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Gran Turismo HD Becomes Free Download
The Opposable Thumbs blog mentions a surprising twist from the world of Sony products; Gran Turismo HD will now be a free download. The realistic racing title was slated to be released as a full game, but the word is now that Polyphony will be releasing what they have, via e-Distribution, in Japan and the U.S.. Instead of continuing work on GT HD, they'll focus on Gran Turismo 5, the next 'full' game in the series. From the article: "In Japan there will be a free download that includes ten cars and two layouts of a single track. Not exactly an embarrassment of riches, but hey, free is free. There is no hint at when we'll see this download in the US, but I don't think it will be too long. Gran Turismo isn't exactly a small property here, and a free taste of the game in full 1080p will give gamers something to show off to other car buffs on their shiny HDTVs."
Sony's realized that all those people who bought PS3's have gone back to playing GoW on their 360 or playing party games on their Wii. The PS3's launch, despite the sellout, was disasterous. I haven't heard one good review of the system yet. They don't have a killer game.... hell they've only got one decent game (RFOM). The game is basically CoD3 with aliens.
How do they solve it? They bring a killer-game early. They release GT HD as a free download and get a few people to buy the system just for that game. Kinda genius really: Good will from a free game, system-mover, doesn't lose the sales they'd get from a full GT game.
They still have quite a way to go. The 360 has a very good library going, and the Wii is fun as hell. But this kind of outside the box thinking is something Sony has been lacking and it's a good move.
I hate to sound like a fanboi (I will probably get a ps3 *someday*) but it would seem to make more sense in your particular case to save $200 and buy a 360 since it will have GTA the same day as the PS3, and go with Forza 2 which supports MS' wireless racing wheel which has been getting rave reviews.
"...I haven't heard one good review of the system yet. They don't have a killer game.... "
For games, I completely agree. Most of the launch titles are pretty lame. However, there is one app that's made the $500 and $600 boxes worth it (yeah, we bought one of each): Yellow Dog Linux. I've been developing for the Cell BE for a few months now (on loaner systems) and have not had this much fun programming hardware since I built a processor as an undergrad. Compared to the $8-20k that the IBM and Mercury Cell systems go for, the PS3 is a bargin.
YDL on the PS3 has all the same patches and SDKs as the official FC5 Cell BE Linux distro. The PS3 has the added benefit of a graphics card. We plugged ours into the 24" Dell widescreen displays and are running at full WUXGA resolution. The graphics are framebuffered and not accelerated, but for number crunching, this is not an issue (though it would be fun to use the GPUs, too). The only downside is that only 6 SPUs are exposed from Linux (there are 8 on the high-end systems, 7 avaiable to PS3 games).
-Chris