Slashdot Mirror
PlayStation 3 Launches in EU/AU
stpk4 wrote to mention some articles discussing the launch of the PlayStation 3 in Europe; London saw Phil Harrison handing out HD sets, while Microsoft's party barge and lackluster crowds marked the Parisian launch. The Australian launch went well but also saw disappointing crowds, with media, security, and store officials outnumbering the customers for much of the event. Eurogamer has a comprehensive list of launch titles, for those of you in the new territories thinking of picking up a console.
(crickets)
The real question is: did they also provide the HD cables to connect the PS3 to those TVs? (since the PS3 doesn't come with them)
Collector's Edition
My bet is that Sony realizes that the PS3 is only really a value for people needing HD, and many people simply aren't running HD yet. (I have a 36" standard def tube set at home which still looks great for everything I watch).
That known the best way to get people evangelizing about the product is to make sure they are using it in the most optimal scenario.
Also, I am willing to bet he knows the PR quagmire/sinkhole the PS3 is in and knew it would get him good publicity pop.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
we sold about 26 machines at our midnight launch this morning. That was only about a third of our pre-orders, and Sony got us 120 machines for day one. I know everyone's heralding the death of Sony's gaming division these days, but they've done a fantastic job with getting stock out there to stores (admittedly they've had months to put this in motion). I won't be buying one myself but I think Sony are starting to turn their fortunes around.
Just as long as they don't let any of their execs do anymore interviews.
Well, now having a Xbox 360 and Wii, and a lot of playing time on thePS3, I'd have to say the PS3 gets a worse rap than it deserves. Well, at least it doesn't deserve the ire it is shown. They could have been more competetive by making the Blu-Ray optional (which there is little use for as of yet). As far as the interface goes, the PS3 is a bit more versatile than the 360, but the 360 is much easier. Combined with a PSP, it can do some pretty sweet stuff. I hear you can do some sweet stuff on the 360 if you have a Windows Media Center PC as well, but I don't know and won't find out.
The PS3 is quieter than the Xbox, and has a much better hard drive setup. However, for all it's much advertised power, I certainly haven't noticed it. It could be the games, but nothing I have seen would lead me to believe it is more powerful. Which, I guess, brings up games. So far PS3 is far behind the 360 in games. And that's saying alot with the 360 not having a super line-up yet.
But, I'm still waiting for my Xbox back from MS after the dvd drive crapped out. Just like the original xbox, the DVD drives seem to be good for about a year, while my original PS2 drive is still working.
Anyway, for the money, I'd take a 360 and a Wii over the PS3 anyday. The 360 for playing alone & online, and the Wii for when friends are over.
Thats not surprising, considering cell is specifically designed to excel at the sort of calculations involved with protein folding. Its not indicative of the overall power of the system, or how well that power relates to a PC at all. Saying that a PS3 has 20x the performance of a Windows PC based on these numbers is ridiculous.
Intelligence says that some German retailer had a crazy stunt: Bring your Xbox360, smash it in front of the audience and get a PS3 for free! Limited to the first fifty people...
That happened only in London, and even there the reception was rather cold (they had 100 tvs for the midnight lines in London and given the fact this was a secret even there were almost no lines). The biggest documented thing was in Paris, where 60 people basically bought a PS3 in a big launch event, where they had 1000 PS3s lingering around, to the worse, a Microsoft boat drove by before. Actually locally here (central europe) there were some boxes sold, but they had them stacked up so most of them basically were left alone. (Totally opposite to the Wii launch where the boxes were basically ripped from the floors within minutes and basically all of them sold out within the first 20 minutes and lots of people being left empty handed) I dont know the preorder numbers, but as it seems, and every report indicates it that the entire launch was rather cold. The main problem really is the price, Sony as a brand is strong, but HDTV is not and the season is not a shopping season, add to that the fact that the price here in Europe is 800 dollars, add to that the fact that the europen version is the first getting the software Emu and people over here have the feeling to get a worse version (compatbility still is worse although the potential for the thing is there, but you still can switch the us version to software only as well) and people rightfully feel like being screwed and ripped off by Sony left and right and hate them for it. Or in other words, many loyal PS2 fans simply were not interested at all anymore! I hope this is the right smack on the head for Sony, that they finally get the clue to cut down the influence of their media division into the rest of the company. This whole fiasco could have been avoided if they would not have misused the entire thing as trojan horse to push Blue Ray into the market! I personally think, that we might see a DVD version of the PS3 sometime, but it might be to late to save the PS3 then.
Indeed. To put it in perspective, the average GPU client is doing twice as well as the average PS3 client.
Finally we find out why the PS3 costs so much more in the UK.
It has an HDTV bundled with it....
And what exactly is the 'overall' power of a system?
Performance always has a context (despite what some marketers will have you believe) and in this context, yes, the Cell in the PS3 really is that much more powerful than an x86 chip.
FUNK!
Sure it does. In fact it already has about half the install base of the 360 and more than twice that of the PS3. Remember that if the 'most powerful machine' wins the race, Sony would never have been a contender. People seemed pretty content with their PS1/PS2's despite there being more powerful systems competing with them.
No worse a conclusion than the parent post's. I would have thought that a GPU is by far the best part of a PC to make a fair comparison against the PS3 with.
The F@H web site certainly seems to agree http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-ATI.html it links between their information on the GPU and PS3 versions stating it's using the same technology behing both clients. The client is admittedly exclusive to ATI cards (X1600, X1800, and X1900 class GPU's) but I would assume that Nvidia's offerings would offer similar performance.
I had the day off today due to the dryer at home deciding to stop working. This took me on a tour of Comet, Curry's, Woolworths and Big W.
All stores had huge signs outside saying "PS3 stock available inside". This was from 12 oclock through till 2pm. Everywhere had huge stands and what looked like large amounts of stock, I also only saw one person show interest.
Later this afternoon I decided to take a trip into Cardiff (S.Wales vally boy just so you know). Gamestation, Virgin, Game, HMV and more all had signs saying "stock available".
I think at this point that I should note that in all stores the Wii was totally sold out. Supply chain problems,lack of interest whatever. I think it speaks for itself that at £425 just for a base unit console the numbers are going to suck. People want value not extra's and to put a long story short, if you really do need that PS3 get to Newport and Cardiff in S.Wales.
Pete
Actually Nintendo is looking long term, their strategy is dead on, consoles are commodities, and hence they have to be cheap (have you read the interview where they wanted to get the price below 100$) you do not need an uber machine doing everything, the pc already does that way better than any console can do it, and a pc can be found in every house. HDTV does not make sense yet because the market saturation is not good enough, so what can you do, build a machine which is cheap and a no brainer to pick up, and get the controls right so that also beginners can jump on it, while also serving the old fan base.
It is not too hard, to get a HDTV enabled wii out of the door, if the demand is there, currently it is not, and Nintendo is dead right on this. In about a three years time it is time to rethink the strategy, but do not expect nintendo to move fast into this area, they seem to feel quite cozy in their little toy corner and watch Microsoft and Sony kill each other in the console business.
The current situation must be very comforting to them, they again are out of the visual target range of Microsoft which still tries to sink Sony, Sony is shooting itself into the food with its own arrogance, and Nintendo slowly but surely reaches numbers which third parties cannot avoid to develop for anymore, in between they seem to have reached the new gamer and non gamer audience via excellent coverage in non gamer media.
And currently not being able to run on pure hdtv does not mean you cannot do it, look at PC gaming, HDTV resolutions have been a commodity there for almost a decade, games simply scale down or up, and often simply replace textures. So I do not see the current non hdtv as a real issue here. They dropped out of the race because there is nothing to gain or to win there.
What's scary is that if Microsoft starts astroturfing fanboyism, what happens to the independant fanboys when Microsoft uses its monopoly to push them out of the fanboy business.
I'm still waiting for it to come out here in Kenya.
Le français vous intéresse?