Slashdot Mirror
Elite Won't Replace Premium or Core Skus
As the day has progressed, more information about the 'Elite' has become available. GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that the other two 360 skus will still be available. The Elite is not replacing either of them. Interestingly, there's no word on a price drop for them either. Major Nelson's most recent podcast has several interviews and details about the new offering, which you may find informative. There's more analysis available, if you find that interesting: CVG wonders aloud who is going to buy this thing, while a Wedbush Morgan analyst mentioned to GamesIndustry.biz that he thinks this validates the PS3 strategy. "'It appears to me that Microsoft sees the writing on the wall - Blu-ray is going to win the format wars ... Ultimately, Microsoft will likely offer a Blu-ray drive with the 360 Elite, and I think consumers will be able to select based solely upon other drivers.' Pachter also believes that although the Xbox 360 Elite will register with early adopters of hi-def content, the current 20GB model will still be sufficient for many consumers."
Is everyone suddenly a merchandiser or something? I'll replace your sku.
It appears to me that Microsoft is acknowledging the format wars are stillborn. Their support for HD-DVD was just about defusing the PS3 anyway, not defeating Blu-Ray. MS already has their license fees secured, regardless of how the little-plastic disc formats fare.
The media victory Microsoft is after, is digital delivery.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
WTF are they smoking up in Redmond?
At first it seemed to be dope due to the green color. At closer inspect, though, it turns out that it's dollar bills...
Prices are funny. Microsoft is obviously milking every dime they can get out of gamers who buy a system before they drop the prices. While there is no sign of that happening, you can pretty much count on any PS3 price drop to be matched by a 360 price drop of equal or greater value.
That "validation" of the PS3 strategy by way of price is a bit misleading, though. Sony equates the PS3 to fine equipment whose price indicates its value. But it's a genuinely expensive device to make. What the PS3 price points have proven to the people who figure out the prices of consoles is that consoles have been too cheap and the market could sustain them at higher prices than previously thought.
Other very expensive consoles have gone down in flames for home use... but the median price for the majority of consoles at the market at any given time has been a $200 - $250 sweet spot. The only thing that Microsoft and Sony have done is show that the sweet spot can be coaxed higher.
What I don't understand is why Microsoft isn't playing a price war yet. They've got the biggest userbase for this generation, most established games (excluding Wii's ability to play Gamecube games), and they're turning a profit on current consoles sold. Sony's machine costs $800 and putting pressure on them to lower a price point could hasten any future demise... if it's in the cards.
My only stab at trying to understand is that Microsoft eventually wants to buy the Sony gaming division, but I'll be the first to suggest that's an outrageous claim. Hmmm...
More Twoson than Cupertino
I work in a company that does open world games (and good ones actually). I have to tell you the "hobbling" isn't true. The 512 megs of ram that we have on the system is a bigger issue than anything that has to do with the media we are working on.
Blu-ray sounds great but what do you need to fill it with. As it is the amount of money we pay to get the game shipped now is a lot. Cost is what's stopping us from making bigger or more diverse games, rather then size of the media again.
The people who are hurt the most by this are the JRPG companies who just explode with FMVs, blue dragon is a 3 dvd game, other then them I've heard no complaints about the size of the media. Hell, The only reasons they are filling up Blu-rays are they are using "stupid" tricks like uncompressed audio for Metal gear solid. I just have a simple question. Now that both systems are out, and we already have seen that the 360's dvd has a higher read speed then the ps3's blu-ray device (overall blu-ray SHOULD be faster, but in these two actual system the 360's drive is faster). Why are you using larger files sizes rather then using the "extra" power of the ps3 to uncompress these files? The simple answer is no, the ps3 isn't that powerful (Insomniac today claims you have 8 cores? funny we only have access to 6 cores).
In the end blu-ray isn't going to be the answer. Sony's system has some good marks, but blu-ray isn't necessary, and the Cell processor is doing more to hurt the developer than it is helping it.
If anything the 360 developer's biggest problem has nothing to do with DVDs, it's due to the fact that the Hard drive is non standard and we can't guarantee using that for caching, but that's a relatively minor complaint in the long run.