefore you can still play them. You may have to bust out an extra $5 for a cable splitter so you can hook them up at the same time, but it isn't the end of the world.

Re:Prices of other consoles in the UK

[assassinator42]

Huh? The Wii will be able to play ~100% of Gamecube games. Plus, they have that whole virtual console thing. Although that's a lot different, of course.

This just in..

[Rob T Firefly]

Extremely Rich Man doesn't think £425 is a lot of money.

In other news, a homeless man retracted his suicide plans upon finding a tenner in the gutter.

Re:This just in..

[harrkev]

In other news, a homeless man retracted his suicide plans upon finding a tenner in the gutter.

In other news, Luciano Pavarotti has been found in a gutter.

Re:This just in..

[smellsofbikes]

That is one poignant reply. Too bad there's not a +1 Painfully True mod coz it's more than just funny.

Re:This just in..

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, AC spits on hobo in gutter and tells him to get a fucking job like the rest of us or follow through on the promised suicide and do us all a favour.

Blue ray

[JVert]

So... not only will the PS23 not sell, but your telling me blue ray is going to be even worse? ...the hell is wrong with you?

Blu-Ray marketing.

[Volanin]

If you think a Blu-Ray player by itself might be £600-700, and we're coming in at just £425, it's a bargain.

It's seems clear by now.
Sony does not want to promote its next console as a video-game.
It wants to estabilish the blu-ray format as the default next-gen media.

And indeed, it has a lot more to afford financially if this happens.
Let's just see if its plans will follow through.
I, for one, am *not* buying a ps3 this time.

(Although i have a ps1 and ps2 and love them.)

Nothing to see here

[AmiMoJo]

This is normal practice in the UK. Our prices are always higher than overseas, it`s nothing new.

They don`t call us "Treasure Island" for nothing. After all, what are you going to do? Buy an import PS3 and UK games won`t work, plus import tax will kill any saving. Go to Europe to avoid region coding and taxes? How many people actually will?

Re:Nothing to see here

[Ant P.]

I read somewhere on /. a few weeks ago that the PS3 supposedly has no region locks. Apparently it's the only legitimate defence modchippers have so they removed it.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, what are you going to do? Buy an import PS3 and UK games won`t work, plus import tax will kill any saving. Go to Europe to avoid region coding and taxes? How many people actually will?

C) None of the above. Have we all forgotten that Sony is an abusive control freak company? Of course not, you all just rationalise your principles away. I don't give a flying fuck how much the consoles cost because they are all made by greedy abusive companies who will screw me over every chance they get.

Re:Nothing to see here

[mausmalone]

D) Simply refuse to buy it until the price comes down to a level that seems reasonable. E) Buy a competetor's product instead due to the difference in cost.

Re:Nothing to see here

[DrXym]

Actually PS3 games would work if you bought an import - Sony have declared that games will be region free.

But you'd have to make sure you got a 230V model from somewhere otherwise you'll have to buy some ugly line voltage converter to make it work.

Re:Nothing to see here

[AmiMoJo]

We never boycot anything properly in the UK. How often do you get "don't buy petrol on Monday from BP" emails?

Re:Nothing to see here

[cliffski]

Its a total ripoff. When i bought my bose headphones, I imported them from the US, paid the delivery AND the tax, and it was still about £50 cheaper than buying thm in my high street.
If I had saved £1 by doing this, I'd still do it, just to avoid giving my custom to the rip-off scumbags selling in the high street.
And online sellers are no better in the UK. You type in a UK address and the price suddenyl shoots way up.
I sell my games at he same price globally, which means in the UK people get a bargain thanks to the insane dollar-pound rate right now. I know many people use country detection scripts to charge different nationalities different amounts, but I hate being on the receiving end so much I wont do it.
Needless to say I wont buy a PS3 at that price (or any price, given the appeal of the Wii)

Re:Nothing to see here

[twistedsymphony]

The CONSOLE is region free, whether or not the games are is completely up to the Publisher/developer... basically the console knows what region it is but it's up to the game itself to determine if it should lock based on the console's region.

I don't see how that's very helpful it's the same system MS has been using for their consoles, Some games are region free, some games arn't.

Re:Nothing to see here

[DrXym]

No, Sony have said the games will be region free. The model worked on the PSP so obviously they're taking it to their big consoles too. Movies are still region encoded though.

I'm sure it is possible for a game maker to lock the region on a game but I expect that if Sony will make sure it is financially not a good idea to do so unless you have a damned good reason.

Re:Nothing to see here

[Mewtwo]

And at what point are you going to have the seller be HONEST about the item being shipped?

Just have them mark it as damaged and worth $50 or something so you don't get hit with import tax.

Re:Nothing to see here

[wisdom_brewing]

Only thing i saw of that type was the Boycott ESSO stickers all over the tube in London... Boycotts are nothing in the UK, youre right

Re:Nothing to see here

[Bios_Hakr]

>>After all, what are you going to do?

Buy a PS3 online. Get a friend in the US to buy one for US prices and box it up. Write "DVD Player" on the customs tag and FedEx that shit to you.

Have him do the same with some of the top-rates games. Just have him send a few games every month.

You can return the favor by sending Vegemite/Marmmite back to him.

Not that expensive

[Jboost]

Remember the Neo Geo and 3DO, they were well over $800 (with inflation adjustment). See: http://curmudgeongamer.com/2006/05/history-of-cons ole-prices-or-500-aint.html/

Re:Not that expensive

[sqlrob]

And how successful were those consoles?

Re:Not that expensive

[Rydia]

We're comparing it to the NG and 3DO? I thought the point was to be SUCCESSFUL. "Expensive" isn't some sort of absolute comparison to everything that's come before it, it's what people consider above a reasonable price ceiling. The only point you could make with that data is that the PS3 is too expensive, because it's closest comparable compatriots were monumental flops!

Re:Not that expensive

[rizawbone]

Remember the Neo Geo and 3DO, they were well over $800 (with inflation adjustment)

Yeah, and now both companies are bankrupt.

Re:Not that expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

SNK (who sold the Neo Geo) is still around.

Re:Not that expensive

[grammar fascist]

And how successful were those consoles?

I think that might have been his point. You know, "not that expensive" juxtaposed with same-price consoles that failed--it's obviously sarcasm. Now he's modded a Troll.

Hey mods! Can you folks read between the lines, or at least practice giving benefit of the doubt?

Re:Not that expensive

[Rob T Firefly]

PS3 has one major difference to Neo Geo and 3DO: it's only on par with the competition, not leaps and bounds ahead as the various marketing types would have us believe.

When Neo-Geo came out, we were still playing with 8-bit consoles. Neo-Geo was meant to basically be an arcade-level piece of equipment, and marketed to the class of people who could afford to stick a real Street-Fighter cabinet in their rumpus rooms, but who wanted to swap out games as easily as with a console. NG was even basically the same level of hardware as their arcade machine, which nobody believed could happen back then. And 3DO was a whole different animal, attempting some weirdass hybrid level of interactive video machine during the height of the FMV craze, before everyone had a PC with a CD-ROM.

Sony, however, doesn't have much to push. Hardcore techies can go on about poly counts and HD, but your average Joe will be able to look at the same demo played on PS3, 360, or Wii and not see any noticeable level of graphical difference. This isn't an 80s arcade-vs-console battle, or even a SNES-vs-Genesis-vs-NES deal where anyone could see the extra detail and capability. The only noticeable difference to anyone without fanboyish loyalty to one brand over another or a particular exclusive killer app to look forward to, is the honking big price tag on one of them.

Re:Not that expensive

[gabebear]

"the honking big price tag on one of them."

I think you meant the honking big price tags on all but one of them.

Re:Not that expensive

[spirality]

The thing about the PS3 is it will probably be the first and chepeast way to have a Cell Workstation... That more than anything is what I'm gunning for. AFAIK it's still shipping with Linux, but even if its not the Cell patch has been in the kernel tree since 2.6.15 or .16 I think. Anyway it's in there now.

Now, I like games okay. I play a few a year, but the PS3 hardware, that's where it's at. Certainly I don't represent the mass market on this one though...

So anyway with the PS3 I'll have a DVD player, which will replace my PS2, which is my only DVD player. It'll play all of my PS1 and PS2 games, so I only have to have one box sitting there. It'll do Blu-Ray, which I'm still not sure about, but since I only rent movies I don't really care about movie DRM too much. Whatever, those are all just bonus things. I get a cell workstation. That's the best part.

Re:Not that expensive

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"And how successful were those consoles?"

The 3DO sold 6 million units. Imagine what would have happened if they had Sony's library.

Cheap Machines

[Hairball6494]

I agree with the bit about the machines being cheap. Just think. If you had a desktop with the kind of gaming power these little boxes such as the 360 and the PS3, they'd cost well over $1,000. I'm not buying a console since I sold my gen 1 xBox. I don't think they're worth it. Besides, how many of you can pull yourselves from your computers long enough to play on a console?

Re:Cheap Machines

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about whether the components justify the price, its about whether you think that the system is worth the cost for your specific purpose. At $400 (or more) most gamers are unwilling to purchase a new system because they either can not afford it or they have better uses for the money; I spent less than $400 on games this year and I purchased more than a game a month.

Sony is selling the PS3 at $600 because it provides the Benefit of Blu-Ray when most people don't have an HDTV, and of those with an HDTV very few have one that is capable to display 1080p; look at Plasma and LCD tvs, most of them "support" 720p and 1080i but many (most of the lower price ones that people use when they say "HDTVs are comming down in price") don't even display at full resolution. (1024x768 and what not are their actual resolutions). Why would I pay $600 for something I can not take advantage of when I can put that money towards games for my Wii (I must own one), DS and 360?

Re:Cheap Machines

[pla]

If you had a desktop with the kind of gaming power these little boxes such as the 360 and the PS3, they'd cost well over $1,000.

And if I had a desktop that could run as fast as a horse, it too would cost well over $1,000.

Just because both have CPUs and can play games doesn't make them comparable. My car has no fewer than 7 CPUs, and I play games in it all the time. So should I justify the price of a high-end gaming PC by saying that my car costs more and can't even push as many gigaflops?


The PS3 (and any gaming console, except possible the original XBox) represents a very crippled subset of the capabilities of a PC. So it doesn't really matter if they need to include 99% of a PC in there, as long as they don't let me use it as a PC when not gaming, with my OS of choice and an off-the-shelf USB keyboard and mouse. But that will happen right around the same time Apple releases OS-X for commodity PC hardware and Billy G puts Vista under the GPL.

Re:Cheap Machines

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but for $800 you can build your self a pretty decent computer gaming machine. (assuming you own a monitor already which is fair since it's not like the PS3 comes with a TV). By decent gaming machine I mean it will be able to play every game out now. Maybe not in full detail or 1600x1200 res. but it will be a pretty nice over all computer.

Re:Cheap Machines

[harrkev]

Besides, how many of you can pull yourselves from your computers long enough to play on a console?

Huh? In many ways, consoles are BETTER than computers...

• Console's don't get viruses.
  
• You don't have to worry about upgrading your console's video card every year
  
• No driver problems
  
• You generally are not forced into additional DRM that screws your computer
  
• No need to worry about your console being too obsolete to play any given game
  
• Hardware platform generally stable for at least four years
  

Let me list the ways that PCs are better than consoles

• Mouse, keyboard
  
• More eye candy if you spend big bucks.
  
• Games run from the hard drive
  

I spent $1500 on a computer less than two years ago. It has AGP and a 5900XT video card ($200 at the time). I am not much of a gamer, but I understand that my vid card can barely play the newest games. Of course, my computer is AGP so I will pay through the nose to upgrade it.

On the other hand, if I purchase a 360 or a Wii this year, I can still play new games just find three years from now. And the cost of the Wii will likely be about the same price as one video card, and the 360 is about the same price as two video cards.

Any way that you slice it, consoles are not such a bad idea. If you could add a mouse and keyboard to them and hook them up to a VGA monitor, consoles for the win.

Re:Cheap Machines

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Besides, how many of you can pull yourselves from your computers long enough to play on a console?"

Me. I'm in the minority, though, I'm sick of gaming on the PC. I'm sick of getting new video cards every few months. I'm sick of installing games. I'm even sick of sitting at my desk to play. I like to play on the couch. I also like the variety afforded to me on a console.

To each is own, of course. :)

From the Article

[Orrin Bloquy]

"Outraged chavs complained that it would take saving two or three welfare payments to afford the PS3, and that being unfamiliar with how banks worked they were being unfairly discriminated against."

£425?!

[Jeffery Switzerland]

Why does it cost so much more in the UK?! You really are limiting yourself to single men or men rich enough that their wives/girlfriends aren't going to kick up a fuss over blowing £425 on a console, and let's be honest no one got rich by playing games. Plus I can't imagine the argument for Blu-Ray will fly that well here, we're not a very tech hungry country (relatively) only a tiny minority of our television programmes are broadcast in HDTV and I think you'll have a job convincing people here that they need to give up their DVD players anytime soon (especially as you can now get a DVD player for £20/30)

Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Ckwop]

It's not going to stay that price. All the consoles have come down in price relatively quickly. So the question is not whether it is viable but more whether it's a sensible decision.

The way consoles are sold is quite a clever exercise in capturing the consumer surplus; that is, segmenting your market according to their willingness to pay. You launch at a price that is very high to start with and you capture the relatively small segment of the market that thinks your product is really worth that much. You then slowly lower your price so you hoover up more and more of the people who are willing to part with their cash when the price is more reasonable. Eventually, as you near the end of production, you cut your prices further to get it off the shelves and get the people who want something for nothing.

The problem Sony has neglected to contemplate is that this Playstation is not launching in the same conditions as the previous versions of the brand. It is not the first to market with the new generation of console. This is crucial, because now Microsoft is already ahead of the curve with the price strategy I described above. At every stage in the price lowering, we'd expect Microsoft to be cheaper than the Playstation. The Xbox 360 is likely to have more games at any given instant than the Playstation 3.

Another factor here is BluRay. I'd estimate that 80% of Playstation 2s are hooked up to a small TV in some teenageers bedroom. They're not going to go out and buy a High-Definition set for their Playstation 3. They will get no benefit from the enhanced resolution of BluRay and therefore see no reason to buy it.

For this reason, I expect the Playstation to under perform by a long way. It may even cause the Playstation to fade much in the same way the Dreamcast caused Sega to wash out to see. These are interesting times to be alive.

Simon.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Frag-A-Muffin]

... The problem Sony has neglected to contemplate is that this Playstation is not launching in the same conditions as the previous versions of the brand. It is not the first to market with the new generation of console. This is crucial, because now Microsoft is already ahead of the curve ...


I'm not a Sony fanboi or anything (in fact, I'm a self proclaimed Nintendo Whore). With that out of the way.

I beg to differ.

2 Words:

Sega Dreamcast

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[GundamFan]

I agree with most of what you have said but there is one thing that stands out

The Xbox 360 is likely to have more games at any given instant than the Playstation 3

I don't know if that will be the case by default... remember a bulk of the original Xbox games where multi platform titles (the same is true of the 360 so far... also many games where released first on the Xbox as "exclusive" and then later on the PS2 (some even having the better designed port on the PS2)). Developers will continue, I think, to hedge there bets and multiplatform there games.

Anyway... the exclusives are what make a system anymore and for me that means following Konami around like the MGS fan I am(I may manage to wait for substance this time around though).

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Soul-Burn666]

Funny you include the Dreamcast in your comment and forget that the Dreamcast was the first of the last gen of consoles, shipping a year before the Playstation2 and having a nice assortment of games at the PS2's launch. Yet it failed miserably against Sony's advertising.
It's true though that the PS2 was certainly stronger than the DC, spec-wise, while the PS3 is not that much stronger than the X360.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[bazorg]

I'd estimate that 80% of Playstation 2s are hooked up to a small TV in some teenageers bedroom. They're not going to go out and buy a High-Definition set

These high definition things you mention are also known as 17" CRT monitors, right?

I'm not kidding you, I really don't know if these things are/can be made compatible with normal computer screens. the fact is 1080 pixels doesn't look like a big number to me and most of the living rooms I know just could not fit a 30 or 40-inch tv screen... that's just too big for anyone with a normal home and a minimal sense of aesthetics.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[kamapuaa]

Worldwide sales figures will look something like this over the next five years:

PS3: 120-150 million
Wii: 20-35 million
360: 12-18 million

Ha Ha HA...oh wait are you serious?

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[vistic]

"These are interesting times to be alive."

Indeed! If it weren't for the console wars, life would just be so uninteresting that I would just rather DIE!

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[InsaneGeek]

As long as your monitor supports 1920x1080i or p resolution you can run it, few inexpensive monitors run that res natively (been changing), or then do something like run it in 960x540p instead (kind of equivalent, 1080i is better for colors and depth of display the 540p would be better for fast movement; of course 1080p is better than both). But really what's the point of running HD games on a display that you really won't notice much of a difference. HD really becomes a moot point on 30" displays and below, what's it's really about is on big displays removing the blockyness, etc. The average computer display or kids 19" bedroom TV even taking a full HD input really won't get you that much of a kick up over regular NTSC.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look everyone! It's this guy again. In your previous post you actually admit your company has a financial interest in the PS3, which makes you rather biased.

Look at it logically. EVERY other console the price of the PS3 has fucked up. Everywhere you look the PS3 is recieving nothing but critisism. Face it, it's destined for the shitter. Why don't you produce your games for the XBox 360 as well?

Along with the MASSIVE power advantage the PS3 has over the Wii and 360, betting on Sony selling any less than they did this gen is silly.

That would explain their success at E3 and the graphics that were better than the 360 wouldn't it? Oh.. wait..

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[ThePyro]

Another factor here is BluRay. I'd estimate that 80% of Playstation 2s are hooked up to a small TV in some teenageers bedroom. They're not going to go out and buy a High-Definition set for their Playstation 3. They will get no benefit from the enhanced resolution of BluRay and therefore see no reason to buy it.

Except that most consumers don't understand that small TVs don't benefit from BluRay. All they know is that BluRay is somehow "better" that DVD. Terms like "resolution" just make their eyes glaze over - in fact, the last time I looked at HDTVs in a store, they didn't even print the resolutions of the TVs on the list of features.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[MikeBabcock]

More often than not, people who buy HDTV sets do so because its better than their existing set, then hook it up with S-Video cables not realizing they can't get HD signals over those cables.

Those are the same people who paid $10k+ for their HDTV and will pay up to $1k for a Blu-Ray player too.

I waited till a good quality HDTV was available for under $1k and will wait till the PS3 is around $250.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[DragonWriter]

HD really becomes a moot point on 30" displays and below, what's it's really about is on big displays removing the blockyness, etc. The average computer display or kids 19" bedroom TV even taking a full HD input really won't get you that much of a kick up over regular NTSC.

Yes, it will, because the average kids bedroom TV set or computer display is going to be considerably closer to the user's eyeballs than a big livingroom TV, most of the time.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[MikeBabcock]

You're kidding, right?

Running at 1024x768 in 1995 was a hell of a lot better than NTSC is today. My 15" monitors can all do 1152x864 natively and that's not 17".

It may not be 1920x1080i like the HDTV set in my livingroom, but most PC screens are already able to do much much better resolutions than NTSC.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Monkey]

You hit the nail on the head. These are the same kids who bought 64-bit AMD processors in droves so they could run their 32-bit operating systems and their 32-bit games on them.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[be-fan]

There is one thing you're neglecting, however. The cheaper console does not necessarily win. It's content that's the ultimate arbiter of the winner. Unlike the previous shift, from Nintendo to Sony during the N64 versus PS1 contest, you're not seeing a mass defection of content providers away from the PS3 to the XBox 360. Moreover, I'd argue that much of the 360's potential head start has been squandered by an underpowered library. It's not unusual to see a crappy set of launch titles on a console, but with the 360, it won't be until this summer (6 months after the console's launch), that games start coming out for the 360 that are actuallly worth having. If Sony has a decent launch lineup, this advantage of the 360 could be mitigated.

Now, Sony does certainly have the ability to muck up the PS3, but its certainly not decided. Remember that this game is still Sony's to lose. The installed base of PS2s is more than double that of the Gamecube, XBox, and 360 combined. Over the next two years, the console with the largest installed base, and the one generating a substantial portion of the revenue in the industry, will still be the PS2. This is a decisive advantage for Sony, one that isn't going to be overturned lightly.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember Microsoft is financially healthier then Sega was. Also Sony`s profits are not too good these days.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[InsaneGeek]

I think you missunderstood me, you really won't notice a wopping eye-dropping difference between 480p on a 19" monitor compared to 1080p on a 19" monitor, nor will the earth shatter between a 19" TV with NTSC 480p compared to HDTV 1080i (I'm going to have to assume no-one's been crazy enough to put 1080p in a 19" TV). There's allways going to be a difference, but the law of diminishing returns kicks in. The cost benefit of HDTV on a 19" TV just isn't there, as unless you are 6" away from the screen you are losing detail quickly. Now compare 480p to 1080p on a 65"+ display you are going to notice a BIG difference, and that's why I say HDTV in a 30" TV isn't worth it the perceptable difference between 480p & 1080i (or 720/540p) on a TV that small makes it cost ineffective.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[randomaxe]

I'd estimate that 80% of Playstation 2s are hooked up to a small TV in some teenageers bedroom.

Considering that the average age of gamers these days is ~30 years old, either your numbers or wrong, or you're estimating that a lot of adults live in teenagers' bedrooms.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Anonymous Coward]

Worldwide sales figures will look something like this over the next five years:

PS3: 120-150 million
Wii: 20-35 million
360: 12-18 million

Sorry, what was that about pulling figures out of your ass?

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you can't tell the difference between a game running at 640x480 vs 1280x1024 on a 19" monitor? Better get your eyes examined...

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[DragonWriter]

The cost benefit of HDTV on a 19" TV just isn't there, as unless you are 6" away from the screen you are losing detail quickly.

6 inches? Talk about hyperbole. If you don't see a major difference between 640x480 and, say, 1600x1200 (to take common PC resolutions approximately matching 480p and 1080p) on a 19" screen from even several feet away, you probably need to see someone about your vision problems.

Now compare 480p to 1080p on a 65"+ display you are going to notice a BIG difference,

At risk of pointing out math, if there is a BIG difference on a 65" display at 10 feet, then there is an equally a BIG difference on a 19" display at 3 feet (considerably more than 6 inches). And, frankly, I think you'll find most people note a "big difference" between 480p and 1080p on smaller screens than 65" at 10 feet away. And I think you'll find the distances people watch or play games on 19" TVs or monitors in their bedrooms are quite often easily 1/3 or less the distance that they do those same activities from the giant TVs in their living rooms.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[InsaneGeek]

I think you have a missunderstanding of what 480p & 1080i/p mean. It's not about how big the lettering is on your display, it's about displayed lines; which from what you said is obviously what you are thinking. How at 640x480 icons and text get huge, again that's not what it's about. Play the same video at 640x480 & 960x540 (the equivalent 480p & 540p timings) and see if it's a massive, stunning difference.

A 480p displayed video and a 540p/1080i displayed video will not have massive differences between the two on a small display. It's not just my opinion either, go ask the people at avsforum and see if it's worth the investment, like me they'll say there is a difference but like me they'll say the benefit is just not there. I've seen the threads there, I know and they've been asked over and over through the years (I've also pulled from firewire HD signal and displayed it at both 480p & 1080i on a small TV... not much difference).

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[DragonWriter]

I think you have a missunderstanding of what 480p & 1080i/p mean.

No, I don't.

It's not about how big the lettering is on your display, it's about displayed lines;

Yes, I understand what resolution means. What determines the ability to see a difference is whether or not the difference in the diplayed details are smaller than the eye can detect, which is an affect of the solid angle subtended by a fixed portion of the screen.

which from what you said is obviously what you are thinking.

Which part of what I said made you think I was talking about text size?

How at 640x480 icons and text get huge, again that's not what it's about. Play the same video at 640x480 & 960x540 (the equivalent 480p & 540p timings) and see if it's a massive, stunning difference.

Well, there's not if you are playing content that's not natively significantly higher resolution than 640x480 (though its interesting that you've gone from claiming that there isn't a big difference between 480p and 720p/1080i at that size to claiming there isn't a big difference between 480p and 540p, which is, you know, a pretty big difference.)

But, yeah, if you've got content that your system renders at the higher resolution, or video natively at the higher resolution, there is a very noticeable difference on a 19" screen at several feet.

It's not just my opinion either, go ask the people at avsforum and see if it's worth the investment, like me they'll say there is a difference but like me they'll say the benefit is just not there.

Whether the difference is worth the cost is, of course, subjective, and I really don't have any particular interest in what you or the people at avsforum think about that; that people are buying HDTV's much smaller than 65" convinces me that your suggestion that its not worth it without a giant TV, whether you and avsforum agree about it or not, untrue as far as the marketplace goes.

Further, the claim that there is a "huge" difference on a 65" screen at living-room distances but no detectable difference on a 19" screen at anything more than 6" is geometrically ludicrous. The difference between one resolution and another on a 65" screen viewed from, e.g., 10' is going to be the same as the difference on a 19" screen viewed from approximately 2'11". That's an objective fact of geometry.

And, as I said before, the people using their consoles on 19" screens in their bedrooms are likely doing so much closer to the screen than those using biggers screens in their living-rooms -- and I would bet, too, that most of those "bigger screens" are a lot smaller than 65", too.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Hamton]

The PS2 wasn't much stronger than the Dreamcast, on a technical level.

Many Dreamcast games still look good by todays standards. Some were ported straight to the GameCube (regarded as graphically superior to the PS2) and fit right in. Some Dreamcast games wouldn't look as good on the PS2 (Shenmue being an example, as the Dreamcast had more video memory than the PS2).

The Dreamcast failed against Sony's marketing machine, hindered by a lack of publisher support (EA). As a piece of hardware, it was on a par with the PS2, launched at an affordable price, had online gaming from the start, and a great collection of arcade quality games.

People just didn't buy it.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[James_Duncan8181]

And, to be fair, got good performance and *extra registers* in 32 bit mode. Your point was?

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[InsaneGeek]

Which part of what I said made you think I was talking about text size?
The whole vision problems thing

Still making the same claim, the difference between 540p & 1080i (on a computer monitor) is basically refresh rate, on is at 30hz the other at 60hz. Which ultimately gives you the same number of visible lines on screen at any time, p gives a nicer cleaner edge, i a greater depth of colors, etc. The reason why I mentioned 540p is that monitors that can do 1920x1080 @ 30hz aren't quite the widest spread, so I suggest using the visual equivalent or 960x540 @ 60hz, so you can try doing it on equipment that can support it.

As to whether the market place thinks it's worth it or not where is the plethora of TV's 30" that support HDTV resolutions? (there are the little LCD displays that do, but they are more of a rebranded computer monitor than anything else, and they don't really run native HDTV res they down res it to most often XGA). Is there a 19" TV that actually supports true native HDTV resolutions, seen a bunch offer HD-ready, but they don't actually run it and in fact scale it down.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Anonymous Coward]

most of the living rooms I know just could not fit a 30 or 40-inch tv screen... that's just too big for anyone with a normal home and a minimal sense of aesthetics.

What are you on about?

My sister and her husband just got a 32" TV, their living room is small (in so far as I haven't seen a smaller one) and it looks fine. Maybe you just can't visualise it because you don't know anyone who has done it.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[DragonWriter]

The reason why I mentioned 540p is that monitors that can do 1920x1080 @ 30hz aren't quite the widest spread, so I suggest using the visual equivalent or 960x540 @ 60hz, so you can try doing it on equipment that can support it.

Almost to the point of necromancy, by now, but interlaced modes are not the "visual equivalent" of a non-interlaced mode with half the resolution in each direction and double the refresh rate. They're not even the "visual equivalent" of non-interlaced modes with half the vertical resolution, the same horizontal resolution, and double the refresh rate, though that's a closer parallel.

As to whether the market place thinks it's worth it or not where is the plethora of TV's 30" that support HDTV resolutions?

30" is an unusual TV size; there are a vast array of 32" HDTVs, both LCD and CRT, and quite a few smaller ones, as well.

(there are the little LCD displays that do, but they are more of a rebranded computer monitor than anything else, and they don't really run native HDTV res they down res it to most often XGA).

More often 1360x768 or 1366x768 WXGA (and since that format became popular with TVs, I'd rather say that the computer monitors in those formats are rebranded LCD TVs, rather than vice versa, but, whatever), which, while less resolution than 1080p/i, more than 720p (which is also an HDTV resolution), and plenty enough to, even at their sizes, show a huge jump in quality compared to 480i/p SDTV resolutions.

Is there a 19" TV that actually supports true native HDTV resolutions, seen a bunch offer HD-ready, but they don't actually run it and in fact scale it down.

Most that I've seen support "true native HDTV resolutions" (specifically, they natively support 720p), though I haven't seen any 19" 1080i/p native HDTVs (not surprising; even computer monitors rarely support more than 1600x1200 at that size, and computer monitor use is more likely to call for high resolution than most TV uses (game console use being one of the TV uses that is most likely to put resolution at a premium, of course.)

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[MikeBabcock]

Resolution is usually perceived in terms of "blockiness" by the viewer. The higher the resolution, the less one can perceive the individual pixels in other words.

Of course, the human eye only perceives a certain fraction of available data at any given distance (usually measured in degrees, somewhat like how a ray-tracer looks at things). For example, when I sit on my couch with my 15" laptop on a table in front of me, it is the same size to my eye as my 30" wide screen high definition TV is about 8' away. The LCD screen's 1024x768 resolution has more visible pixels at that distance (about two feet) than the 1080i TV four times farther away. As such, the resolution matters more at close distances where they eye can see better, not less. In fact, if a regular definition TV is far enough away, you couldn't perceive the difference between it and an HDTV of the same size right next to it.

That said, at 8' away like my TV is, I can just barely make out the pixelation on jagged edges at all at 1080i. I can most definately see the resolution difference between 24 at 720p and CSI at 1080i (much clearer).

PS, could your "small tv" even display more than 480 lines of resolution in the first place, and how far away was it? There's a reason TV stores have those charts showing how far away a given sized TV is designed to be viewed from.

Re:Expect the Playstation to underperform.

[Shadowlore]

The way consoles are sold is quite a clever exercise in capturing the consumer surplus; that is, segmenting your market according to their willingness to pay. You launch at a price that is very high to start with and you capture the relatively small segment of the market that thinks your product is really worth that much. You then slowly lower your price so you hoover up more and more of the people who are willing to part with their cash when the price is more reasonable. Eventually, as you near the end of production, you cut your prices further to get it off the shelves and get the people who want something for nothing.

Surely you don't think that's unique to consoles, do you? Anything in consumer electronics is that way. DVD players are twenty bucks. If they could fit in cereal boxes we'd probably see them there in a few years. How much were they when they came out? A helluva lot more! This is the way the market works. Volume production brings lower pricing due to economy of scale.

This exists in other markets. Look at "standard" and "base" model new automobiles 5, 10, 15 years ago. What was once a high-priced option is now standard - and at a lower differential than the initial option offering. I can name several other markets in which this sequencing exists.

Another factor here is BluRay. I'd estimate that 80% of Playstation 2s are hooked up to a small TV in some teenageers bedroom. They're not going to go out and buy a High-Definition set for their Playstation 3. They will get no benefit from the enhanced resolution of BluRay and therefore see no reason to buy it.

Why, because that is your experience? Mine is the opposite. Of the several dozen people and families I know who have PS2 in the house, the only ones that are not hooked directly to the main TV (which in most cases is HD) are the second or third console socked away in the respective bedrooms. That figure you gave is about as relevant as the number of dogs whizzing in central park. You made it up to suit your bias or reflect your limited and insignificant experience. Yes, my experience on this is in the same boat.

I wodl hazard a supposition that a significant portion of those who will want the PS3 and do not hook it to an HD set are doing so not for the HD factor but for it's other redeeming qualities. The fact that it will (to them) be "forward compatible" is a very nice bonus.

For myself, I will hook it to the HD bigscreen in the main room. And the current PS2 that is connected (and running HD) will move to the bedroom where I do not yet have an HD set. Yet.

DVD support

[sanosuke001]

Why do people keep complaining about the DVD functionality of the PS2? I have been using my launch-day PS2 to watch DVDs since launch. I also don't think that they're launching it as a Blu-Ray player first and console second but having the Blu-Ray functionality for a fraction of the price is definetely a good deal. If you don't want the blu-ray player, don't buy it. They're trying to get a "media center" type system into homes. It'll probably act as a DVR as well... and with the rumors around about it being able to support linux and homebrew stuff, and the upgrade potential for the core system (no HDMI upgrade but meh...) I think you all are a bit critical of Sony. They haven't been doing well marketing it, but it's not a bad setup for the price they're asking... you all are just being stubborn >.>

Re:DVD support

[Fred Or Alive]

Well, in Europe we have a slight problem. The highest quality input on most TVs is RGB SCART. Guess what format the PS2 doesn't support for DVD playback? RGB. You get a green tinted black and white picture. Strangley, no other SCART equipped DVD player has this problem.

(I did hear it's becuase they forgot to put Macrovision or whatever on the RGB output, and it was discovered on early Japanese models. So rather than fix it, they just crippled the console. After all, if you want a good DVD player, Sony do have a wide selection...)

Re:DVD support

[Chris Burke]

If you don't want the blu-ray player, don't buy it.

Oh, don't worry, that's what many people have already decided.

As a Blu-Ray player, it's a good deal.

As a game console, it isn't a good deal.

So the question is: How many people care about Blu Ray vs care about having a game console? And if you care about Blu Ray right now and are thus an early adopter with spare cash to blow on something that could go the way of laserdisc, are you going to buy a "good deal" Blu Ray player or a "high end" Blu Ray player? You've already spent several grand on your TV; is it worth it to buy a top-end player to hook up to it, or do you need to make your game console pull double-duty?

The rest of us who don't have an HD TV couldn't care less about Blu Ray. Assuming I ever do care about HD video formats it's going to be after the format war shakes out, whether that means one format wins and the other dies, or multi-format players become ubiquitous (like with DVD writers).

Sony is trying to use the PS3 to win the format war so that people will care about Blu Ray. In the meantime, the only thing positive you can say about the PS3 price is "it's good for a Blu Ray player".

The problem with this is: Sony is trying to create demand for a new format with a product whose price can only be justified if you already have demand for that format.

Re:DVD support

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then you're pretty damn lucky considering the fact that the launch-day ps2's had a problem with exactly that.. the motors would burn out and you'd have to take it to get them fixed. I don't know anybody (except you) that didn't have a problem with that.

You're also lucky considering the fact that I have personally had to purchase a new PS2 every year since the day the launched, my brother has owned 2 and my roommate has owned 3.

And I take good care of my stuff.

You're pretty lucky if your launch-day ps2 is still working. How many times a day do you have to take that thing apart to clean it and reset the tray?

Not if I don't want a Blu-Ray player

[Bastian]

It's only a bargain if I want a Blu-Ray player.

If I what I'm really looking for is a game console, the added cost for the Blu-Ray player sounds more like several hundred dollars down the toilet.

Re:Not if I don't want a Blu-Ray player

[dogmatixpsych]

Now we know why Microsoft didn't include a HD-DVD drive in the 360. Microsoft isn't as dumb as they sometimes come across.

Re:Not if I don't want a Blu-Ray player

[grammar fascist]

If I what I'm really looking for is a game console, the added cost for the Blu-Ray player sounds more like several hundred dollars down the toilet.

You misspelled "a several hundred dollar gift to Sony from a fanboi."

Re:Not if I don't want a Blu-Ray player

[llZENll]

I totally agree, just wait when MS announces their break through pricing of their HD DVD addon player this xmas for $99. You can already get stand alone HD-DVD players for $200. The added cost for BluRay is nothing more than Sony trying to totally control yet another storage format.

I also think a HUGE part of the PS2s continued success is how easy it is to copy games for it, the PS3 is a whole new ballgame.

Re:Not if I don't want a Blu-Ray player

[Chicane-UK]

Exactly - and this is precisely why I feel Sony just has no idea. They justify the price because it has Blu-Ray but what if like me you are a long way off being able to afford a HD capable LCD TV, and you already have a fairly extensive DVD collection? I'm not interested in moving to a new tech like Blu-Ray for a loooong time.

It pains me really because i've owned all the different types of Playstations and i've always felt that Sony have done a good job with their consoles. But this time around corporate greed and a sheer desire to flood the market with ITS technology has got in the way of just producing a good console.

Sad and probably enough to keep me away from PS3 ownership (like the £425 price tag wasn't enough!)

In other news...

[Wampus Aurelius]

...Jack in the Box has announced that its new burger, the "Jumbo Jack 2" will be priced at $250 and contain a generous portion of "the finest Russian caviar."

Jack in the Box CEO Jack said, "I don't think it's an expensive burger. I think it's actually a cheap burger. If you think that that much caviar itself might be $300-$400, and we're coming in at only $250, it's a bargain."

But...I just wanted a burger.

Re:In other news...

[xtracto]

Haha, no shit, with the right marketing the brits would buy that at £239, I mean, it is less than in America no lads?

Re:In other news...

[LearnToSpell]

Burger King: Have it your way!

McDonald's: I'm loving it!

Jack in the Box: Maybe you'll have lunch, maybe you'll FUCKING DIE!

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

This should be modded insightful + funny.
Nice post, lad.

Re:In other news...

[mcb]

Reminds me of the $100 cheesesteak
http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vnews/display.v/ ART/4185fa00ea4a2?in_archive=1

Re:In other news...

[Impotent_Emperor]

Never, ever eat under cooked ground beef. (You can do it with steaks, but only because any sources of infection should be on the outside surface of the steak.)

My elementary school once served hamburgers and the one I got was pink on the inside. I freaked out and never bought lunch from them ever again.

I knew those bastards were trying to kill us.

Re:In other news...

[C.A. Nony Mouse]

I recall a few years ago, some Los Angeles restaurant (Hamburger Hamlet?) listed a $100 hamburger on the menu. A bottle of premium champagne was included with the meal.

And you got a spare burger as well.

The Deal with Blu-Ray

[davebo357]

I hopped on the HDTV bandwagon early 2001, so I've been waiting over 5 years for someone to give me HD movies at home. Also in that time I've bought two other hdtv's, so you could say I'm the exact technology sucker market that Sony is shooting for, especially since I also got Playstation 1 and 2 pretty soon after release. The reason I'm not buying a Playstation 3 (at least until i start seeing GTA4 screenshots) isn't the high price, its this retarded format war. They couldn't resolve their differences with hd-dvd, and I'll be damned if I'm going to start buying movies that I won't be able to play at anyone else's house in a year. As far as I'm concerned Sony screwed this all up well before E3 and the price announcement. Of course i feel the same way about the Xbox360 :P

Re:The Deal with Blu-Ray

[iainl]

"at least until i start seeing GTA4 screenshots"

Why would that persuade you? It comes out on the XBox 360 (a console already $200 cheaper, and I expect a price cut by then) on the same day.

Re:The Deal with Blu-Ray

[simonjp]

They couldn't resolve their differences with hd-dvd, and I'll be damned if I'm going to start buying movies that I won't be able to play at anyone else's house in a year.

Dont you know in a year's time once you play them in a drive the discs will get encoded to that machine, meaning you can't play them somewhere else - why would you want to be able to do that? Why would the other location not have its own copy.

geez - this could be the reality of DRM in the future! HA

Re:The Deal with Blu-Ray

[davebo357]

Because I love the dual shock controllers, i even use them on my pc when i re-buy the gta's on pc, at least for driving, on foot i use mouse+keyboard. I have ps2->xbox controller adapters now, and they're terrible. If the ones for the next gen consoles are better then that's always an option, although I really do hate that huge external power adapter. Obviously I'd have to take into consideration what other games were available for either system by that point, but by then I would hope developers would have time to push the limits of the systems, and if in fact PS3's graphics come out ahead, I'd rather just pay for the best looking system with the controllers I like most. Kind of off-topic to this reply but in looking back on my recent console gaming, the most fun seems to be had with DDR and Guitar Hero, both games using gimmick controllers and requiring very little in the way of cpu power. I think Nintendo just might get back on top this time around. "Why would that persuade you? It comes out on the XBox 360 (a console already $200 cheaper, and I expect a price cut by then) on the same day."

Re:The Deal with Blu-Ray

[PeelBoy]

There is no shock in the PS3 controllers though :-\ and have you used the 360 controllers yet? They are very nice. I loved the dual shock too, but I think the 360 controller is the best out right now.

Also I heard GTA4 was coming out on the 360 first, not at the same time.

Re:The Deal with Blu-Ray

[iainl]

October 2007, same date for both XBox 360 and PS3. Moore worded it as "Day One" in the conference speech, and some misinterpreted his comments to mean that it was going to have a period of exclusivity, but Rockstar later cleared it up with a seperate press release.

There will be exclusive add-on content available to purchase through the Live Marketplace, but on the other hand Sony plan a marketplace equivalent (or "ripoff" if you listen to 360 owners), and I expect to see seperate exclusive content there, too. Because there are plenty enough GTA fanboys out there who would buy both versions just to get it all.

+1 insightful

[xtracto]

I live in UK, but I am not from here and I just get £700 monthly to live. I am *really* looking forward to buy the Revolution (Wii), from the way I have seen prices are driven in UK, it will surely cost £199 (if it is $200 in USA) or ~ £239 if it is $250 in USA.

I can not understand how this people let themselves get screwed so hard, of course they tend not to feel it. No matter how I show them on Amazon, Ebay, etc they just do not get it. But, if we see for example my girlfried who is working in telephone answering and is getting almost the minimum, she is getting £200 weekly. Of course we have to pay the flat rent and all those things.

$800 is no meaningless at all, does anybody in the UK can see it? It was funny how a guy I just knew was all amazed because he went to Prague and got a beer for £0.50, she was coompletely shocked when I told him that was the price of a beer in Mexico also. And here they pay at least £1.50 for a beer made HERE.

Anyway, I hate the way Sony is trying to push the PS3, saying "OMG it is almost a gift for what it does!!!", but does anybody knows what the heck does it do? blue ray player?, No thanks, I will wait until I can buy a chinnese player, without all the DRM shit. /rant

Re:+1 insightful

[robthebob]

You say we let ourselves "get screwed so hard" and "they just do not get it" but what can we actually do about it? We know the prices are significantly higher, for no good reason, but we still have to pay them if we want the product. American companies enjoy getting their free 30% markup over here, and they even charge more here than Europe, despite the fact that they don't even need to do any translation here.

Re:+1 insightful

[grammar fascist]

Anyway, I hate the way Sony is trying to push the PS3, saying "OMG it is almost a gift for what it does!!!"...

Would that be a gift from the consumer to Sony?

Re:+1 insightful

[soft_guy]

Don't buy it then. Or wait until the price goes down which is probably 6 months?

If you are more patient, you can buy your games really cheap. Just play games that are a few years old. You actually get to play better games because you can tell from reviews which ones were good and which were junk. You can probably buy a PS2 for less than $100 now and the games are cheap and people can tell you which ones are worth playing.

Buy yourself a PS3 in 2010.

Re:+1 insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

" American companies enjoy getting their free 30% markup over here"

That's just bullshit.

The prices are higher because of either tax or distribution costs being higher.
This is not just American companies but others as well - there is something fucked up with UK , not the rest of the world.

Re:+1 insightful

[robthebob]

The trouble is, it's the case for everything. It's a choice between paying more to get it now, and waiting, sometimes for a very long time, to pay the same as it actually cost in America. It's all very well to say "buy a PS3 in 2010", but should I currently only be using any technology that is at least 3 years old? I appreciate your comment, and I certainly enjoy older games, but the problem remains. Side note: do you know how much the PS3 will cost in Japan?

Re:+1 insightful

[xtracto]

Heya! a bit late, but I could find the a quote about the price of the PS3 in Japan:

From : itmedia in japan:

"Both drives of the blue ray disk and the hard disk are prepared standard as for PS3 which is loaded 2 models (as for color only clear black), the 20G byte model 6 ten thousand 2790 Yen (including tax), the 60G byte model becomes open price." [babelfish translation].

Which I translated to: Y 62,790
This (according to xe.com) is more or less $558.668 USD.

About the rest of your comment, I understand the frustration of seeing that corporations are selling things more expensive, but one of the things I have seen while in UK is that the quality of life is better than that of USA and a lot of other countries. One of the things I read somewhere is that, one of the main difference between UK and USA quality of life is that over here (UK) having a full time job with the "minimum" payment (I believe it is £5.05) is enough to live ok, while in USA having a job is sometimes not enough to survive (and that is why you see people having two jobs or sellling Tupperware [not that there is something wrong with selling tupperware of course =oP] ).

Seppuku?

[thepropain]

In my mind's eye, I see a samurai named Sony running a katana through his belly...

Re:Seppuku?

[Rydia]

Silly nitpick, but seppuku is performed with the wakizashi.

Back to your regularly scheduled Sony flamewar.

Re:Seppuku?

[MrP-(at work)]

Actually in modern times seppuku is performed with a frisbee

Re:Seppuku?

[LearnToSpell]

When all you have is a katana, everything begins to look like a belly.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, they're claiming that the PS3 is a good value because it costs less than other Sony products with some of the same features? How does that follow? Maybe the other products are just even more overpriced.

actually, it didn't

[BitterAndDrunk]

My PS2 DVD player would fade in and out, and also had a greatly lowered max volume (to the point that if the traffic was busy outside and the windows were open, I couldn't hear the movie sometimes)

I fixed the dimming effect by running the PS2 through an RF adapter, degrading the signal.

So, no, the PS2 didn't meet my expectations for a DVD player and I had to buy another one. Which was part of the reason why I bought the PS2 in the first place, unfortunately.

Re:actually, it didn't

[StarvingSE]

Were you, by any chance, running it off of a daisy chain with your VCR? If so, many VCR's will fade your picture in and out so you can't copy your DVD's to VHS. I'm not sure if they mess with the sound at all. Might be the reason for the fading.

I've used my PS2 as a DVD player for many years and it has been more than adequate for that purpose.

Re:actually, it didn't

[timster]

Fading in and out was possibly Macrovision (as another poster suggested), but the quiet audio problem was a well known issue with the PS2. Possibly it was fixed with a later revision.

I don't buy the "cheaper then BR player" routine..

[ShyGuy91284]

This was a great feature of the PS2. You want to know why? It was launched a couple years (maybe more or less, I'm not really sure) after the DVD standard launched, allowing it to have a relatively cheap drive people would _actually_ buy. I remember about a year before I got a PS2 I got a DVD player because I needed one. The PS2 was $300, and I got the DVD player for around $100. I think it will be a long time until a stand-aloneBlu-Ray player can sell for that price. Maybe in a few years when they can lower the price its sales may skyrocket, but until that day comes, they will probably be beaten to a bloody pulp by Nintendo (as the Slashdot poll indicate). People will probably get a Wii (Or XBox 360 since I expect their price will fall near Wii's price), wait a couple years, and then get a PS3 when they realize they need a Blu-Ray player. Of course if HD-DVD wins, people with a Wii may get a 360 instead if it gets integrated HD-DVD down the road......

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'LL BUY

[VincenzoRomano]

... only when I'll se the real machine running games!

Bukkake?

[Winterblink]

I don't know, I see a girl named Sony on her knees with Nintendo and Microsoft standing above her with flies unzipped.

(ok, admittedly I took that straight to the gutter...)

Wow

[mgabrys_sf]

re:"Can a console really be viable at this price?"

Can a dead-horse be flogged any further into the ground Zonk?

Unfair comparison?

[Aiku1337]

Isn't this an unfair comparison? You can't just take an exchange rate and compare the actual value of something directly. I mean, how much do things actually "cost" over there? A movie ticket here in the US is probably 8 to 11 dollars depending on where you live. If you went over to the UK, exchanged your dollars for pounds, would a movie ticket still cost 8 to 11 dollars or would it be more?

Re:Unfair comparison?

[VJ42]

Depending on time, where you want to sit, what cinema, and your age, movie tickets range from ~£3.50 to ~£8.00 where I live. Some cinemas in London have tickets priced ~£10 to ~£15; this isn't replicated antwhere else in the UK as far as I know (people in London get even more ripped off than the rest of us).

Re:Unfair comparison?

[joe 155]

as a northerner I was shocked that at uni people actually considered £2 for a pint to be cheap... I'm not used to paying much more than £1.50 for a nice ale. Why do we have such regional pricing?

Re:Unfair comparison?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be because of the extra £10k at least London weighting allowances you get on your salaries and before someone says move that £10k on my salary wouldnt rent a dog kenel in the capital.

Re:Unfair comparison?

[hattig]

I'm off to pay £2.50 for a pint here in Cambridge, and that's cheap for here. The pub across the road from work is £2.70 to £3.00 a pint (Adnams, Waggledance). Sadly the £2.50 ale is Greene King Triumph, but it's drinkable and I'd rather sit with friends than on my own.

Feel lucky you have it so cheap up there in the grim dark cold north :p

Re:Unfair comparison?

[wisdom_brewing]

Over 4 'quid' for a pint of hoegaarden, and im willing to pay if i choose to head to a pub, try to avoid wetherspoons if at all possible. Usually head down to majestic where I have a friend sort me out with a nice discount on crates of Asahi and have friends over, watch movies, much nicer environment than a pub, more comfortable, choice as to what to watch, gamecube in the corner if we're in the mood. Have a friend studying at York and it is grim up there, but cheap so the cold and darkness is easier to bear :) Im at Warwick Uni, living in Leamington, everyones in walking distance as is every bar, pub and club in town. And even then i prefer to drive down to london, stay with my brother and pay the equivalent of $15 a drink at a club. Then again, factoring the girlfriend in explains the latter case.

Re:Unfair comparison?

[joe 155]

by hell, I'm at warwick uni... I was wondering if there was any other people at warwick on /. what course you doing?

Politics all the way here!

I also have a friend who is at York uni... and I have a lot of friends who live in leamington... what a mental set of coincidences :S

Re:Unfair comparison?

[hattig]

The beer I mentioned went up to £2.60 a pint in the past week sometime.

The spirits are looking more tempting every day. The alcoholics in the government will never raise duty on spirits, only on wine and beer.

Yes, I was avoiding Wetherspoons, although their pints are £1.90 each (last time I went) here.

Majestic is a good place to get decent beer for a good price.

Re:Unfair comparison?

[wisdom_brewing]

Studying MORSE (cue jokes...), im sure you know it, live on the parade just opposite King Baba. Final year so not here for too much longer.

Re:Unfair comparison?

[joe 155]

morse jokes, ey? I've got 4 or 5 frinds doing that... they all end up a bit weird and hang out in groups late at night proving really random things. why does it matter is P=NP? MORSE is 4 years though isn't it, so you must be just about ready to go insane after 4 years here... it's only been 2 for me and I'm already going mental over it... it doesn't help that I've got exams starting on the 6th and I don't seem to have actually learnt anything this year and don't really seem to be able to get off /. for long enough to start. Dam computers.

Re:Unfair comparison?

[wisdom_brewing]

Im only doing 3 years, going to work as a trader come august. Dont spend any time in lectures, know more or less no one on my course (about 5 people and all through a mate from halls in the first year). Spend 3 days a week during term in london and the rest pissing around. Going mad is inevitable if you stick around. Im finished by june 7th luckily, but most of my friends at other unis are much closer, some having finished already.

You meet someone outside warwick and mention MORSE, they think morse-code... Im rarely amused. Need to get out of here, more academia than Warwick. Not long left. Good luck with your exams, just sat a lovely paper in Bayesian Forecasting and Intervention having been to no lectures and only picked up the notes/past papers yesterday. Story of my life.

Expensive

[kanzels]

Those kids should spend $800 way better than just stupid game console. When we were young there were no such consoles and we was happier. Now kids spend extensive amount of time playing games at home. Sad. I have a small son, but I won't let him do the same :)

Re:Expensive

[Grey Ninja]

Thank god I didn't have fascist parents. I grew up in an open environment, and I am a better person for it. Needlessly removing things from your experiences for no good reason is just unhealthy.

Re:Expensive

[kanzels]

Did I say removing? Just not buying crap.

Re:Expensive

[Grey Ninja]

Now kids spend extensive amount of time playing games at home. Sad. I have a small son, but I won't let him do the same :)

That sounds pretty evil to me.

Re:Expensive

[kanzels]

You just got wrong feeling :) I will just lead small child, let him eat healthy food (no hamburgers and coke), explain what's good and what's bad. You took it too seriously. I don't think game console is a toy for small kids. Maybe for bigger kids, but still you have to control time they spend with this, any doctor will say it's not very healthy to stare on TV for 10 hours every day.

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, it's really fucking "evil" that he won't let video games and television raise his children like most of the welfare brood sows who don't give a shit about anyone but themselves all the way up to the upper-middle class "career women" who are just "too busy" to raise their kids.

What are you, 12 and Mom just took your XBox away? Fucking grow up and realize what parenting is about.

Re:Expensive

[Grey Ninja]

You just remind me very much of this idiotic woman I saw on the bus today who was trying to convince her 4 year old daughter that sugar was yuckie. Presumably because someone told her that sugar was unhealthy. You know what else is unhealthy? Butter, red meat, processed meat, rock and roll, human contact, etc. etc.

You know, it bothers the hell out of me when parents do that. Like I said, I was brought up in an open environment. I was free to do pretty much anything I wanted, and my parents didn't try to control what I did. They just provided me with guidance on what was good and what was not. (Although my mom was quite controlling in some aspects, that primarily dealt with physical safety. There was good reason for that though)

I just think that the overprotectiveness of some parents is just absolutely absurd. I apologize if you are not one of the people I'm referring to, but honestly, it really really sounded like it when you said that your kids weren't allowed to play video games. I've known kids who had extremely overprotective parents. They usually fell in one of two categories. Extraordinarily rebellious, who would do pretty much anything that their parents wouldn't approve of, and the type that lived in total fear of their parents, and actually followed all their insane rules (mormons anyone?).

Anyways, tell me what doctor said that video games are unquestionably unhealthy. Last I checked, they improved cognitive ability, eye-hand coordination, and problem solving skills. You sound like you are about 40... maybe a little less, maybe a little more. Do you remember when your parents told you that Rock and Roll was the devil? Think about what you are saying and doing here. Video games really are the new Rock music.

Re:Expensive

[kanzels]

Thanks, my english is not so good to express it like that!

Re:Expensive

[kanzels]

Haha, you write too much :) No I'm not 40, I'm 28, you just got plain wrong image. You used word "guidance", that one is most correct, as small kids cannot decide what's really good and what's bad. Simply there are far better things in life that game consoles, for example sports. Let your kid play games every day and all the day, I won't mine to do this, maybe time to time... but life is not about virtual life in games.

Re:Expensive

[kanzels]

Another thing... you mentioned sugar. Americans think that sugar is cool and that's why 50% of their population is fat. I'm not saying that sugar is evil, I'm eating it too (not so much of course). You're too consuming country to see it. European thinking is a little bit different.

The UK != The US

[Lave]

I have a couple of points to make about how they are marketing it as a cheap way to get a blu-ray player. This worked brilliantly for the PS2 in the UK. In the same way we all told our parents we needed a PC for "homework" when growing up. This won't work for a number of reasons.

1) DVD -> Blu-Ray != VHS -> DVD. VHS were terrible. Crappy quality and wore out fast. DVD players let us use our current equipment to get much better picture quality. It was a one purchase upgrade. And it's only become universal in the last few years (now that a dvd player is £30). With Blue-ray moveis I need a new TV or it's meaningless. And a new TV will never reach £30. most people won't upgrade till our current TV breaks.

2) PAL != NTSC. When I've been in america I have to say - the picture quality is terrible. I can see the desire for HD television there. But in the UK we have very good quality broadcasts. There is less desire for the upgrade.

3) Freeview. This - in my opinion - is the clincher. Our normal terrestial broadcast (channels 1-5) is the primary method of recieving TV. This will be shut off between 2008 and 2010 to replaced with the currently available "freeview" this provides 30-40 free channels for the price of a set top box. There is much annoyance about this - even when set top boxes are only about £30. "Freeview" doesn't have the bandwidth to provide HD content. So knowing that cable channels in the UK have always been niche, there is no way that people will be willing to upgrade from freeview till at least 2010.

To me, this suggest that these consoles are a generation early with HD in the UK. And this should have profound effects. In my opinion of course.

Re:The UK != The US

[kisrael]

PAL vs NTSC... do you think it's neccesarily the format, or just how the signal is getting to your place, signal strength and all that? The USA is a big place, so we switched to coax cable fairly early, and often the quality is really blah.

I'm just guessing though. I mostly know about PAL vs NTSC from programming for the Atari 2600...I know NTSC is "Never The Same Color", but it had a better framerate...

Re:The UK != The US

[PCM2]

There's really nothing wrong with NTSC per se. PAL does have slightly higher resolution than NTSC, but on a closed circuit, e.g. from your DVD player to your TV, it's perfectly fine. It does tend to suffer more than PAL over broadcast, though, which is where it gets its reputation for "Never The Same Color" etc.

To your point on frame rates (and the original poster) ... every time I go to Europe it takes me a couple of days before I can look at a TV and not see the flicker from the 50Hz refresh rate (vs. the American 60Hz). So neener neener.

Re:The UK != The US

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the reason I heard for NTSC's "Never Twice Same Colour" reputation had to do with how the colour signal is modulated. There are essentially two picture signals: one is the luminescence (the only one black & white TVs would read), and the other describes deviation of hue (in a positive or negative direction). Since you're reading colour relative to some "central hue", the TV user needs to define what that hue will be (and for some reason, it seems to shift over time). I seem to remember hearing that PAL actually more unambiguously specifies colour (though possibly at the expense of easy backward compatibility with black & white TVs, I guess).

Of course, I'm not sure if this explanation is actually correct. It just always seemed somewhat plausible to me.

Re:The UK != The US

[hattig]

It's probably the SCART connector between the player and the TV that's showing the good picture quality for PAL vs NTSC. SCART (Eurotel) carries RGB signals, which are far better than composite (although SCART also carries composite in case the TV is cheap and only has 1 RGB compatible SCART input). SCART's been standard in the UK for around 20 years too, so everything has it (apart from the PS2, if the PS3's the same then it can sod off back to Japan).

PAL (Picture Always Lousy) was only lousy with analogue terrestrial broadcasts. We've had satellite TV here in a big way since 1989, and digital satellite since 1998 (MPEG2, standard definition). We've simply had better source quality all the way to the TV than NTSC. And that has meant that HDTV uptake over here will not be because of a burning need to improve picture quality, it'll be merely because at some point you won't be able to buy a standard definition set.

Re:The UK != The US

[Anonymous Coward]

There is much annoyance about this

There are two things that annoy me about it:

• My bedroom TV won't get it, since it doesn't have SCART (or a decent aerial).
  
• My main TV loses signal all the time, going into silence or freezing on artefacted pictures, generally at the punchline of a joke. I think this is due to there being hills in the world.
  

Of course these can simply be solved by moving house to somewhere that gets a clean signal, and buying new televisions :-)

Re:The UK != The US

[drinkypoo]

As usual, you can read all about it on wikipedia (also see their entry on PAL)

Re:The UK != The US

[MisaDaBinksX4evah]

Well, we have S-video and component connections on standard NTSC televisions nowadays, both of which are better than composite.

Re:The UK != The US

[leenks]

That's one reason that 100Hz TV's were so popular in the UK. They are slowly being phased out in favour of LCD ones, but 100Hz is a drastic improvement.

Also, most new broadcasts in the UK are digital - analogue satellite and cable were phased out years ago in favour of DVB, and we are just about getting nationwide coverage of DVB-T, giving 30 or so free digital channels.

Admittedly, the quality isn't as good as HDTV - when I saw HDTV in a US bar last time I was out there I was pretty much shocked at the detail - but it is pretty damned impressive compared with analogue transmissions. It also makes what I get in US hotel rooms look very poor - something not helped by the ridiculously large and square TV that is always in the room!

Re:The UK != The US

[bigdavex]

2) PAL != NTSC. When I've been in america I have to say - the picture quality is terrible. I can see the desire for HD television there. But in the UK we have very good quality broadcasts. There is less desire for the upgrade.

That's absurd.

Re:The UK != The US

[LordVader717]

100 Hz "double scan" is basically the PAL version of the "pregressive scan" NTSC format.

Re:I don't buy the "cheaper then BR player" routin

[Fred Or Alive]

AAUI it was more in Japan that the PS2 was a cheap DVD player at launch, so it would be a different market, and slightly earlier in the DVD timeline.

I'd guess they're hoping to repeat some of this worldwide...

PS3 to Sell at Over $800 in UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of typos, I'm pretty certain the the unit of currency in the UK is not the dollar.

Anyway.. $800.. that's about £50 these days, isn't it?

Re:PS3 to Sell at Over $800 in UK

[Traiklin]

not quite, you are only off by about £375, $800.00 = £426.54

Re:PS3 to Sell at Over $800 in UK

[gormanly]

Actually, it's not over $800 at today's rate, but still...

• US prices: $499 ; $599
• Eurozone prices: $637 (€499) ; $765 (€599)
• UK prices: Not available(!) ; $798 (£425)

F and off, Sony. It won't sell to me and (i) I have plenty of cash and (ii) I love my PS2 and would have paid £350 without a moment's thought. No-one I've talked to on this is prepared to pay, and we're all late 20s and early 30s gamers with good jobs and no kids. They're not going to sell these at that price...

Does anyone else think...

[aminal]

That this thing will sell at $800 _anyway_. Its the PS3, Playstation has enough fanboi's to sell out the console a couple of times over, no matter what it costs for a Q4 06 launch.

People want these things, and _will_ part with $800 to get one, even just to stick it on ebay straight away - knowing that some daft bugger is going to pay even more for it.

Blu-Ray Player

[NonSequor]

A Blu-Ray player is completely worthless until there is content for it to play.

Re:Blu-Ray Player

[Xugumad]

But with quality releases such as Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Van Helsing, The Chronicles of Riddick and Underworld: Evolution, how can you claim a lack of content?

Okay, I'm being harsh, there's some... decent... movies coming out. However, gotta say, it's all stuff I'd either never buy, or have already...

Coffee, meet keyboard

[VJ42]

I can see the Daily Mail headlines already :p

Why would I have a problem?

[Moraelin]

"Besides, how many of you can pull yourselves from your computers long enough to play on a console?"

*raises hand*

If I'm going to play a game anyway, why would I care that much if I sit on this chair in front of the computer or on that sofa in front of the TV? No, seriously. I'm there for the game, regardless of whether it's a computer, console, or a magic Ouija board with a LCD screen.

Seems to me that some people get so focused on the means, that they lose sight of the goal. The computer is not the goal, and the console isn't the goal either. They're just _means_. Playing a good game is the goal.

That's it. That's what being a "gamer" is all about: games. Nothing else. Everything else is in some other category. And let me recap it, for those who still don't get it:

- E.g., those just wanting to brag about how many more 3DMark points their new 7900 GTX scores than my PS2, those aren't really looking for the "gamer" category. I don't play 3DMark, I play games. For that kinda discussion, that's over there, through the door labelled "willy wavers".

- E.g., contrary to popular belief, stupid fanboy wars about Nintendo vs Sony vs Microsoft aren't "gamer" stuff either. The brand name isn't a goal, and anyone who has serving Nintendo or Sony or MS as a goal really needs to take a break and a critical look at their life. Again, playing a good game is the goal. Owning a Nintendo or a Sony or a MS console or a PC is merely a means to playing the game you want to play, nothing more.

- E.g., no, as a gamer I don't give a flying fuck about the controller being with/without vibration, banana shaped, nunchaku shaped, mouse+keyboard, or whatever, either. That's just means too. Will there be a great game that requires that controller? In some cases, I seriously doubt it, but the final judgment will be actually seeing that game on the shelves, or not. Then I'll go and buy the right controller for it too. (I had no problems buying lightguns for lightgun games, or a Dreamcast keyboard for chatting in PSO, after all. But again, those were the means, not the end. The purpose was the game, not the lightgun.)

Will I buy a PS3 or a Wii or an XBox 360? Hell if I know. Maybe all three, maybe neither, maybe something in between. Depends on whether any of them will have enough games I really want to play. If they have the games, sure, sign me up. If not, not. It's all about the games, in the end, everything else is just means.

And again, if a game I want to play is only on a console, I'll have no problem getting up from the computer and moving over to the console. Why wouldn't I? Doubly so if the whole genre doesn't even exist on the PC. (When was the last time there was a fighting game for the PC, for example?)

But here's the thing

[sterno]

People will buy the PS3. In fact, a lot of people will buy the PS3. The price is high yes, but not so high that it's pricing people out of it. Yes, 425 pounds is $800, but then the dollar has been tanking.

Are people going to buy PS3 as a blu-ray player? No. But then that's not the point. The point is that when movie studios are looking to support HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, and there's already millions of Blu-Ray players out there because of all the PS3's, what are they going to choose.

Practically speaking very few people are out there are buying HD-DVD or Blu-Ray right now. Most people I know don't even have HDTV yet. Of those that do I can't imagine many of them shelling out $800-1000 for a HD movie player yet. However, of those people I can imagine many of them buying a PS3. They won't buy it to be a player, of course, but hey, if it will play those, why shell out the money for an HD-DVD player when you've got a Blu-ray player sitting in your living room already.

It's going to be probably 3-4 years before either HD format becomes vaguely mainstream. DVD players are dirt cheap right now and since most people don't have HD, it's not worth investing in the format (especially if all the HD players will be backward compatible with DVD's). However if you have a PS3, expect to upgrade to HD at some point, and have a choice between a Blu-ray and a DVD version of a movie, why not get the higher quality now? Then you won't feel a need to upgrade later.

The PS3 will be expensive relative to what's out there now, but people will buy it. And because it'll be in millions of living rooms unlike HD-DVD players. Sony's probably losing a fair bit on the PS3 but if it lays the ground work for winning the format war on HD video, they'll be rolling in the licensing fees for at least a decade.

Re:But here's the thing

[SeeMyNuts!]

"People will buy the PS3. In fact, a lot of people will buy the PS3. The price is high yes, but not so high that it's pricing people out of it."

After so many parents have bought iPods, cell phones, brand name clothing, auto insurance, digital cable, etc. for their kids, do they really have $800 left for another gaming machine? Or is this going to be another big tick up in the consumer debt levels that are already too high?

If I had $800 to spend on something, and I just had to spend it, a more general purpose PC or Mac Mini would seem much wiser. It seems the new generation of gaming consoles are more high fashion than anything, IMO.

I don't know about the UK...

[lbbros]

...but the PS2 when it came out here in Italy costed L.850,000 - that means around $400. What difference there is with PS3? It's roughly the same price.

still nothing compared to japan's price

[Anonymous Coward]

In japan, the "high-end" console's price will be INFINITY dollars. Yes, and that is no joke. What's more, it will still sell out, as it's the ONLY next gen console that japan cares about. (Wii counts as new gen, not next gen)

Now does sony's crazy pricing make sense? They're counting on japan to carry them to at least moderate success.

Re:I don't buy the "cheaper then BR player" routin

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pretty much exactly what I'm thinking. Buy a Wii right when it comes out, then see who wins between HD-DVD and blu-ray before thinking about buying a 2nd console. Also if either the PS3 or XBox360 flops terribly I will have lost nothing.

Cross-country price comparison

[WedgeTalon]

Just for fun, here's my cross-country price comparison.

To explain the format a bit, the first column is the country and the native price of the console in that country. The next three columns are THAT price converted to the respective currency. Originating currency price is marked with ='s. Hope this is a clear enough explanation.

All prices are rounded off. Conversion done via: xe.com

PS3 Premium
[Country] [ USD ] [ EUR ] [ GBP ]
[US: 599] [=599=] [ 467 ] [ 317 ]
[Eur:599] [ 768 ] [=599=] [ 406 ]
[UK: 425] [ 803 ] [ 627 ] [=425=]
 
Xbox360 Premium
[Country] [ USD ] [ EUR ] [ GBP ]
[US: 399] [=399=] [ 311 ] [ 211 ]
[Eur:399] [ 512 ] [=399=] [ 271 ]
[UK: 279] [ 527 ] [ 411 ] [=279=]

Re:Cross-country price comparison

[joe 155]

thanks. this is really interesting (I know it might read sarcastically but it's not). I've never really seen the prices all put out in pounds before and I'm shocked that we're paying over £100 more than people in the US. This further highlights what I hate about distribute who make games/films/music. They use the free market to get the stuff made at a really low price in the far east, then put a region code on the stuff so you can't buy it where it is cheapest - blocking the free market. it's even worse with downloadable content because they can deliver it anywhere over the net at the same cost and speed - why won't they let us all buy at the same price?

It's a shame you won't get modded up though... but no one ever reads comments after the first 10 minutes...

Re:Cross-country price comparison

[assantisz]

We must not forget that the EU and UK prices include VAT (17.5% in the UK currently). The US price does not. Also, we have to add trade tariffs to the US price (which could be another 15% or so). I really doubt that anybody but the governments are milking the end customer.

Re:Cross-country price comparison

[hattig]

Note that european prices include VAT.

UK VAT is 17.5%.
EU prices vary between 17% and 25% IIRC.

Sadly everyone picks a safe conversion rate, so instead of the current $1.87 == £1, they'll pick $1.70 to absorb any variancy in their favour.

Re:Cross-country price comparison

[fatgraham]

mod parent up some more. the US dollar is very weak compared to sterling at the moment. see graph; http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/cgi/fxplot?b=USD&c=GBP&rd= 31&fd=1&fm=1&fy=2005&ld=31&lm=12&ly=2006&y=daily&q =volume&f=png&a=lin&m=30&x=&cu=on
[1]

come november when the markets sort themselves out, this $800 figure will have changed to like $600

[1] for historic purposes, today's value is 0.53, one month ago it was 0.56, in march it was around 0.6. April was a BIG slide

Blu-Ray as games media

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't blu-ray better for gaming as well as being a HD movie format? I thought they held more data and more importantly had much higher I/O speeds. Shorter load times are a major point for GameCube over PS2... I'll get the GC version whenever I'm buying a game available on both consoles.

Sony is blinded by arrogance. Nintendo will rise.

[LLcj]

I really can't believe the stupidity and arrogance of the Sony folks here. I was a PS1 and PS2 buyer, always assuming that it was an absolute given I'd buy a PS3, like as soon as it came out. I make a very decent living...but after 1) the pricing release 2) Wii's strong showing at E3...I simply can't justify this purchase. I don't want to be @ss-raped for a format that really just might not catch on. Sony assumes they have the golden touch..and the people will come. and I believed sony would come out with a rockin product..I believe both to be wrong. Nintendo has captured valuable mind share with the DS (and DS lite). The DS's success over the PSP has shown gamer's willingness to just get good games with a less powerful system for a more reasonable price. This halo effect will carry over to the console side. It's not entirely dissimilar to Apple's iPod strategy.

Breaking News:

[Anonymous Custard]

Breaking News: Sony Overcharges for Needlessly Proprietary Electronics! Film at 11.

Can a console really be viable at this price?

[magicjava]

Can a console really be viable at this price?

No.

This is news?

[jedigeek]

It's just another case of rip-off Britain, another example of how international business arse-rapes us every day, while Blair sits by and sucks it up!

Re:This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blair is about as left wing as Hitler. He doesn't give a fuck about anyone who can't give him over £2 million. Why would his attitude to our people getting ass fucked by businesses which he is supported by?
Get the twat out of office at the next chance. Don't vote Labour ever again.

Re:This is news?

[MarkByers]

If people are willing to pay the higher price, businesses would be foolish to lower it, since all they care about is maximising profit.

Re:This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tony Blair does care about you. Specifically he understands your request and has decided to step down from office at the end of his term.
I hope to reiterate his sincere regrets that any of his failings have damaged the reputation of the Labour party. Please believe that we all (at the Labour party) have the best of intentions and hope to improve the lives of all our united peoples regardless of whether some disagree to the methods, or indeed the aims.

Kind regards,
Anonymous.

The PS2 was £399 when it was released in the

[Nick Gisburne]

The PS2 was £399 when it was released in the UK, so I don't see a problem with early adopters paying this much. Within 6 months the price will be dropped by £100 so if you can wait, do so. It wasn't so long ago that consumer (ie non-PC) DVD recorders were £1,000, now they are less than £100. It's always expensive being the first to buy new technology. Besides, if you wait you can enjoy the hacks, cracks and general techno-japery that accompany the consoles once they get into the hands of the soldering-iron crew.

It is what it is

[DragonWriter]

I'm not trying to say the Sony strategy is right, or even well-executed. Merely that they've been open for a long time about what it is, that the PS2 was a first step in that direction, that (even around the time of the PS2 release) the next console would be a bigger step in that direction, etc. I'd say, so far, that their marketing hasn't been well directed for what they've been saying in the business press is their strategy for a long time, OTOH, if they want to push it as a Blu-ray player, there is no reason to do a media blitze angled that way until shortly before the launch. I agree that you have good points about the nature of the early-adopting market. Now, OTOH, they could do something slick if, parallel to how many DVDs have PC-exclusive interactive content, they could get some early Blu-ray movie releases to include really worthwhile PS3-exclusive interactive content, they could really leverage the functionality.

Actually, could be worse...

[Anonymous Coward]

We're so used to the 1UKP = 1USD conversion rate on electronics in the UK that I was expecting at least 500. Which it may well be if this is before VAT (17.5%), of course.

I would expect that the rumours are right that the UK will only see the higher end version of the PS3 - or at least one with HDMI. It may be the case that a lot of high-def TVs in the US have analogue signals, but (although there are a number of early adopters) the big push to high definition in the UK is only just starting to happen - and, consequently, a significant proportion of HDTV owners in the UK will have HDCP-capable devices. Those that don't will need to upgrade anyway - HD broadcasts in the UK require (or will soon require) HDCP connections. I would be surprised if the image constraint tag for Blu-ray doesn't get implemented in regions outside the US, with lower analogue HDTV penetration, significantly before it gets enforced in the US (bear in mind that studios are only saying they won't use it *yet*). Without the need to support analogue HDTV, HDCP can be forced on us sooner, and that's going to make the component version of the PS3 substantially less attractive as a Blu-ray player.

I am, of course, assuming that Sony wouldn't try to sell a product that people would have to upgrade to an almost identical one a year later; this may be generous of me. I'm also assuming that DRM isn't going to go away, much as I may like it to.

So, anyway, the list price might be for the "higher end" version of the PS3 - and $800 vs $600 is pretty good by the standards us Brits are used to when it comes to transatlantic shipping.

As for whether I'd use a PS3 as a Blu-ray player... unless it's unusably poor, absolutely I would. Since it should be digital end-to-end and Sony are (partly) in charge of the spec, they might not mess it up. I bought a PS2 (silver/second edition) because I wanted a standalone DVD player, and having one that doubled as a game console was a bonus. I'll probably use a PC with a BD drive in it first, just as I used a PC for DVD playback until I wanted to be rid of the 10m cable. I'm sure I'd get a better picture by spending money on a decent DVD player, but given the quality of my TV it's not particularly worth it. I'm hoping that when things are digital end-to-end, there should be less to differentiate products (barring external scalers - I'm really hoping that Blu-ray takes to encoding images at 1080/50p [60p in the US] to permit optimal conversion to both 1080i and 720p formats, once cameras become available. But that's another discussion.

So would I buy a PS3 at this price? Yes. Would I buy one sooner if it were cheaper? Er, yes.

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was actually waiting to get a PS3. Not Now!!! I honestly think this is just *BS* that we have to pay this much to play games. Why is it, Sony thinks people in the UK have lots of money to waste? My choice now goes straight to xbox. Bye Bye Sony. You dug your own grave!, and FU for taking the p*ss out consumers.

Reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if it gets good reviews from the imaginary reviewers Sony fabricated for their movie division it will sell well. Get a blurb from them like "Best game system EVER! Take THAT XBOX!" or "It will make you say Ninten-who?"

Reasons not to buy Sony.
- Artificially Keep prices high by controlling formats (leaving customers with unsupported crap).
- Installing Root Kits on people's pcs.
- Equipment priced like it came from the space program, some of their crap breaks down so quickly you'd swear the SONY store stockroom is full of eastern block/chinese knock'offs.
- Lying to the public, things like inventing movie reviewers.

UK pound

[tronbradia]

Stuff is mad expensive in the UK, that's just how it is. You go to the UK all the prices are pretty much the same number as here, just in more expensive money. Currency exchanges aren't based on actual relative cost of living. They're an arbitrary figure derived by negotiations between investment banks. The dollar is doing particularly shitty these days because investors are freaked out about the wacko politics going on down there. I live in Montreal though I'm American, and I was shocked to see that stuff is actually less money here than at home (Seattle) even though I'm paying in (once significantly devalued) Canadian money. Housing in particular is dirt cheap by comparison. Since I've been here, the Canadian dollar has increased dramatically in value, but prices for things that you buy in Canadian stores haven't changed to make up for the difference in exchange rate, though I'm told American prices are inflating somewhat these days. The fact that £450GB costs $850USD emphasizes how worthless American money is these days, not how expensive the PS3 is in the UK.

Re:UK pound

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all fair and well, but as a brit, I still feel fucked in the ass.

I know any from the UK will go on about how high VAT is, but in contrast, I do not mind paying TAX as long as I see a proper return on what I am being charged for for example, out deputy prime minister Mr "Two Jags" John Prescott still gets the same £120,000.000 a year whilst now doing lesser work.

If it wasn't for the shear arrogance and stupidity of the government, I would say that the UK (specially up north) is the best place to live.

bearably.

Re:UK pound

[wisdom_brewing]

Not to mention income taxes are substantially higher in the UK than the us, and GDP per head is lower...

I often take trips to the states to get hardware, eg digital cameras, laptops, etc. Friends ask me to bring them back a Vaio, or something along those lines. Technically I am smuggling, though even if I were to declare the products and pay the import duty i'd still be getting the products for over 50% less, and thats without claiming back US taxes. An even better location is somewhere like Singapore, Hong Kong or KL but dont travel there as frequently. You might get a slightly different keyboard layout, but thats not a problem for most, especially considering the hundreds of pounds saved.

The dollar was even cheaper in the 80s, but todays value is very near the 10 year peak... Hopefully it'll turn around calmly without any drastic changes.

Re:The PS2 was £399 when it was released in

[Nick Gisburne]

And PS2 owners will buy because they can play all their old games on the new console, while there are still relatively few new games. Having said that, who ever used a PS2 to play PS1 games? For the low income wage slaves, get a PS2 and/or 100 games for about 50 quid on eBay - there's plenty of life in the old ones... sighs fondly in remembrance of genuine panic when the monster appeared in 3D Monster Maze on the ZX-81!

By this price...

[Zaatxe]

...I can have all the PS3 Sony can pry INTO my cold dead hands.

So what!!

[GmAz]

Who gives a rats @$$ if its a Blue-Ray player? Its still a video game console. The PS2 had one of the best DVD players in it. But you didn't see people flocking to buy it because if its DVD playing features. Just think of the next generation after the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. What are those going to cost? $1000 or higher?

Re:So what!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pray, tell, in what way was the PS2 "one of the best DVD players"?

Re:So what!!

[clonmult]

Were you running some custom DVD software on your PS2? It was (is) terrible. Sure, its handy, but we've got £25 DVD players here at home that walk all over the PS2. Heck, the PS2 can't even get the aspect ratio right.

Re:So what!!

[GmAz]

This was back when DVD players were new and just as expensive as the PS2. When I say one of the best, I mean the quality of the video. The picture was beautiful. No, the interface sucked since you had to use a controller to use it, at least until the remote control came out. Shoot, I can get a DVD player now for $40 that plays DVDs, VCDs, Divx, JPG discs, and more.

Kutaragi quote

[saboola]

Kutaragi in an interview was quoted as saying "Microsoft shoots for the moon. Sony shoots for the sun."

He could not be more correct, because we all know what happens the closer you get to the sun.

Re:Kutaragi quote

[filterban]

He could not be more correct, because we all know what happens the closer you get to the sun.

Yeah. Your XBox 360 overheats.

Oh wait...

Who Cares about Blu-Ray

[EpochVII]

I didnt read the article but from that quote it seems as though he's saying Blu-Ray compatability is a great feature we'd want in a gaming console. Why do I want that? If 8 gigs(DVD-DL) and a hard drive(xboxes and the new ps3) is not enough storage for your game there is a bigger problem afoot. Not only is your console price too high, but your games have really low replay value with all that space taken up by cheesy effects, videos, and super hi-res textures. Just think of a way around it.

Answer to the question.

[the web]

"Can a console really be viable at this price?" A top end DVD player can. A console cannot! I've gotta take a guess that most people are buying a PS3 to play games, not watch movies. And most of the people that are buying it to play games, aren't in any way going to be able to take advantage of a blu-ray player.

will sell at £425?

[NeuralSpike]

Given that Xbox 360 is going for £280 in the UK I think it should read will not sell at...although the price diference is quite similiar to the difference we'll see in the US.

Sucks even more for the Brits with VAT, though. (I love NH, no sales tax, no income tax!)

Sure it may be "cheap"......

[lion2]

.....for what it has, but is it worth it? The bluray player may make it a good deal, however I don't want a blueray or HD-DVD player. I'd rather let the formats battle it out on thier own. Anyway I feel that movies coming in a disc will soon be obselete in favor of digital distribution. It already started happening to a small extent with OnDemand Channels. So Blueray or HD-DVD cannot sell me on a console.

Why the price point

[Provocateur]

It MUST come with its own booth babe.
 

Fooled me once

[tgibbs]

I paid a high price for the PS2 with the idea that I'd be saving money by not having to buy a DVD player. And then the PS2 DVD player turned out to be so crappy that I ended up buying a DVD player anyway. But even the PS2's lousy DVD player was a big improvement over the VHS player I had at the time, while HD seems like a pretty modest improvement over the picture from my cheap DVD progressive player.

Seriously, I knew this would happen.

[happy monday]

Consumer electronics are ALWAYS more expensive over here. I am always surprised by the low prices listed for the US. Maybe it's something to do with the fact the sterling is worth more than dollars, so whilst the prices are numerically equivalent (i.e. both in the 400s) the value is higher for the UK price. It's fucking mindbendingly cynical the way these motherfuckers are ripping us off because of what amounts to cultural differences. UK people shell out more because they've been conditioned to by consistently higher prices (this applies to CDs and everything as well).

Kinda scary

[Anonymous Coward]

We're having yet another long winded discussion of what the PS3 will cost. Are our lives really this meaningless?

GTA

[Joebert]

Sheesh, for that price, I might actually have to beat some hookers with a baseball bat just so I can play GTA from the safety of my home.

If I wanted a great deal...

[tehgimp]

I would be on Fatwallet every day maxing out my credit card on Dell laptops. Excpet you're not actually saving money when you buy a lot of crap you don't want / need. Sony is trying to force me into a "great" deal which I want no part of. Thanks Sony, you just made my decision on whether to get a 360 or a PS3 and easy one.

Didn't we hear this already?

[Net_fiend]

Sony announced the price for the PS3 over a week ago and people are still complaining. Either you agree with the price or you don't.

Lets beat the cat some more I don't think its dead enough yet.

Welcome

[Karem Lore]

To rip-off Britains, we get screwed always here for whatever...

Karem

Re:Typical

[drinkypoo]

The discussion is about whether or not a console can be viable at a given price. The pricing of the competitors is entirely material. The above commenter may be a fanboy, but you're an ass.

consoles sold at a loss

[jackstack]

I heard from a birdie that MS atleast sells the XBox360 at cost (i.e. no profit). Very similar to the inkjet printer business models...

Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[Thornkin]

In my opinion, Sony has mis-judged the market. They saw the success of the PS2 with its ability to play DVD and misread the reasons. It is true that the inclusion of DVD made the PS2 a better seller. You got a game system and a DVD player for a little more than the price of a DVD player at the time. Sony seems to be forgetting that DVD was an established trend when the PS2 launched. It was a given that most people would want DVD players, it was just a question of when. That is not the case for bluray.
Two big factors effect this. First, BluRay is not a guaranteed winner the way DVD was. DVD had no competition. BluRay does. HD-DVD is a viable alternative and is on the market already. Second, there is no ready-made mass market for BluRay. It is a niche item at best right now. On a regular TV, it does me nothing that a DVD player won't. DVD brought better picture, direct scene access, and bonus features. BluRay brings a better picture iff you have a $2000+ TV. If you don't, it doesn't get you anything.
Sony seems convinced that everyone wants a BRD player and will see the PS3 as a discounted way to get one. Listen to their execs. They all tout that it is cheaper than standalone BRD players. That's true. It is, however, more expensive than a standalone HD-DVD player. People will pay a little more for a combination item if the second part is something they want. Outside of the videophile community, I don't see the demand for high-definition movies. The extra $200 premium for BRD won't be viewed as a discount over the $1000 a standalone player costs. Instead, it will be viewed as a tax over the cost of an XBox 360.

Re:Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[be-fan]

BluRay brings a better picture iff you have a $2000+ TV

Where do people get the idea that HDTV's still cost so much? You can get a 27" 1080i HDTV with an HDMI input and built-in tuner for $380 from Best Buy (probably even cheaper online). This is only about $80 more than the corresponding non-HDTV.

Re:Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[rrdm2k]

Since this topic is about the UK pricing of the PS3, I'd like to point out that the cheapest British HD 27" set I could find online costs 600 quid or $1,128:

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5 361971/Trail/C%24cip%3D36693.Sound%2Band%2Bvision% 3EC%24cip%3D36785.Televisions%3EC%24Screen+Size+(i nches)%3D27.27.htm

That's in a sale and "HD ready" which means its only 720p IIRC. HDTVs may be cheap as chips in the US but over here they cost a bit more.

Re:Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[WillAffleckUW]

I agree. I haven't had one discussion with any kid or teen in which they expressed the slightest interest in the BRD player features of the PS3 - it's all been about the games they could play on it.

So long as that's so, Sony has to bring their non-crippled price down to at least the $500 UDS equivalent price mark, or there will be a lot of surprised Sony execs realizing they messed up come Christmas.

Especially when the Wii is going to be even cheaper than that.

Re:Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[Perky_Goth]

$380 is still a crap load of money in a lot of places (plus, without rebates and weird promotions like in the US). And from what I've heard, for screens smaller than 30", there isn't much of a point in HD.

Re:Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[LordVader717]

In Europe they only market flat-screen HDTVs. No CRTs. The best offer I've seen sofar (although I haven't looked around too much) has been a 720p LCD for 799 Euros.

Re:Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[Jarlsberg]

So what resolution works best for you with your 17-24" monitor? 640x480?

Re:Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[Perky_Goth]

17"? right... not that they're expensive anymore, but sorry, don't have one. besides, on my pc i want to read text, so i need more definition. i was repiting what Alex Lindsay said in Twit and This week in media, and from his way of talking about broadcast, i'm pretty sure he knows a lot.
still, yes, it's a personal opinion, but i don't think people really want to pay for the previlege of watching crap in higher resolution.
to each his own, i probably shouldn't have replied to you yesterday :)

Re:Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[Jarlsberg]

Sorry if it sounded aggressive, but I really do think it's bull to say you don't need high def if you've got a small TV. But of course, as you point out, it's a matter of personal opinion, and what you watch on TV. Certainly, if you've got an Xbox 360, or are planning to buy a PS3, or are considering HD-DVD/Blu-ray, buying a non-HD TV at this point is pretty short-sighted.

Re:Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[Paul Crowley]

The cheapest TV I can find in the UK with an output resolution greater than 1366x768 (ie better than 720p, good enough for 1080i) was GB 964. Others are marketed as "supporting 1080i" which means that they can downsample..

Re:Sony is making a critical error in judgement

[be-fan]

Why do you need 1080i? 720p has several times more resolution than SDTV, and looks damn good, especially on screens in the 27-35" category.

I've got a 60" 1080i screen at home, and my friend has a 720p 37". The picture on each screen is about the same, all told. Both are a hell of a sight better than any SDTV at that size.

Bah, Uk is always expensive.

[Angelwrath]

Everyone knows that the UK is expensive. But it's the easiest conversion in the world, at least for Canadians. For Canadians, we take the price of something, and change the $ dollar sign to the Pound sign, and you have the UK price. Easy peasy.

And Sony is right - this is a cheap machine for a Blu-Ray drive. Don't you remember the Superdrive when Apple was first to market? The Superdrive alone was selling for something like $600-$900 and that was representing half the cost of an Apple Mac.

Beyond any doubt, the Blu-Ray drive costs a pretty penny, and to get it in a console for such a price is peanuts.

Computer..

[wingman358]

Lemme ask you this: Would you buy a top of the line computer with HD graphics, free internet gaming, wireless controllers, and a next-gen media player for $800?? I know that consoles and computers are definitely not one in the same, but go with me on it.

The Price is Unimportant

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought the N64 - It was a mistake
I bought the GC - It was a mistake
The SNES was really nice. But my Amiga was better.

I really don't need 100 different Mario games. Actually I don't need Mario at all. Maybe children or their parents might be interested in buying a Nintendo console, because games are less violent. But really. I'm an adult - I want to see blood. porn and realistic gfx. Nintendo is a toy maker.

And besides : I am going to buy a plasma for 1500 Euro and a new Apple PC plus the PS3. I love hardware :-D ... 1000 Euro might be too much for some but not 400 - 700. Probably everbody who owns the Ps2 will upgrade to Ps3 because of backwards compatibility.

Well bugger me...

[HolyMonkey]

... and give me my Wii!

PS3 Doomed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Far too expensive for a console. Sony will have to subsidise the cost of Bluray disks to make them cheaper than DVDs for it to get any foothold in the market as a HD player. Most gamers probably won't also be buying HDTVs in addition to such an expensive console (currently about £1400 for a decent HDTV in the UK), so that won't help sell it. Sony will need a huge number of killer titles, or the PS3 is doomed. They will also need better development tools. The current toolchain is most definitely obtuse and does not do nearly enough to help developers parallelise their code to take advantage of the Cell's architecture. Optimising specifically for the PS3 is not a something that is necessarily cost effective or practical for all developers. As far as I am concerned, the Cell is a mistake. Sony would have been better to embed three fantastic out-of-order cores, and a good graphics chipset, coupled by a fast bus topology. This would have been vastly superior to the currently more promising, but still relatively feeble, three in-order cores that the Xbox has. I hope I am wrong about this, but the tech signs are not promising.

Re:Typical

[Khaed]

Actually, if you look at his other posts, he pretty much spends every gaming thread bitching about people shilling for Nintendo. If anything he is a fanboy, or at least a Nintendo hater. I thought "Gee, another guy complaining about people shilling for Nintendo... oh wait... that name is familiar..."

Yeah, the guy thinks we're being paid, too. Just because I think $600 is crazy. If Nintendo was paying me I could afford a PS3.

What you technically get for the $ doesn't matter

[King_TJ]

I think you have to look at the psychology behind console sales. The buyer wants a fun gaming experience, and the ability to pay for the whole thing piecemeal.

Why didn't you see PS2's bundled with a 5 or 10 pack of games, or even including a memory card and 2 controllers, right in the original box? Simple! Because the typical consumer feels much more comfortable shelling out, say, $600 as $200 here, another $50 here, and maybe $90 there, etc. until reaching that $600 total, rather than bam - $600 up-front.

I barely know *anyone* who uses a PS2 who didn't buy that 2nd. controller and a memory card, and owns at least 5 or 6 game titles! Yet almost none of them would have paid for all of that in one box, even if it was discounted a little bit as a bundle!

This is going to be the PS3's problem too. Even if consumers *do* wind up wanting blue-ray players shortly after the thing is released, and feel it's a good value for all the cool games it plays, plus the blue-ray capability - they won't want to swallow the whole cost up-front. It'll just feel like too much of an investment in something that's far from a necessity.

If Sony wants successful adoption of these units, and this really is close to the cost to build 'em, they're going to have to take a big loss up-front on the sales, and find a way to nickle and dime the buyers on all the "must have" extras and games so they can make it all back in the long-haul.

loss of sales...

[SCDavis]

I had discussed this in one of my classes, and a $600+ system is too much for a gaming system, especially when the nintendo is going to be half of that... even xbox is rumored to be lowering their prices when the wii comes out... and if you go for the lower end system, you dont get the blue ray, right? bah and i wanted to see GTA4 (hopefully the 360 will put it out... or are they?) -Davis

Re:Typical

[sasdrtx]

Nintendo Doesn't Love You.

I don't mean that in the sense that if you showed up to Mr. Iwata's mansion and asked him for a loan, bits of you would be found in the feces of his guard dogs the next day. I mean, that's true, but that's not the point.

Awesome!

Re:Wouldn't it be great..

[Anonymous Coward]

WÜRDE NICHT ES GROSS SEIN, DEN FERNSEHAPPARAT EINZUSCHALTEN UND IRGENDEINEN VEREINIGTE STAATEN PRÄSIDENTEN, DEMOKRATEN ODER REPUBLIKANISCHES GEBEN ZU HÖREN DIE FOLGENDE REDE?

My fellow Americans: Wie aller Sie wissen, ist die Niederlage der Irak des Regimes durchgeführt worden.

Da Kongreß nicht keines Geld für diesen Krieg ausgeben möchte, ist unsere Mission im Irak komplett.

Heute morgen erteilte ich den Auftrag für einen kompletten Abbau aller amerikanischen Kräfte vom Irak. Diese Tätigkeit ist innerhalb 30 Tage komplett.

Sie soll jetzt die Berechnung anfangen. Vor mir habe ich zwei Listen. Eine Liste enthält die Namen der Länder, die unsere Seite während des der Irak Konflikts bereitgestanden haben. Diese Liste ist kurz. Das Vereinigte Königreich, das Spanien, das Bulgarien, das Australien und das Polen sind einige der Länder, die dort verzeichnet werden.

Die andere Liste enthält jeder nicht auf der ersten Liste. Die meisten Nationen der Welt sind auf dieser Liste. Mein Pressesekretär wird Kopien beider Listen später heute abend verteilen.

Lassen Sie mich beginnen, indem Sie sagen, daß wirkungsvoll sofort, Auslandshilfe zu jenen Nationen auf Liste 2 sofort und unbestimmt aufhört. Das Geld, das während des ersten Jahres alleine gespart wird, willen recht viel Bezahlung für die Kosten des irakischen Krieges.

Die amerikanischen Leute werden nicht mehr Geld in dritte WeltHölle-bohrungen gießen und jene Regierung Führer aufpassen, auf Korruption fett zu wachsen.

Notwendigkeit Hilfe bei einem Hunger? Wringen mit einer Epidemie? Anruf Frankreich.

Zukünftig zusammen mit Kongreß, arbeite ich, um dieses Geld in Richtung zum Lösen der Ärgernsozialprobleme umzuadressieren, die wir noch zu Hause haben. Auf dieser Anmerkung ein Wort zu den Terroristorganisationen. Schraube mit uns und uns jagt Sie, Sie und alle Ihre Freunde vom Gesicht der Masse niederzuwerfen und zu beseitigen.

Thirsting für ein gutsy Land terrorize? Versuch Frankreich oder möglicherweise China. Ich bestelle das sofortige Trennen der diplomatischen Relationen mit Frankreich, Deutschland und Rußland. Dank für Ihre ganze Hilfe, Kameraden.

Wir ziehen uns von NATO außerdem zurück. Bonwahrscheinlichkeit, mes amis.

Ich habe den Bürgermeister von New York City angewiesen, die, vielen UNO diplomatischen Träger zu schleppen anzufangen, die in Manhattan mit mehr als zwei unbezahlten Parkenkarten zu den Aufstellungsorten gelegen sind, in denen jene Träger abgestreift, zerrissen und zerquetscht werden. Ich interessiere nicht mich für, was Vertrag dieses betrifft. Sie kriechen haben 10 Tausenden der unbezahlten Karten. Zahlen Sie jene Karten morgen oder passen Sie Ihr kostbares Benzes, Beamers auf und limos werden zu einigen der feinsten Hiebgeschäfte in der Welt umgedreht. Ich liebe New York.

Eine spezielle Anmerkung zu unseren Nachbarn. Kanada ist auf Liste 2. Da wir wahrscheinlich sind, von einander viel mehr zu sehen, konnten Sie Völker wünschen pissing versuchen wir weg nicht für eine Änderung.

Mexiko ist auch auf Liste 2. Präsident Fox und seine gesamte verdorbene Regierung benötigt wirklich eine Haltung Justage. Ich habe einen Paarextrabehälter und die Infanterieabteilungen, die herum sitzen. Schätzen Sie, daß wohin ich EM setzen werde? Yep Randsicherheit. Fangen Sie so an, etwas mit Ihrem Öl zu tun.

OH- übrigens die Vereinigten Staaten abschafft den NAFTA Vertrag - jetzt beginnend.

Wir sind von der Einweglandstraße müde. Sofort werden wir für Öl in Alaska bohren - das um Ölnotwendigkeiten dieses Landes an den Dekaden zu kommen kümmert. Wenn Sie ein Ökologe sind, der dieser Entscheidung entgegensetzt, verweise ich Sie auf Liste 2 oben: wählen Sie ein Land aus und bewege

The ironic thing is...

[The Great Pretender]

that the British are also such tight-wades with their cash! Talk about a bad marketing scheme, they totally hit the wrong country with the high price. Of course we'll opt for the cheaper platforms...Lordy, Sony does it again.

Re:Typical

[NeutronCowboy]

Why is this insightful? Yeah, it's a fact that as soon as someone brings up the high price of the PS3, someone brings up the argument that the Wii will profit from this. That's because a lot of people think like that - including me. And they think that because the low price of the Wii and the new controller are actually the reasons that they'll buy a Wii and not a PS3 - including me.

Methinks that you're simply a disappointed Sony fanboi who can't handle the fact that they aren't part of the cool team anymore. Get over it.

One Word Makes It Viable

[FathomIT]

Inflation

Don't care--not interested in a $600-$700 player

[n0w0rries]

I can't wait until Blue Ray comes out. I can't wait to spend $600-$700 on a player, then $40 per movie, and I get to hassle with DRM for no extra charge!

I can see it now... I've got some friends over... hey let's watch a movie!

Authorizing your movie... please wait...

Authorization error -3212455661220
Would you like to retry?

Authorization server did not respond. Please call 800-555-SONY to unlock this movie.

Thank you for calling 800-555-SONY. For english, press one now.

Thank you. Please enter the serial number located on your movie package, followed by the pound key

You entered... four...five...one...two...three..nine...five...zer o...one...two...two...two..three..four..five..one. .
If this is correct, press one now.

Thank you. Please enter the serial number of your blue ray dvd player

Thank you. Please hold for the next available anti-piracy specialist. The average hold time is...12... minutes.

Thank you for holding, how can I help you?

We're sorry about that. I need the serial number of the movie and the serial number of your blue ray dvd player.

Whats worse is...

[Belial6]

What is worse is that they could pigon hole Bluray as being the "PS3 Movie Format". If that happens, they can forget about wide spread adoption, as even Joe Sixpack knows that the PS3 will be replaced by something newer and better in a few years.

UK Sandwich

[bombadillo]

This is stupid. It's like me as an American complaining about the cost of a sandwich in the U.K. Oh my that sandwich in the plastic triangle costs 3 quid. That's almost 6 dollars! They are selling sandwich's for 6 dollars! Surely no Brittish citizen will pay 6 AMERICAN dollars for a sandwich in a plastic triangle!

A few years ago when I lived in England I seem to remember xbox,ps2 and gamecube going for a numerical price as in the U.S. The exchange rate of course pushed the price of a UK machine in U.S dollars well over it's American counter part.

TV system doesn't match.

[tepples]

I'd just like to comment that the PSTwo (slim PS2) makes a decent DVD player

I live in the USA and have imported an all-region DVD (Wobbl and Bob Volume 1) from the UK. It works in my Region 1 PC DVD-ROM and my $60 Region 1 Apex DVD player, but all I get on my PStwo (NTSC U/C) is "TV system doesn't match." It appears that the PStwo is incapable of resampling PAL video (704x576, 25fps) to NTSC (704x480, 29.97fps).

Re:TV system doesn't match.

[drinkypoo]

Yeah, that's pretty sad. Personally I use XBMC to play DVDs now, since it seems to work pretty well... And I think I've come around to the idea that when I rip one I ought to just make a mkv with the subs and such. It's not so cross-platform but it plays in the places I need to play it. It's even sadder because I have a TV that can do NTSC or PAL, and it's not even a new one; it's an old-ass Sony video monitor with two composite, one s-video, and a cga :)

But.... VHS sucked

[popo]

That's why DVD inclusion in the PS2 wasn't a dumb idea.

DVD's were a massive leap over the pathetic quality (and "sequential access") of VHS.

By contrast, DVD's don't suck. So Sony, if your potential market is people who have HD Televisions AND want to be early adopters of unproven media AND don't mind waiting for a meaningful list of available titles to become available AND don't mind shelling out goofy amounts of cash per title... then congratulations on your "niche".

For a second there we thought you guys were trying to make a mass market product.

DUPE!

[yem]

Yeah it's expensive. We get it. Do we really need a daily reminder?

Slashdot is getting to be as bad as the blogs *cough*joystiq*cough*kotaku*cough*

This is just fanboy-bait.

Spot on, however

[geekoid]

"no, as a gamer I don't give a flying fuck about the controller being with/without vibration, banana shaped, nunchaku shaped, mouse+keyboard, or whatever, either. That's just means too"

a bad controller can ruin a good game.

Supply and demand

[GunFodder]

Blu-Ray player manufacturers are still ramping up their production facilities. They are probably only producing players in very limited numbers. Given the limited supply they need to figure out a price that reduces demand to the point where they can keep up. Otherwise stores can't keep the players on their shelves. Prices will drop once manufacturers have the capacity to produce sufficient quantities to keep up with the larger demand for a unit at a lower price. If anyone is keeping their prices artificially high then they are going to end up with a lot of warehoused stock, which will have to be sold at a discount later anyway.

Re:Supply and demand

[Babbster]

What in God's name are you talking about? So, you're positing that the primary reason for the ridiculous price of Blu-Ray is to keep demand down? What a crock. There has to be a lot more to it than that considering Toshiba is already selling HD-DVD players for $500 and RCA units hitting the street next week for the same price. And if your theory is correct, then what does that say about the prices of HD-DVD players in the next 6-12 months? Blu-Ray will have zero ability to compete for the mass home movie audience unless their prices can match up (down) to HD-DVD.

Re:Typical

[Golias]

Actually, if you look at his other posts, he pretty much spends every gaming thread bitching about people shilling for Nintendo.

If, by "every gaming thread", you mean "three gaming threads", then yes. However, I've been around and posting on gaming threads since long before you had your first wet dream of playing Zelda with a motion-sensor.

Oh, and look at that... the ONE thread in my current history where you can see I made a similar complaint, it was was ANOTHER thread about a console other than the Nintendo which the fanboys were spamming with cheers for the Wii. What a shock.

As long as the drumbeat of tiresome rah-rah keeps coming up for this console (which hasn't even been released yet) in every goddamn console thread that ISN'T about the Wii, and as long as I have interludes of idle time to joyously point out your fanboyish idiocy, I will continue to do so without apology.

Re:Typical

[Khaed]

However, I've been around and posting on gaming threads since long before you had your first wet dream of playing Zelda with a motion-sensor.

Fanboy alert. Seriously, that's the kind of fanboy flamebait crap that goes on every time there's a new generation of consoles. I don't know what kind of a weird, weird world you live in, but I don't have wet dreams about Zelda, or motion-sensors, nor do I have regular dreams about Zelda, or motion-sensors, or video games, or computer pereipherals. Note, also, that having longevity as someone who bitches about fanboys isn't really impressive.

Sorry that, you know, I don't spend enough time in Slashdot's gaming section to recognize your name from the N64 vs. PSX days where you bitched and whined about N64 fanboys (both of them).

Just think about how weird it is that, of the thousands of active Slashdot posters, I recognized your name almost instantly as someone who bitches about Nintendo "fanboys" and "astroturfing" and "shills."

every goddamn console thread that ISN'T about the Wii

We're discussing price, so it's relevant. The other thread?

It was about the price of the PS3 as well. Hence, the Wii's low price came up. I could see if, for example, we had a thread discussing the graphics capabilities, or the Cell processor, and suddenly people started talking about the Wii (unless we were comparing processors, at which point, the PS3 would win by a large margin).

I am no more a Nintendo fanboy than you are a paid shill for Sony; I bought the PSX and PS2 and have enjoyed them, and I'll buy a PS3... when the price isn't $600. Which was part of the discussion in both the threads where you went about whining about Nintendo fanboys. I am sorry that I do not have the same loyalty to a Japanese gaming company that you do, and that me expressing it offends your sensibilities.

Actually, no, I'm not. But I am a bit amused by the whole "I've been in gaming threads longer than you!" thing you said.

Compare Nintendo fans to Nazi's! That'll be fun!

Baad assumption

[Guppy06]

"I think actually, it's probably a cheap machine. If you think a Blu-Ray player by itself might be £600-700, and we're coming in at just £425, it's a bargain."

This assumes that people actually want a BluRay player. The market viability of BluRay in general isn't a sure thing.

Either the guy being quoted said it while wincing at having to toe the company line like this ("Of course everybody wants BluRay!"), or there are going to be some unhappy stockholders when they see how many executives are so willing to jump off a cliff like this.

Re:Typical

[Golias]

Methinks that you're simply a disappointed Sony fanboi who can't handle the fact that they aren't part of the cool team anymore. Get over it.

Interesting theory. I've never owned a PS2, though, nor the PS before it.

If I salivate over Nintendo's new underpowered, stupidly-named, overpriced (That's right! Overpriced! It's the only one made with hardware so cheap, they are selling it at a profit on launch day! Sony's new $800 box for $600 is too expensive, but Nintendo's $150 box for $250 is a fuckin' rip-off.) and not-yet-released console because it promises to let me pretend to swing swords with a TV remote, will that get me on this "cool team" of yours?

Re:Typical

[Golias]

Fanboy alert.

Fanboy of what? Pointing out fanboys means I must be a fanboy of something else. Wierd logic you have there.

I don't know what kind of a weird, weird world you live in, but I don't have wet dreams about Zelda, or motion-sensors, nor do I have regular dreams about Zelda, or motion-sensors, or video games, or computer pereipherals.

You must have been home sick the day they were handing out senses of humor.

Note, also, that having longevity as someone who bitches about fanboys isn't really impressive.

Did I say I've been bitching about fanboys for all this time? Heck no! I'm just bitching about Revolution/Wii fanboys because they are the most absurd people I've ever seen on this forum. The object of their affection hasn't even been made yet, and they love it so much they are prepared to scream and yell at me for pointing out that it just very well might turn out to be something less than a complete "revolution" of the industry.

360 is less successful than Xbox 1 in the US too.

[News for nerds]

The PS3 is expensive, but it's the only player in it's domain in Japan -- the Xbox 360 has, somehow, been less successful than the original Xbox over there.

Xbox 360 is less successful than Xbox 1 in the US too. These are the data released by the most reliable market research company, NPD.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10136 9

Xbox: Nov 2001 - Apr 2002
Xbox 360: Nov 2005 - Apr 2006

Hardware Sales
Xbox 1: 1,873,857 - Xbox 360: 1,504,684

Software Sales
Xbox 1: 8,165,786 - Xbox 360: 6,700,125

Maybe I'm a Sony whore, but...

[daybot]

Before I start, let me just say that £425 is indeed a lot of money. Even here in the UK, it buys you a reasonable computer.

...but:

1) Find me a fast CPU with 7 usable cores for that money.

2) I'm really excited about Blu-Ray because of its storage capacity and HD resolution; if it's cheaper than other Blu-Ray players at release time it'll be a bargain, otherwise it will drive the cost of Blu-Ray players right down as nobody's going to buy a low/mid-range player that costs as much as/more than the PS3. Win/win for Sony and the consumer.

3) Selling gaming hardware at a loss a la Xbox is a bad idea; it encourages the use of mega cheapo components (again, a la Xbox i.e. the overheating PSUs and dead fans) and drives up the cost of games + cripples developers.

4) If the UK gets the PS3 at the same time as other markets, it saves the early adopter lots of cash / air miles so I reckon the average cost for such a consumer to be lower than other releases such as the PlayStation 1 - people used to buy imported ones for £600+.

5) Sony is using this money from its loyal customer base and stronger than steel franchise to produce a hugely innovative console. Kudos to them for using these assets to do something ambitious.

6) If you look at the rise in cost of the "enthusiast" graphics card solutions that PS3 is competing with, against the rise in cost of the PlayStation consoles, the situation looks a bit different.

Personally, I'm looking forward to preordering my UK PS3, and if you think £425 is expensive, wait till you see what they'll go for on ebay during the Christmas rush!

PS: The extra cash for the UK version is what it costs the lorries in fuel duty to get from the docks to the stores ;P

Re:Maybe I'm a Sony whore, but...

[Wozbacca]

1) Find me a fast CPU with 7 usable cores for that money.
--- that doesnt mean anything. who needs 7 cores?

2) I'm really excited about Blu-Ray because of its storage capacity and HD resolution; if it's cheaper than other Blu-Ray players at release time it'll be a bargain, otherwise it will drive the cost of Blu-Ray players right down as nobody's going to buy a low/mid-range player that costs as much as/more than the PS3. Win/win for Sony and the consumer.
--- HD-DVD will be much cheaper and have a larger market share leading to faster adoption

3) Selling gaming hardware at a loss a la Xbox is a bad idea; it encourages the use of mega cheapo components (again, a la Xbox i.e. the overheating PSUs and dead fans) and drives up the cost of games + cripples developers.
--- sony would be selling at a loss with the ps3, they did with teh ps2, every console is sold at a loss and the money is made back on the profit on the software. the 360 is sold at a lost, but theres a catchment ratio of 4.2:1 so they've probably made that loss back already!

4) If the UK gets the PS3 at the same time as other markets, it saves the early adopter lots of cash / air miles so I reckon the average cost for such a consumer to be lower than other releases such as the PlayStation 1 - people used to buy imported ones for £600+.
--- there will still be stock flow issues, they havent even got a single working prototype yet. at E3 they had three different dev kits showcasing the different sides of it. i still imagine fanboys struggling to get consoles in their countries so they'll pick it up abroad or get it on ebay for 10 times the price.

5) Sony is using this money from its loyal customer base and stronger than steel franchise to produce a hugely innovative console. Kudos to them for using these assets to do something ambitious.
--- you mean taking the piss out of the early adopters, abusing the loyal fanbase of hardcore gamers to make money off them to get the casual gamer

6) If you look at the rise in cost of the "enthusiast" graphics card solutions that PS3 is competing with, against the rise in cost of the PlayStation consoles, the situation looks a bit different.
--- its a bodged geforce chipset that is based on PC architecture from 6months ago. the 360 is custom a designed chipset based on what will be in PCs in about 6months time. the 360 wins the graphics chipset war hands down

Personally, I'm looking forward to preordering my UK PS3, and if you think £425 is expensive, wait till you see what they'll go for on ebay during the Christmas rush!
--- which is why i'll be preordering mine, to sell back on ebay straight away.
PS: The extra cash for the UK version is what it costs the lorries in fuel duty to get from the docks to the stores ;P

Re:Typical

[Khaed]

and they love it so much they are prepared to scream and yell at me for pointing out that it just very well might turn out to be something less than a complete "revolution" of the industry.

Eh, but that's not what you're doing. What you're doing is whining about people who are discussing the Wii on Slashdot, and discussing the price differences.

Looking at it rationally

[xtieburn]

Well I believe I can rationalise this. I mean things are always going to look expensive in England but while the pound is worth a lot of dollars, the pounds in our pay cheques are worth more as well.

So I did a comparison using amazon. The X-Box360 core in England is £209.99 ($396.11). In America its $299.99.

So we see the X-Box is upped by $96.12 in its transfer over to us. Which for every dollar you are spending an extra 32 cents.

The PS3 has a comparison of $600 to £425 ($801.68) Well thats an upping of $201.68 but your spending more dollars so get a per dollar amount. That comes to 34 cents. Or if they were hammering out X-Box360's thatd be upping it by roughly $101.93. So only about $5 or 2 or 3 quid more than the 360.

This just isnt an unusual price for the cross over to pounds. While I still believe it is overpriced in general. They arnt really over pricing it even more.

So cant really bash for there conversion price (Well unless your bashing the whole conversion price thing in general.) but if your just bashing for the overpricing in general. Carry on.

Remember 3DO price - $700(!) in 1993(!!)

[jesup]

I was offered a job at 3DO (where a bunch of my friends worked) in 1993, for a good salary for the time. I ended up turning it down, because when I got home I said "I should be a primary customer for this - 30ish early-adopter-gamer-techie - and I wouldn't pay what they're asking ($700)". I had met with Trip Hawkins (head of 3DO and EA), and he's used his reality-distortion field to convince me (temporarily) that early adopters would buy it anyways, and there was no need to push the price down. Luckily, I had told myself I wouldn't decide while I was there.

Trip even called me at home the next weekend to try to change my mind (and find out why I turned them down), and I told him the same thing. He disagreed. I think I was proven right. :-)

Re:What you technically get for the $ doesn't matt

[oddguy9000]

But...the $600 in this case just get you a PS3, not a PS3 and 5 or 6 games, extra controllers and whatever. Just the console.

Wii's Graphics Will be weaker

[Nazmun]

While i'm not putting down the wii as a console but even the average Joe should be able to find a difference in graphics between a Wii vs. 360/PS3. The wii is unfortunately quite a bit weaker technically then ms/sony's consoles. It may be less noticeable if you lack hdtv though as all wii games will be programmed to run in standard resolution.

Re:Wii's Graphics Will be weaker

[Z80a]

how much weaker is what we need to see,Wii Vid chip is not ready yet :3

Re:Typical

[VJ42]

I'm no fanboi; before the DS, the previous handheld I owned was the Atari Lynx, my previous console was the Sega Mega Drive (both given to me by my parents; though my brother has owned both the Play Station and PS2, I've enjoyed both, again he got them from my parents). Infact I've never owned a Nintendo product before, not even a Game boy. I was just commenting on the price differential; though now I'm out of Uni and have my own disposabe income, I think I'll probably buy a Wii and an maybe XBox 360 aswell. With the upcoming price drop, it'll still be cheaper than the PS3

Re:Typical

[msh104]

you know,

this high price might actually work out quite well for the xbox sales as well.
when you present people with three simulair "things" ranging for cheap to most expensive, many people seem to go for the middle choice.

Golias = shill?

[hkmwbz]

That guy seems to be obsessed with Wii fans. It's almost like he hasn't been around for the last few years to witness the hordes of fanboys from both the Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft camp.

I'll admit that this time around, Wii fans are more noticeable because the Wii seems to be winning the "buzz war". I am but one example of a guy who hasn't been really that interested in gaming for years, but the Wii has gotten me really excited. But I don't see a lot of fanboys. They seem to be more genuinely interested in the Wii, but without being a fanboy like Golias.

You know, considering Golias's posting history, I'd say that he is a shill for either Sony or Microsoft. Most likely Sony, since he seems to hate the fact that the Wii gets more positive press and has more fans rooting for it.

When he says "I'm sick and tired of fanboys" what he's really saying is that "I'm sick and tired of my favorite console/my employer not getting the attention I think it deserves". The PS2 won the last "console war". Sony had a massive following of fanboys that crushed all other groups of fanboys. Now Golias and his fellow Sony fanboys/shills are outnumbered by Nintendo fans and people who are curious about the Wii. I think that makes him furious.

But whatabout ps2 Launch

[Nazmun]

It's quite valid to say taht most ps2's are probably connected to some smaller tv's now that it's been a budget console for several years. But how about at launch? Did those enthusiasts who spent a phenominal $300 dollars also put them on the smallest tv's in the house to experience their awesome new graphics and surround sound?

I still have my ps2 plugged into my bigscreen (36inch old sd tuber mind you) and a dolby digital sound system. It just makes gaming a hell of a lot better.

$800...thats nothing...$1000 in Australia.

[dr.banes]

My brother is in Australia and thats what they want to charge.This is getting quite ridiculous, the fact that $500 or $600 comes into the equation and conversation is crazy. Is Sony forgetting that we need hdtvs to appreciate all this stuff. Who really needs Blu-Ray or HD-DVD for that matter. I really can't tell the difference using an upconversion dvd player on a plasma or lcd which is fine to me.

yea

[MeridianBlade]

I assumed this!

PS3 cost

[Holmesey]

In a way it's dear as they have previously told us that it wont be as dear as the XB 360 but this is dearer. But then again when you think of a blue ray disk....

I think the problem is:

[goldcd]

"If you think a Blu-Ray player by itself might be £600-700"

I'm sure as f*ck not going to pay anything approaching that for a BR player in a million years - I'm pretty sure I don't even want one at all.

Sony's entire logic for justifying the price of the PS3 seems to be "Well just think how much more we'd be screwing you if you bought a BR standalone player (and yes this would be the standard they're trying to get into as many homes as possible).

The more you think about it, the more warped it seems. It can't actually cost them more to make a BR player than a PS3 - so either:
a) they're ripping off all the BR player buyers and shooting themselves in the foor with the 3rd parties by undercutting them. b) they're taking a massive hit on each PS3 they sell with a subsidy - which means the games will be horrendously expensive as they try to claw back the hundres of dollars you 'owe them' - and all the people who just want it for films, buy a PS3, don't buy games, so Sony'll have to claw back the money on BR films (which will in turn give HD-DVD the advantage) and and oh ffs.....

Re:Typical

[Golias]

I'm cool with discussing the Wii. The Wii gets several articles written about it each week where you'll never hear me complain about people discussing it. What I'm complaining about is Wii fanboys shilling for it on articles about other stuff.