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PS3, Xbox Having Disappointing Christmas Season
Both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 appear to be having a bit of a rough Christmas. For the PS3, it's all about launch jitters. The worst of these jitters is probably the dubious nomination from TIME magazine, who has cited the console as a 'bust'. The 360, likewise, is having problems meeting expectations, especially those of Michael Pachter. He's the gent that expected big sales this Christmas for the console, and he's now trying to figure out why the 360 fell short. What is, perhaps, a larger problem - lack of penetration for the Xbox Live service - is being discussed by Reuters. While the still laudable number of 4 million subscribers sounds impressive, the article points out that the runaway success of the Wii and the overall ratio of possible to actual subscribers should give Microsoft pause. In short, Sony and Microsoft are having good, but not great holiday seasons. Next year, when there's enough stock to go around and big games on the way, we'll see who really 'has the stuff'.
They named the 360 console of the year, along with all the other consoles.
While Microsoft might have a legitimate worry with the 360, it's plainly obvious to me that it's too early to be calling the PS3 in trouble. I mean every single one they've manufactured and shipped has sold shortly after arriving at the store (or well in advance). That's hardly a sales failure (although it is a supply failure). More importantly, rough launches have hardly doomed consoles in the past. Both the PSx and especially PS2 had rough launches and look how they turned out.
There are a lot of things you can criticize about the PS3, but the sales are not one of them. Really, you can't say much at all about the sales until they start sitting on the shelves for more than 5 minutes. Even if total sales during the holidays are slow due to lack of supply, it doesn't really matter that the total volume is low until the boxes finally stop selling instantly.
I read the internet for the articles.
Stores all over North America have been getting restock every couple of days. The eBay scammers were counting on Sony having continued production problems past the holidays. That has turned out to be a false hope resulting in crashing eBay prices for PS3s.
Microsoft apparently is flooding the channel with 360s to try to be able to make an effort to be able to claim they reached their sales goals for the first year. People are reporting giant stacks of 360s sitting in aisles in stores this past couple of weeks - my local Frys has the biggest stack of consoles I've ever seen as of a couple days ago. As the article talks about, Microsoft is having a real hard time moving systems even with the 100 dollar rebates they've been paying stores for for the last couple of months.
Most interesting is the lack of supply of Wiis. People have speculated it is because Nintendo is having to switch the wrist straps. Whatever the reason, something is up. No one is reporting hardware failures like the 360, so it will be interesting to see what happened. I would not be surprised if the numbers for December are a whole lot closer between the PS3 and Wii than anyone imagined they would be.
Anecdotal story, but I may speak for others:
I am fascinated by the Wii, and already own two games(Zelda:TP and Super Monkey Ball) for the Wii...and I still do not own one. There just aren't any that aren't sold on the internet or on a freezing cold line at 3am.
So rather than going home empty-handed to sit out my holiday vacation days in boredom...I picked up an Xbox360 to tide me over till February when the Wii (hopefully) where the Wii is available on the inside of stores rather than the outside.
So my desire for the Wii managed to boost Xbox360 sales. Having an Xbox360 made a large number of games available to me, and it led to purchase a series of games I'd been curious about but never cared to pursue. So Nintendo can also be thanked for netting me 10-12 games(though only about 6 are new).
Naturally my story will not be common, but I don't think it will be all that rare. I just happen to have an excess of disposable income due to my circumstances and underdeveloped propensity to save.
I just mentioned in another thread a few minute ago that Micro Center is offering a $100 rebate on Xbox 360s, both the core and pro systems. For the core system, that would end up being $200.
Now, that being said, beware the nickel-and-diming:
So if you're just looking for something that will play the fancy new Xbox 360 and classic old Xbox games, you can get it now for $200. If you're looking to build it out to any degree, you should indeed probably wait.
- It's not a new way to play games
- It's not a BluRay (or HD-DVD) player.
- It's not fully backward compatible
- It's not a Linux platform.
- It's not friendly to casual gamers
It's just the XBox...only prettier. There's no easy way to market that...You can convert HDMI to DVI with a simple $5 cable from monoprice.com. It is disappointing that the Wii only supports up to component, but who knows what will develop later on. Someone could come out with a VGA cable eventually.
I had a Xbox 360...and then I borrowed my brother's Wii console. Not only did my wife actually stayed in the room while I was playing she actually played a couple rounds of Wii Bowling with me. The next day I listed my Xbox on eBay and plan to buy a Wii at the earliest opportunity.
It wasn't a tough sell at all.
If you haven't played one...do so.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
It's hard to say if Sony is having a bad Christmas or not round here, as their 'we can't be bothered' attitude to Europe means they forgot to send us any. The Wiis are all sold, which means Microsoft are probably picking up extra sales from worred parents who would be left without a 'big present' for little Timmy if that nice salesman hadn't convinced them to go for the Xbox 360.
Apple are either being incredibly clever holding back the iPod shuffle knowing the 'next present up the ladder' is their own Nano, or they seriously miscalculated demand, since they are practically unobtainable here.
I think the real problem for the Games market is that there were no really 'big' must-have games this year. I'd have bought a Wii if the Mario Game was out, a PS3 if it and GT5 was out, and a Xbox360 if hell froze over. My spend on games this Christmas is zero, and I'm not the only one.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
There's nothing on those game discs that could have been fit on a DVD at this point...
Even if Bluray comes later it becomes irrelevant for games. It's the game console addon problem. Addons do not work for consoles, because game developers will always aim at the base model. When you have an install base of 1 million PS3s that don't have bluray drives in them, who in the hell is going to publish games on a bluray disk and exclude those customers? Especially since they're most likely the early adapters who go the most crazy over new games.
Thus Sony knew that if they wanted to put bluray in, it had to be all or nothing. Gabling on a laser that isn't widely produced or they didn't have stockpiled was obviously not the greatest decision short term.
we need videos of people throwing Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers through their TVs on youtube. That seemed to have working for the Wii. And before you're all like "no, nah ah!" this is Microsoft and Sony we're talking about, they'd probably be like "yup, that must be the wii's secret to sucess" If I saw a commercial with Bill Gates whipping around a 360 controller then smashing it into the camera lense and breaking it, I'd be more inclined to buy a 360.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I see you're a ps3 graphics fanboy.
When the two 'big games' that supposedly show off the 'true power' of the 360, PGR3 and Gears of War:
* PGR can't even run at full 720p resolution
* Even with the low resolution it still is only 30fps
* A jaggy mess in actual gameplay
* Only bogus 'photo mode'/non-gameplay movies/images are released for the game
* Actual gameplay captures of Gears of War simply do not exist on the Net - nothing but high rez bullshit marketing shots
* Just as much of a jaggy mess as PGR in actual gameplay
PGR3 is not some MAJOR game for the 360, by the way. Most players don't even like it. I bought it and resold it within a week because I hated it so much. It was a launch title, so it got plenty of hype. Nothing more.
* PGR3 not running at 720p has nothing to do with the 360. It's a result of the developers deciding to run it that way. It DOES run higher than SD which you apparently didn't quite get. It's rendered at 1024x600 sized up to 720p (1280x720) which isn't a larger jump anyway. SD is much lower than that. There are also many, much more graphically demanding games out there than PGR, and they're running at full 720p. Burnout Revenge for instance. (funny you should mention it though though...isn't the PS3 having trouble running at 720p?) Enjoying your PS3 at 640x480?
* Oh, is your eye faster than the rest of ours? Motion is percieved at anything faster than 11fps... They've stated all kinds of framerate issues with many of the new PS3 games anyway. To actually have it affect gameplay you're gonna have to get below 20FPS...which doesn't say much for the PS3.
* Jaggy mess? The 360 has guaranteed 2x MINIMUM anti-aliasing in ANY game. It's also manditory and enforced by Microsoft. If you looked into the 360's archetecture you would know that it also comes with NO performance his WHATSOEVER which is why almost all games have 4x support (the 360 has a separate post processing effect processor Things like motion blur (and plenty of other things) can also be completely performance free if the developers wish). The PS3 has OPTIONAL AA support and it's all handled by the main GPU. Your jaggy mess comment is just as clueless as your previous two. Jaggies are dependant on resolution...and AA pretty much does away with that problem.
* I've seen TONS of screenshots of PGR3 at IGN and Gamespot and other review sites that don't look ANYWHERE near as good as the game ACTUALLY does. I'd sure like to see where you get off saying it's "bogus."
* There are gobs of actual gameplay screenshots. Tried looking at any gamesites lately? The problem is that you don't seem to realize that ALL the shots you see are rendered in the game/game engine. The screenshots also don't anywhere near do justice to the actual game. Try watching a sidebyside GoW and R:FoM video and see how much the GoW graphics beat the living tar out of R:FoM. By the way, the "hi-rez" shots you're talking about are 720p screenshots... 720p is 1280x720 resolution...
* Again...read the comments about AA above. You're just making stuff up.
Are you just stuck on moron or something? I'm not fanboy at all, but what you said is just idiotic to the max. Gamespot did a sidebyside graphical comparison of crossover games on the PS3 and 360 and at this stage of the game the PS3's looks are a good deal below the graphics of the 360. Apparently the only people denying that are fanboys like you.
This isn't to say that the PS3 will never compete, but IF the corresponding launch titles on either system were indicative of "true" graphical power, the 360 is well beyond the PS3.... Do a little research and next time don't come here and make a moron out of yourself.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6162742/ For example.
Er, PS3 has DVI in the form of HDMI, they're signal compatible and straight pin adaptor cables are easy to find.
HDMI is signal-compatible with DVI-I and DVI-D, which are used to interconnect with digital LCD panels. Most low-end LCD panels and practically all CRT displays use the DVI-A signal standard, which is just analog VGA with a different connector and is not compatible with HDMI.
Which is the *ONLY* thing that 99% of the console players want out of an online service!!
Make it free to play online already!
Offer stupid extras or game downloads or other crap as premiums, but don't charge for basic multiplayer game functionality.
That goes for all of the other console mfgrs as well.
We've been getting shipments of everything but the ps3. WE've had tons of 360's ordered hundreds for the holiday and they are selling but we've barely had any ps3's. The ps3's status is worse then the 360's last year. We knew we would be getting at least one shipment a week if not more. Three months after launch we were never out of stock for the 360's. I've not heard a thing about us even getting more ps3s.
Parent's aren't even interested in asking about the ps3's and when they do it's something like. "Well, we also want to get a ps3 but you guys probably don't have it right?"
I don't know who's got in in shelves but they aren't really available here in central ohio.
Hmmm... Pie...
Except... there ar three or four games at most for each of these add-on "gamepads." Even the EyeToy didn't get more than a few mediocre games. On the Wii, every game can and will use the remote to some degree, because developers know they can rely on it being there.
And as we've seen, ideas usually don't suddenly appear. They need to be refined over time. Look at FPSs on the Wii: CoD got the aiming pretty good, Red Steel implemented some additional remote features (such as "calls" you get during multiplayer games or throwing of hand grenades using the nunchuck), and so on. The second or third versions of these games will perfect the control scheme. You can't just create two or three games for such an innovative controller and expect them to be perfect in every way - that's why most EyeToy games are either pretty bad, or pretty bland.
It should be noted that no new revision ever fundamentally changed the hardware. They made new versions of the GB, GBA and DS smaller, prettier and included a brighter screen, but they never increased the screen's resolution, or made them faster.