Slashdot Mirror
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.
... 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.
I think you're parsing that sentence wrong. Read it as :
"PS3: Releasing one year after the lower priced Xbox 360, [with the Xbox360 being] lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service."
- Tempestdata
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
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.
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.
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.
- A unified online profile that contains all of your stats and setting across all of your games
- The ability to access and modify that profile online bringing your console presence to the PC
- An online feedback system that links to your unified profile that allows you to avoid or prefer players allowing you to keep playing others you enjoy playing with and avoid others you don't enjoy playing with
- The ability to access a set of controls with the touch of a button at any time allowing you to adjust various console and profile settings, adjust custom soundtracks, send and receive messages, view information about your profile and the profiles of the gamers you're playing against, etc.
- The ability to set your preferred controls... axis inversion etc. and have it be used for every game
- The "TrueSkill" skill raking algorithm for match making online with people at your skill level
- "Custom Soundtracks" that allow you to easily replace the in-game music with music from from a storage device, an iPod, or a networked computer
- Achievements which add replay value to games by suggesting goals and setting challenges that a gamer might not otherwise attempt
- Gamerscore derived from achievement that creates a sort of Meta-game that encompasses all games on their console
- The Xbox Live Arcade (which was started with the Xbox 1) for downloadable games and content delivery directly to the console
Some of these ideas start on the Xbox 1, and PC but have been really fleshed out and turned into really solid, beneficial and most importanly universal features. None of these have been done on other consoles to my knowledge.Collector's Edition
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