Sony's Harrison on Sony Arrogance

Joystiq had the chance to exchange a few words with Sony's Phil Harrison at the UK Develop Conference. They asked him some hard questions about the crazy comments that have been coming out of the company since E3. From the article: "There's always going to be a risk when you are market leader for ten years that we start to lose perspective; and we have to make sure that we don't lose perspective. But I don't think we're arrogant, I think we have to recognize that we're in a highly competitive industry and that anything that we say will be eternally editorialized by professionals and consumers alike. So we're always in the spotlight." After the tape was off he snarked that he hadn't been asked very nice questions. Poor guy, having to answer questions that aren't 'How awesome is the PS3 going to be?'

Comments

Dear Zonk

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Zonk,

You are not a journalist nor a competent editorial writer. Please post your snarky comments (in response to others' snarky comments) in the comments section like I'm doing, so that they may be voted "+5, Taking potshots at the market share leader in a given field."

Re:Dear Zonk

[tfurrows]

And yet, in spite of Zonk's apparent lack of writing skills, hundreds of /. readers will take this opportunity to get their energy out concerning yet-another arrogant industry-leader... None of us uses slashot for the quality (or grammar) of the writing, but for the chance to participate in the mele of the comments :)

Re:Dear Zonk

[rehtonAesoohC]

Only problem is that Zonk would be Anonymous Coward and your point is moot.

Re:Dear Zonk

[jizziknight]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that when AC comments like this get modded up that it was the person who modded the comment up who posted as AC?

Re:Dear Zonk

[VJ42]

It's been upmodded twice, so it's just you ;p

Re:Dear Zonk

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I knew you couldn't moderate a thread in which your IP posted an AC comment.

Re:Dear Zonk

[fotbr]

Thats ok, post AC from the office, Mod your comment up from home.

Or "borrow" your neighbor's open 802.11x connection. Or just fire up the ole stand-by dial-up connection.

Re:Dear Zonk

[wheany]

So you think that ACs can't make up-mod-worthy comments? Curse those sub-human anonymous cowards!

Re:Dear Zonk

[fotbr]

No, just pointing out some obvious ways to get around the "can't moderate a thread your IP appears in" bit. Nothing more than that.

To Sum Up

[Anonymous Coward]

So let's see...Some guy from joystick.com does an ambush interview that basically amounts to "Do you admit that you are arrogant, Yes or No!"

And this is...news?

Re:To Sum Up

[Kohath]

Have you watched or read the news lately? This is pure gold compared to a lot of the rest of the news.

Re:To Sum Up

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the news about the third world war starting in the middle east? Yep, burying yourself in console prop sure beats reality!

Not about the PSP, they're not.

[Rachel Lucid]

Hard to be arrogant when you just shelved your main media distribution...

Re:Not about the PSP, they're not.

[monopole]

And instituted a yet infinitely stupider format in its place. Dropping the UMD in favor of a $60-120 memory stick which will only play one movie (out of a choice of Hitch, S.W.A.T., The Grudge, or XXX: State of the Union) at 240x320 resolution! We can rule out arrogance at this point in that it implies self preservation.

Have you stopped beating your wife?

[jharv13]

Any answer Sony gives is "wrong."

"We're not arrogant" yields, "see?! Seeeeee??"

"Ok, we're arrogant" is just as stupid.

I can't imagine how joystiq figured that'd be a useful question, except in the context of badgering Sony. Why he'd set out to do that intentionally is clearly up for debate. When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, I suppose.

So, joystiq, "have you stopped badgering Sony?"

\harv
-
no sig today, maybe tomorrow

Re:Have you stopped beating your wife?

[Burlap]

agreed, this is a horid interview. Joystick set out to make sony look the fool and did a good job of making themselves look bad insted.

Now, I'm about as much of a Wii fan-girl as you're ever going to find, but I think that Mr Harrisson handled that interview with class and more civility then Joystick deserved.... I think Phil may have just got a new greese rag in the form of a t-shirt.

Re:Have you stopped beating your wife?

[oahazmatt]

Any answer Sony gives is "wrong." "We're not arrogant" yields, "see?! Seeeeee??" "Ok, we're arrogant" is just as stupid. I can't imagine how joystiq figured that'd be a useful question, except in the context of badgering Sony. Why he'd set out to do that intentionally is clearly up for debate. When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, I suppose. So, joystiq, "have you stopped badgering Sony?

The question is relating to how he felt regarding comments of Sony's arrogance. The question moved on to how the negative comments are affecting Sony.

I don't see that as badgering Sony. It is asking relevant questions. Had the question been "Why are you so arrogant" it would have been a different story. The questions were asking for responses to accusations, not accusing in themselves.

Re:Have you stopped beating your wife?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I don't know, I'd call the CD spyware thing arrogant. Selling portable audio players that required users to convert their entire libraries to ATRAC in order to play them is pretty arrogant. Sony thinking they could sell movie UMDs at nearly the price of the DVD counterparts was pretty arrogant, in my opinion. The DVD "+" writable standard was pretty arrogant, IMO, they didn't get accepted so they joined HP in making it anyway. I don't think the Blu-Ray standard counts as it's not a Sony format, but a format co-developed by at least a half-dozen major companies like Pioneer, Matsushita (Panasonic, JVC), and all the other hardware makers on the DVD consortium save two.

Re:Have you stopped beating your wife?

[Sage Gaspar]

The trend in video game "journalism" these days is asking "tough" questions for the sake of asking them. If you look like you're standing up to big corporations, you'll get the preteens who equate aggressive badgering with journalism. Just last week we had an article where some asshat "game journalist" with a blog "stood up" to some stupid and non-binding PR request from Square by writing a hostile, lengthy rant about it. And it got Slashdot front page coverage, because both parties know it'll get the hits. Zonk knows when he posts an article like this he'll get hits from people who pick up on his ludicrously obvious bias, people defending him, people trying to keep a level head, people who can't resist a good flamefest, etc.

Taking potshots at Sony right now is like shooting fish in a barrel. The aggressive interviews make sense when you're trying to get tough, meaningful answers from someone that isn't obviously in a lot of trouble. Not when you have the support of the entire community on your side. In that case it's just pageantry.

Not to place the onus on the video game media exclusively, as you can also see it on FOX News any time you flip it on.

Arrogant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's only July and the anti-PS3 hype is already at a fever pitch. Those latest abysmal 360 sales figures must have stung...

Your company sold 100+ million consoles on its first effort in the console market.
Your company sold 105+ million console so far in its second effort in the console market.
Your company is outselling one of your 'competitors' newest console for 6 of its first 7 months on the market with your six year old current console.
Your rival Nintendo has given up trying to compete technologically with you in their next console and is turning to gimmicks like the Wii's pointing device.

And your third console looks like this:

The $499 PS3:

1080p BluRay movies over component
BluRay Live support - additional dynamic content updates and information for movies
DNLA compliance - http://www.dlna.org/home/
1080p Games over component
20gig hardrive
Free online play for all non-MMORPG titles - confirmed over and over again by Sony
Full backwards compatibility for all PS1 titles
Full backwards compatiblity for all PS2 titles - PS2 chips included in the PS3
Linux
Online movie and music store
Webbrowsing and other desktop apps
Tilt controller
Every single developer that supported the PS2 onboard with their games for the PS3
All parts of the system except the HDMI port are upgradeable
Harddrive upgradeable with stadard store bought drives

And the $599 PS3:

60 gig harddrive
WiFi
HDMI

Arrogant? No.

Confident.

Re:Arrogant?

[netsavior]

Seriously, Sony, no matter how much you gurella market this thing you will not win over Slashdot. Also stop copy/pasting your own posts.

Re:Arrogant?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Confident is releasing a console at $400 knowing that no successful console in history has ever sold for more than $300; confident is charging $10 more for games knowing that no market leading system has had $70 games in modern times. What Sony is, is beyond words; "stupid and cocky to the level which everyone will take pleasure watching them fail" comes to mind but seems to need a little more.

The facts are that the best hardware does not lead to the market leading position (something Sony should know being that they've had the worst hardware 2 generations in a row and were still successful). The PSP is a much more powerful system than the Nintendo DS yet the DS is raping the PSP in worldwide sales; the XBox and Gamecube were dramatically more powerful than the PS2 and were raped in sales by the PS2; and the N64 was far more powerful than the playstation but (once again) was raped in sales by the Playstaion.

The system that wins is (always) the system with the most high quality sofware, at an affordable price with affordable hardware. So far Sony has 0 of those three components.

Now Shut up Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll!!!

Re:Arrogant?

[Chris Tucker]

I'll beleive all those tasty specs when it SHIPS with all those tasty specs.

Until then...

Remember the SONY BMG rootkit on CDs. Remember that the PSP is a locked down, closed platform. (For at least the first 72 hours after an OS upgrade is released, that is.)

Sony is not your friend. Giving Sony your money will not make them your friend.

It just makes you their bitch.

Re:Arrogant?

[Aidski]

And the Wii's other gimmick... fun games. Shame Sony rarely thinks of that one. (and I bought a PS2 and not a gamecube, yet own 2 games for the PS2 and have spent more time playing gamecube at friends' places)

Re:Arrogant?

[happyemoticon]

Your rival Nintendo has given up trying to compete technologically with you in their next console and is turning to gimmicks like the Wii's pointing device.

What, and a seven-way processor isn't a gimmick?

Re:Arrogant?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What, and a seven-way processor isn't a gimmick?"

http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/

http://www-1.ibm.com/businesscenter/venturedevelop ment/us/en/featurearticle/gcl_xmlid/8649/nav_id/em erging

There are already over 250 companies building Cell based products.

Cell is being used in:

PS3
TV and other home media devices
IBM servers
Aerospace devices
Medical devices
Media/movie company content production

Go away fanboy.

Re:Arrogant?

[happyemoticon]

I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand that. Please restate your response in the form of the source code to a non-trivial 3d game that takes full advantage of 7 processors, or the words, "I am Tim Sweeney." Thank you.

Re:Arrogant?

[MBCook]

I don't think it's a terribly bad idea, and it certainly isn't a gimmick. Sega advertising the Saturn as having 3 CPUs when the PlayStation only had 1 was a gimmick (it may have been true, but the PS was clearly just as powerful).

As for the 7 processor thing, that is pure business. Each cell has 8 SPUs. By only enabling 7 of them, they can sell all the processors that would otherwise be worthless for the PS3 because a defect killed an SPU. They do it strictly for yield numbers. This is just like Intel selling defective Core Duo CPUs as Core Solo CPUs by disabling the defective core. It's the same reason DRAM has extra bits in it so the defective ones can be avoided.

The number 7 is just because 8 fit on the chip and they want to be able to have half decent yield numbers (which, from what I've seen (see one of my other posts in this topic) are already terrible).

As for how to split things up, here is a random idea:

1. Graphics
2. Sound
3. Graphics Physics (particles, foot planting, etc)
4. Logic Physics (collisions, etc)
5. AI 1
6. AI 2
7. Input/Network/Disc

Actually, I think Sony has said to count on one SPU doing OS tasks all the time, so I guess you could take out AI 2. Now ignore the suitability to divide things up that way in the Cell, my point was just that you could divide a game that way.

Re:Arrogant?

[Maserati]

At this point in the PS3's development the source code to a trivial 3D game running on 7 processors would be acceptable.

Re:Arrogant?

[happyemoticon]

I was just reading about that, actually. Enabling only 7 of the cores is a great idea from a business perspective - costs are already going to be high enough with the BD-ROM. As well, the marginal benefit of 8 over 7 just isn't that great.

What I was trying to get at with "gimmick" wasn't really numerological at all, it was just an attack on what I see as a sexy, overengineered solution over pratical computing. I don't doubt that multithreaded applications are the wave of the future and that an engineer who is capable of thinking in an arbitrary number of directions at once is going to have a huge leg up in the next twenty years. However, when AMD and Intel are making baby-steps into the field of multiprocessing by only having 4 cores per chip by next year, and IBM's been making a huge amount of fanfare for freakin' ever about their 8-core chip, I start to have doubts about whether the Cell is going to look the same under my TV as it does on paper. I call it a healthy level of caution - some people think I'm a curmudgeon, though.

But put my paranoia aside. Let us assume the Cell ultimately really is an objectively outstanding processor (it very well may be). I think there's no question that writing multithreaded games is harder than writing single-threaded games and that developers aren't used to doing it as a rule yet. Despite how outstanding the Cell is, Sony is dictating the rules of the game to its developers, who'd rather have fast single-thread performance because it's easier and it's what they already do. They'd also like it because it's similar to PCs and it'd make the consoles similar to each other. Widen your market, fatten your profits. Sell them the same game twice. It works.

It's just like Cocoa vs. Carbon on Macs: Objective-C and Cocoa pretty much is a better solution than C++ and Carbon if you're just talking Mac development. But one, it forces developers to learn a different language with foreign syntax and no namespaces, and two, Cocoa isn't an option if you're porting in, and you'll have to rewrite your entire program if you ever decide to port from Cocoa. Apple also merrily does things that break people's programs and cause the old bugs they were exploiting to get by to stop working, forcing you to rewrite your code correctly and adapt to a newer, better hardware platform once every ten years or so. This is why most developers like Microsoft better, because they let you hang around and run your crufty, old-as-the-hills legacy code for ever and ever. Simcity exploited a bug to run in DOS, and Windows 95 detected when Simcity was running and allowed that bug to be exploited so that Simcity could run on Windows 95 with no alterations. That's the strategy that makes you the darling of developers, and even though they've been in the console space longer than MS, Sony has something to learn from them.

Re:Arrogant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go away fanboy.

Curse your infernal debating skills! I am no match for this subtle and witty putdown, which confutes my argument so thoroughly and eloquently that I am thrown into confusion.

I will crawl back into my hole and hope that one day I, too, will be a big boy who can use clever words.

Re:Arrogant?

[Anonymous Coward]

As for how to split things up, here is a random idea: 1. Graphics 2. Sound 3. Graphics Physics (particles, foot planting, etc) 4. Logic Physics (collisions, etc) 5. AI 1 6. AI 2 7. Input/Network/Disc

Um, you'd think it would be easy to split things up that way but if you've programmed a game, it's not. Pretty much each one of those depends on something else being done first and therefore can't easily be done in parallel. Games are fairly serial... The physics have to be calculated, then the animations change to react to those... including the AI. Graphics are already done on a separate processor... the GPU. Sound is normally done on a separate processor... the sound card and it is also dependent on the placement of objects if it's sourround sound so it needs to be played after the physics and AI. That pretty much leaves IO really. Which could be done in a separate process but it has to check to see if the items it's swapping out of memory aren't in use anymore and that could probably get tricky. Also the controller IO needs to be read in before the physics are calculated to know where the player is moving (But that doesn't exactly take a lot of time).

You also forgot something. Sony said 1 processor would be dedicated to their menu system which acts like Live's blade thingy. So in reality they have 6 processors to work with.

The only thing I've heard of the extra processors being used for is hair physics/cloth physics. Stuff that doesn't really affect the player in any meaningful way except to look cool. But I'm sure it has to wait (mutex) until the main body's physics is calculated.

That leaves you with 3 processors in use... which tada is exactly what the XBox 360 uses. They could use more if they thought about it, but in reality, they'll probably only use 3 because then it can be ported easier to the 360.

Re:Arrogant?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You also forgot something. Sony said 1 processor would be dedicated to their menu system which acts like Live's blade thingy. So in reality they have 6 processors to work with.

The only thing I've heard of the extra processors being used for is hair physics/cloth physics. Stuff that doesn't really affect the player in any meaningful way except to look cool. But I'm sure it has to wait (mutex) until the main body's physics is calculated.

That leaves you with 3 processors in u"

Holy shit! You don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about.

Currently one of the SPEs is being used just for OS tasks, but that will change most likely before the PS3 ships or soon afterwards. It is safer right now not to bother with having the OS and game code share the same SPE. The massive power advantage the PS3 hardware has over the Wii and 360 makes it of little difference in reality.

The rest of your drivel is too absurd to even try to correct.

PS3 developers are utilizing all six SPEs in their games. And in the near future they will be using the seventh too - the OS needs very little time to run on its SPE.

SPEs are used for every area of game code - physics,AI,rendering,and so on.

Stop talking about subjects you clearly have no competence in.

Re:Arrogant?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where Melissa got her numbers from - I remember SMB3 being $50 at launch.

That said, most SNES games were $60 in my area, and the Square games were always $10 more. I got $200 for my birthday one year and I cleaned it out in Walmart buying Chrono Trigger, Secret of Evermore, and Descent.

Re:Arrogant?

[mgabrys_sf]

Most n64 games were over 60 dollars, and many were as high as 80.

By the way, anyone notice the dollar is worth less than 16 years ago? Anyone?

Oh fuckit I forgot I'm talking to the Linux and anti-DRM so we can steal everything and fuck the artists crowd. Never mind.

^^ Phil Harrison

[Jakhel]

log in you arrogant bastard

Re:^^ Phil Harrison

[Anonymous Coward]

log in you arrogant bastard

Dude, its 5:30 on a Friday, I'm still at the office. I would kill for an Arrogant Bastard right now.

It's not that way at all

[hackwrench]

People like it when others confess that they have sinned, on the one hand and on the other, they occasionally like it when somone admits that they are doing something, but then say "It may not be popular, but we were right to do it". It's called having the courage of your convictions.

One "zonked" tag to go please

[SuperKendall]

And can I get a few comments from the people that think Slashdot has no console bias on the side please?

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[NonSequor]

What bias? How do you expect him to report anything good about the PS3 when there isn't any good news about it available?

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[MBCook]

No kidding. Delays in the system, delays in the cell, delays in Blu-Ray, the price, last-minute half-features (the controller tilt), feature removal (Ethernet hub, rumbling), cell yields of 10-20%, and low laser diode yield. Sony hasn't had ANY good news. Even at E3 when they were expected to make a killing they didn't show a ton of impressive stuff. Sure it looked good, but they didn't look as good as the target renders and they didn't have a large variety of games. They also didn't have much in the big name department (GTA, just a video of Jak and Daxter).

Compare that to MS who while not great did show a wide variety of games and had some good announcements (GTA no longer exclusive to PlayStation for one).

Then there was the "little guy", Nintendo. A fantastic showing of tons of games that got tons of press. People were interested in much of it. Wii Sports, Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Red Steel, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and more. Name 7 big upcoming games off the top of your head for either other system.

I've gotta say, I thought the PS3 would be a scarce but big hit with great graphics. Now I'm starting to get much more interested as it seems the PS3 will be overpriced with great graphics and a fair helping of "what are they doing now."

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[Kohath]

What bias? How do you expect him to report anything good about the PS3 when there isn't any good news about it available?

This isn't a negative story. This isn't a story at all. This is 100% content free. The non-biased thing would be to ignore it.

And that's my comment on your comment on zonk's bias for posting an article about a Sony exec's comment on joystiq's question about the feeling that there was arrogance percieved in Sony execs' previous comments. Write a blog post about it. It's sooooo relevant to whether the PS3 games will be fun or not (which doesn't matter until they are available anyway).

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[Trogre]

And still the PS3 is outselling the XBox360 at a major store in my country.

That's right - people are already pre-ordering them in droves. And they're happily paying a lot more than $600 for the privelige.

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[Anonymous Coward]

Where? Japan? Yes, the Japanese are extremely xenophobic and hate Americans (and who can blame them, the US still celebrates how they annihilated two Japanese cities with nuclear weapons).

But mild success in Japan over a dismal failure hardly is indicative of anything. The PS3 is setting itself up to be the biggest failure since the XBox360.

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[Trogre]

Not Japan;

New Zealand, one of the most pro-american countries in the south-south-west pacific.

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[wheany]

Which is also the reason they abhor the Ipod.

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I know it's going to hurt to hear this, but nothing that happens in New Zealand counts for anything.

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[KDR_11k]

Of course the question remains, how much is the 360 selling?

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[Chibi-Hikaru]

Not even the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Re:One "zonked" tag to go please

[DaveCBio]

Proof please. Oh, and unless they are putting down a sizeable deposit it's pretty easy to "pre-order" anything.

Poor Harrison

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww, poor Harrison, you didn't get asked any nice questions. Would you like to cry on my shoulder, pookie-kins?

$599 is fine

[rsilvergun]

for launch. I don't know why people are surprised. The last 3 console releases (ps2, Xbox and Xbox360) where all scalped on ebay for way more than that. Sony's just responding to that. Expect the price to come down pretty quick as sales drop.

Re:$599 is fine

[DeadMilkman]

But what if that IS the price...

And they are NOT planning price drops for a 1-2years....

What if the price drop 1.5years later is 399-499

What then pray tell? 2-3 more years till the magic 200$ price tag making it 4-5years into production?

Re:$599 is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Then don't buy it for 2 years genious.

Re:$599 is fine

[MBCook]

On the one hand, you're right. I think MS should have done that. Just put all the console up for bid in one giant eBay auction and let people pay what they are willing to.

That said, it doesn't have to be that way. I bought TWO PS2s on launch day in a major metro area for the launch price without having to sit in line from 2:00 AM or something. I could have easily done the same for the 360 launch or the XBox launch without any problem.

But with the PS3 instead of having a choice of trying on my own or paying $1000 on eBay, I will be FORCED to pay $600 if I get it at retail (which I won't until the price is half that).

Re:$599 is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I will be FORCED to pay $600

I have never paid more than $130 for a console gaming system. Ever.

Re:$599 is fine

[Brianech]

That was the MARKEDUP price desperate people were willing to pay. I dont even want to know what people will be selling the PS3 online for, cause they will obviously try and make as much money as possible. But not a lot of people have money to be dropping over 1000 online for a console. Yes is happened with 360, yes it will happen with ps3, but that is no reason to markup the initial price so much.

Re:$599 is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't spell genius, don't try to insult someone with the word.

Re:$599 is fine

[rohlfinator]

The last 3 console releases (ps2, Xbox and Xbox360) where all scalped on ebay for way more than that.

But to how many buyers? 50k? 100k? The Xbox 360 had a pretty weak launch as it was. If Microsoft had sold it at $600 retail, it would have been plain embarrassing.

The eBay market can give the impression that hardcore gamers are willing to pay a lot for a new toy, but it's not entirely accurate. If money was not a concern to gamers, people would have purchased the $300 360 Core system (which was readily available) and upgraded it with the HD and wireless controllers. It might have cost a bit more, but it would have been cheaper than buying on eBay. Instead, most people waited until they could purchase the full bundle at a fair price.

Expect the price to come down pretty quick as sales drop.

A price drop within the first six months would be seen as desperate, especially if it was due to a lack of sales. Typically, the oldest console leads the price drop wars, so Sony probably won't make the first move unless sales are really weak. Plus, Sony has been using the PS3's price to imply a certain degree of value. It would be tacky for them to turn around and drop the price so soon, effectively telling early buyers that they paid too much.

Re:$599 is fine

[Guppy06]

So recently after its launch, how many of current Xbox 360 owners actually bought theirs at scalper prices on eBay? If it's more than 5% I'll be surprised, and I'm being very generous going that high.

So Sony is charging more for a console than the vast majority of current console shoppers were willing to pay.

Re:$599 is fine

[DaveCBio]

Exaclty. It will take years to get the cost of the BR drive and the Cell processor down and any price reduction is going to be that much more money Sony has to recover in licensing fees. The PS2 doesn't have the highest game/console ratio, so nothing makes me think the PS3 will be any better. Sony has a challenge in front of them. I plan to buy a PS3, but it will be a few years from now when the hardware is stable and the price is lower.

that wasn't much of an interview

[dR.fuZZo]

They just asked him a few questions and they were all basically, "hey, what's up with your company's attitude these days?" I guess actually asking about anything at all directly related to their products would be too relevant or something?

Re:that wasn't much of an interview

[Guppy06]

"I guess actually asking about anything at all directly related to their products would be too relevant or something?"

Directly related to their products? The PS2 and even the PSP don't make for interesting news any more, and we still have months before the PS3 is anything more than vaporware. Beyond that, there are very few questions about the PS3 that wouldn't be answered with either "We already answered that at E3" or "You'll have to wait until $COMPANY_SHOW to find out." The only new things Sony has been putting out are asinine statements about what they think the market will do, and that's what the questions were about.

Well, but see, that's the thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty obvious Sony can charge $599 at launch and get away with it. But just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Charging $599 may be a workable idea from a pure business and economics sense, but it's just plain uncivilized behavior. It's not only insulting but actually dehumanizing to the people who will or might buy PS3s-- because Sony is effectively treating them not as people or customers, but as spigots from which money can be extracted, and they are turning the knob on that spigot up as high as the pipes can bear without bursting. It's like if a small town's only convenience store jacked up their prices for bottled water to $10 as soon as a heat wave starts. Yeah, probably people will buy the bottled water even at $10. Yeah, you'll probably make money off of the decision to raise the price of your bottled water to $10, even if some people are driven to just go without water. But is it the right thing to do? Is it even a good idea in the long run, when you take into advantage the long-term effects of your customers feeling they've been taken advantage of? We could perhaps say that when someone does one of these things, those things that you can do but you probably shouldn't, that they are acting "arrogant".

And by charging $599 for the PS3 just because they know people will pay whatever Sony asks, Sony is being arrogant. Enormously arrogant. Almost as arrogant, in fact, as Zonk is being when he thinks anybody cares about his little MS-fanboy potshots at Sony that he slips into these articles.

Bias is excess negativity

[SuperKendall]

What bias? How do you expect him to report anything good about the PS3 when there isn't any good news about it available?

Nor has there been any bad news either - yet all we see are articles re-hashing old issues people have with the PS3. There are plenty of similarily content-free positive news bits about the PS3 as well, since as game announcements and interviews with people like the makers of Warhawks. A lot of that is in fact more newsworthy than a stupid attack interview that tells us nothing, yet you see nothing like that here.

Let's wait until we have some real information - good or bad - on the PS3 to report, and report that.

It's also kind of hard to claim a lack of bias when you can see Zonks own commentary attached right to this story.

Thanks for playing FUD

[Yvan256]

Your rival Nintendo has given up trying to compete technologically with you in their next console and is turning to gimmicks like the Wii's pointing device.

Nintendo hasn't "given up trying to compete technologically", they never did in the first place. Nintendo is about games, not marketing numbers or CPU/GPU power like Microsoft or Sony. Anyone remember the PS2's "emotion engine"?

As for calling the Wii controller a "gimmick" or even a "pointing device", you don't even know what you're talking about.

Re:Thanks for playing FUD

[goarilla]

right on!

Nintendo games are polished, finished and just work
And so is the hardware

Pot...Kettle...Black?

[DeadMilkman]

Dear Sony shrill, you forgot:

60-70% of the Japanese retail find your competitor more interesting/capable.
65-70% of the Japanese develoupment houses interest rests with your competitors.
65-75% of Japanese consumer market interested in buying your competitor's product citing the #1 reason as "cost" against your product.

And in Famijitsu, THE japanese gaming mag...you are pulling 5% more popularity in Japan than the Xbox 360... (* That right there alone should be causing panic!)

Sources:
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_conte nt&task=view&id=3403&Itemid=2
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_conte nt&task=view&id=3162&Itemid=2

Re:Pot...Kettle...Black?

[moochfish]

the links in this post are very interesting. They help focus the fact that nobody denies the ability of the PS3. The problem is that it does not offer a feature set that much further beyond the XBox 360, nor does it innovate much compared to the Wii. Most importantly, its price is far, far above either console. As a result, consumers do not agree with Sony's assertion that their product is a no-brainer success waiting to happen.

As I always point out to my friends, perception is an impotant part of the gaming industry. If everybody THINKS a console is too expensive, publishers get less interested in doing exclusives with it, thus making it harder to lower its price, thus causing the price to stay high for even longer. If everybody THINKS it is only a marginal amount better than XBox for 50% more money, that's enough for those same people to not want to spend their money on it -- regardless of how much greater the PS3 is in reality. Lastly, if people THINK the Wii is more innovative, that alone generates tons of buzz, attracts publishers who want to capitalize on that buzz, and with increased game sales, ultimately helps further lower the price of the console.

Again, nobody is disputing the PS3 isn't the most powerful system on the market. Nobody was disputing the Dreamcast's power when it came out either.

You'd think

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think that with a console launch and PR campaign as disastrous as the one the PS3 has seen, that you wouldn't need to embellish the news to make it look bad for Sony. But for some reason, Zonk feels compelled to do it anyway.

General Motors execs used to sound like that

[Animats]

He comes across like a General Motors exec from the glory days.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

they're offered free with the purchase of a memory stick, you dumbfuck.

Confusing the enemy

[SuperKendall]

Remember the SONY BMG rootkit on CDs.

It's hard to forget, I would never ever buy anything from... Sony/BMG.

Sony games I have no issue with in that regard.

If your brother robbed a bank, would it be OK for me to arrest you? It's not fair to punish different divisions of a company that have little to do with each other just because one made a terrible blunder.

Remember that the PSP is a locked down, closed platform.

More so than the DS? What other handheld with even the sales of the PSP (a distant second to the DS) exists and is more open?

You are just confused because homebrew people have had more success with the PSP than the DS, which makes the lows of lockdown look much starker by contrast. I agree it's annoying as I'd like to use a PSP for some custom things as well, and don't own one yet exactly because I feel it's too locked down. But I own nothing in its place either.

Re:Confusing the enemy

[Anonymous Coward]

They may be 2 divisions of the same company, but they are still part of the same company. The truth is that companies attempt to build a corporate culture throughout all of their divisions; any form of morality/imorality a company displays is entirly because of this coporate culture.

Since the early 90's Sony's corporate culture has been that marketing sells a product and that the product's quality is not important; which is a drastic change from their culture in the 80's, this took time to fully accomplish but now you can rarely find a Sony product that lasts 2 years. In the past few years Sony has been adding to their wonderful culture the concept that their Consumer's rights don't matter all that matters is the bottom line.

Sony is a bartender who is charging you $10 for his watered down drink because he wants to recover the cost of the roofie he dropped into it.

Re:Confusing the enemy

[zeeroj]

My PS2 has never broken down. This is despite my best efforts to drop it onto pavement, into puddles, and so on.

Re:Confusing the enemy

[geminidomino]

This is despite my best efforts to drop it onto pavement, into puddles, and so on.

Best efforts?

If you try to drop your PS2 onto the ground, and miss, I think it says more about you than the PS2's quality. ;)

Re:Confusing the enemy

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have believed dropping it but the puddles comment is complete bullshit. You, my friend, are a liar.

Re:Confusing the enemy

[torpor]

Just thought you might like to know: GPH are no longer violationg the GPL.

Competitor

[SuperKendall]

Why did you use the word "competitor" when in each case only "Wii" fits? Why not just say Wii? I can imagine why the Wii polls better right now, it has some really sexy features and looks like great fun. But it's also operating where there's more of a vaccum around PS3 details, which gives the Wii a great upper hand right now.

As for Famijitsu, it's hard to believe the stated figures when the actual sales results are so low. Polls can be rigged, sales figures are much more concrete and indicitive.

Have you stopped r00ting your customers?

[NickFortune]

"Ok, we're arrogant" is just as stupid.

Well, Sony have given some world class stupid answers lately. I think the ones that did the most damage were.

• "Rootkit? What rootkit?"
• "That's not a rootkit"
• "The customers don't even know what a rootkit is why should they care?"
• "This program removes the rootkit"
• "OK, that was a bug. This program really removes the rootkit"

Now that was arrogance.

Is it surprising if their other business interests get tarred with the same brush? I know it changed my mind about buying a PS3. .

Re:Have you stopped r00ting your customers?

[smallfries]

No that was stupidity. Arrogance was making me pay a ridiculous amount of money for a 2Gb memory stick for the psp because they use a propriatory format. Then expecting me to fork out again because they use a *different* propriatory format on their phones. Bastards.

And $500 is better

[SuperKendall]

A correction, the base price that contains everything a gamer would need is $500, not $600. There has been a lot of confusion around this because many people like to pretend the $500 model does not exist even though it offers all the features of the premium 360.

$500 is also very expensive, no need to raise the figure any to complain about price.

That said, I totally agree with your point. Pretty much all through December I don't think a 360 sold on eBay (any model) for less than $800 - Sony I think is just being smart about collecting some of the money that would otherwise be going to eBay. A lot of people in lines at midnight were there just to get a 360 to scalp, I can't help but think it would be nice to reduce the occurence of this.

Re:And $500 is better

[SetupWeasel]

The thing that causes the PS3 to be $500 and not $300 is not completely useable at the $500 price. If you want to watch a Blu-Ray movie and be sure you can actually see it in HD, you need to buy the $600 model. If you only wanted needed to play PS3 games, the cost should be $300 or $400 at absolute maximum.

The problem with the PS3 is not that it is a $600 gaming machine. The problem is that it is a $300 gaming machine that is being sold for $500-600.

Don't give me any shit about the movie companies not using the ICT. It is in there for a reason, and until we hear that they will be removing it from the Blu-Ray standard, it must be assumed studios will use it.

Company spokesman says company is doing fine

[Cryptnotic]

This is news, how? This guy would be fired if he said something like, "Sony is in trouble. We really have to get our act together or we will lose lots of market share to Nintendo and Microsoft. BlueRay really worries me too." Reporters ask the questions they do because they know the answers that they will get, but because they need person A to say it so they can quote them in their article or record it on audio or video for their program.

Re:Company spokesman says company is doing fine

[cgenman]

And to be fair, he said "'well those were positive questions', in a vaguely sarcastic tone." He was probably hoping to give a mini-interview to help prop sony up, and found himself defending her against rather agressive negative questioning.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad people are finally moving away from softballing everyone. But I'd think that in that situation, an emotionally driven comment like "well those were positive questions" is completely understandable.

There are valid reasons to be upset with Sony right now. This is not one of them.

UMD was always an odd duck

[SuperKendall]

I never understood who they thought would buy another copy of a movie at DVD prices just to play on the PS3. The new memory-stick system should fare no better.

If they were really smart they would have built a transcoder that downsampled DVD's to fit on a memory stick and play on the PSP, then convince the Sony movie studios not to sue themselves. The media division still has a little too much pull to let that happen, I guess.

Re:UMD was always an odd duck

[kannibal_klown]

It was never going to be big, but the PSP movie thing had a little promise. For example if I go on a business trip and I have to pack light (or leave stuff in the overhead compartment) a PSP movie would be nice. But NOT at that price point: that was just really poor planning.

weak

[Anonymous Coward]

Weak interview - and weak editorial that follows. Like Jim Gray interviewing athletes after the game. Always spinning things in a bad light. I couldn't be more bored.

Well there's a story

[SuperKendall]

last-minute half-features (the controller tilt)

Well now that you mention it, there was an interview with the same Warhawk developers that were the ones that stated they got the controllers just a few weeks before E3 - in the interview it said the statement had been misconstrued; Sony in fact had let them know about the tilt feature much earlier but had only delivered physical controllers with the tilt sensors built in a few weeks before E3. The exact words:

Actually, Incognito has secretly been working with Sony on the tilt technology for a while, but it wasn't until the last few weeks before E3 that they received a working controller.

So the combination of a developer talking about what looks to be a pretty good PS3 game (how meany Gears of War stories has Slashdot seen?) along with a debunking of one of the more commonly held myths about the PS3, you'd think would be newsworthy. No mention of that on Slashdot though...

Re:Well there's a story

[MBCook]

I read that, and I know that it wasn't given to them two weeks before the show or whatever was initially reported. Still, I think it's a rushed half feature because my guess is that while they have been planning the PS3 ever since the PS2 was released, my guess is that the tilt functionality has only had real consideration since the learned what Nintendo was up to (either through a leak or through the press conference that the rest of us learned about it through).

Re:Well there's a story

[_xeno_]

So, in other words, Sony had been working on the tilt feature ever since Nintendo announced the Revolution controller, but only got it working recently, and only managed to eak out prototypes mere weeks before E3.

Which is pretty much what everyone already knew; Sony rushed to get a copy-cat controller out immediately after Nintendo announced the controller for the Wii.

Notice how no one has ever said "oh, yeah, Sony was working on this before the Revolution controller announcement." Instead it's always "oh, Sony's been working on that for longer than people think!" Well, I think they started the day after Nintendo made their announcement and only finally got it working just before E3. Anyone who thinks that Sony decided to add this feature without looking at Nintendo first and trying to steal some thunder from Nintendo is just deluding themselves.

Dear Anonymous Fanboi,

[Anonymous Coward]

> Taking potshots at the market share leader in a given field

I don't give a damn if they're #1 or #100, frankly I don't like Sony due to all the crap they've been pulling of late like the rootkits.

And I'm sick of fanbois who act like "oh no, our precious Sony! they gave us the Playstation, you can't criticize them!"

Face it: Sony sucks. And I don't care how good their games are, or even if the PS3 lives up to the hype. I won't buy it because I won't endorse the things Sony has done. They "promise" not to use the patent that kills our ability to rent (or even loan!) games to others, but don't explain why they hell they bothered to patent it if that's true (umm, yeah, so our competitors can't sue us for infringing upon it when we're not, umm, going to do that! suuuurrre....) or how we can ever trust them again after the rootkit?

Re:Dear Anonymous Fanboi,

[Anonymous Coward]

And there is the obligatory 'ZOMG ROOTKIT' comment. Like you would honestly have purchased any of the CDs that the 'DRM' software was on. Not like that makes it better for Sony to have done it, but they s***-canned it almost immediately. Companies make mistakes. If they do it again, THEN you can crucify them.

Thanks.

Re:Dear Anonymous Fanboi,

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies make mistakes. If they do it again, THEN you can crucify them.

Funny, when I was arrested for hacking back in my college days, that excuse didn't cut much ice with the prosecutor's office. Why is Sony entitled to a break? I guess if you're a huge multinational corporation, the rules are a bit different, huh?

Re:Dear Anonymous Fanboi,

[buffer-overflowed]

Funny, if I did what Sony did I'd be non-personed in some Eastern European or Turkish Prison, having all sorts of horrid things done to me*. Yet Sony as a whole and Sony's other divisions get a complete pass.

This whacky world sure be whacky and wierd.

* Alright, so I'd just be in a normal jail having horrid things done to me.

Re:Dear Anonymous Fanboi,

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the difference is, your hacking was malicious in intent. Their rootkit was not. It was created for DRM purposes. Not to be used as a rootkit. In this case, they made a mistake. You willingly and maliciously broke the law. How is that the same?

If you 'accidentally' logged into your university's computer system and 'accidentally' changed something of some importance to you, that's not the same thing, bucko.

Re:Dear Anonymous Fanboi,

[ultranova]

No, the difference is, your hacking was malicious in intent.

How do you know his intent ?

Their rootkit was not. It was created for DRM purposes. Not to be used as a rootkit.

So instead of giving control of infected machine (that did not belong to them) to a third party, they simply intended to seize control themselves. Yeah, they're still burglars, but they tried (and failed) to relock the front door after they were done, so they're good burglars who just were too stupid to succeed in locking the door.

In this case, they made a mistake. You willingly and maliciously broke the law. How is that the same?

You are again assuming malice on unkown persons actions, where the exact actions are unkown. You are also assuming lack of malice on Sony's actions. Finally, since the purpose of Sony's DRM (and all DRM) was to strip the users computer from some of its normal capabilities - in other words, to damage it - it is most certainly at least morally wrong and propably illegal as well; but, since Sony is a corporation, and corporations are largely above the law, having bought the people who write it, it is entirely possible that its actions, while certainly illegal if done by an individual, were actually legal for a corporation.

How is that a troll? Mod up!

[SuperKendall]

What in there is trolling? It contains a lot of simple factual details about what the PS3 is. If I say the sky is blue, or that water will turn to steam when heated sufficiently, is that trolling?

Re:How is that a troll? Mod up!

[Anonymous Coward]

"gimmicks like the Wii's pointing device"

Having used the Wii controller at E3 I don't think it is a gimmick - but I do think it just isn't anything special. Certainly not special enough to make up for the weak graphics on the system and the fact that I can/have already played every old Nintendo game I ever wanted with emulators on my computer.

Here we go again.

[stonecypher]

I'm honestly getting a little tired of these fanboy reporters wasting what could have been productive interviews by instead parroting the rantings of a clone-factory also-ran. There's a reason nobody can name a game of Jeff's that isn't a sequel or a ripoff: they don't exist. Why is Sony arrogant for not tipping their hand? They've cornered what was a thoroughly dominated market in under two years and held it for more than a decade. Yes, the price is high, but Sony knows how to handle markets; their seven year old PS2 is outselling Microsoft's brand new XBox360 in every territory, even though the 360 is the only one of the next-gen consoles available, and probably will be so until at least Christmas.

News flash: Jeff Minter is Nobody. Film at never.

(His two famous games are a Robotron ripoff and a sequel to someone else's game which is essentially a graphics upgrade and a speed boost. Most people have to look him up online to even come up with another one of his games. C'mon. Arrogant means to exaggerate your own worth in an overbearing manner, and here's some guy who has released 40 games, the sum total of which don't outsell even one game in the Playstation2 Top 100, talking about Sony's full of it because he doesn't like their new price line? Pots and kettles, man.)

Re:Here we go again.

[pommiekiwifruit]

Hey, he is a much-loved industry figure from the 1980s. I remember with fondness disassembling GridRunner on the VIC-20 by hand... Your blog does not immediately say what authority you speak from. Which top-selling games have you written?

Admittedly when I said hi to phil harrison on wednesday night he blanked me, so i guess I won't get any sony party invites soon unless I tag on with someone else.

Re:Here we go again.

[stonecypher]

Hey, he is a much-loved industry figure from the 1980s.

Well, he is from the 1980s. He might also be much loved by the fans. He was not much loved within the industry. Game thieves never are.

I remember with fondness disassembling GridRunner on the VIC-20 by hand...

Okay. Go grab the demo from his webpage. You'll be surprised to learn that it's just enemy behavior from Centipede and Galaga, without the mushrooms or enemy formations that made the other two games good, and with a screen saver for a background. He doesn't even try to hide it - at level 9, he starts using graphics stolen from Galaxian (in the PC version of gridrunner++, it starts at 15 instead.) They're not the only ones, but they're the easiest to get to quickly - not that the game is even remotely difficult.

The only real difference between this game and Centipede, besides the progressive level constraints and the stupid sheep jokes, is that Centipede (at least back then) required a trackball.

Your blog does not immediately say what authority you speak from.

Yes, it does. Read it again.

That said, it doesn't really matter who I am; what I say is factual, even if I'm some nobody from under a rock (which I'm not.)

Admittedly when I said hi to phil harrison on wednesday night he blanked me, so i guess I won't get any sony party invites soon unless I tag on with someone else.

Well, if you see me at E3 next year, tell me who you are, and I'll introduce you. Phil and I have gotten along well ever since I met him at one of the panels three years ago, when one of the panellists said something snarky about one of his decisions (he was in the audience, not on the panel, so I just got a chance to speak before he did.) We're not bosom buddies by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm relatively easy to remember by sight - I'm a very large person with very long hair - so he still gets me into doors when he sees me.

Re:Here we go again.

[DaveCBio]

Honestly, if you think the PS3 is going to be monster hit at that price I'd say you should start looking in the mirror to see who is the fanboy. Sony is arrogant and assumes that it's brand name will sell the PS3 no matter what. Well, the last time I looked at the consumer market I saw a fickle group that is more than willing to jump on whatever the "hot" trend is. So, if Nintendo or MS become the hot property over the next few years Sony will suffer. They will sell out at first because there are enough early adopters out there, but at the premium they are asking they won't sustain that level of sales for long past the holidays.

Re:Here we go again.

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC Gridrunner++ was not written by him, but rather by some fans of his in BASIC. At least that was the impression I got from him when I saw him a few years ago.

Your blog does not immediately say what authority you speak from.

  Yes, it does. Read it again.

Well your blog is certainly more up-to-date and interesting than mine, which looks like a time capsule from 1996, but I'm still no wiser as to the type of games you play or write. The resume section is blank.

Alas, I never get enough time off to visit E3 (I only got the evening off to visit Develop in Brighton) but I would love to go there one day...

Phil does know me I suspect, since before he joined Sony (he was at Mindscape in Haywards Heath IIRC) but I haven't worked on anything for Sony that hasn't been cancelled... Oops I tell a lie, my text plotting code ended up on a PS2 puzzle game in 2002. But I guess either he thinks I was mislead about him by Gary Liddon or not important enough to be worth bothering with (which is probably true enough).

Anyway, the point is not who ignores me in the industry, but who dislikes Jeff Minter, and I hadn't heard much bad about him (apart from the sheep, the "curse of minter" (konix, jaguar), and the lack of new titles obviously). Certainly I hadn't heard him being called a thief in the circles I move in.

Re:Here we go again.

[stonecypher]

IIRC Gridrunner++ was not written by him, but rather by some fans of his in BASIC.

Generally speaking, you should check before correcting people. Jeff Minter wrote Gridrunner++, which is why he's selling it on his web page.

but I'm still no wiser as to the type of games you play or write. The resume section is blank.

Perhaps you should read the blog a third time. It discusses what I do for a living. Also, there are several categories on my blog about the games I write for fun. I'm the guy who ran the TCP/IP bounty for the Nintendo DS, and who wrote the first Nintendo DS IRC client. I wrote the SC DS interface, for people who wanted to develop for the DS before it came out. I'm the guy who arranged the 25-game buyout of GameBoy Advance games for Datel. I write roguelikes, strategy games, sudoku games, BBS doors, and so on. Etc, etc, etc.

Again, none of what I do is actually important here, and I'd like for you to stop attempting ad hominem please. If I was some random nobody, I would still be well within my rights to point out that this clone factory named Minter has no right to be basing on other people, when all he is is a game mechanic thief. That I happen to come up more on Google on gaming matters than he does is just icing on the cake.

Certainly I hadn't heard him being called a thief in the circles I move in.

Not to seem rude, but that's because you're not an industry game developer. There are lots of people who are well known for being thieves and self-aggrandizing liars who you probably don't know about. It's the same reason you don't know about the scumbags in the movie industry, the automobile industry or the playing card printing industry. Every industry has bad apples, but unless you're part of it, you're never going to know who they are. If you heard the horror stories that come out of explaining why Sid created Firaxis, you'd be approaching this quite differently. His current team is awesome, but some of the people he's had to deal with in the past? You'd be ill if you realized in how many ways people have tried to screw him. Ever wonder why Hasbro made two Civ sequels without Sid? Ever wonder why Microsoft made an obvious Civ clone? Did you notice that the guy behind Age of Empires had just quit Firaxis with about fifteen other people two weeks before Microsoft hired them all as a group? If you ever get on the good side of someone at Firaxis, ask about the big exodus in the middle of Civ 3. The story is just amazing.

The point is, go to one of those big game information farms, and get a list of everything Jeff Minter has ever done. Find me two games which aren't clones (fair warning: Hover Bovver is a clone of The Maze of the Minotaur, a board game. Gotta love how the box says "you've never played a game like this before!," when I have my dad's copy printed on cardboard from 20 years before Minter was born.) Once you're done trying to find two games that aren't rip-offs, and only after you've tried, go read his self description on his web page. You'll be nauseous.

The things he's famous for are a Robotron 2084 clone (Llamatron 2184,) a Tempest sequel (Tempest 2000 is Minter, sure, but it's essentially just a faster and prettier version of Tempest by Dan Theurer,) and a broken knock-off of Centipede with some creatures that do Galaga moves (gridrunner / gridrunner++ ; in the original, look for stolen Galaxian graphics on level 9; in Gridrunner++ they don't start until level 15.) Jeff Minter is a second-rate video game Bluebeard. Now he's bragging that his music-aware screensaver is a whole new genre of gaming. I'm lucky enough to know (in passing) Justin Frankel, from where he used to hang out on IRC. I asked him his reaction once. I haven't seen that much swearing, even on IRC, in quite a while.

Jeff doesn't even try to hide his thievery. He steals not only game mechanics but also graphics and even titles from other games. You may not have heard it before, but you're hearing it now. Go take a close look, and ask yourself again whether he's someone you want to defend.

Re:Here we go again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey let's not get into namecalling. After all, I do like some of your articles (e.g. the one lambasting games journalists with 7 second memories), and agree with the principle of publishing articles to enrich the worlds knowledge (but am too lazy to do the same). I can't check on the authorship of gridrunner++ since I dont have it on my machine here. But just because he is publishing it doesn't necessarily mean he coded it.

As for not being in the games industry, one of the games I was lead programmer on sold several million units. But I will admit to not gossiping much with other developers, apart from thechaosengine and those game developers who go to the same local pubs (which is only three companies) and "back in time" music events (which are great fun). So I may well be less broadly informed than many enthusiastic gamers.

I don't need to look him up to remember quite a few of his games by heart: Gridrunner, Lazerzone, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Sheep in Space, Anticipal, Hovver Bovver (thanks for the boardgame reference there!) Mama Llama, Psychedelia (hence Neon), Tempest 2000. As for being nauseous, I think I might still have paper copies of his fanzine (which he wrote himself) lying around somewhere, so my nausea threshold is quite high :-)

And Mel Croucher once claimed there were only two games: chess and ping pong :-)

Considering Justin Frankel was 6 years old when Psychedelia came out in 1984 he may not have as much to complain about as you think. There was a special issue of computer and video games (?) i think in the mid 1980s that had a heap of music analysis light synthesisers for 8 bit computers (using the tape ports) on e.g. the BBC B. That would be fun to track down. Especially if the rumours I heard for some games initially starting off counting zero crossings to determine frequency are true.

Re:Here we go again.

[pommiekiwifruit]

(logged in at home again). Shall I summarise where I think we agree and disagree?

We both agree that Jeff is not important in the great scheme of things. But you think ad hominum attacks are invalid, and it is the points he/you/I make that are important :-)

We disagree that Jeff is not famous. He was one of the most famous british developers in the 1980s, and the "legend" label reflects that (legend can be a polite way of saying has-been). It allows the possibility of a comeback (c.f. Pete Burns) I think of the legend label as being permanent. From that I think your article calling him a nobody was provocative.

We disagree about the ethics of the originality of his games. Intellectual Property was a different beast back in the 1980s. I guess that makes me sound like an apologist, but the early 1980s saw a great mix of game mechanics coupled with free "borrowing" from one game to another. The idea of a software patent on a game mechanic is anathema to me. On a personal note, the biggest selling game I have written was the least original (being the closest port) and the ones with the most prideworthy code were the worst selling, so I am coming to the opinion that originality does not pay the mortgage.

We agree that Phil Harrison is famous. I can't remember if he is a decisionmaker or not though (I am not so up on Sony politics as some of my coworkers).

We agree that Phil Harrison was entitled to hope for better questions from an interviewer. I think it is rare for even a professional journalist to do that however (just look at the questions politicians get asked - very often "do you hate politician X's guts" rather than about actual policies). They are often after stories, not facts.

We agree that the PS3 will be very powerful.

We disagree that the PS3 will sell extraordinarily well. I think the Wii will outsell it globally (by units, not necessarily by dollars). Whether it has reasonable sales will depend on how cheap they can make later versions.

We disagree that the PS3 price will seriously affect sales.

We disagree that Sony is making some arrogant statements. I don't think Phil is arrogant, but perhaps Sony Japan's statements have not been translated in the most favourable light. The label of "arrogant" once acquired can stick in the media's mind.

We both think we are in the games industry but neither of us has Ferraris :-(

Re:Here we go again.

[stonecypher]

Hey let's not get into namecalling.

I didn't. Well, not you. I did call Jeff some names, but unless you're him, you don't need to worry about that. Unless you mean where I said you weren't an industry professional, but, well, you aren't, and that's not an insult; I'm not an automobile industry professional, by counter-example.

But just because he is publishing it doesn't necessarily mean he coded it.

It's almost like you're trying to give me opportunities to insult the man. :D But, um, you're right - perhaps this reference will help. He really did write Gridrunner++. (I find it amusing that that article refers to the very games I cited as what it rips off as "this game is like XXX on someDrug."

As for not being in the games industry, one of the games I was lead programmer on sold several million units.

Very few games sell that kind of volume. Using US numbers for example, Namco's highest selling game of all time, Soul Calibur 2, which has been out for a hair under three years, has only sold 911,000 units. Only two Pokemon titles have ever broken the 2 million mark - Ruby / Sapphire (4,992,000) and Fire Red / Leaf Green (3,344,000.) It's worth noting that those are Nintendo's two highest selling titles of all time. Indeed, Nintendo has only released 11 games which broke the 2 million copies shipped mark, and all but three of them are Mario titles (Super Smash Brothers has Mario characters, but I don't count it as a Mario title.) EA has only broken that line four times. Sony, Square, Microsoft and Take 2 have each only broken that line twice. In both cases, Take 2 broke that line on Grand Theft Auto. Firaxis has broken the line once, as has Blizzard. No Playstation 1 title ever broke that line - no XBox 360 game has even hit 1 million. Only one DS game, Nintendogs, has crossed the 2 million mark, and only just barely (2,036,000.) No other game company has ever broken that line in the United States. If you are telling the truth, you are one of exactly 14 people. I know all but two of them.

Which game was this, please? I suspect you need to check with your marketing team; you're misremembering the data they gave you.

(Mind you, these numbers are for console video games, not PC games; if you include PC games, another four people hit that list with nine games, more than half of them Sid Meier. Sid is awesome. You aren't Sid, are you?)

I don't need to look him up to remember quite a few of his games by heart: Gridrunner, Lazerzone, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Sheep in Space, Anticipal, Hovver Bovver (thanks for the boardgame reference there!) Mama Llama, Psychedelia (hence Neon), Tempest 2000.

If you would be more careful, you would realize that what I asked you to do were to name two games which weren't clones or sequels. Not one game in that list is a non-clone non-sequel. Try again, please; I'm asking you to do this for a very specific reason.

Considering Justin Frankel was 6 years old when Psychedelia came out in 1984 he may not have as much to complain about as you think.

Please read this in context; you've missed the point. The claim Jeff Minter made was that specifically his XBox screensaver was inventing a new genre, not that Psychedelia did. The reason Justin was angry was because Jeff quite obviously said that as a publicity stunt; that you've now named something Jeff himself wrote which invalidates Jeff's claim is the specific reason Justin was complaining. Jeff is a media whore who has no problems with saying absolutely asinine things to get attention. You're bolstering my claim by providing that example.

Re:Here we go again.

[stonecypher]

But you think ad hominum attacks are invalid

Ad hominem attacks are by definition invalid. I only make them at Jeff because he pisses me off.

We disagree that Jeff is not famous.

I never said he wasn't famous. I said he was nobody. There's a big difference. Other famous nobodies include Renee Zellweger, Anne Heche, whatever this month's boy band is, Al Roker, Renee Zellweger, the guy from the original Highlander movie, any man in a porn with Ron Jeremy, the logical inverse of Samuel L Jackson (because he's so famous that even his exact opposite is famous,) Renee Zellweger, the Mayor of Cleveland, Canadians, the Royal Family of Luxembourg, Jey Leno and Renee Zellweger.

The point isn't whether you know who they are. The point is whether or not they're human filler. If Jey Leno never existed, it's not like anything he's done wouldn't have happened in his stead. If whoever Tom Cruise's current arm candy is hadn't come about, Scientology wouldn't collapse. There was no special Zellweger touch on Bridget Jones' Diary which would preclude a different actress.

The germane bit is, if Jeff Minter was hit by one of those science fiction bombs that make you never have been born, would gaming change much? And the answer is, "maybe there would be less clones around." That, my friend, is the epitome of "nobody."

and the "legend" label reflects that

I still openly reject his self-appointed legendary status.

We disagree about the ethics of the originality of his games. Intellectual Property was a different beast back in the 1980s. I guess that makes me sound like an apologist, but the early 1980s saw a great mix of game mechanics coupled with free "borrowing" from one game to another. The idea of a software patent on a game mechanic is anathema to me.

Oh, you're blowing what I said way out of proportion. I'm not saying games can't borrow from one another; Sonic is an awesome game, even though it's largely an adaptation of concepts from earlier games like the Mario series. The difference is that Sonic has new elements, a new style, it isn't a dead fucking ripoff.

Jeff Minter is a human xerox machine. Laws be damned, what he did was immoral a thousand years ago, and is today, too. I'm not saying it's illegal. I'm saying it's disgusting. There is no originality in any of his work, except a bunch of lame, stapled on llama jokes.

so I am coming to the opinion that originality does not pay the mortgage.

We debate that opinion. Either way, failing in the marketplace is no excuse for becoming a boldfaced plagarist. This isn't a question of similarity. It's a question of outright reappropriation.

As far as the later "we agree, we disagree" stuff, I'm not sure where you're getting that stuff, since I haven't said any of it. I don't think Phil Harrison is famous, as people who aren't in the industry by and on the whole have no idea who he is without his job title stapled onto his name. I haven't come to any decision about the PS3 sales rates; all I said was that Jeff had no right to second guess the most successful franchise in history, given his abysmal records. I have made no comment about the effect of PS3 price on sales, and indeed I believe its high price will be a huge problem for sales, just as the Neo-Geo's was. I've made no comments about Sony's arrogance; only Jeff's. Of your six "we agrees," only two actually represented my beliefs. I would thank you to stop guessing at my beliefs.

We both think we are in the games industry but neither of us has Ferraris :-(

I don't believe I'm in the games industry, actually. I believe I'm moving into it. I'm an industrial programmer and an entrepreneur. Don't confuse my saying I know people and that the reason you don't know things is that you're not a pro with my saying that I'm a pro. I'm not. I've released games, sure, and I have a hell of a lot of gaming press, sure. But I'm an industrial programmer.

As far as what I drive, why are you guessing? You have no idea.

Re:Here we go again.

[pommiekiwifruit]

Thanks for your detailed reply. If I may cherry-pick:

Jeff Minter is a human xerox machine.

Having now looked at Gridrunner++ I can say I am disturbed by the amount of copied content (not game mechanics) in it. The sound samples sound like a remix of defender sound effects, and the graphics include characters redrawn from at least galaxians, asteroids, tempest, 1942, and commodore and atari logos. I think that is inappropriate for a game released in the 2000s that is not a work of satire. Also the .exe stats he did write the code in Visual C++, so I must be confusing that SKU with another which was written by fans in BASIC which he then republished. But I still feel his output has a distinctive style.

Sonic is an awesome game

I agree with that even more now than when it first came out (when I wondered why Sega was developing a Felix the Cat platformer). It required high quality mapping in order to allow the character's speed to work.

I would thank you to stop guessing at my beliefs.

Well I'm glad you can make them explicit in your posts. That way my misunderstandings can be cleared up.

As far as what I drive, why are you guessing? You have no idea.

A Ferrari is the stereotypical reward for writing a best-selling game with a generous contract. I don't even drive! In your blog you talk about getting interest in a game (e.g. Sudoku for the DS; which may be somewhat of a crowded market what with Brain Training already having sold millions of units) but not claiming massive sales. I am suggesting that you have not yet had a huge seller. I have not yet had a generous contract. Remember that Jeff did top the US sales charts in 1982 when Gridrunner knocked Choplifter off the top spot. He was nominated for "Development Legend" status at the Develop Awards 2004 alongside Michel Ancel and winner Peter Molyneaux, so it's not entirely self-appointed.

Re:Here we go again.

[tc]

I've been watching this whole exchange with some amusement, and I have to congratulate you, sir. You really are a first class troll. Let's review:

- You don't like ad hominem attacks when they're directed at you, but you're perfectly prepared to sling them liberally in the direction of Mr. Minter. This appears to be a common theme in your line of reasoning.

- You accuse Jeff Minter of being a "nobody", and yet I'll wager that far more people in the industry have respect for him than have even heard of you.

- You claim that Jeff Minter is "despised" in the games industry. That's news to me, and I've been in the industry for over 11 years. Given how long he has been around I'm sure he has bumped heads with a few people along the way, so it wouldn't surprise me if there were some people floating around who feel that way. But you could say the same about almost anyone, and it's a far cry from the universal disdain you are suggesting.

- You claim that all of Jeff's games are clones or sequels. Given a broad enough interpretation, that's a fair statement. However, it's also a fair statement about the vast majority of games ever made. There just aren't that many genuinely new ideas. Unless you happen to be Sid Meier, Will Wright, or small handful of others, your life in the games industry consists of putting slightly new twists on essentially the same basic gameplay.

This last point I want to make particularly clearly. It's a perfectly honorable thing to take an existing game and remake it better - there is no copyright on an "idea" and nor should there be. Some of the best, i.e. most fun and/or best selling, games out there are clones and sequels. Every FPS ever made owes a debt to Wolfenstein and Doom. Every RTS should give a nod to Dune 2. Does that mean that Halo and Starcraft are worthless, terrible games? Of course not! Similarly, should we lambast Jeff Minter for making Tempest 2000, or should we applaud him for making the best version of that game ever built? I vote for the latter. If your Sudoku game turns out to be the best Sudoku game ever, I'll applaud you too.

Re:Here we go again.

[stonecypher]

In your blog you talk about getting interest in a game (e.g. Sudoku for the DS; which may be somewhat of a crowded market what with Brain Training already having sold millions of units) but not claiming massive sales.

Oh. Also, no, it's not a crowded market - Brain Training's implementation is shite, and neither of the other two pure-sudoku games out there do anything other than the core game at 3x3, with fewer than a thousand puzzles each.

He was nominated for "Development Legend" status at the Develop Awards 2004 alongside Michel Ancel and winner Peter Molyneaux, so it's not entirely self-appointed.

Well, just because some nobody awards show calls some other nobody a legend doesn't mean they actually are. (shrugs) What makes someone famous is being known, not an awards show who couldn't get anyone better. There are literally hundreds of better candidates they've never even tipped their hat to. It's absurd. Honestly, if he were a better man, he just wouldn't use the term.

Re:Here we go again.

[stonecypher]

- You don't like ad hominem attacks when they're directed at you, but you're perfectly prepared to sling them liberally in the direction of Mr. Minter.

I can't decide whether it's more amusing that you'd say that after resorting to the same, or whether it's just that you can't sort out the difference between an accusatory blog post and a discussion. I'm fine with ad hominem attacks. I am not fine with their being used to support arguments. The difference is enormous.

This appears to be a common theme in your line of reasoning.

Given that your accusation doesn't find itself correct there, I'd be interested to learn in what other places you believe I'm being a hypocrite. I suspect they're equally vapid.

- You accuse Jeff Minter of being a "nobody", and yet I'll wager that far more people in the industry have respect for him than have even heard of you.

That's a wager you'd lose. Jeff Minter is not respected. He is reviled. The average Joe Nobody on the street would win that bet, and I'm not Joe Nobody, your condescending tone applied to someone you know nothing of notwithstanding. It may interest you to know that I've been on G4 twice, so that you can free yourself from your nonsense guesses that I have no position to speak of.

I'm a little tired of the ongoing personal attacks in the stead of actual counterpoint. I know you're having trouble with this, so let me explain it again: there's nothing wrong with personal attacks. However, when you make guesses about a person and then say "wow anyone like my guesses is a douche," you really end up just looking foolish, and wasting other people's time.

If you have something to say about what I said, go ahead. If you have more to say about me, don't bother. I have games on the market, and I'm not even in the games industry. Until you reveal what your work is, your attempt to make me feel like an outsider simply fails; I've been saying I'm an outsider all along, and given your bearing, I suspect I'm still more successful in gaming than you are. Feel free to tell me what you've worked on in order to make your attempts at seeming like an authority ring something other than hollow. Don't bother attacking me anymore.

- You claim that Jeff Minter is "despised" in the games industry. That's news to me, and I've been in the industry for over 11 years.

I don't believe you, to be frank. It's a bit like the people in Chicago who would write into newspapers and claim that they were deeply involved in the local political scene, and couldn't imagine that Al Capone would be anything other than a paragon of virtue in the eyes of the law. All sorts of people who wanted to pat themselves on the back about being in touch did exactly that; they could not imagine that there was something going on which they didn't know about. Meanwhile, these people were essentially just wasting their time; nobody took them seriously, because the vast majority of them were themselves utter nobodies just straining to get someone to believe they were an expert.

If you want to look like an authority, don't say you've been in the industry for some amount of time. Hell, you've been in the industry less than a third as long as the person I'm currently claiming is a nobody; I can't imagine why you'd think that would impress me. Brian Reynolds impressed me six months after he entered the market, by generating a genuinely fun and highly profitable game without massive technology investments.

Either stand on your work, or sit down. Tubthumping is annoying. Nobody cares how long you've been around; only what you've done. You sit there screaming about my complete lack of hits (which in fact isn't true,) yet you claim to be in a much stronger position than I am.

Time to put up, or to shut up. Exactly what games have you been lead on? I'm happy to assume that you haven't said so before through omission or because you didn't believe it was important. If you cont

Re:Here we go again.

[stonecypher]

Honestly, if you think the PS3 is going to be monster hit at that price I'd say you should start looking in the mirror to see who is the fanboy.

Er, I don't, and moreover I never used the word fanboy. I said nothing about the PS3 at all. I just commented on my opinion regarding one man's media tirade. Where is this coming from?

Well, the last time I looked at the consumer market I saw a fickle group that is more than willing to jump on whatever the "hot" trend is.

Have another look. The PS2 is outselling the XBox360 almost four to one, and has never been outsold by the 360, even during the month it was first introduced. That fickle group isn't nearly as fickle as you imagine, and the statistics are easy to come by.

They will sell out at first because there are enough early adopters out there, but at the premium they are asking they won't sustain that level of sales for long past the holidays.

Amusingly, I remember the same thing being said about the PS1 and the PS2. I tend to agree with you, actually; I think the price will be a big problem. I've run the numbers, and it's my personal estimate that Sony is overdoing their market predictions by a little over 60%. I believe Sony is pulling a Neo-Geo. I don't understand why you're accusing me otherwise.

That said, I think you need to realize that you're not a market analyst; indeed I suspect you haven't ever actually looked at price-gauged trend data for consoles. You're speaking in firmaments when you're not apparently even passingly familiar with sales data. I don't understand why everyone thinks they're a marketer. If you understand the market so well, just short Sony's stock; the Playstation brand, including software, licenses and hardware, currently accounts for almost 35% of Sony's income. If the machine tanks as badly as you suggest, it'll do the company tremendous damage. If my personal estimates are correct, it's easy to calculate the actual damage, which weighs in at about $450m in the first six months (I'm not willing to estimate further than that, as that's the point at which price points traditionally start getting changed.) You would be rich in a matter of months.

And, frankly, you condescending to me about guesses you made about my opinions which aren't actually correct is a bit too boring to follow through on, so don't bother to reply, please.

All consoles are locked down

[Nazmun]

Try playing homebrew games on your Sega, Nintendo, or even xbox systems without cracking something? Give people the option to rip off developers and sony sales and they will. In droves...thats just human nature to most of the population.

If they REALLY want to ask tough questions...

[FSWKU]

...then I've got one that should cause him to sweat a bit.

Quoth Phil Harrison to Spiegel Online:

On one level I understand why people say that. But it's a little stupid, if you don't mind me saying so. When we launched Playstation in 1994 we introduced the concept of real-time computer-generated 3-D-graphics for the first time.

This was part of his response to a question relating to the tilt controller, specifically wanting a response to those who thought they stole the idea. My question is two-fold: First, what are you hiding? It should be easy to relate the design process that ended with having a tilt controller (needing a feature now that they can't have dual-shock would have been more than sufficient). However, you simply called the allegations "stupid" and tried to move on as quickly as possible.

My second question (and the most pressing): Why are you LYING to the public about Sony's achievements? And before you get upset about the question, let me point out my proof:

• 1980: Atari releases Battlezone. This game featured real-time, computer-generated 3D graphics, and was also (technically) an FPS.
• 1992: Sega releases Virtua Racing in the arcades. The game was composed almost entirely of real-time 3D graphicsf.
• February 23, 1993: Nintendo releases Star Fox for the SNES. The major selling point of the game was real-time, computer-generated 3D graphics.
• November 22, 1994: Sega debuts the Saturn, which is fully capable of providing real-time, computer-generated 3D graphics. Titles such as Daytona USA sell extremely well among owners of the system. This same year, Virtua Racing is ported to the Genesis, and Virtua Racing Deluxe is released for the 32X.
• December 3, 1994: Sony releases the Playstation, which was originally to become a CD add-on for the SNES to compete with the SegaCD.

This clearly shows your assertion that "...we introduced the concept of real-time computer-generated 3-D-graphics for the first time..." to be flat-out wrong. This is all commonly available information, which someone authorized to speak on Sony's behalf should know off the top of their head. So I ask again, why the lying? If it was intentional, then you have only proven the arrogant desperation of your company. If it was a mistake, then you are proving yourself unqualified to speak for an entire company. Unfortunately, I am inclined to believe that it was intentional in light of Kaz Hirai's statement of "...With our original PlayStation, we ushered in the era of the CD-ROM and 3-D..."

So to conclude, you may not think of yourselves as arrogant, but your words and actions say otherwise.

Re:If they REALLY want to ask tough questions...

[RSquaredW]

Johnny Turbo, you've come back to us!

So who is talking about the pot and the kettle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linking to your own article to call someone arrogant?

Re:So who is talking about the pot and the kettle?

[stonecypher]

I don't see anything arrogant about my linking to something I said in detail several days ago. I am not saying anything about my importance, nor am I being over-bearing; I just didn't think it appropriate to cut and paste the whole diatribe into SlashDot. In fact, that's what SlashDot prefers one to do. It's how things have worked here for eight years.

So, mr. AC, perhaps you could explain to me what's arrogant about that? And, perhaps you could gather together the gonads to use your account when you answer?

Mario 3 was $75

[Myria]

Mario 3 for NES debuted at $75 and that was I think 1989.

Melissa

Misinformation

[SuperKendall]

The thing that causes the PS3 to be $500 and not $300 is not completely useable at the $500 price. If you want to watch a Blu-Ray movie and be sure you can actually see it in HD, you need to buy the $600 model.

It's pretty odd how this particular myth continues to persist, despite numerous corrections on this very subject from myself and others in every Sony story.

In fact you can watch Blu-Ray movies at 1080i using the component output of the PS3. You may even be able to do 1080p, that is less certain due to AACS... But no matter, the point remains you can do 1080p over component cables, and many new 1080p HD sets still support this (as due older models, most of which ONLY support componet HD not having HDMI ports).

I am also buying the PS3 for Blu-Ray ability, and have no intention of losing signal quality - Component is a very good quality signal, and you can run component feeds over much longer runs than HDMI. Not to mention that I prefer not to support DRM laden technologies when I do not have to.

Re:Misinformation

[_xeno_]

No, no you can't. Blu-Ray movies with ICT activated will ONLY display in full HD over HDMI. Anything else and it'll degrade it down to DVD quality[1], making the extra cost for the PS3 completely worthless. It's not worth cheaping out on $100 (which won't even buy you two PS3 games anyway) when all you'll accomplish is making your PS3 become worthless in a few years. See the Wikipedia article on Blu-ray and a HDTV Canada article on the ICT itself.

There's no reason to criple your PS3 by getting the cheap version that's guaranteed not to support all Blu-ray content.

[1] Actually ever-so-slightly-higher than DVD quality. But not full HD quality in any case.

Perhaps

[SuperKendall]

I don't know if Sony "borrowed" the idea from Ninetndo or not, nor do I care. The fact remains that the common refrain of "Sony only added it two weeks before E3!" is factually incorrect - just as the oft-quoted price of $600 for the cheapest PS3 you can buy. The use of either term plants someone as either ignorant or a simple fanboy without any desire to be correct, only loud.

Re:Perhaps

[_xeno_]

Yeah, $600 is just the cheapest PS3 you can buy if you wanna, you know, actually be able to make use of those nifty HDTV features. The HDMI port cannot be added to the $500 one.

Yeah, yeah, I know - "only for Blu-ray movies" and "Sony says you won't need to yet." Except Sony has already told us that the PS3 is really "a cheap Blu-ray player" and I don't exactly want to get a movie player that'll be effectively useless in a couple of years when HDMI is required.

While $600 may not be the cheapest PS3, it's the only one that's worth buying, as it's the only one that won't randomly become obsolete at some unknown point in the future. And besides, with PS3 games slated to cost "no more than $100," it's only the cost of a game to get the full PS3...

Dear Anonymous Flamebaiter

[bateleur]

Face it: Sony sucks.

This is not something I expect to read in a "Score:5, Insightful" post.

You are not forced to buy Sony's product. By not doing so you send exactly the right signal. However, the way things work is that each individual makes this choice for themselves. If Sony's sales drop as a result and they make huge losses, then the market has adequately expressed disapproval.

I suspect what's really annoying people round here is that we all know perfectly well Sony's going to do just fine with the PS3. Many other large corporations have proven this time and again: make products that people like or which do things they want and that's enough. End of story. Corporations don't care what you think, or even if you think, unless it impacts profits.

You may not like what Sony do, but it seems to me they do not "suck" in any relevant sense. Their console isn't out yet. When it is, we can have this discussion more constructively based on the merits of the device itself and its associated software.

Misinformation

[SuperKendall]

Yeah, $600 is just the cheapest PS3 you can buy if you wanna, you know, actually be able to make use of those nifty HDTV features. The HDMI port cannot be added to the $500 one.

It's pretty odd how this particular myth continues to persist, despite numerous corrections on this very subject from myself and others in every Sony story.

In fact you can watch Blu-Ray movies at 1080i using the component output of the PS3. You may even be able to do 1080p, that is less certain due to AACS... But no matter, the point remains you can do 1080p over component cables, and many new 1080p HD sets still support this (as due older models, most of which ONLY support componet HD not having HDMI ports).

I am also buying the PS3 for Blu-Ray ability, and have no intention of losing signal quality - Component is a very good quality signal, and you can run component feeds over much longer runs than HDMI. Not to mention that I prefer not to support DRM laden technologies when I do not have to.

Yeah, yeah, I know - "only for Blu-ray movies" and "Sony says you won't need to yet." Except Sony has already told us that the PS3 is really "a cheap Blu-ray player" and I don't exactly want to get a movie player that'll be effectively useless in a couple of years when HDMI is required.

More than a couple of years, especially if the $500 PS3 is the primary unit sold - for at least the next few years that will be people's primary Blu-Ray player due to cost. As long as that is true they cannot turn on the ICT flag because they will be cutting out too much of the market.

Therefore you'd have to look outward until the time when sub $100 Blu-Ray players are the most common device befre they can even think about utning on ICT... and at that point, you simply buy the cheap Blu-Ray player and use that to buy the movies you already have! Thus there is no failre point in the plan, because as I said even if they someday do enable the IC flag (which I actually doubt, but I'll give it to you for the sake of argument) you simply buy a dedicated player.

In the meantime by not buying an HDMI capible unit you make it less likley that ICT ever will be enabled.

While $600 may not be the cheapest PS3, it's the only one that's worth buying, as it's the only one that won't randomly become obsolete at some ...

Incorrect, by buying the $500 PS3 you are insuring it will not become obsolete - and again, it will never be obsolete for games as you can do 1080p over component.

Yes, yes you can

[SuperKendall]

No, no you can't. Blu-Ray movies with ICT activated will ONLY display in full HD over HDMI. Anything else and it'll degrade it down to DVD quality[1], making the extra cost for the PS3 completely worthless. It's not worth cheaping out on $100 (which won't even buy you two PS3 games anyway) when all you'll accomplish is making your PS3 become worthless in a few years

They are not enabling ICT now. They will not as long as the dominant Blu-Ray player is the $500 PS3 which cannot do HDMI. By Buying the $500 PS3, you ensure that you can continue to use it as a player.

At some point in the future when other players get cheap enough, it's possible the ICT flag will get turned on... at which point you buy the cheap dedicated player, and continue to use the PS3 at 1080p for games over the compoent cable. Thus you lose nothing by buying the $500 PS3 and in fact have saved $100. If you invest that $100 saved in an account somewhere you'll have more than enough to buy a player and a few games in the distant future IF they ever do turn on the flag.

Re:Yes, yes you can

[_xeno_]

They say they won't enable the ICT now. However, Sony also said they'd never bundle a rootkit with CDs.

The ICT will be enabled at some point, and $100 seems like a small price to pay to ensure your PS3 won't become severly crippled at an unknown point in the future.

Doesn't matter if they do

[SuperKendall]

As I said, even if they enable ICT they only reason they could do so would be that HDMI capible players were plentiful enough they would be able to do so. Unless you'd care to explain why a company would release a product only a hundred thousand people could buy and use instead of millions by simply not enabling the flag? You see, I am not relying on the goodness of the movie studios hearts but only thinking of what will bring them the greatest profit - as are they.

That's exactly why ICT is not on today. Why do you not trust greed as a motive where the movie studios are concerned?

As I said, even if they do turn on the ICT flag later (the distance of which is a combination of standalone Blu-Ray players dropping in price and the percentage of $500 PS3 models sold) you can simply buy a standalone Blu-Ray player. If you take that $100 you would have spent, and put it in an interest-bearing account then by the time the ICT flag is enabled you should have enough money for a standlone player and another movie or two. So you can save $100 now an enjoy Blu-Ray movies when the PS3 comes out, then continie to watch the same movies later and use the PS3 as a gaming device. The plan is simple and saves you $100 - not sure why you are set on spending extra money to help out the movie studios when there is no need to do so.

Re:Doesn't matter if they do

[SetupWeasel]

One, only Sony has "promised" not to use the ICT. There are many other studios that are free to do so and have not made such statements.

Two, If you think Sony cares about you or your purchase past the point where you cough up $500, you haven't been paying attention.

Think of it this way. If the ICT will never be implemented, the $600 SKU is a red herring and a rip-off. If the ICT is implemented, the $500 SKU is a red herring and a rip-off. Someone is getting screwed, and that is absolutely consistant with Sony's business model in the past few years. How many broken promises and defective consoles will it take for people to stop bowing before their altar?

Then again, people still buy Firestone tires, and at least Sony won't kill you.

Still doesn't matter

[SuperKendall]

One, only Sony has "promised" not to use the ICT. There are many other studios that are free to do so and have not made such statements.

There is an "unofficial" announcement of a pact between all studios - on the HD-DVD and Blur-Ray side.

But even if there were not it doesn't matter, for the reasons they are doing so have already been outline by myself. The motive is as clear as day - sales. If you wish to propose some alternate theory about how studios have suddenly taken a dislike for money all of Slashdot waits with baited breath.

Two, If you think Sony cares about you or your purchase past the point where you cough up $500, you haven't been paying attention.

Why would that matter? That you think so shows a lack of reading comprehension and understanding of my points.

Nothing I have said relies on Sony "caring" for the consumer, I can't imagine anyone gullible enough to believe that.

Think of it this way. If the ICT will never be implemented, the $600 SKU is a red herring and a rip-off.

That shows a lack of understanding of HDMI. If it were not for the HDCP intractibly bound with HDMI, it would indeed be preferable - the video quality is somewhat better, interoperability would in fact work well (HDCP is what messes that up right now since the encryption handshaking has been flaky) and in the more distant future HDMI 1.3 even support greater bit depths than DVI, which means smoother tones in an image.

You are resting everything on ICT but in fact that is only a side issue, and not really important at this time. You are making it out to be like Sony looses regardless of the outcome of the use of ICT, when in fact the consumer has a clear victory to be had if the $500 PS3 sells well. I am all about what is good for the consumer, not what is good or bad for Sony.

How many broken promises and defective consoles will it take for people to stop bowing before their altar?

I don't have to trust them to like them. My original PS2, bought at launch, works just fine. I'll buy a PS3 at launch as well, partially for a Blu-Ray player and of course for the games (old and new). Then I'll get a Wii as well...

The 360 looks pretty good too but just doesn't have any games that would appeal to me that are not also on the PC. I am pretty sure with the Japanese developer support I'll get some game of Ico calibur for the PS3 along the line - that's part of what I'm buyng into. Sony "Anti-Fans" make the mistake of thinking people who like the consoles like Sony, when in fact what we like are good games. In the end, is that not really the most important thing?

Re:Still doesn't matter

[_xeno_]

The thing you're constantly forgetting is that Blu-rays with ICT enabled will still play on the $500 PS3 - just at the lowest HD resolution, which is ever-so-slightly greater than DVD resolution.

When the ICT becomes enabled, all ICT discs played in a $500 PS3 will turn the $2500 HDTV the PS3 is hooked to into nothing more than a $500 low-def TV. But they'll still play. I don't think the studios will care that they're screwing over people with the crippled PS3 when they activate the ICT - they'll still be able to watch them, just not at full HD resolution.

What you forgot

[SuperKendall]

The thing you're constantly forgetting is that Blu-rays with ICT enabled will still play on the $500 PS3 - just at the lowest HD resolution, which is ever-so-slightly greater than DVD resolution...

But they will look like hell compared to the other 1080 discs. People will notice the difference; It is easy to see. They'll buy a new disc and say "why does this look so poor compared to my other Blu-Ray discs?" Then they will return and/or complain.

The thing you're really forgetting is if people do not notice this change in resolution, then it does not matter. For those of use who know better or can see the difference, then - once again - we'll just buy a cheap standalone player.

Your arguments, if correct, point to ICT being enabled today. If you can answer why it's not being turned on to start with then I might buy into your theory of them enabling it soon. Either they are enabling it now or they will not be for some time, because it's all about the motives for enabling the flag and the effect it has on sales. Right now they want the best looking picture possible to get people to buy into nice HD sets and expensive players - this will again be the case for years to come as the market is built up. Only at that point will they re-ealuate the use of ICT. In the meantime, of there have been no issues from not enabling the flag why turn it on and take on the complaints from angry buyers?

joystiq

[zerocommazero]

Hey wait a minute, here!! Isn't joystiq.com owned by Zonk!?! Shameless promotionalism....