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History To Repeat Itself With PS3?
Dr. Eggman writes to mention a 1up article looking at the way things were when the PS2 launched vs. next week's PlayStation 3 launch. The question: can history repeat itself? From the article: "PS2: Released one year after the lower priced Dreamcast, lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service. PS3: Releasing one year after the lower priced Xbox 360, lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service. PS2: Competition from Nintendo: A smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay.' PS3: Competition from Nintendo: A smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay.'" The article also looks at how things have changed for Sony since the last time around.
For me it's all about the price
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
same games, better graphics, pay us again
Maybe I just wasn't as well-informed back in '99-'00, but I don't recall much talk about online plans during the launches. I mean, ChuChu Rocket and PSO were big deals for the DC, but I don't recall the PS2 boasting superior online play right out of the gate...
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
... because today is not like yesterday. For example, online game play wasn't as important when the Dreamcast was released. Also, sales were sluggish from the beginning as people held their money for the PS2 launch which was not the case with the 360.
The PS3 might still dominate, but it's not likely to be for the exact same reasons as in the past.
TW
... otherwise we can look forward to the PS3's lens giving out shortly after the warranty period and refusing to read half of the discs. The PS2 lens problems made the 360's failure rate look like a drop in the ocean? Nope, this isn't intended as flamebait - it happened to me, and I was only able to get it working, sort of, by cracking the PS2 open and changing the lens angle. What Joe Public who's never even opened a PC was supposed to do, other than buy a new one, I don't know.
PS3 has ease of development going for it?
The article also compares "the average price for PS2 on ebay [sic] in November 2000" with "the price for the higher end PS3 when it releases in November 2006." Stock eBay vs. high-end retail price? And this is supposed to be a formula?
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
"PS3: Releasing one year after the lower priced Xbox 360, lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service."
Really? Great games? Not at launch.
ease of development? One reason why it has barely any launch titles is because it's so hard to develop for the console. Superior online service? Does it even have an online service?
No, I'm not anyone's fanboy. I still want to play MGS4.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Sony had a better reputation at the time of the PS2, so I think that this time, the sales figures will be a little different at least.
// You may rejoice.
Superior online service? Does it even have an online service?
Seriously, when you know a week before launch that you'll have to download an update for the console as soon as you buy it in order to use online features, that's not what I would call a superior online service.
Now that's what I call bootstrapping: you'll be able to get online only after you get online to download the patch.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
i think people are a little confused about what Sony are trying to achieve with the PS3. Sure, it's going to be up against the Wii and XB360, but I'm guessing that's a secondary concern to Mr Stringer.
The PS2 sold 105million units. Let's say the PS3 is a disaster - how bad could it be? 50million? 25million?
Those are all Blu-ray devices. At least an installed base of 25million Blu-ray players sold in a few years time. Versus how many HD-DVD players? How can HD-DVD compete with that kind of a headstart?
Owning the next-gen DVD format is the prize here. HD-DVD is only 33% ahead of Blu-ray today, before the PS3 even hits the market. I think that's more precious to Sony than losing a bit of ground to Microsoft. Maybe they calculated on losing gaming market share this time round.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
So basically it'll boil down to:
1. The naysayers will say that it'll suck
2. It'll sell beyond expectations
3. The naysayers deny the first statement and claim they knew all along
Summation 2
PS2: Sony still on consumers' good side.
PS3: Sony has pissed consumers off with root kits, exploding batteries and limited production of PS3.
The PS2 is not known as a easy system for development and most developer's interview about PS3 projects has some lines about them telling PS3 is a very difficult system to develop for (mainly because you can't get very strong performance from the CELL CPU without extensive experience of multicore architecture, which is not very common in IT nowadays and even less in the game development world imho).
Also about the competition from Nintendo line, smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay was not much more than a marketing argument, with Wii I guess they pretty much achieved to meet the marketing promise.
@neonux
I think the second page of the article is definitely the more interesting of the two: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=1&cId=3 155102. Here they give the reasons why this launch's similarities aren't all positives. The PS2 may have been on ebay for $600, but the PS3 is coming from retail stores at MSRP of $600. That's a big difference.
The real reason why the PS2 was such a success, is that it was a very cheap DVD player, and DVDs had just become established technology.
The PS3 is a cheap Blu-Ray player, but Blu-Ray is by no means established. Instead of using the DVD to launch the PS2, they're trying to do the reverse: using the PS3 to launch Blu-Ray. I don't think that will work nearly as well. In fact, I expect it to fail miserably.
It seems to me that they are on the ball with it more than Microsoft. Sony sees bugs in their code and they fix and distribute them ASAP. Unlike Microsoft who waits around for weeks after the patch has been made to actually distribute it.
PS2: Competition from Nintendo: A smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay.' released one year after the PS2
PS3: Competition from Nintendo: A smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay.' released concurrently with the PS3."
Fixed your article. Where's my co-author credit?
History To Repeat Itself With PS3?
No.
This has been another episode of Simple Answers to Slashdot Questions.
1up gets it wrong. Again. Look at the PS3 launch titles; there isn't a "great game" among them. According to nearly every developer interview and blog, the PS3's cell processor and development environment is quite difficult to program for. The online service is far from "superior"; it lacks critical features that have been part of Microsoft's offering since the last generation and what it does offer is still nebulous and unproven. The information is this article is garbage; it's either been written to generate traffic from fanboys or generate money from Sony's PR budget.
Who said this?
seriously, I don't remember anyone saying they WANT Sony to fail, most comments I have seen have been a desire to see all 3 systems do well, for a more open and competative game market....
any one?
link highly apreciated.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
If we're going to look at the past to predict the future, let's look at these facts:
No console with a launch price higher than $300 (at the time of launch) has ever been a success.
No console with a launch price higher than $400 (adjusted for inflation to 2006 dollars) has been a success since prior to The Crash of 1982.
Sony took a huge risk in pricing their new console so far outside of the historical comfort zone for price, and I don't think the outlook for them is good at all. I only wonder what derisive name will ultimately be attached to their failure:
P$3?
PS3DO?
PS3O-GEO?
One important item to make note of here is that while the Sega Dreamcast was itself a decent system, Sega had already burned a lot of its customers with their numerous "1.5 systems." What I mean by that is, all of the many systems they created as extensions of current systems (Sega CD, 32X, etc..) that they sold as the next big thing, but completely failed on when it came to supporting them. I myself bought the 32X for $130 when it came out, and how many games were made for it? Less than 60. Same with the Saturn, the ultimate 2D system, suddenly found itself floundering when the Playstation focused solely on 3D games and Sega dropped it, and went on with the Dreamcast. After all of those, you could be sure I wasn't about to spend another dime on a Sega system, because how do I know its not another "1.5" system than will have its support cut out from under it in only a few months time.
Who the hell is saying the PS3 has better online service? The last word I have heard regarding online service to this day is that everyone is still at the altar of XBL, except for some microtransaction nasties.
" This one costed $300."
The past tense of cost is cost. You sound like a retard or an elementary school child when you write it in a "real" article. This is the first line, too! Do they not hire editors at 1up?
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
It said:
It would have been clearer had it said: "PS2: Released one year after the lower priced Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service. PS3: Releasing one year after the lower priced Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 was lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service. Even if it just said, "which was" after dreamcast and xbox 360. The commas can throw people off into thinking the lower priced console was one point and what followed were unrelated additional points when in fact what followed was a description of the lower priced console.
i think people are a little confused about what Sony are trying to achieve with the PS3
I think you're the one that is confused, sorry. Sony is all about long-term w/the PS3, and there is no single element of it that will make or break those goals.
Owning the next-gen DVD format is the prize here
Irrelevant...that token is off the table with today's announcement of a 'playz-all' drive. Poof - gone. Risk-free for both sides and life goes on. Next problem?!
I agree with 100% of this, Even with the bad press almost every single presale around the country sold out. People are selling them for 3x-4x what they cost on Ebay, and the buzz for them even with 1 killer launch title is amazing. Coupled with coming with a Blu-ray HD DVD player this (entertainment center) console could very well set the pace for the market for HD DVDs and Console (Entertainment Center) gaming machines. Old saying applies "there is no such thing as bad press" as long as people are buzzing about you, you will be on there minds.
What killed the dreamcast wasn't the PS2 directly. What killed it was Segas poor reputation with its past systems. The Sega Saturns 3d support was very poor compared to PS1 and N64,and died off rather quickly. Segas Add-ons for the Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, 32x-CD, Sold moderitly well, but had poor games, and killed of right away when Saturn came out.
So when Sega rushed the dreamcast out to be the first of the new generation systems, people were hesitant about buying another sega product. Some people only used the Saturn as a stop-gap till the PS2 came out. The hype of the PS2 helped kill the dreamcast but it wasn't the only factor.
This time around PS3 is competing with Xbox360. Unlike Saturn the Xbox has proven itself as a strong system, and in many ways better then PS2.
Wow. That is such a logical argument. In fact, let's follow that argument to its logical conclusion. So a movie format based on a console that sells millions of units is a guaranteed success, right? Well, that means UMD must be a raging success because its player has sold millions. And since there aren't many games (at least ones people want to play) for the PSP, people will buy movies to get some use out of their overpriced game console. So UMDs must be flying off the shelves, right?
P.S. The PS2 succeeded because Sony duped enough developers (like EA) into not supporting the Dreamcast by telling them the PS2 was going to cause a rift in space and time because it was so powerful. By the time developers realized Sony had conned them, it was too late. They won't make that mistake again (just like Universal refused to support Blu-ray after losing a ton of money on UMD). Witness EA cancelling NBA Live 07 for the PS3. No third-party developers are killing themselves to get stuff out for the PS3 launch(no online in Tony Hawk, etc.) like they did for the PS2. Developers are taking the path of least resistance- develop on the 360, port to the PS3 and spend a bare minimum of engineering time optimizing. Again, look at the poor framerate in Tony Hawk and the warmed over ports passed off as "exclusive sequels" in Ridge Racer 7 and Full Auto 2.
The PS3 sounds exactly like the Ps2. And everyone knows it. If you had problems with the PS2, expect more from the ps3.
Even worse people jumped on board the ps2 for two reasons. A. It was the only system worth buying, (Sorry dream cast) the only system with a great legacy. B. It had GTA. C. It played your PS2 games and only costed 300 dollars.
Sony can pretend this is all good because it's the same, but Ps2's early launch saved them. PSX not really having competition for CD based systems saved them. However the 360 has an HD-DVD player now. Gamers won't care about blu-ray games unless they can see a real difference (they can't) Blu-ray might win, but the Ps3 is in a bad place.
Most of the points they made are scary because they are so bad for the system even while 1up is making it sound good. No one wants to buy a PS2... at least not for 600 bucks. People want to buy a PS3, they want a new system, and as much as tilt control sounds interesting, Nintendo has that for 250 and games completely built around it. And as much as better graphics sounds good, Microsoft has that for 300 or 400 (400 if you're smart). What exactly am I getting for 600 bucks? A cell processor that won't even reach full potential for 4 generations? A hyped machine? A paper weight with out an online network?
The 360 has the best position currently, and even in japan people are looking forward to blue dragon (more than zelda? How did Microsoft do that one?)
I am old enough to have seen every home video game system. Ever. Including the Odyssey and Fairchild. I even owned one -- Atari Video Pinball (the last one they made before the 2600).
I actually wanted to buy a 2600 in 1979, but when I went to look at one it was side-by-side with the spanking-new Atari 400 computer for about 200 bucks more. That was the end of consoles for me.
With every single console since, the computer on my desk had more raw power, better graphics, and better gameplay (via the keyboard) than any console of each era. Every console title was either directly available on the computer or a clone just like it was.
The article makes big deals out of Sony Online & XBox Live, while Doom players have been online since 1995, and online computer games (like via Compuserve) date to the late '70s.
They also keep claiming that the PS3 is a bargain blu-ray player. In 1979, the financial decision was Videogame brain-rot vs. the benefits of a real computer. Years later, the real computer has more than paid for itself. I'd still make the same decision today.
Years from now, none of these things will be anything but doorstops.
(And that's regardless of the experiences of one 500-year-old Cartman.)
Now get off my lawn, you damn kids!
This is a dupe of the other million PS3 articles I've seen on slashdot. I find it unlikely that there will be any real new information before the PS3 launch in a week (actually I bet there is no new info there either); however, I'm sure there will be more than one PS3 article on slashdot before it is released. I'm not sure whether I should blame the editors or all of us readers for reading the same information again and again.
Hobby Robotics
I agree. I think Sony's trying to take a double edged sword here. It's what I've been thinking as well.
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
A "plays-all" drive wasn't announced today. What was announced was a single chip that does video decoding, DRM, various video outputs, etc. [1] It's a piece of the pie, but not the whole thing. It's suggested that creating a single drive that reads both with be more difficult that building the decoding chip. [2]
Better then to include consoles in antiscalping laws. I'm sure they've got enough clout to make it happen, and the ability to penalize flippers and the buyers. Just void the warranty if receipts dont match in the first two years. Make a few buys from some high volume people, and have them call in who sold them the unit to take down the sellers. After that, publicly announce who these flippers are and how to contact them, telling that they (the flippers) are now ineligible for support for any further consoles they buy.
It'd be interesting to see what happens with the next console launch if they pulled this one off, especially if they have prices all flat at 30-50 plus MSRP on Ebay. Heck, you might even be able to generate more sales.
Works for tickets (e.g. World Cup where laws exist) with little complaint.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Game Console $350. Games $100. Having the time of you life: Priceless!
:P
I say, who cares what the price is! its going to be the best Game Console to hit the market for a long time. so you might as well get one, or else go over to a friends house and play it!
I agree! It's very convenient to be able to use my PS2 to play my DVDs, I don't need to have another machine hooked up or worry about video swit-
DISC READ ERROR
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
How many HD-DVD players do you think will be out there in a few years time? The PS3 initial launch quantities are pitiful. While Sony's ramping up PS3 sales, HD-DVD is out there, looking cheaper, and if not better, at least as good (going on what I've read here - never could understand why Blu-Ray would not look every bit as good as HD-DVD, but nevermind).
This also ignores the very real possibility that both formats will flop, because DVD was just too successful, and people don't want to start replacing media they invested a small fortune in over the last few years.
You could get good DVD players (Panasonic brand) in $150 in late 2000. That's half the price of the PS2 when it came out. I didn't have a DVD player and I thought it was a good selling point when I got my PS2 in 2001, but I did not think it was a "very cheap" DVD player.
The DVD player contributed it, but it is by far the "real" reason it was so successful.
Yes but what you forget is Blu-Ray discs are playable in other Blu-Ray players. UMDs can only be played on PSPs. Also, UMDs don't offer better quality than DVDs. Why would you want to buy a movie twice so you can watch it on your home system and a portable? So this argument can't really be applied to the PS3, it's not the same situation.
Easily. HD-DVD has the letters "DVD" in it. That has an immediate meaning in the average consumer's head: It's like DVD, but now it's in HD! Just like how a HD-TV is like a TV but in HD!
HD-DVD, regardless of how well it actually performs, has an immediate name recognition. The name "Blu-ray" really doesn't convey any meaning to the average Joe Blow -- unless s/he already did the homework. It doesn't exactly scream, "This is better than DVD!"
vs.
How is that a valid comparison? I wonder if the author is aware that the PS3's are going for up to $5000 on ebay right now. And there's also that gem about PS2's having DVD functionality:
From what I recall, DVD's were already kicking ass when PS2 came out. In fact, many people bought a PS2 because they liked the DVD functionality.
PS2: Released in the middle of a booming economy when a large number of twentysomethings had either more money than god, or at least enough to warrant spending hundreds of dollars on a video game console.
PS3: Released in the middle of a shitty economy when a large number of twentysomethings have less money, more bills, and enough to worry about that a $700 game console isn't in the cards.
blog |
The PS2 didn't reach 40 million until September 2002, 2.5 years after it went on sale in March 2000. It took it until November 2005 to reach 100 million. I couldn't find any reference to the PS2 hitting 150 million. All I could find was a cite from this month saying the entire "installed base" for all gaming number 150 million.
So I really don't forsee this as being a coup for Sony. It might be, but I don't think so. I bought an N65 and then a Playstation. I bought a Playstation2 and then a Gamecube. I would have bought an original Xbox if any of my friends had them.
At $600, I will never buy a PS3, regardless of the fact that I've already pre-ordered a Wii. Ken was right - at that price, it's not a gaming machine anymore. If I buy a second console, it will be an Xbox 360, even though I loathe Microsoft.
With the high price of the PS3, the initial install base will grow very slowly. This will cause a low volume of game sales, which will further cause fewer games to come out, which will cause fewer people to buy a PS3. It will just snowball from there. Sony simply does not have the first party games to pull this off. I think Nintendo MIGHT be able to do it, but it would take a radical marketing and focus shift. But their first party titles would guarantee an initial install base to get the ball rolling. Microsoft might be able to get it going due to Halo and its penchant for just buying up game developers. Sony would have a small chance of doing it based on games that tend to be exclusive to it (at least initially), but with the pricing they have just guaranteed it will not happen.
It really just comes down to a VERY simple fact - $600. Even at $500, it's a bad deal. $500 is right around the price for a lot of people where purchases move from "do I want this?" to "do I need this?". And when you add on the price of a game and an extra controller, bumping it up around $100, most people will decide they don't need it. I think this would be true even if the Xbox and Wii were launching two years later than the PS3.
And Blu-Ray will do absolutely nothing to help sell more than a few million or so PS3s. Studies have shown that the average household income for HDTV owners is nearly $90k. The people with that kind of money would probably have bought the PS3 anyway. But the people at the lower end of the scale who really stretched their finances to buy the HDTV to begin with will be hard put to shell out for the PS3. And if you look at that study, only about half the people watch HD programming on their HDTVs. These people aren't exactly clamoring for higher quality video.
So while I could completely be wrong, I predict this could be a complete catastrophe for Sony. This opinion doesn't come from fanboism. Nintendo cured me of that with the N64 debacle. Since then I have been fairly platform neutral. Even my disgust with Microsoft wouldn't have kept me from buying an Xbox if I could have convinced my brother to get broadband so we could play online.
My prediction for hitting the different milestones are:
5 million sales in the first 9 months
30 million sales three years from launch
50 million sales five years from launch
I'm not a hard core gamer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do own both a PS2 and a Game Cube. Here's my take, in the order of expected market dominance, of the three consoles:
1) The Wii. The controller sells the console. It is the ONLY difference worth mentioning in this crop of game consoles. I think this will sweep the market.
2) The X-Box 360. Not because it's any better than the PS3. The PS3 and X-Box may as well come off the same assembly line, but the X-Box 360 is cheaper than the PS3.
3) This will be almost entirely limited to hard core gamers who have more money than sense. I expect Sony to bleed heavily on this until the PS3 is discontinued. The BluRay player will help this anchor sink fast.
If someone doesn't "win" the HD disc war soon, it might as well not have even happened. I'm not willing to spend $500+ on a format I don't even know will continue to be supported. I imagine many feel the same.
Was that a serious assertion? At any rate, the XBox beats the PS3 hands down in that category, methinks...
It was a British judge that made this ruling. Can a British judge make this ruling on behalf of the whole European Union?
Even if there's a drive that plays all (which as my elder sibling points out hasn't really happened yet), I think that only one of the two formats will win in the end. I don't think there's room on store shelves for two the-same-but-different copies of every movie. The Internet, where shelf space isn't a problem, will lessen that , but if one of the two formats gets critical mass the other will be marginalized. Controlling the format is not a means to the end of making The Big Bucks (tm) by selling hardware; Sony made plenty of money selling VHS players post-Beta failure. Controlling the format is an end of its own, with potentially even Bigger Bucks (tm) to be made.
PS1's played audio CD's and PS2's played regular DVDs but hardly anyone used them to do that. If sony is counting on blue-ray to be different in that regard, they may be deluding themselves.
Hah. You mean they pre-sold-out all two-dozen PS3s they actually managed to manufacture and ship at launch?
That could also backfire. "HD-DVD? Oh, that's just old last generation DVD spruced up a bit."
Compared to your Atari 400, which was useful technology for decades.</sarcasm>
The problem here is that Blue-Ray vs HD-DVD is essentially a battle of Betamax vs Betamax. The only advantages that these formats offer is better integration with High-Definition equipment, but the public has demonstrated that the better graphics provided by HDTVs aren't worth the extra money. Both Blue-Ray and HD-DVD will fail because there's already a well-established alternative: DVD.
Badass Resumes
When the original PSX released, I held off because the future on the system was in doubt. I mean, how could a relative newcomer dethrone Sega? Held my nose (I basically dislike Sony) and ultimately bought one.
When PS2 was released, I held off a bit (all the reliability problems), but it was always fixed firmly in my sights. Backwards compatibility, DVD player; I'd be a fool not to get one. Xbox had yet to prove their worth.
And now, I really like the 360 except nothing has convinced me they are doing much better with the quality control. The PS3 seems like an expensive gamble without an established library of killer titles (yes, Sony is almost guaranteed to have an impressive library, but it's not like they haven't made some huge missteps as of late). The whole DVD issue won't be resolved with consoles, but with the price of the standalone players themselves (there are more DVD players sold than all consoles combined).
That leaves Nintendo and/or PC.
As you can build a pretty kickass PC on the cheap these days, it is looking more like a good gaming rig and a Wii.
Both of the major players seem oblivious to their own failings, and seemed bound and determined to keep people from purchasing their systems. I think they are due for a rude awakening.
I think it was something like 100,000 units presold.
LOL. What I was trying to say is that owning a computer when I was young paid off long after the computer itself became a doorstop. I basically make my living with the start I got having a computer back then.
Actually, my old Atari 400 is on the floor not too far from a door right now.
But how many players per machine? Consoles tend to have four-player party games such as Bomberman, Gauntlet, Smash Bros., and the like, which put four characters, each controlled by one player, into one arena displayed on one sufficiently large TV. Can you put four keyboards and four mice on a PC, or do you have to buy four PCs and four monitors if the four people in a single house or at a family reunion want to play with one another?
360 is loud. It's not exactly cheap either, it's only kind of cheap compared to the PS3 but they both are in that price range where it's totally doable if you want to, you just think about it a little more. There isn't nearly as much of a price difference as I think people like to think, they are both well under $1000 and above that $100 to $150 pyschological number. If you cannot afford a PS3, you really cannot afford a 360 either, or at least you're not in any position where you should be. Likewise, if you don't have much trouble forking over $350-$400 for an xbox360, the extra $200 isn't really that big of a deal. It is in the immediate term if you only have $400 right now and you need to buy one right now, but the fact is most of you won't be getting a ps3 until March-June or even next Christmas, what's the difference saving it up over a few months?
HD movies is a huge wild card. Might be a great boon for PS3. You never know. The HD-DVD vs. BD thing is really only an issue to geeks. If I have one in my living room, then I'll buy and rent those movies. I have about 50 channels of HD content and I watch it over SD almost every chance I get. I hate "fuzzy vision" anymore. I have watched DVDs on PS2, but not that many.
Compatibility is also huge. Of the 10 xbox games I own, a remarkable number won't play on my 360, Fifa 2005, Winning Eleven 8, Fifa Street (okay, I like the footie) and then the Topspin/NCAAF game that came with the old xbox. None of those work on the 360. Sony seems to care a great deal more about compatibility. I have 20some or 30some PS2 games, it's worth something to me to continue to be able to play those games. Maybe 10 of them I like to play around with regularly, I still enjoy driving around Liberty City killing people some times. Plus there are tons and tons of brand new PS2 games for about $20. Xbox360 and PS3 software costs $60. That will matter to parents, would you rather give your kid 1 game or 3 or 4 games? It matters if your kid only get's new games when you buy them for special occasions. In 3 years, it won't matter but today if you happen to have purchased a PS3 in Japan, you can run a lot of software on it, more than exists for all of the devices that are called xbox.
I also expect both devices to cost the same amount Xmas 2007 or shortly there after.
As for coding. It's hard to quantify the differences between optimizing for 3 cores and the Cell. It's purely an academic discussion. If you're building a state of the art game, it's just something you have to deal with. The discussions have always been from the perspective of someone porting to these new chips or porting their current "engines" to them. Hate to break it to you, but nobody is going to get too amped about Doom 3 or Unreal 2005 on PS3 or x360. Both machines have fixed memory and fairly exotic architectures that are unlike just about anything you'll see on a desktop. With all the automatic DMAing code that IBM has put out for the Cell, it's looking easier and easier to program and make it do some cool stuff. I still haven't heard a game publisher state hardware difficulty as the reason a game was delayed or the killed a project. Bottom line is that you have to support both and if for some reason you think it's too hard, get a new gig.
Aren't they as "evil" as Sony, if not more?
Microsoft is an even bigger threat because they are a hell of a lot smarter than Sony. Sony may be evil, but they're incompetent enough to make mistakes which allows competition to come back in. Microsoft, on the other hand, is very good at closing the door shut.
If you're going to buy a console based on the good of the industry and ethical reasons, choose the Wii first, then PS3, then the XBox 360.
In terms of value, yes $600 is expensive for a console, but the base is $500, which is only $100 more than the Xbox 360's premium version. For the $100, you get greater storage capacity in the games (bigger games), a next-generation media player, free online play, no power brick, less noise, more potential, linux capability, motion sensing, among other things. The only thing you lose is rumble, an unproven online system, and few games (currently).
Linux capability proved to be the clincher for me, but the other features may be enough to convince people to shell an additional $100 to buy a PS3. And when you think about it, $100 is less than the price of a couple games...people who can't afford the PS3 are more likely to get a Wii than an Xbox 360. It's people who want great graphics, and can't wait for the PS3 to be in stock that are the ones that will buy an Xbox 360, which I assume will include a fair number of people this holiday season.
You're kidding, right?
When PS2 came out in .uk, DVD was a pretty new format. Not many people had DVD players - only rich people, movie geeks, and tech early adopters had them. Then the PS2 came out. Suddenly millions of people buy a device to play games, and suddenly find they have a DVD player too. Overnight the DVD shelf space in all the stores expands enormously, and VHS dies off fast.
I'm convinced the PS2 drove DVD to the mainstream in the UK. Everyone I knew played their DVDs on PS2 for at least a year, until DVD players became widespread enough to supplant it.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
As opposed to the last great format war, your DVDs will still play in the new drives. Some of the drives will even attempt to upscale the image to make it look better. Let's see you do the same with that massive collection of VHS tapes.
The war is different this time around.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
There's another reason why things are different than last time:
Microsoft
Simply put, the PS2 trounced the Dreamcast and the PS3 will probably trounce the Wii. Unfortunately, however, for both contenders, Microsoft got there first. And not by just 10 minutes. No, they've been in the market for a year. They've had a year to gather / buy as many devs as they can to get their title portfolio up (hint #1: Fancy graphics don't sell consoles - games sell consoles. Good games) and they have done pretty well.
Yes, the PS3 will be good, but so is the Xbox 360. And its live service has had a year to get lots of lovely customer tied into it. (hint #2: people are lazy and will stick to what they have) And it's had a year of tweaking, fettling and patching to make it robust. Sony have still got to go through that pain.
In short, the PS3 will not flop (too many people will want the latest thing no matter what and the home market loves Sony) but it will slide into a solid second place and, to be honest, may never leave there. And if they do fail to knock Microsoft back off the top slot, I doubt we'll see a PS4...
Which is what my parents asked me about just this past week! They asked if they should wait for Blu-Ray or buy a new DVD player. HD-DVD didn't even cross their lips. People will confuse HD-DVD with DVD thinking it's just an extra mode or something like CD vs. CDR vs. CDRW. New name = New tech to them and I'm sure many others.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Sony has got to think THIS is good timing. ;-) Can't hurt but then again, the press seems to be missing this.
http://forums.xbox.com/7765866/ShowPost.aspx
And if this REALLY is only less than 1% of users, man alot of those "less than 1%" got online to report this. Notice how many pages/posts in such a short time. Maybe all of the "less than 1%" are active members of this particular forum. Right, "less than 1%".
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It happened to me too. Sony sent me a brand new unit (twice... another one a few years later). Sony puts a one year warranty on this thing, and it's almost no questions asked. Why did you do it yourself?
Last I saw, MS was doing so-so at a great expense to themselves whereas Sony is having a seizure of incompetence as of late.
Seems like most of the love is going for Nintendo since their the only ones trying something different (oppose to MS's extending the status quo with Live) with the Wiimote.
The Gospel according to lolcat
My PS2 also stopped reading discs just after the warranty ran out. When I went to Walmart and attempted to exchange it I was rebuffed. There is a serial number and a date stamped to the casing and mine was too old. They told me I could not return it under any circumstances.
So I bought a new one, removed the outer casing, then carefully applied my old casing to the new innards.
I slapped the new case on my old busted PS2 and returned it to Walmart. Worked like a charm!
coolest? Which will get young teens the bragging rights come Christmas time? PS3 is #1 status symbol.
Don't listen to that dipshit. Sure, I can't say that a large percentage of people used them that way in the US, because I don't know a large percentage of the US' population, but I do know that basically everyone I know has used their PS1 as a CD player and their PS2 as a DVD player. The latter was much more common but the former was not uncommon - it just wasn't their primary CD player. When the PS2 came out, even in the US most people didn't have DVD players. They sold millions of PS2s practically overnight and when the dust settled, TONS of people had a DVD player in the form of a PS2. This isn't going to happen again with the PS3 because nobody gives a shit about Blu-Ray and the console is twice the price of the PS2 at launch, but let's face it, it's not twice as much fun. It might look four times as good but if that doesn't translate into some amazingly killer games then it's only going to sell a token number of consoles to rich people who want to impress people to come over.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think that what you say indeed helped the early adopters, but DVD player prices fell so fast (in the US at least) that for the most part, people here just bought PS2's to play games. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that's my observation.
Rather than comparing PS3/XBox360 launches to the PS2/Dreamcast launches, they should have compared them to the Xbox/PS2 launches.
Microsoft released the more advanced (and substantially more expensive to manufacture) Xbox a year after the PS2. By that time the PS2 had already sold millions of units and was a well established platform with dozens of top selling games. In comparison, the majority of the initial XBox titles were unimpressive. Most people who bought an Xbox early on bought it for one or two games and spent most of their time and money on the PS2 they had already bought, or on their PC. Microsoft had to practically give the things away to stay competitive with the PS2, and they were bleeding money the whole time. It wasn't until almost two years after launch that the game lineup for the Xbox was on par with the PS2, which by the way, is about how long it was before Microsoft had a single profitable quarter selling the Xbox.
Sounds a little more familiar, doesn't it? Sure, the Xbox was (eventually) a wild success in terms of units sold, but can Sony really afford that kind of success?
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I'm sorry, but the PS3 does NOT have "ease of development"
I don't understand where the PS3 represents any innovation in gameplay. The graphics are amazing, but then looks aren't everything. I don't know that the PS2 did either, BUT it did add something very important to the Playstation platform: the DVD player. This is why the PS2 was so huge in Japan. DVDs had been available for some time, but DVD players weren't selling well. Suddenly you can consolidate two devices in one small box. Naturally it sold millions of units in very short order. People were dying to get one because of its dual-purpose design.
Sony's trying to do this again, shoehorning a BluRay drive into the PS3, but there's a catch this time. People AREN'T dying for HD video. A good SD set might run you $500 or so. A comparable HD set is automatically going to be at LEAST twice that. So the monitors are expensive, and the console is expensive and the content is all but non-existent. And the games? REALLY expensive, plus the initial reviews of forthcoming games are not quite what you'd call "overwhelmingly positive".
Lightning rarely strikes twice, and for Sony there's not a snowball's chance of it. In 2000 the conditions were just right, and Sony found themselves with a huge hit on both sides of the Pacific. The PS2 has for the last six years been a massively popular and versatile device. The conditions just aren't right for the PS3. Sure, it'll be popular, but I think it's pretty clear that the Wii is the console of choice this year.
The standard version of the PS3 costs $500 ($499). Unlike the base version of the Xbox 360 it isn't horribly crippled. It still comes with a hard drive, although smaller. I've heard plenty of people comparin the $600 PS3 price with price of the Xbox and Wii, but it isn't fair. The premium Xbox unit only has a 20GB hard drive, the same as the base PS3.
Which is why more and more I'm thinking Nintendo's strategy is brilliant, releasing 2 days after the PS3. Remember last year when the 360 was in the news for over a month with shortages and games and all that? Now, the PS3 will get that press for two days and two days only, then all the news will be about the Wii. Even after the big rush, no single story about the PS3 will be in the news that doesn't also mention the Wii. Nintendo has basically assured themselves equal media attention to Sony by riding their coattails. And with systems more widely available, a lower price, and completely different gameplay, they can't help but look like a tempting option in the inevitable comparison.
just some guy
look at launch numbers for the $500 units vs the $600 units
i think its something like 80% of the expensive ones so if you hope to get a cheap one near launch you'll be pretty much SOL
The Xbox was released on November 15, 2001 at a price of $299 and it was reduced in price to $199 on May 15, 2002.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2The PS2 was released on October 26, 2000 at a price of $299 and it was reduced in price to $199 on May 14, 2002.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GamecubeThe Gamecube was released on November 18, 2001 at a price of $199 and it was reduced in price to $149 on May 13, 2002.
My guess is that in May, the Xbox 360 Core version will be dropped and the premium version will be reduced to $299. The PS3 will be reduced to $399/$499 and the Wii will be reduced to $199. It may come down to one company cutting their price and the others following.
Microsoft earns over $10 billion a year in profit, while Sony and Nintendo make about $1 billion each every year. Microsoft has been making the Xbox 360 for over a year, significantly cutting manufacturing costs.
The one game that has been reviewed on both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 is Tony Hawk Project 8. There are two major problems with the PS3 version: lack of online support and frame rate issues. The frame rate issues are a huge problem for Sony. If someone is paying a premium price, they expect a premium product. If the PS3 version of games is inferior to the Xbox 360 version, I don't see why anyone would want to purchase a PS3. Luckily for Sony, it probably just means that people are having a difficult time developing for the platform.
And then you have parents like mine that are fairly early adopters but hadn't even heard of Blu-Ray until I mentioned it being in the PS3 when they announced their price point a few months back.
http://www.cafepress.com/hikarudesigns/ http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=hikaru
Please note that I said "Even at $500, it's a bad deal." I was addressing the $500 version.
But since you bring it up, this actually makes matters worse. If they had ONLY sold the crippled version, they might have had more success with the $500 price point. As it stands, now a buyer will be faced with paying "real money" for the second tier. That's going to cause even more problems for Sony.
Apparently the PS3 launch in Japan was pretty wildly successful. Complete sellthrough in less than an hour. This is not particularly surprising really, but 80,000 units sold is a good start. It's up to you to decide if launch unit shortages is history repeating itself here.
That's a good question, but unlike the Dreamcast, I think the Xbox 360 is a lot more entrenched in the market than the dreamcast was, plus the suggested price is astronomical
even compared to the PS2. The real value would probaly be it's Blu-Ray player, but with the current format war with HD-DVD, even that is an uncertainty, scince is possible for it to get
"betamaxed". Also, Sony did quite a few things in recent history that really crossed the line and pissed off alot of people, so I dunno....
Split screen is not always necessary. If all players are in the same room in the game, then all players can be shown in a single view that fills the screen.
In Final Fight clones such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II through IV, and in Gauntlet clones such as Secret of Mana, the players are co-op and in the same room in the game. The view of this room fills the screen, and seeing what the other players are doing is an advantage to all players. Even in competitive games, if seeing what the other players are doing is cheating, then why do DS multiplayer games, such as Meteos, Mario Kart DS, and Tetris DS, show what the other players are doing on the other screen?
So how many monitors per PC does a typical PC game allow? Once you buy four PCs, you've paid as much as if not more than the price of a PS3 + HDTV.
Except that "fighting games" are popular at the parties that my family throws. Super Smash Bros. Melee, a non-traditional fighting game for Nintendo GameCube, gets a lot of play time. "Some sports games" would include wrestling or anything else fought in a ring, and Bomberman is the same way.
One could also ask, how could any portable video format compete with the UMD, with an installed base of nearly 23 million players.
BTW, how big is the UMD section at BestBuy these days?
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
The premise' contains a logic flaw. This article begs the question and is therefore irrelevant. Let me break it down:
p = PS2: Released one year after the lower priced Dreamcast, lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service.
q = PS2: Competition from Nintendo: A smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay.'
r = PS3: Releasing one year after the lower priced Xbox 360, lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service.
q = PS3: Competition from Nintendo: A smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay.'
Premise = History will repeat itself.
Logic = p + q implies true.
suppose p.
suppose q.
suppose r.
therefore p.
therefore q.
therefore r.
therefore q + r implies true.
In other words, the claim that the present mirrors the past is completely disconnected.
--Brad Bender
I have ready many articles surrounding the gaming competition. PS3 vs. 360 vs. wii and none of them seem to take into account the female component (or I am reading the wrong articles). The wii has strong potential in this market where as the PS3 and 360 remain the same and this could help drive sales of the wii up.
/knows females (rare on slashdot) //Females I know hate technology but love the wii!! //Does that mean since I like the wii... I'm less of a man.... 360 here I come!!
I think a couple things play into this:
1. PS3 and 360 hype FPS, War and violent games... the wii focuses on gameplay and characters
2. Price... most females are not going to spend the extra money for a PS3 or 360.
Lastly and most important:
Gameplay interface. Females traditionally do not want to sit and learn a controller and all its buttons to play some FPS game. Changing the input or gameplay interface is attracting more females. This has been shown to be true for the Nintendo DS.
Thoughts?
PS3: The Neo Geo for a new generation.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Stupid as hell since a major company can just bombard lawsuits in every EU country at once and force small companies out of business due to lack of resources (as Sony did).
Um, I don't think that such laws would pass muster, at least not in the U.S. And they shouldn't, because it takes away a buyer's right to resell their property for whatever the market will pay.
If I buy a PS3, or anything else, and then I realize that it has suddenly increased in value and want to sell, I ought to be able to sell it to someone. Provided that the sales transaction isn't coerced, or that I don't engage in any illegal activity in obtaining the good originally, or in reselling it, then I should be able to do this. If you make it illegal, you're effectively taking money out of my pocket: someone was willing to buy what I had at a price that would have made me a profit, but the sale wasn't allowed, even though both parties wanted to go through with it (it would have been a 'win-win') and there was no unlawful behavior.
If the government was going to pass a law prohibiting you from reselling software that you purchased, all of Slashdot would be screaming about it. This is the exact same issue, basically first sale doctrine, except it's with consoles (or tickets) instead of software.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Yeah, the war has changed, but that does not increase its odds of winning. With the VHS/DVD switch, I actually WANTED to, DVDs were a superior technology in everyway. Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD are just the same thing as DVDs but on crack. With DVDs, I didn't have to go out and cough up a couple grand on a new TV to notice the difference, either. Also the DVD/VHS switch WAS NOT about quality, it was more about ease to most people. DVDs are somewhat prettier, especially with age (which is arguable, since damage pwns DVDs, but slightly degrades VHS, but most people switched to save shelf-space, and save rewinding, have special features, and such, and as a bonus, ALL WITH THE SAME TV! With the next gen you have a slight (I really can't tell the difference from sofa distance) increase in quality, and a massive increase in price, with no other benefits.
/.ers anyways)
I'm sure the biggest selling point is being on the cutting edge, for being on the cutting edges' sake. Which is a game most people are smarter than playing, or at least too poor to be playing. Keeping up with the Joneses is a pretty weak motivation for a 3 grand upgrade, with only minor benefits.
In a short phrase: DVD ain't broke. (unless you count in DRM, which is a benefit to me and most other
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Back at 2000 there wasn't Wii around. Wii is highly designed gaming platform with some spesial features like totally new approach to controller.
There is small things like these that will twist the market. Although Nintendo didn't make up in last round as a winner there is extremely good chance that it will do so now. Xbox360 is last console here to represent us more traditional alike gaming console. Wii and PS3 are more advanced boxes with exactly opposite approaches on gaming at home. While XBox seems to be something in between, I think it is going to be loser in end game.
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
I have not elsewhere seen the PS3 described as "easy" to develop for. More like "very very hard".
I am a big fan of the Cell (I've done some writing about it and played a bit with the sim), but I can't imagine calling it "easy".
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As we get put into the same market as Europe cause we're a PAL teritory.
And the Wii will be here before X-mas.
The only thing is us Aussies are having to tighten our purse strings already as we've just had our 3rd rate rise by the Reserve Bank for the 3rd quarter in a row. So the average Joe is less likely to put up with paying for the highest price machine.
They can't possibly be talking about the PlayStation 2.
All I'm saying is that it better not be a $600 bomb with the recent overheating problems Sony has had. If it does well, the great. If it sucks, I can't say I would be surprised either. Like so many people have commented on, the Sony fanboys will buy one regardless and deny anything wrong with it, the Sony haters will no doubt buy one later when the price comes down to a reasonable level, and then there will be people like me who won't care either way. I bought a 10 generation ps2 because after 10 generations, one would hope the bugs would be gone. I expect to do the same with the PS3.
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
The consumer base is at the brink of the switch to HDTV and the PS3 has already started tipping people over. Mark my words, within 2 years there will be few modern households without a HDTV capable set.
Blu-ray, HDTV, PS3 all come hand-in-hand ushering the new era in - or at least that's the image Sony is cleverly managing to portray. I know a no. of people who are planning to get full-HD (1080p) TVs now and I want to trade in my 720p HDTV.
The naysayers are simply blinded to the way things are going. DVD is really crap with its letterboxed widescreen format that the dvd players or tvs have to scale up. After watching some blu-ray movies there is no going back.
what's more likely is that the naysayers will say that they were right all along, except Sony deceived everyone and their superior marketing and name brand influenced the ignorant masses.
The PlayStation 2 sucked quite badly given what was claimed, what was delivered and when it was delivered (with reference to the now infamous E3 demos, how much better it would be than than the Dreamcast, that it would have 'Toy Story' quality graphics). When the PS2 Dead or Alive port had 2D spites in the scenery, in places where the DC one had fully 3D backgrounds, it was clear they'd misrepresented the systems ability.
Sony didn't really use 'superior marketing', they just flat out lied. People still bought the PS2, and the name brand got people to buy it. They have flat out lied again with the PS3 hype, claiming several instances of CGI footage are 'real in game footage' (which only people who know very little about video games let alone rendering technology could possibly be fooled by). For example, they said Lair was going to look like this unfortunately, it really looks like this.
Edge recently did a splash on it where it comes out looking pretty good - I've seen this title in motion on 50" plasma though, and it looks for all the world like an title for the original X-Box (and not one of the good ones). Even for a launch title, that's pretty bad.
The hardware is grossly over-hyped, again, but most people don't know much about it, or take the time to find out.
Sure the PS3 has '8 cores'. What they are not making much point of is it has a single general purpose core, with the other 7 being being limited co-processors (with the system supporting 9 threads in total). You may think that sounds better than the X-Box 360, which has 3 general purpose cores (with multiple FPU and SIMD units in each core), and in some ways it is. However, try writing real world software (games included) that runs faster on the cell processor than on the 360 and I'm quite sure you'd be in for a real mission.
I don't have any experience writing console software (unfortunately, it doesn't usually pay as well as more mundane enterprise work) but do have experiencing running my own software on different hardware platforms. I've taken software I've written and run it on a Sun Fire X4200 (2 x dual core AMD CPU's) and on a T2000 (8 core Ultra Sparc, with an insane 32 threads) and I know the straight forward really-fast-generic-core approach blows rings around a fancy, unique CPU design for all practical purposes. Everyone said this about the much touted 'emotion engine' on the PS2 though - few developers ever really managed to fully utilise the hardware because of it's uncommon nature.
You'd have to spend a huge amount of time just optimising your software to work with an esoteric architecture, in way that doesn't help when you come to port the title to other platforms (and most will be looking to do a multi format release) - and that sort of investment just isn't warrented except on first party titles. In the same way that Gran Turismo (one of the best looking, if not the best looking PS2 title) was published by Sony and the best looking 360 title, Gears of War, was for made exclusively for Microsoft Game Studio, only first party / flagship titles are going to have enough time and money spent on them to make the most out of the system. Everything else will come out being as good as can be done relatively easily - and Microsoft having an SDK that allows you to build Windows and 360 versions of your game side by side doesn't help Sony's case on that front.
I would say that the PS3's multi-threaded cell design does genuinely mean it's better suited to developing games with better AI. However, and I'm genuinely glum about this, developers do not have a good track record of implementing good AI even when they do have the ability to do so (od
at one point, the brand name IPOD meant nothing also.
Blu Ray will do just fine.
the ps3 is _not_ over priced. Just because you (and I :( ) don't have the scratch (or aren't willing to fork it over if you do), doesn't mean it's overpriced. The pre orders sold out, instantly. By definition it's not over priced. The only way it will become over priced is if Sony fails to drop the prices as sales slow and costs come down. Then it will be overpriced. Until then, if anything it's severely under priced. It's going for well over $600 dollars on ebay and all indications are that the bids aren't jokes.
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I'm pretty sold on my Xbox 360. It's impressed the heck out of me. That being said, the PS3 looks nice too, but it is just waaay too expensive for my blood. If I remember correctly I paid $300 for the PS2 soon after its launch. A basic PS3 is going to cost $500, and premium will cost $600. Meanwhile, a core Xbox 360 system costs $300, and the full package system costs $400. Yah... I can deal with a $100 price jump (the difference between what I paid for the PS2 and what I paid for the Xbox 360)... but $200 - $300 (PS3)??!! As for the whole Blu-ray thing, I could really care less about it. I have no reason to be playing Blu-ray discs. Maybe in a few years after the price has dropped I'll get a PS3. Until then though it looks like it will be left for those that are willing to shell out the cash for it. Sorry, Sony.
I have quite a few problems with your post and the predictions you make.
Problem #1:
This prediction is that people have been making it every year for the last 5 years or so. Do you have any actual sources you can point to that have done surveys asking households if they plan to buy an HDTV next year?
Problem #2:
The bulk of the people who have HDTVs now are those with money to burn. The rest are those who will be making a major purchase getting an HDTV. These people will be unlikely to have another $600-700 dollars. Even at $500, if you are buying the PS3 for gaming you will likely buy at least one game, an additional controller and a cable to output to HD (it only comes with RCA cables). If you're buying it to play Blu-Ray movies on, you'll also probaby want to buy a remote ($25). So they can spend this kind of money, or they can spend much less on an Xbox or Wii.
Problem #3:
It is far from proven that mainstream consumers will even notice the difference in resolution between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD or between the Xbox, Wii and the PS3. How many times have you been to someone's house with an HDTV only to have a SD signal in stretch mode? I don't mean the GOOD stretch mode either, I mean the "squish their heads" stretch mode. I've been to more than one airport that has replaced every tv with widescreen LCDs that are in squish mode. Keep in mind, the study showed that over half of those people with HDTVs didn't even watch HD programming. And these are supposedly the semi-early adopters.
Problem #4:
The DRM crap in both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are not going to help adoption of either format. I still have to explain to my relatives why the DVD player has to hook directly into the TV. And they still don't get it. HDTV and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD throw a bunch more problems on the pile. A good portion will be watching downsampled video due to incorrect wiring but never even realize it.
Problem #5:
You say "DVD is really crap with its letterboxed widescreen format that dvd players or tvs have to scale up." This is a bizarre statement. The DVD format is not letterboxed. DVDs have supported anamorphic transfers since day one. The problem is that some studios either a) haven't had new transfers that would look decent at HD or b) haven't cared and just want to shovel something out there and make some money. Blu-Ray doesn't solve either of these problems any better than DVD does. A new anamorphic DVD transfer looks great, even in HD. With my projector, I have a screen that is 8 feet wide. I can definitely tell the difference between a good transfer and a bad one. So Blu-Ray or DVD, it's up to the company to do a good transfer. Believe me, you're going to see the exact same problems with Blu-Ray that you see with DVD. Not as frequently, as DVD was the first time in the whole digital disc/widescreen tv era. But Blu-Ray won't be competing with DVD anyway, it will be competing with HD-DVD.
Problem #6:
You cite several friends planning to get a 1080p HDTV. That's great. But are they planning on buying a PS3, too? I have several gamer friends, and not a one of them does anything but laugh at the idea of buying a PS3. And these are single friends making $50k+ a year, living in low cost of living cities.
So, again, I just don't buy it. Literally, I suppose. I used to be a HUGE supporter of Blu-Ray. I felt it was far superior in terms of capacity and there was just no reason to go to HD-DVD where you didn't have as much room to breathe. But Sony has really dropped the ball on this one. If Blu-Ray ever wins the format war, it won't be due to selling a console for the price of a used car.
You know another problem is with everybody thinking that new is better ....does everybody remember Gamecom???? The portable gameboy that could connect to the internet?
...Yeah WOOOh blu-ray WOOOOWWW. But i dont really care about that and most die hardcore gamers just want something to play with. You know i was in line for ps2 and xbox i got mine... And neither of them read diss like they should anymore ....getting them fixed is more then then a new system.. :) ... Gaming is becoming to expensive and the people with money to buy all these items are gonna put out for this ---But on the downside most of these people dont enjoy and keep buyng more .....End point i think Console Gaming is Dead ..this console war his time is battled with nukes and they just blew up !!
You know everyone seems to come out with something new every year that's got a new feature or something that makes it better . Like these bl-ray discs- or HD DVD discs but most people who buy these Tv's and get all over getting this stuff and having the best usally make the big dough but never pick it up more then once or twice... My point being is Sony and microsoft should stop focusing on bells and whistles that most people dont care about
why buy a new system taht isnt gonna perform in 2 years..(P.S. My super nintendo works great
And if i do get hyped and buy a ps3 what's the next price gonna be for a system when do we stop outrigging these items and scaring gamers with the prices
And it was somewhat affordable at the time.
That said, I won't buy another. I've had way too many disc read errors watching movies, especially discs rented from Blockbuster.
$600 for a PS3? See, this is what kills me about the "hardcore" gamers. These guys will drop insane amounts of cash just so game that's not really fun has more shading textures and slighty more blingy 3d effects than you had $1000 before.
I'll be getting a Wii for cheap and having more fun than you, with enough cash left over to buy a 30 pack of Natty Light all for myself.
I meant to include:
Problem #6:
Even your own claim is that there will be few "modern" households without HDTVs within the next 2 years. That really doesn't do necessarily put an impetus behind PS3, Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. As others have pointed out, when we jumped from VHS to DVD is was a major jump. It was still only a single piece of equipment being upgraded. The next jump will be from TV to HDTV. People will still be watching their plane jane DVDs on these HDTVs for quite some time. Right now you're expecting consumers to upgrade both their TV to HDTV and their DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD at practically the same time. There is a market for that, but it's not the mass market.
And if they did their homework... they'd know better.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
and it still rates as one of my favourite consoles ever (along with the Snes). It was great. PS2 launch killed it. I looked at the first gen PS2 stuff (lived with console magazine writer at the time so got dev kit access), looked at my DC - and the DC was better - yet the PS2 still won. As far as I can see the PS2 won on two fronts, it had a DVD player - this was a big thing as I'd coughed up a load for one and could see why other people would want one at a low PS2 price. Also Sony had better PR. Since the DC launched there was the endless media burble about Emotion engines and the like. The press saw how the PS1 had come from nowhere and believed Sony's promises about how revolutionary the PS2 would be. It wasn't another console like all the others, it'd be a quantum leap forward. This time the press is hostile, not the gaming press, I mean all press. I still don't think the PS3 is sunk, I've seen the demoes and they look lovely. It has a good chance. For it to succeed, they need to get some good games out (I've still no idea what the great launch title I'm supposed to be buying the hardware to play is) and they need to get the online stuff free - I like the 360, but have f'all idea what I got for paying for my 12 month gold membership (I get to play the games I paid for online for free, and get demos??? Few things have pissed me off more than game companies trying to SELL me skins advertising their games). *thinks more* Sony are still fucked. PSP was lovely hardware. WiFi enabled out of the box and got killed by the DS. In fact if you want to see who'll win this just look at the PSP and the DS. It's the same thing again.
Wow, you responded to points I didn't even make, are you reading off a sheet of talking points or something? This is where you lose your remaining credibility:
I have several gamer friends, and not a one of them does anything but laugh at the idea of buying a PS3. And these are single friends making $50k+ a year, living in low cost of living cities.
You're nuts, this is diametrically opposed to my own sampling of gamer friends. At the end of 2004, there were 11 million HD households, each owning an average of 1.2 HD sets. Anyway, take your meds, relax for another week and check out the reaction to the US launch ok?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
This "joke" makes no sense.
The problem with this is that there is little real value to having a hard drive larger than 20GB in a game console (unless you want to make it a PVR, but then you need a way bigger drive than anyone is offering on a console). In fact, for what the xbox/360 (and PS3) will use a hard drive for you don't even need 20GB; drives just don't get cheaper smaller than that so MS chose that size based on the fact that it wouldn't save money to make it smaller.
...$499 is just too much for a console. There are plenty of PCs at that price point.
IMO MS made a pretty smart move by ostensibly appearing to offer the console ("core") for $299 but making it pretty compelling that you should pay $399 for the better version. Sony is trying to do the same in a way, but starting at $499 just won't work the same way - $299 is the original price for last gen's consoles when they came out
I only responded to you in the post you made on a different slashdot story where you talked about not batting an eye on dropping $600 for a PS3 after also dropping $2500 for an HDTV. I linked to HDTV prices to try to clue you in to your $2500 purchase being on the high end of the range. From your reply on that thread, you still don't get it. I don't know how much clearer I can explain it, so I'm going to assume it isn't a case of you not being able to understand but rather you actively avoiding it.
Anyway, as far as losing my credibility, I'm not really worried. You clearly can't believe anything other than the picture of "reality" you've created for yourself. I actually believe your anecdotes, you know. I just know that there are a lots of different kinds of people. My stories are absolutely true, too. What I'd like you to consider is that your "sampling" isn't necessarily representative. Mine isn't necessarily, either. I bring it up only to highlight that you shouldn't believe your sample is the be-all end-all.
Also, it's very interesting that you should link to that article. Your statement was: Mark my words, within 2 years there will be few modern households without a HDTV capable set. Even the most optimistic prediction in the article was 82% of households by the end of 2010. One said 63% by 2010. Another said 55% and the fourth said 50%. By 2010. Unless by "few" you mean 18-50% and by "2 years" you mean 4 years, your prediction seems to be way outside of even the broad range of research-backed estimates.
Oh wait, let me guess, you'll say that you're right because those households without an HDTV aren't "modern" households.
I will agree that there is little point in discussing this with you further. You seem to draw your points out of thin air rather than basing them on actual research and published data.
You seem to draw your points out of thin air rather than basing them on actual research and published data.
What do you think this is?. "At the end of 2004, there were 11 million HD households, each owning an average of 1.2 HD sets." Two years ago. There were already millions. You're trying to denying what anybody can see is a huge trend to big flat screen TVs in the living room. Give it up, you need to get out more.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Once again, you have to come back with a personal attack. First my posts are due to me being off my medication, now it's because I'm some sort of invalid? Is it that difficult to just stick to the discussion and not try to insult someone you are arguing with?
Okay, so back to the article. You keep pointing out the number of households being 11 million at the end of 2004. Yes, it's impressive that "millions" of people have HDTVs. But isn't it more sensible to actually put it in the context of percentages? Notice the line where it said the total number of households is 110 million. So it's more like 9%. This is not an incredibly shocking number to me.
Also, one data point is not a "huge trend." Current data says that there were around 15 million HDTV households in mid-2006. Most projections I've read say that this is expected to be about 20 million by the end of 2006. And before you say "look, that's proof, it DOUBLED in two years, that's a huge trend!", another way to look at it is that they only picked up another 9% of the total households in two years. So now they're at 18%. I wouldn't call 9% over two years a huge trend. At that rate, it would take them six years to reach the household penetration DVD has right now.
For an actual huge trend, lets look at DVDs. I googled around for a bit and found this data:
4q1999: 8.5 million
1q2001: 14 million
2q2002: 30 million
2q2003: 46 million
2q2004: 63 million
2q2005: 75 million
2q2006: 80 million
DVD is considered to be one of the biggest consumer electronics successes of all time. Yet it still took around five years to reach 73% household penetration from around the point we are at right now with HDTVs. And there are far more complicating factors for HDTVs than there are DVD players. At their most expensive, DVD players cost around $300. Sales really started to ramp up when they got in the $200 territory and took off in the $100 territory. As is the case with almost all consumer electronics, newer players came out every year that were both CHEAPER and BETTER than the ones sold in previous years. It was no big deal to buy a new DVD player a year or two after your first, moving the old one to the bedroom or the kids room. That's simply not going to be the case with HDTVs. Unlike traditional TVs, CD players, DVD players, stereos, computers, etc., HDTVs are prices are not rapidly dropping into the area where it's a "no brainer" purchase for most people. For people with a lot of disposable income like yourself, yes. Instead they're dropping from the "oh my god how could you spend that much money on a TV" to the "wow, that's incredibly expensive for a TV" by the end of the decade they'll be into the range of "that's kind of expensive for a tv."
So say you buy an HDTV at around $2000 in 2003. When will you buy your next HDTV? It's going to be a while, I can tell you that. We're talking 10 years if you're like most people. And what would you do with the old one? Well, it's unlikely you're going to stick the sucker in the bedroom or kids room, unless you have a whole lot of square footage in your house or it's one of those REALLY expensive thin screen plasmas or something. You can try to sell it, but who wants to spend that kind of money on an HDTV when the newer ones are out that are probably much better?
Personally, I believe HDTV will eventually be the only TV. But I think it will take far longer than most consumer electronics. Going back to the studies at that link, you will see that they agree with me. One study says 55% of households will have HDTVs by the end of 2010. The other says 63% and the other says 82%. Even taking the best estimate, that means they'll be getting to present day DVD penetration by the end of 2009. But that's the best estimate. Taking the worst estimate, at the end of 2010, HDTV will be where DVD was at the end of 2003. At that rate, it will be more like 2015 before HDTV gets to where DVD is right now.
Things could change, I'll be the fir
The Dreamcast wasn't a terribly good machine, and as I recall it was fairly highly priced as well. It never had very many good games when it was still sold commercially, and only really ever possibly became useful after production had stopped with all the homebrew emulators, etc. made for it. I don't even count it as competition either at the time or looking back now...
XBOX360: specwise it's arguably better than the PS3. I've read many comments that the multi-processor multi-threading of the XBOX360 is much more usable in a wider variety of cases than the more specialized variant with the cell in the PS3. Also it seems that the PS3 devkit is as bad as ever while M$ appears to have something that most developers are comfortable with, which I would hazard, having never seen it, a variant of Visual Studio with compiler & libs for targetting the XBOX360.
Blu-Ray: Does anyone buy blu-ray DVDs other than very few people? Not to mention this is a blu-ray ONLY drive which may end up the beta format of the 2000s. I'd call it a "feature" IF it came out later and used the blu-ray/HD combo compatible mechanism.
Wii: considerably cheaper, not that far behind the PS3, certainly closer IMO than the Dreamcast ever was. Also considering how crappy console games for the XBOX(hijacked PC games) and PS3(crappy launch titles), the number of units available, I'd have to say that the Wii is going to be much stronger competition than some appear to think. Also, I'd say the XBOX360 is in good position this time too, except for Japan(again).
System design: do people seriously buy console on how they look? In any event the Wii is a nice size and looks decent(if it matters) and the XBOX360 and PS3 are good enough lookswise, although their sizes are a little large having to accomodate hard drives.
Price: heh, I paid $350 for a PS3 plus 3 games. It arrived on launch day. (Should've ebayed it!) Can't wait to see ebay prices for the PS3, as I think they will be high regardless of how the PS3 does in the long run... $1200? anyone?
Oh hey, don't forget to toss in another $100 for that HD cable that you'll want if you're going to be using HD or want to play blu-ray DVDs... }:)
The topic was lauding the 360's and Dreamcast's ease of support, not the PS3. Re-read the sentence again.
The above may have been offtopic, but it was not flamebait - it was intended to educate, not annoy. Please update your sphincters.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't think it's a layer transition thing, there are too many places in a given DVD where it'll happen. (A dual layer DVD will have just one layer transition, right?)
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
It is you who seem to have it wrong. Resistance definitely looks to be a great game. It received a 9.1 from IGN who are basically an advertising firm for MS. Not only that, it looks to be twice the game of anything I could pick up for my 360 at launch.
[quote]With every single console since, the computer on my desk had.........better gameplay (via the keyboard) than any console of each era.[/quote][BR] That is a very subjective opinion. As someone who enjoys both pc and console gaming I think gameplay is much more satisfying with a console controller.