Slashdot Mirror
People Swapping PS3s for Wiis?
An anonymous reader writes "To add to Sony's problems with the PS3 launch, it now appears that some Playstation 3 owners are trying to trade their PS3s for Wiis. The author writes: 'There's also speculation that people want the Wii because the PS3s best game is Resistance: Fall of Man. This, of course, forget that there are plenty of cool PS3 games on the way, and the PS3 has its own motion sensing technology, which, while not as good as the Wii, is still pretty cool and opens up Sony to emulate some of the Wii's successes.'"
on video games. She and her family won't buy a new console for at least the first six months that it's out because they want to see what actually comes out for it, what others think, how many bugs it has, etc. I'm not surprised in the least now because the PS3 is very expensive, said to be rushed in a number of areas, and well, wasn't quite worth the hype.
As a former Dreamcast fan, I'm not surprised. Sony's hype engine is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it can really crush a poorly marketed, but good console. On the other, it set a bar that was ridiculous for their engineers to try to achieve.
People are starting to wise up to Sony and realize that they are great at hyping stuff that ends up being no better than their competition's products that happen to be significantly cheaper. They probably haven't even figured out why it is that Apple has kicked them squarely in the nuts in the digital music player market. I think their worst nightmare would be a dynamic duo of Apple and Nintendo building the One True Living Room Suite.
There are so many good games for XBox/XBox 360 and Playstation 2 that only hardcore gamers need to really go out and buy a PS3. I'm going back now and buying all of the games I missed when I was busy graduating from college last year and... there's no reason for a guy like me to buy a PS3 for at least a year and a half.
I tell you what...for all the hype around these things just a few weeks ago, I've had three chances to buy one (a PS3) in the last few days. One was a friend who bought two of them for Ebay and couldn't sell them at all. The other two times were regular retail stores while I was Christmas shopping. I passed all three times. Not sure why but the price of those things sure made me think twice.
I can certainly see buyer's remorse sneaking in after people play it for a few days and realize that maybe it isn't $500 cooler than their old PS2.
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Not the linked article, the article the linked article linked to...
In my search of Austin, I only turned up 6 total people who wanted to trade their PS3 for a Wii, so I moved on to New York City, which boasted a pretty substantial 18 desired trades. Here's where it gets crazy: in San Francisco, there are 48 different PS3 for Wii trades going on at this moment. Now, keep in mind, most of these trades are requesting a Wii plus cash difference, but there is the occasional barter that will take a loss just to get their hands on the latest Nintendo console.
So to summarize - the "occasional" person willing to trade a PS3 for a Wii straight up warrants another Slashdot front-page zOMG SONY IS SO SCREWED wankfest.
The fact that MOST of the trades want the Wii + the cash difference is apparently totally irrelevant. Tell you what, I'm willing to trade my brand new video iPod for some used dental floss and $1,000. Now someone write an article about this amazing new trend of people shunning Apple in favor of OralB!
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
I know of at least 4 people who would have bought Wii's had they been able to. One of them gave up and got a 360 and the others are so discouraged they probably won't get one at all. Even though Nintendo's launch is being billed as one of the best (if not the best) launch ever I think they really screwed up. They should have picked a country, hyped the machine, and then had enough consoles to let everyone who wanted one get one.
The way it is the excitement is pretty much died down. Many people who would have made the quick impulse won't. Bad move...
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Because it looks like the PS3 might go the way of the Dreamcast, and they are going to have a lot of extra hungry consumers. For all it's perceived worth, the PS3 is worth much...yet. It will be, if it lives long enough. But let's face it, we need them to come in third place or lose. Just like we needed Nintendo to come in 3rd/lose, like what happened. Winners become assholes, just like Nintendo once was, just like Sony is now, and just like MS will be(in the console world). But, it would be best if Sony doesn't completely quit. One thing that I wish never happened was SEGA's withdrawal from the race. It created less competition. Now if Sony's nightmare scenario comes true, and the PS3 fails, and they have to withdraw, or worse, they sell the gaming division to MS(most likely), I wonder if SEGA might jump back in.
...buy a PS3 at launch. It is an abortion. The Wii is fun, but it is a lot of hype, too. The controller is certainly unique, but I don't want to play it for 3 hours at a go. Plus, the graphics are lame. Neither of these have well implemented online infrastructure. I don't care about browsing the internet with a console. I just want to play games with friends around the country. If you can get over the fact that the 360 is a MSFT product, it does what it's supposed to do rather well. Ok, so there's no motion control. I'm already tired of the Wii control scheme. The PS3 is back in its box. Resistance is just another game--it just happens to be THE game for the PS3. Maybe I'll hook it up again when F1 2006 comes out in, wait for it, 2007. In the mean time, I'll have wasted a few hundred hours of my life on XBox Live.
>They should have picked a country, hyped the machine, and then had enough consoles to let everyone who wanted one get one.
can work both ways. I live in UK: no PS3 till March. if I had wanted one I would have seen it as them telling me to fuck off and told them the same.
Nintendo launching everywhere as much as possible shows respect to their customers imo. I was able to get a Wii, and so was everyone else who knew about the launch beforehand and was prepared to put a little work in (refreshing amazon.co.uk for 40mins).
expecting to get a Wii straight away when only deciding to get one *after* it has had a massive launch and become a hit is just childish. but telling your customers they can't even think about having one for 4 months is just insulting.
(to all UK PS3-wanters: you only get treated this way because you put up with it.)
Look, whatever dude. Let me directly quote the entire post again:
The PS3 doesn't have motion-sensing technology. It has gyros that can sense the controller's tilt. No MEMS accelerometers, and no position sensitivity.
It's a cheap knockoff, and everybody knows it except idiot Sony fanboys.
He says that there is no motion-sensing and then states that the gyros can detect the tilt. He's clearly drawing a distinction between the two types of motion. Yes, you're right, the controller detects rotation, but a lot of the cool uses of these controllers comes from detecting linear accelearations and getting spatial information.
This argument is dumb. We're arguing about what an AC said. Good day to you, sir!
-Bucky
If you are sitting on tyhe deck of a rocking boat, wouldn't the average person conclude that they are moving?
:) Personally I don't know anything about the sixaxis, but if it only detects changes in orientation it's not a motion sensor per se.
And you'd be right. You are moving relative to the water (but not relative to the boat) however in common parlance, the boat is not "moving", it's rocking. Hence the word you used. Hence the difference between rotation and "movement" the original posted pointed out.
No, I'm not. Motion means motion - there's no room for semantic wriggle-room there.
Well I'd argue that its not undergoing motion since its position isn't changing as it's rotating about its local axes, so if we represent it's pose by a 4x4 homogeneous transform, the 3x3 orientation part would change but it's 3 coordinates in XYZ space would remain constant. Hence it would be rotating but not moving.
I believe the "crying wolf" was on the part of the original poster - who deliberately used inaccurate terminology to stir up slashdot anti-Sony sentiment.
Well, as I said, from my point of view the terminology is much more correct than yours.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Now I'll wait until the strongly rumored January price drop and their appearance in stores.
There is no strongly rumored January price drop, there isn't even a weakly rumored January price drop. There is only a, "one guy said on Slashdot that he thinks there will be a January" price drop.
There will be no price drop. There is no reason for a price drop. Demand still outweighs supply, why on Earth would anyone even consider a price drop?