I'm intentionally being very broad when I'm talking about Socialism. So I am grouping a lot of people together. Looked at broadly, Communism and Socialism are fairly similar. And how many Socialists you know have positive things to say about the wealthy?
Hate speech advocates make the argument that politically incorrect speech leads to violence. They say that racially insensitive ideas are a slippery slope to genocide. They commonly use the Holocaust and American slavery as examples. I am looking at other examples of genocide which have occurred in the last century. If we are to ban ideas on the basis that they could possibly lead to genocide, then economic equality is on that list. Which is why ideas shouldn't be banned.
Maybe I was trolling a bit. I was in a terribly bad mood when I originally posted the comment.
I fully believe that 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust. However it seems that a lot of people want to deny genocide occurred under Communist rule. When you take both the actions of the Communists and the actions of the National Socialists into perspective, you come to the realization that the type of government not the beliefs of the government are responsible. Socialism is the belief that everyone would live in an egalitarian and peaceful world if there were not a small group of people who were conspiring to keep control. The Nazis believed that it was a race who were responsible and most Socialists are racially neutral. But the results are the same.
You can't ban Socialist speech. If someone wants universal health care or the right to form a union, you can't throw them in jail. Yet we all have to acknowledge that if Socialists were to gain absolute power, they are capable of genocide. Just as a racist with absolute power would be capable of genocide. The key is to prevent anyone from gaining absolute power.
Genocide requires that a government has complete control. It requires that it cannot be stopped by courts, demonstrations or free public speech. One of the key elements of any totalitarian society is the idea that no one can speak freely. All speech is government approved. To have free speech in a society is to undermine totalitarianism.
I think that every person who is thinking of purchasing an Xbox 360 has certain criteria before they buy. Some people will wait until it falls below $399 for the premium version. Some people are waiting for there to be a sufficient number of games that they desire. Most people will wait for a combination of these factors.
The question is whether or not Microsoft can change the preference of PS2 owners from Playstation to Xbox. It will take a decent price (I believe $299 for the premium system will really start to sell systems), a large number of high quality games and respectable online play.
From what I've heard, Microsoft has an install base of about 5 million Xbox 360s. I think if Halo 3 had been released, that would be about 8 to 10 million. Gears of Wars is a bit like a Halo 3 substitute. I'm not saying that it's not an excellent game in its own right, but the Halo franchise is one of the major reasons people buy Xboxes.
If the PS3 becomes a $599 console you can't buy before 2007 it will help Microsoft a lot. Sure there are going to be people paying $2000 for it on Ebay, but most people want it for a much higher price. The question is when will the PS3 hit $299? That will be the point at which most people will consider buying it. Judging by the PS2 entry in Wikipedia, it took 18 months for it to drop by a third and another year before it dropped in price again. That would make it 2008 before it hits $399 and 2009 or later before it hits $299 for the premium version. If the Xbox 360 followed roughly the same price drops, by the time you can purchase a PS3 in Europe (March 2007) the Xbox 360 premium would be roughly $266. Probably $299 with Project Gotham Racing.
Microsoft's best strategy for Christmas would be to release a $349 Premium Xbox 360 bundle with Gears of War and Project Gotham Racing in North America and Europe.
I had the misfortune of playing Rainbow Six: Lockdown on the PC. A third of the walls in the game were covered in advertising. And it was the same ad! First it was the DVD release of Silent Hill and then it was an Audi ad. But it would be the same ad for the entire level, you would literally see it 50 times.
Make all of the Burger King, Goldman Sachs or Astroglide games you want. Just keep the advertising out of the regular games!
As a general principle, every company should worry about its competitors. Microsoft has massive corporate lockin with Windows, most corporations have software developed for Windows that would cost a huge amount of money to switch to Apple's OS or Linux. But do you think that Microsoft doesn't spend time thinking about how to retain marketshare?
In the game console business alone we've seen leaders being bent over and abused. Nintendo comes to mind. It's a very fluid business. There isn't much customer loyalty.
Microsoft has been manufacturing the Xbox 360 for about a year, its part costs have probably come down 15 to 25 %, it is about to move to a 65 nm process for certain components (which will reduce power consumption and save money) and Microsoft has a huge amount of money. Microsoft can rape Sony on price. Nintendo is currently making money on each console sold and is using low cost components which will only get cheaper over time. Nintendo is in a position to rape Sony on price. The reason the Xbox 360 is selling as many consoles as expected is that $399 is too much to pay for a console. Microsoft has it in their power to correct that.
Sony's exclusivity deals with game developers are far more limited than they were before. The PS2 had a 100 million consoles sold (probably about 80 million are working), it made sense for developers only to develop for the PS2. With an uncertain install base, no developer in their right mind will develop exclusively for the PS3 without a sack full of money from Sony. This is compounded by high development costs for next gen games. If a developer makes a game for two or three consoles, the failure of one console will not ruin game sales.
1080p graphics don't matter at the moment. Look at bestbuy.com. Look at the televisions costing over a thousand dollars. How many of them support 1080p? There are quite a few televisions under a thousand dollars which support 720p. Sony is relying on the PS3 purchases 3 or 4 years from now. By that time this particular generation will be over.
I think that both the Xbox 360 and the Wii will do well. After the Xbox 360 drops its price by about $100 and includes a game with the system. Third-party developers will show a preference for the Xbox 360 over the Wii until it is clear that third-party games can sell well on the Wii. There were many people who bought a Gamecube and only played Nintendo games on it. Months would go by and there would be no Gamecube games on the top 20 games sold in the United States. The Wii is also a different sort of console, which will cause a degree of hesitation. Despite a small install base for the Xbox 360, a number of third-party Xbox 360 games have become number one sellers in the United States and Europe. Saint's Row, Dead Rising and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter come to mind. When a developer is looking for investment, being able to say that other companies have been successful in the same field is a big selling point. Development of third-party Wii games will pick up once third-party sales pick up.
I think that the game console market is extremely price sensitive. If the game console market was not price sensitive, why did Sony drop the price of the all-powerful PS2? Why not keep it at $299 and rake in the cash? If Sony executives face a $299 Premium Xbox 360 and a $199 Wii, I think they'll start to worry or be replaced by their shareholders.
It's designed to inflame Muslim passion against the United States and the Western world. The Iranian government in particular wants to distract its population from the failing economy. The radical president of Iran was elected to fix economic woes, but he has been sidetracked by international conflict. It's also meant as a threat: bomb Iran and we will cut off your oil supply. Only in the mind of Jack Thompson do video games train people to become professional killers.
I strongly doubt that the Iranians would not use Iranian special forces to accomplish such a mission and instead use a 15 year old kid who played the game two times. Instead they want the kid to join the Iranian military or just shut up about the poor Iranian economy.
First, I have no pity for the child porn distributors. Theoretically it could be very borderline material, but it is probably terribly vile stuff that requires long prison sentences.
The hate speech issue on the other hand is very serious. What is determined to be hate speech in this situation? Is it calling for the genocide of a particular group or is it an offensive joke? Who gets to make a call on this? If someone from Brazil states that affirmative action should be overturned, are they committing a crime? What about concerns about violence in a particular neighborhood? Is implied hate enough for a conviction? If someone believes that homosexuality is immoral and openly say their opinion, do they go to jail? What if they never tell anyone, but they write a journal on their computer which happens to be discovered by the government. Should they go to jail? If the U.S. government turns over this information when such speech is protected in the U.S., it weakens the right of all Americans to speak freely. I'm also concerned about other governments following the example.
A lot of people are against politically incorrect speech, so I'll give an example which is more politically correct. Imagine a woman in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi system for tracking all of her online activates is not logging material as well as it should. She has a sexually explicit chat with a foreigner. The Saudi government's tracking system becomes aware that a chat took place and it had forbidden content, but can't track who made the chat on the Saudi side. That information is stored in a server in the United States which is owned by a company that also does business in Saudi Arabia. Let us say that the woman will face fifty lashes if she is caught. Should the United States government allow that information to be passed to the Saudis?
Not only do they have to do a full recall, but it gets dragged out through months of bad press. People will be calling their relatives asking if their laptops have Sony batteries in them. Do you think the laptop companies are going to blame anyone but Sony?
Sony should have seen this coming and bit the bullet at that point. This has turned into a PR disaster. Most people don't understand the concept of a root kit, but they do understand "can't bring laptop on a plane, because it might bring the plane down" (Virgin Atlantic did ban several brands of laptops because of this issue) or "laptop bursts into flame, everybody blames Sony". It's a very simple concept and everybody can understand it. When technology doesn't work properly or worse becomes a hazard, people become angry and scared. And the last thing a company wants is to have its name associated with fear and pain.
This will probably not be read by anyone, but I thought I'll respond in general.
I was trying to ask where people stand between absolute freedom of speech and strict political correctness. Most people fall between the two extremes. I fall heavily on the side of freedom of speech personally, but I understand a lot of people don't. There were cartoons that inflamed the Muslim world, the dissolution of the largest Belgian political party for being too anti-immigrant for the Belgian supreme court, the attempt to end evolution education in certain schools and the many hate speech laws throughout the world. A Slashdotter is probably more strongly in support of free speech than the average person, which explains the nature of the other comments.
It is less about what is science, rather what you call science. Science may produce a lot of the world's wonders and fascinate the public, but scientists themselves have very little media influence. A corporation, government or political group will find someone with an advanced degree willing to say what they want and put them on television. Most of the audience will believe what the expert is saying, while many scientists in that field may be throwing rotten vegetables at the screen. I bet there are a lot of climatologists who get really pissed off when they see Fox News on a nearby television. You are correct about the need for correct scientific standards, I'm just saying that there are well paid people who don't follow these standards and get away with it outside of academia.
What if a teacher wants to start up a discussion about whether homosexuality is a mental disorder? What if a scientist wants federal money to evaluate racial differences dealing with violent behavior and intelligence? What if a doctor reports statistical information stating that children of interracial relationships have a higher birth defect rate? What if someone produces a study that indicates faith is related to low intelligence?
A lot of people find that such discussions would terribly offensive and harmful to the social order. It's also easy to find scientific data which will prove just about anything. It could be because of small sample size or faulty data, but if you pick and choose the information you'll get what you want. If someone has a grudge against blacks/homosexuals/women/men/heterosexuals/whites... they can probably find a study that demonizes them. And then they put out books like the Bell Curve.
Some people have gone to jail for arguing that the Holocaust never happened. In Muslim countries, people have faced the death penalty for alleged slurs against religious doctrine.
My point is that everybody has some beliefs that they feel should go unchallenged. Whether it is their faith in God, their belief in racial equality, their rejection of the supernatural, opposition/support of abortion rights, etc. Regardless of the facts.
Where would you draw the line about debate? Are there discussions which should not take place?
It would be interesting to see how well Oblivion runs on a PS3 in comparison to a PC or Xbox 360. Is the PS3 really that much better than an Xbox 360? This would show. On some settings Oblivion can humble a Quad SLI setup (usually max settings outdoors), so it won't be a case of the PS3 maxing out Oblivion. I wonder whether it will come on a Blu Ray disc or a DVD because it clearly doesn't need the Blu Ray's capacity. That Blu Ray drive sure is worth the extra cost. Maybe a lot of pre-rendered video will be thrown on for fun.
This is only for people who are completely devoted to the Playstation brand. Anyone else who wanted it, already owns it.
If Sony had made a deal with the DVD coalition and accepted the HD-DVD standard I think they would be in a much better position right now. They would only take part of the HD-DVD licensing profits, but it would be cash in the bank. Business is about risk, but it's also about taking the easy profits when you can.
Imagine if you will, Sony including the only high definition format disc in their PS3. A dual layer HD-DVD has 30 gigs of storage, more than enough to hold the 22 gigs of Resistance: Fall of Man. Every single movie studio releasing their films on the only high definition format: HD-DVD. Sony would not be having the blue diode production problems that it is currently having. Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker. The high definition era would begin with the same unity as the DVD era. Sony would be guaranteed a huge quantity of money from licensing.
Instead, Sony decided that it had the Playstation brand as a magic bullet and gave the finger to the rest of the DVD coalition. I hope it works out for them.
Sony is realizing that very few people want to pay $600 for a console and $80 per game. Even Microsoft has to realize that $400 for a console is too much. Yes there are people who will pay that much, there are people who pay tens of thousands of dollars for a watch or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a car. When a company cuts the price of its console and games before launch they are admitting that they have made a mistake in pricing.
The decreased game price will really squeeze the developers. Developing a 20+ gig game, filled with high definition pre-rendered cutscenes costs a fortune. Combined with the fact that the developers do not know how many PS3s will be out there when they release their game. This encourages developers to stick to 3 to 6 GB games and co-develop them for the Xbox 360. Sony will have to pay for exclusivity, very few developers will want to make PS3 only games without a bundle of cash from Sony. This is Sony's nightmare: games which don't require the Blu Ray drive (thus making it look like a waste from a gamer perspective) and games which exist on both of the high definition consoles. There is even some discussion that Microsoft will pay through the nose to have Resident Evil 5 exclusivity.
One of the big questions is whether or not Sony will decrease the amount of money that it demands from the developer for every game sold. This information will get out because this is the big factor on whether or not the console will be profitable overall. The investors will demand this information from Sony.
Sony has to hope that Microsoft feels that they will never succeed in the console market and drop out. If Microsoft is proud and doesn't want to admit defeat no matter what, Sony is really screwed. Microsoft can spend 10 to 20 billion dollars on winning the console war, this is without going into the red or going into debt. While Microsoft is still making billions of dollars a year in profit, it is very easy to tell investors that Windows has reached it's full growth potential and Microsoft needs to enter new markets if it intends to grow. Microsoft can buy with CASH Konami and Square Enix. How is the PS3 going to do if both Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4 are Xbox 360 exclusives? Microsoft can justify the purchases by porting FF13 and MGS4 over to Windows Vista, telling investors that they are encouraging early adoption of Vista.
This is a good point for the following reason: people trust Nintendo with their children.
A PC is a complex thing that most adults don't entirely understand. It has spreadsheets, word processing documents, web browsers, viruses, crashes, identity theft, etc. Now no Slashdotter is pants wetting afraid of these things, but a lot of parents are and so they want to monitor their children closely when they use a computer. There is an expectation that computers are dangerous.
A Wii is supposed to be a fun thing. One of the reasons that people buy consoles is that you don't have worry about anything... just shove in the game disk and have fun. This is similar to parents who get a Barney DVD, put it in the DVD player, let their kids watch it and then leave the room. If a parent comes in the room and Barney is getting sodomized by a man in black leather, that parent will be on the national news (with some international coverage) that evening and lawyers will be starting the class action lawsuit within a week. Porn is very easy to access on the Internet. This could end badly for Nintendo.
If a child is using scissors under parental supervision and they accidentally cut themselves, parents understand that scissors are sharp. This is an expected hazard. If a child is using a laptop with a Sony brand battery and it sets on fire, the parent is going to be very angry. A laptop is not supposed to go up in flames.
Some of the Xbox 360 games will be out on the PS3. Some of the PS3 games will be out on the Xbox 360. I think a lot of the early porting will be to the Xbox 360 because it is a known quantity, we've seen quite a few 360 games hit number one in the games sales charts. If the PS3 really takes off, you'll see a lot of 360 games released on the PS3 as well. It's difficult to tell whether or not games can be ported to the Wii because of the controller scheme. Nintendo seems to be going it's own way, quite a few DS games though.
This really shows that Microsoft is putting a lot of focus on winning Japanese market share. Their goal should be third place, but a strong third place. If they sell 5 to 8 million consoles that will be an improvement in Japan, 200 thousand would be considered a miserable failure. I believe that they are currently at 85 thousand sold in Japan.
The Xbox 360 needs Halo 3, the PS3 needs Final Fantasy XIII and the Wii needs a Mario platform game (Mario Galaxy?). These are the games which will really sell consoles. There are a lot of gamers who are waiting for these games to be released before they buy.
I think that the Japanese government would block a takeover of Sony by Microsoft for one reason: pride. Despite its faults, Sony is still widely preceived as being one of the crown jewels of the Japanese nation. If Sony went deeply in the red, the Japanese goverment is likely to not allow a takeover and bail them out.
Most of Sony's troubles lie in its poor management. Sony could own the MP3 market if it hadn't been as concerned with content protection or proprietary formats. If Sony had made a deal with Toshiba with high definition format DVDs, Sony would be almost guaranteed to make moderate (billions) profits off of the new format. Sharing a positive number (profits) is better than having a negative number (losses) all to yourself. With a new format decided on, the adoption rate of high definition discs would be much quicker. Sony felt that it could win the format war easily by putting the Blu Ray drive in the PS3. I feel that Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 in 2005 because they knew that Sony would be in a poor position with the Blu Ray drive.
If Microsoft could take over Sony, they should. Microsoft doesn't really have anywhere to expand in software, they need to find new products if they want to have growth. Consumer electronics would be a very good area to get into for Microsoft. It is a low profit industry, but Microsoft would be in a position to sell services and software on the products. Many of Sony's failing products could be attractive to various Microsoft strategies. Think Sony with better management, it is really hard to get worse management.
This situation will most likely happen if the Wii is the dominant console this generation. If the PS3 doesn't do well, Sony will be in a position ripe for acquistion. If the Xbox 360 doesn't do well even though they had a year head start, Microsoft will either drop out of the console market or buy Sony and combine the Xbox and PS3 brands. If the Wii is the dominant console, then the anti-trust people will look more favourably on the merger of two failed brands.
First, stealing indicates that you are taking something away from someone. For instance, if Person X steals Person Y's car, Person Y no longer has a car. This means that the owner has lost something. If Person X copies Company Y's music, Company Y still has access to the music unless Person X destroys all original copies in Company Y's possession. For a poor example of this, think of Johnny Mnemonic when the research scientists stole the cure and erased the original from the databank. I did say it was a poor example. Another thing to note is that no one owns copies of music, movies, television shows or games anymore. They are licensed. So really this is an issue of improper licensing. It is similar to someone running SQL Server with 150 connections when they are only allowed 100. It is still improper behavior (and Microsoft would come after you for it), but not theft. And likely criminal behavior in certain places.
Second, DRM doesn't seem to be about preventing piracy. After all, only one of your friends has to have a non-DRM copy of something for you to get an illegal copy. The concern about DRM is lock-in. The company that controls the DRM scheme gets to decide which devices you can use with the content that you purchased a license for. Money exchanges hands. You will pay a premium for a device which is compatible. It is quite similar to the HD-DVD and Blu Ray battle, it is all about who controls the revenue stream from licensing the winning format. This also leads to grossly incompetent situations where a company manufactures a device which will not work with their own DRM (Microsoft -> Zune). DRM is simply not in the interest of the consumer.
Third, there has always been a significant amount of piracy in software and it has completely destroyed the software industry. Oh wait, it hasn't. The richest man on Earth just happens to have made his money through software. I strongly support the jailing people who sell pirated material or use pirated material in their businesses, but someone downloading a song they would never buy is very low on my list of priorities.
With only 100 000 PS3s available in Japan at launch, even people who would pay $600 for a console will not receive one. However, there will be plenty of Wiis available. This was designed to stop gamers from buying a Wii, encouraging them to hold off purchasing a next gen console until a PS3 is available. If Sony had not dropped the price, a lot of Japanese gamers would purchase a Wii and then consider purchasing a PS3 when the price dropped. Barring a miracle for Microsoft, the Xbox 360 will not be a factor in Japan.
Sony should just have one SKU and price it about $450. The two SKUs for the Xbox 360 have not helped Microsoft move consoles, it's just confused things. In the mind of most people the Xbox 360 is $400 not $300/$400 and the PS3 is $600 not $500/$600. Sony knew it would be expensive to include the Blu Ray drive and so they are going to pay through the nose to get it into millions of households. I think they would have been better off if everyone had agreed on a single high definition DVD format and they had taken their share of the profits.
I admit that I was thinking on an international and national scale. But let's say a city with two papers that also have websites. One has a circulation of 70% and the other has a circulation of 30%. If the paper with a circulation of 70% demands royalties, it will be ignored and search results will bring up the website of the less popular paper. Even if it's of lower quality. If every news outlet of a region demands royalties, that region will be ignored. You will just need to bookmark the websites of your local news outlets when you find them.
The only way around this, is for the news outlets to lobby for mandatory compensation within the law. I think the major news organizations may pursue this option.
There will always be smaller news outlets who want to get additional daily viewers. They want Google to direct people to their site. If the large news organizations want to opt out, there will always be someone to take their place.
When you look at Google news, you see a brief summary of the news article and then when you click on it, you are directed to that website. The website will earn revenue from their advertising. If they have an attractive and useful website, people may go to their site directly. New unique users. Often I find that after I've read an article I found through a search, I will go to the homepage of the site (through the hacking known as modifiying the URL) and look at their other articles. Most websites would pay Google to have links to them, now some sites want to Google to pay them? Google will just ignore them and their competitors will prosper.
Doesn't slashdot do something similar. Someone reads something interesting on the web and suddenly there's a link to it. I'm sure if some sites wanted to charge a fee to slashdot, they would promptly be ignored.
The idea that comes to mind is revenue stream. Someone working for the news organizations came up with the thought "Google has lots of money, let's take it" and so it began.
The Playstation 3 will certainly have a number of exclusive games. It will simply not have the number of exclusive games that the Playstation 2 had. Previously, if a developer wanted to make a game for a single console, PS2 was the optimal one. There are 100 million PS2s out there and less than half that number of Xboxes and Gamecubes combined. Look at the number of games which were only released on the PS2. It made a lot of sense because there was a very large install base.
With the very high price of the PS3 (which Sony appears to be cutting before launch), a lot of developers will hedge their bets with a dual release on the PS3 AND Xbox 360. The Wii's unique controller scheme will prevent direct ports, but the low cost of development should mean more third party developer interest. Now Sony will have to pay for exclusivity, opposed to having the default console.
Even if Sony cuts the price of the PS3 quickly, a lot of the damage has already been done. Many developers who would have created PS3 exclusive games have started Xbox 360 development in parallel. There are a lot of games that will be produced for the Wii on the chance that it takes the dominant position in Japan away from the Playstation brand.
Does anyone honestly believe that there will be 100 million PS3s out there in 2012 and only 50 million Xbox 360s and Wiis combined?
Even if you don't want a PS3, you want sharp PS3 price cuts. Because both Microsoft and Nintendo are in a position to slash the price of their consoles. Microsoft has an enormous war chest and has been producing Xbox 360s for a year which should bring their manufacturing costs down significantly. Nintendo is selling the Wii for a profit and it's very simple technologically.
I could see the Xbox 360 Premium package with Project Gotham Racing 3 going for as low as $249 and the Wii with Wii Sports going as low as $149.
Nintendo will quickly get the cost of the Wii manufacturing to below $149, they can afford to bleed a little money at the start. Except for the Wiimote, the Wii is last generation technology. The only reason the Wii is $250 is because of the insane price of the PS3.
Microsoft needs to protect the Windows franchise. With Linux coming on the PS3 and web browsers coming on both the Wii and PS3, Microsoft should be worried. Microsoft desperately needs people to feel that in order to surf the Internet they need a computer with Windows. The last thing that Microsoft wants is people using Linux boxes with Wiimote-like pointing devices instead of a mouse and keyboard Windows Vista system. Microsoft will either spend billions to get as many Xbox 360s in homes as possible or they will drop out in exchange for Sony and Nintendo disabling certain console functionality.
I guess you could argue that people who purchased Xbox 360s early would be screwed by this. But then again early adopters always pay the most for a system.
Personally, I own a Xbox which I've enjoyed. I've tried a PS2 and a GameCube, but was never impressed with either of them. From the video I've seen of the Wii in action, I don't think I'll like it. I neither want nor need the Blu Ray drive of the PS3. I am looking forward to the Xbox 360 switching to 65nm, Microsoft has stated that it should reduce manufacturing costs and heat. Heat seems to bedevil the current version of the 360. With price cuts in the system and older games, the Xbox 360 becomes much more price competitive with the Wii. However I am open to my mind being changed.
Now I'm not saying that all of Wii's games will have kiddie graphics, the console will have Splinter Cell:Double Agent, Red Steel and others. However there are a lot of games being released for the Wii that have kiddie graphics. Including Wii Sports, the game that comes with the console.
A lot of people think that this will mean that parents will purchase the Wii for their kids. Perhaps for their young children. Think about it. The vast majority of console users are males 10 and up. And these males will want consoles which have a lot of brutal violence. No boy on the playground wants to say that he's been playing games on the kiddie console, while his friends have been playing Gears of War or Assassin's Creed. When you think of a playground, think Lord of the Flies. They don't want to show weakness. And the boys will tell their parents to get a Xbox 360 or PS3 so they don't get beat up at school for looking weak.
The price advantage for the Wii is pretty much gone. The Core version of the Xbox 360 is $299 and several games for the Xbox 360 have just dropped to $30 US. And I've seen them less than that. If you look at the Japanese package for the Xbox 360, which is the Core system + Project Gotham Racing 3 + 99 Nights for $218, even the most ardent Nintendo fan has to admit that it is competitive pricing in comparison to the Wii.
The Japanese bundle ($218) with 3 extra Platinium priced games ($30 x 3) ends up being $308 for a system with 5 games.
The Wii with the Wii Sports included ($250) and 4 launch titles ($50 x 4) ends up being $450 for a system with 5 games.
You may prefer the Wii, but there's no price advantage.
Microsoft needs to take 100,000 Premium Xbox 360 systems and lend each of them out for a week in Japan free of charge. Repeat 12 times. They could make a deal with the Japanese video stores to lend them out and after the 12 weeks they could take ownership of them. I know that there isn't video game rental in Japan, but it could be to Microsoft's advantage if they tried it. If each of the consoles had 8 games with it, it should give a diversity of play. It would be a test drive. The Japanese are very familiar with Nintendo and Sony consoles, but are not familiar at all with Microsoft consoles. People could borrow it and play around with, try Xbox Live Gold online play. It would create product awareness. Most people are reluctant to shell out a few hundred dollars before they try something. Total cost for Microsoft, about a hundred million dollars. But, it would almost certainly be worth more than that in free press coverage.
In the event that no one wants to even try out the Xbox 360, Microsoft has to abandon Japan as a console market. If you can't give away your product, how can you sell it?
Impressive visuals for something about 50 MB. I still think that there may be reasons to lift the 64 MB cap, but you do make a good point. The bigger implication: why does the PS3 need a Blu Ray drive again? I guess if you insist on pre-rendering everything or you are trying to piggyback a Blue Ray install base on the PS3.
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I'm intentionally being very broad when I'm talking about Socialism. So I am grouping a lot of people together. Looked at broadly, Communism and Socialism are fairly similar. And how many Socialists you know have positive things to say about the wealthy?
Hate speech advocates make the argument that politically incorrect speech leads to violence. They say that racially insensitive ideas are a slippery slope to genocide. They commonly use the Holocaust and American slavery as examples. I am looking at other examples of genocide which have occurred in the last century. If we are to ban ideas on the basis that they could possibly lead to genocide, then economic equality is on that list. Which is why ideas shouldn't be banned.
Maybe I was trolling a bit. I was in a terribly bad mood when I originally posted the comment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
I fully believe that 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust. However it seems that a lot of people want to deny genocide occurred under Communist rule. When you take both the actions of the Communists and the actions of the National Socialists into perspective, you come to the realization that the type of government not the beliefs of the government are responsible. Socialism is the belief that everyone would live in an egalitarian and peaceful world if there were not a small group of people who were conspiring to keep control. The Nazis believed that it was a race who were responsible and most Socialists are racially neutral. But the results are the same.
You can't ban Socialist speech. If someone wants universal health care or the right to form a union, you can't throw them in jail. Yet we all have to acknowledge that if Socialists were to gain absolute power, they are capable of genocide. Just as a racist with absolute power would be capable of genocide. The key is to prevent anyone from gaining absolute power.
Genocide requires that a government has complete control. It requires that it cannot be stopped by courts, demonstrations or free public speech. One of the key elements of any totalitarian society is the idea that no one can speak freely. All speech is government approved. To have free speech in a society is to undermine totalitarianism.
I think that every person who is thinking of purchasing an Xbox 360 has certain criteria before they buy. Some people will wait until it falls below $399 for the premium version. Some people are waiting for there to be a sufficient number of games that they desire. Most people will wait for a combination of these factors.
The question is whether or not Microsoft can change the preference of PS2 owners from Playstation to Xbox. It will take a decent price (I believe $299 for the premium system will really start to sell systems), a large number of high quality games and respectable online play.
From what I've heard, Microsoft has an install base of about 5 million Xbox 360s. I think if Halo 3 had been released, that would be about 8 to 10 million. Gears of Wars is a bit like a Halo 3 substitute. I'm not saying that it's not an excellent game in its own right, but the Halo franchise is one of the major reasons people buy Xboxes.
If the PS3 becomes a $599 console you can't buy before 2007 it will help Microsoft a lot. Sure there are going to be people paying $2000 for it on Ebay, but most people want it for a much higher price. The question is when will the PS3 hit $299? That will be the point at which most people will consider buying it. Judging by the PS2 entry in Wikipedia, it took 18 months for it to drop by a third and another year before it dropped in price again. That would make it 2008 before it hits $399 and 2009 or later before it hits $299 for the premium version. If the Xbox 360 followed roughly the same price drops, by the time you can purchase a PS3 in Europe (March 2007) the Xbox 360 premium would be roughly $266. Probably $299 with Project Gotham Racing.
Microsoft's best strategy for Christmas would be to release a $349 Premium Xbox 360 bundle with Gears of War and Project Gotham Racing in North America and Europe.
I had the misfortune of playing Rainbow Six: Lockdown on the PC. A third of the walls in the game were covered in advertising. And it was the same ad! First it was the DVD release of Silent Hill and then it was an Audi ad. But it would be the same ad for the entire level, you would literally see it 50 times.
Make all of the Burger King, Goldman Sachs or Astroglide games you want. Just keep the advertising out of the regular games!
As a general principle, every company should worry about its competitors. Microsoft has massive corporate lockin with Windows, most corporations have software developed for Windows that would cost a huge amount of money to switch to Apple's OS or Linux. But do you think that Microsoft doesn't spend time thinking about how to retain marketshare?
In the game console business alone we've seen leaders being bent over and abused. Nintendo comes to mind. It's a very fluid business. There isn't much customer loyalty.
Microsoft has been manufacturing the Xbox 360 for about a year, its part costs have probably come down 15 to 25 %, it is about to move to a 65 nm process for certain components (which will reduce power consumption and save money) and Microsoft has a huge amount of money. Microsoft can rape Sony on price. Nintendo is currently making money on each console sold and is using low cost components which will only get cheaper over time. Nintendo is in a position to rape Sony on price. The reason the Xbox 360 is selling as many consoles as expected is that $399 is too much to pay for a console. Microsoft has it in their power to correct that.
Sony's exclusivity deals with game developers are far more limited than they were before. The PS2 had a 100 million consoles sold (probably about 80 million are working), it made sense for developers only to develop for the PS2. With an uncertain install base, no developer in their right mind will develop exclusively for the PS3 without a sack full of money from Sony. This is compounded by high development costs for next gen games. If a developer makes a game for two or three consoles, the failure of one console will not ruin game sales.
1080p graphics don't matter at the moment. Look at bestbuy.com. Look at the televisions costing over a thousand dollars. How many of them support 1080p? There are quite a few televisions under a thousand dollars which support 720p. Sony is relying on the PS3 purchases 3 or 4 years from now. By that time this particular generation will be over.
I think that both the Xbox 360 and the Wii will do well. After the Xbox 360 drops its price by about $100 and includes a game with the system. Third-party developers will show a preference for the Xbox 360 over the Wii until it is clear that third-party games can sell well on the Wii. There were many people who bought a Gamecube and only played Nintendo games on it. Months would go by and there would be no Gamecube games on the top 20 games sold in the United States. The Wii is also a different sort of console, which will cause a degree of hesitation. Despite a small install base for the Xbox 360, a number of third-party Xbox 360 games have become number one sellers in the United States and Europe. Saint's Row, Dead Rising and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter come to mind. When a developer is looking for investment, being able to say that other companies have been successful in the same field is a big selling point. Development of third-party Wii games will pick up once third-party sales pick up.
I think that the game console market is extremely price sensitive. If the game console market was not price sensitive, why did Sony drop the price of the all-powerful PS2? Why not keep it at $299 and rake in the cash? If Sony executives face a $299 Premium Xbox 360 and a $199 Wii, I think they'll start to worry or be replaced by their shareholders.
It's designed to inflame Muslim passion against the United States and the Western world. The Iranian government in particular wants to distract its population from the failing economy. The radical president of Iran was elected to fix economic woes, but he has been sidetracked by international conflict. It's also meant as a threat: bomb Iran and we will cut off your oil supply. Only in the mind of Jack Thompson do video games train people to become professional killers.
I strongly doubt that the Iranians would not use Iranian special forces to accomplish such a mission and instead use a 15 year old kid who played the game two times. Instead they want the kid to join the Iranian military or just shut up about the poor Iranian economy.
First, I have no pity for the child porn distributors. Theoretically it could be very borderline material, but it is probably terribly vile stuff that requires long prison sentences.
The hate speech issue on the other hand is very serious. What is determined to be hate speech in this situation? Is it calling for the genocide of a particular group or is it an offensive joke? Who gets to make a call on this? If someone from Brazil states that affirmative action should be overturned, are they committing a crime? What about concerns about violence in a particular neighborhood? Is implied hate enough for a conviction? If someone believes that homosexuality is immoral and openly say their opinion, do they go to jail? What if they never tell anyone, but they write a journal on their computer which happens to be discovered by the government. Should they go to jail? If the U.S. government turns over this information when such speech is protected in the U.S., it weakens the right of all Americans to speak freely. I'm also concerned about other governments following the example.
A lot of people are against politically incorrect speech, so I'll give an example which is more politically correct. Imagine a woman in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi system for tracking all of her online activates is not logging material as well as it should. She has a sexually explicit chat with a foreigner. The Saudi government's tracking system becomes aware that a chat took place and it had forbidden content, but can't track who made the chat on the Saudi side. That information is stored in a server in the United States which is owned by a company that also does business in Saudi Arabia. Let us say that the woman will face fifty lashes if she is caught. Should the United States government allow that information to be passed to the Saudis?
Not only do they have to do a full recall, but it gets dragged out through months of bad press. People will be calling their relatives asking if their laptops have Sony batteries in them. Do you think the laptop companies are going to blame anyone but Sony?
Sony should have seen this coming and bit the bullet at that point. This has turned into a PR disaster. Most people don't understand the concept of a root kit, but they do understand "can't bring laptop on a plane, because it might bring the plane down" (Virgin Atlantic did ban several brands of laptops because of this issue) or "laptop bursts into flame, everybody blames Sony". It's a very simple concept and everybody can understand it. When technology doesn't work properly or worse becomes a hazard, people become angry and scared. And the last thing a company wants is to have its name associated with fear and pain.
This will probably not be read by anyone, but I thought I'll respond in general.
I was trying to ask where people stand between absolute freedom of speech and strict political correctness. Most people fall between the two extremes. I fall heavily on the side of freedom of speech personally, but I understand a lot of people don't. There were cartoons that inflamed the Muslim world, the dissolution of the largest Belgian political party for being too anti-immigrant for the Belgian supreme court, the attempt to end evolution education in certain schools and the many hate speech laws throughout the world. A Slashdotter is probably more strongly in support of free speech than the average person, which explains the nature of the other comments.
It is less about what is science, rather what you call science. Science may produce a lot of the world's wonders and fascinate the public, but scientists themselves have very little media influence. A corporation, government or political group will find someone with an advanced degree willing to say what they want and put them on television. Most of the audience will believe what the expert is saying, while many scientists in that field may be throwing rotten vegetables at the screen. I bet there are a lot of climatologists who get really pissed off when they see Fox News on a nearby television. You are correct about the need for correct scientific standards, I'm just saying that there are well paid people who don't follow these standards and get away with it outside of academia.
What if a teacher wants to start up a discussion about whether homosexuality is a mental disorder? What if a scientist wants federal money to evaluate racial differences dealing with violent behavior and intelligence? What if a doctor reports statistical information stating that children of interracial relationships have a higher birth defect rate? What if someone produces a study that indicates faith is related to low intelligence?
... they can probably find a study that demonizes them. And then they put out books like the Bell Curve.
A lot of people find that such discussions would terribly offensive and harmful to the social order. It's also easy to find scientific data which will prove just about anything. It could be because of small sample size or faulty data, but if you pick and choose the information you'll get what you want. If someone has a grudge against blacks/homosexuals/women/men/heterosexuals/whites
Some people have gone to jail for arguing that the Holocaust never happened. In Muslim countries, people have faced the death penalty for alleged slurs against religious doctrine.
My point is that everybody has some beliefs that they feel should go unchallenged. Whether it is their faith in God, their belief in racial equality, their rejection of the supernatural, opposition/support of abortion rights, etc. Regardless of the facts.
Where would you draw the line about debate? Are there discussions which should not take place?
It would be interesting to see how well Oblivion runs on a PS3 in comparison to a PC or Xbox 360. Is the PS3 really that much better than an Xbox 360? This would show. On some settings Oblivion can humble a Quad SLI setup (usually max settings outdoors), so it won't be a case of the PS3 maxing out Oblivion. I wonder whether it will come on a Blu Ray disc or a DVD because it clearly doesn't need the Blu Ray's capacity. That Blu Ray drive sure is worth the extra cost. Maybe a lot of pre-rendered video will be thrown on for fun.
This is only for people who are completely devoted to the Playstation brand. Anyone else who wanted it, already owns it.
If Sony had made a deal with the DVD coalition and accepted the HD-DVD standard I think they would be in a much better position right now. They would only take part of the HD-DVD licensing profits, but it would be cash in the bank. Business is about risk, but it's also about taking the easy profits when you can.
Imagine if you will, Sony including the only high definition format disc in their PS3. A dual layer HD-DVD has 30 gigs of storage, more than enough to hold the 22 gigs of Resistance: Fall of Man. Every single movie studio releasing their films on the only high definition format: HD-DVD. Sony would not be having the blue diode production problems that it is currently having. Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker. The high definition era would begin with the same unity as the DVD era. Sony would be guaranteed a huge quantity of money from licensing.
Instead, Sony decided that it had the Playstation brand as a magic bullet and gave the finger to the rest of the DVD coalition. I hope it works out for them.
Sony is realizing that very few people want to pay $600 for a console and $80 per game. Even Microsoft has to realize that $400 for a console is too much. Yes there are people who will pay that much, there are people who pay tens of thousands of dollars for a watch or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a car. When a company cuts the price of its console and games before launch they are admitting that they have made a mistake in pricing.
The decreased game price will really squeeze the developers. Developing a 20+ gig game, filled with high definition pre-rendered cutscenes costs a fortune. Combined with the fact that the developers do not know how many PS3s will be out there when they release their game. This encourages developers to stick to 3 to 6 GB games and co-develop them for the Xbox 360. Sony will have to pay for exclusivity, very few developers will want to make PS3 only games without a bundle of cash from Sony. This is Sony's nightmare: games which don't require the Blu Ray drive (thus making it look like a waste from a gamer perspective) and games which exist on both of the high definition consoles. There is even some discussion that Microsoft will pay through the nose to have Resident Evil 5 exclusivity.
One of the big questions is whether or not Sony will decrease the amount of money that it demands from the developer for every game sold. This information will get out because this is the big factor on whether or not the console will be profitable overall. The investors will demand this information from Sony.
Sony has to hope that Microsoft feels that they will never succeed in the console market and drop out. If Microsoft is proud and doesn't want to admit defeat no matter what, Sony is really screwed. Microsoft can spend 10 to 20 billion dollars on winning the console war, this is without going into the red or going into debt. While Microsoft is still making billions of dollars a year in profit, it is very easy to tell investors that Windows has reached it's full growth potential and Microsoft needs to enter new markets if it intends to grow. Microsoft can buy with CASH Konami and Square Enix. How is the PS3 going to do if both Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4 are Xbox 360 exclusives? Microsoft can justify the purchases by porting FF13 and MGS4 over to Windows Vista, telling investors that they are encouraging early adoption of Vista.
This is a good point for the following reason: people trust Nintendo with their children.
... just shove in the game disk and have fun. This is similar to parents who get a Barney DVD, put it in the DVD player, let their kids watch it and then leave the room. If a parent comes in the room and Barney is getting sodomized by a man in black leather, that parent will be on the national news (with some international coverage) that evening and lawyers will be starting the class action lawsuit within a week. Porn is very easy to access on the Internet. This could end badly for Nintendo.
A PC is a complex thing that most adults don't entirely understand. It has spreadsheets, word processing documents, web browsers, viruses, crashes, identity theft, etc. Now no Slashdotter is pants wetting afraid of these things, but a lot of parents are and so they want to monitor their children closely when they use a computer. There is an expectation that computers are dangerous.
A Wii is supposed to be a fun thing. One of the reasons that people buy consoles is that you don't have worry about anything
If a child is using scissors under parental supervision and they accidentally cut themselves, parents understand that scissors are sharp. This is an expected hazard. If a child is using a laptop with a Sony brand battery and it sets on fire, the parent is going to be very angry. A laptop is not supposed to go up in flames.
Some of the Xbox 360 games will be out on the PS3. Some of the PS3 games will be out on the Xbox 360. I think a lot of the early porting will be to the Xbox 360 because it is a known quantity, we've seen quite a few 360 games hit number one in the games sales charts. If the PS3 really takes off, you'll see a lot of 360 games released on the PS3 as well. It's difficult to tell whether or not games can be ported to the Wii because of the controller scheme. Nintendo seems to be going it's own way, quite a few DS games though.
This really shows that Microsoft is putting a lot of focus on winning Japanese market share. Their goal should be third place, but a strong third place. If they sell 5 to 8 million consoles that will be an improvement in Japan, 200 thousand would be considered a miserable failure. I believe that they are currently at 85 thousand sold in Japan.
The Xbox 360 needs Halo 3, the PS3 needs Final Fantasy XIII and the Wii needs a Mario platform game (Mario Galaxy?). These are the games which will really sell consoles. There are a lot of gamers who are waiting for these games to be released before they buy.
I am hoping and praying for a price war.
I think that the Japanese government would block a takeover of Sony by Microsoft for one reason: pride. Despite its faults, Sony is still widely preceived as being one of the crown jewels of the Japanese nation. If Sony went deeply in the red, the Japanese goverment is likely to not allow a takeover and bail them out.
Most of Sony's troubles lie in its poor management. Sony could own the MP3 market if it hadn't been as concerned with content protection or proprietary formats. If Sony had made a deal with Toshiba with high definition format DVDs, Sony would be almost guaranteed to make moderate (billions) profits off of the new format. Sharing a positive number (profits) is better than having a negative number (losses) all to yourself. With a new format decided on, the adoption rate of high definition discs would be much quicker. Sony felt that it could win the format war easily by putting the Blu Ray drive in the PS3. I feel that Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 in 2005 because they knew that Sony would be in a poor position with the Blu Ray drive.
If Microsoft could take over Sony, they should. Microsoft doesn't really have anywhere to expand in software, they need to find new products if they want to have growth. Consumer electronics would be a very good area to get into for Microsoft. It is a low profit industry, but Microsoft would be in a position to sell services and software on the products. Many of Sony's failing products could be attractive to various Microsoft strategies. Think Sony with better management, it is really hard to get worse management.
This situation will most likely happen if the Wii is the dominant console this generation. If the PS3 doesn't do well, Sony will be in a position ripe for acquistion. If the Xbox 360 doesn't do well even though they had a year head start, Microsoft will either drop out of the console market or buy Sony and combine the Xbox and PS3 brands. If the Wii is the dominant console, then the anti-trust people will look more favourably on the merger of two failed brands.
First, stealing indicates that you are taking something away from someone. For instance, if Person X steals Person Y's car, Person Y no longer has a car. This means that the owner has lost something. If Person X copies Company Y's music, Company Y still has access to the music unless Person X destroys all original copies in Company Y's possession. For a poor example of this, think of Johnny Mnemonic when the research scientists stole the cure and erased the original from the databank. I did say it was a poor example. Another thing to note is that no one owns copies of music, movies, television shows or games anymore. They are licensed. So really this is an issue of improper licensing. It is similar to someone running SQL Server with 150 connections when they are only allowed 100. It is still improper behavior (and Microsoft would come after you for it), but not theft. And likely criminal behavior in certain places.
Second, DRM doesn't seem to be about preventing piracy. After all, only one of your friends has to have a non-DRM copy of something for you to get an illegal copy. The concern about DRM is lock-in. The company that controls the DRM scheme gets to decide which devices you can use with the content that you purchased a license for. Money exchanges hands. You will pay a premium for a device which is compatible. It is quite similar to the HD-DVD and Blu Ray battle, it is all about who controls the revenue stream from licensing the winning format. This also leads to grossly incompetent situations where a company manufactures a device which will not work with their own DRM (Microsoft -> Zune). DRM is simply not in the interest of the consumer.
Third, there has always been a significant amount of piracy in software and it has completely destroyed the software industry. Oh wait, it hasn't. The richest man on Earth just happens to have made his money through software. I strongly support the jailing people who sell pirated material or use pirated material in their businesses, but someone downloading a song they would never buy is very low on my list of priorities.
With only 100 000 PS3s available in Japan at launch, even people who would pay $600 for a console will not receive one. However, there will be plenty of Wiis available. This was designed to stop gamers from buying a Wii, encouraging them to hold off purchasing a next gen console until a PS3 is available. If Sony had not dropped the price, a lot of Japanese gamers would purchase a Wii and then consider purchasing a PS3 when the price dropped. Barring a miracle for Microsoft, the Xbox 360 will not be a factor in Japan.
Sony should just have one SKU and price it about $450. The two SKUs for the Xbox 360 have not helped Microsoft move consoles, it's just confused things. In the mind of most people the Xbox 360 is $400 not $300/$400 and the PS3 is $600 not $500/$600. Sony knew it would be expensive to include the Blu Ray drive and so they are going to pay through the nose to get it into millions of households. I think they would have been better off if everyone had agreed on a single high definition DVD format and they had taken their share of the profits.
I admit that I was thinking on an international and national scale. But let's say a city with two papers that also have websites. One has a circulation of 70% and the other has a circulation of 30%. If the paper with a circulation of 70% demands royalties, it will be ignored and search results will bring up the website of the less popular paper. Even if it's of lower quality. If every news outlet of a region demands royalties, that region will be ignored. You will just need to bookmark the websites of your local news outlets when you find them.
The only way around this, is for the news outlets to lobby for mandatory compensation within the law. I think the major news organizations may pursue this option.
There will always be smaller news outlets who want to get additional daily viewers. They want Google to direct people to their site. If the large news organizations want to opt out, there will always be someone to take their place.
When you look at Google news, you see a brief summary of the news article and then when you click on it, you are directed to that website. The website will earn revenue from their advertising. If they have an attractive and useful website, people may go to their site directly. New unique users. Often I find that after I've read an article I found through a search, I will go to the homepage of the site (through the hacking known as modifiying the URL) and look at their other articles. Most websites would pay Google to have links to them, now some sites want to Google to pay them? Google will just ignore them and their competitors will prosper.
Doesn't slashdot do something similar. Someone reads something interesting on the web and suddenly there's a link to it. I'm sure if some sites wanted to charge a fee to slashdot, they would promptly be ignored.
The idea that comes to mind is revenue stream. Someone working for the news organizations came up with the thought "Google has lots of money, let's take it" and so it began.
The Playstation 3 will certainly have a number of exclusive games. It will simply not have the number of exclusive games that the Playstation 2 had. Previously, if a developer wanted to make a game for a single console, PS2 was the optimal one. There are 100 million PS2s out there and less than half that number of Xboxes and Gamecubes combined. Look at the number of games which were only released on the PS2. It made a lot of sense because there was a very large install base.
With the very high price of the PS3 (which Sony appears to be cutting before launch), a lot of developers will hedge their bets with a dual release on the PS3 AND Xbox 360. The Wii's unique controller scheme will prevent direct ports, but the low cost of development should mean more third party developer interest. Now Sony will have to pay for exclusivity, opposed to having the default console.
Even if Sony cuts the price of the PS3 quickly, a lot of the damage has already been done. Many developers who would have created PS3 exclusive games have started Xbox 360 development in parallel. There are a lot of games that will be produced for the Wii on the chance that it takes the dominant position in Japan away from the Playstation brand.
Does anyone honestly believe that there will be 100 million PS3s out there in 2012 and only 50 million Xbox 360s and Wiis combined?
Even if you don't want a PS3, you want sharp PS3 price cuts. Because both Microsoft and Nintendo are in a position to slash the price of their consoles. Microsoft has an enormous war chest and has been producing Xbox 360s for a year which should bring their manufacturing costs down significantly. Nintendo is selling the Wii for a profit and it's very simple technologically.
I could see the Xbox 360 Premium package with Project Gotham Racing 3 going for as low as $249 and the Wii with Wii Sports going as low as $149.
Nintendo will quickly get the cost of the Wii manufacturing to below $149, they can afford to bleed a little money at the start. Except for the Wiimote, the Wii is last generation technology. The only reason the Wii is $250 is because of the insane price of the PS3.
Microsoft needs to protect the Windows franchise. With Linux coming on the PS3 and web browsers coming on both the Wii and PS3, Microsoft should be worried. Microsoft desperately needs people to feel that in order to surf the Internet they need a computer with Windows. The last thing that Microsoft wants is people using Linux boxes with Wiimote-like pointing devices instead of a mouse and keyboard Windows Vista system. Microsoft will either spend billions to get as many Xbox 360s in homes as possible or they will drop out in exchange for Sony and Nintendo disabling certain console functionality.
I guess you could argue that people who purchased Xbox 360s early would be screwed by this. But then again early adopters always pay the most for a system.
Personally, I own a Xbox which I've enjoyed. I've tried a PS2 and a GameCube, but was never impressed with either of them. From the video I've seen of the Wii in action, I don't think I'll like it. I neither want nor need the Blu Ray drive of the PS3. I am looking forward to the Xbox 360 switching to 65nm, Microsoft has stated that it should reduce manufacturing costs and heat. Heat seems to bedevil the current version of the 360. With price cuts in the system and older games, the Xbox 360 becomes much more price competitive with the Wii. However I am open to my mind being changed.
Now I'm not saying that all of Wii's games will have kiddie graphics, the console will have Splinter Cell:Double Agent, Red Steel and others. However there are a lot of games being released for the Wii that have kiddie graphics. Including Wii Sports, the game that comes with the console.
A lot of people think that this will mean that parents will purchase the Wii for their kids. Perhaps for their young children. Think about it. The vast majority of console users are males 10 and up. And these males will want consoles which have a lot of brutal violence. No boy on the playground wants to say that he's been playing games on the kiddie console, while his friends have been playing Gears of War or Assassin's Creed. When you think of a playground, think Lord of the Flies. They don't want to show weakness. And the boys will tell their parents to get a Xbox 360 or PS3 so they don't get beat up at school for looking weak.
The price advantage for the Wii is pretty much gone. The Core version of the Xbox 360 is $299 and several games for the Xbox 360 have just dropped to $30 US. And I've seen them less than that. If you look at the Japanese package for the Xbox 360, which is the Core system + Project Gotham Racing 3 + 99 Nights for $218, even the most ardent Nintendo fan has to admit that it is competitive pricing in comparison to the Wii.
The Japanese bundle ($218) with 3 extra Platinium priced games ($30 x 3) ends up being $308 for a system with 5 games.
The Wii with the Wii Sports included ($250) and 4 launch titles ($50 x 4) ends up being $450 for a system with 5 games.
You may prefer the Wii, but there's no price advantage.
Microsoft needs to take 100,000 Premium Xbox 360 systems and lend each of them out for a week in Japan free of charge. Repeat 12 times. They could make a deal with the Japanese video stores to lend them out and after the 12 weeks they could take ownership of them. I know that there isn't video game rental in Japan, but it could be to Microsoft's advantage if they tried it. If each of the consoles had 8 games with it, it should give a diversity of play. It would be a test drive. The Japanese are very familiar with Nintendo and Sony consoles, but are not familiar at all with Microsoft consoles. People could borrow it and play around with, try Xbox Live Gold online play. It would create product awareness. Most people are reluctant to shell out a few hundred dollars before they try something. Total cost for Microsoft, about a hundred million dollars. But, it would almost certainly be worth more than that in free press coverage.
In the event that no one wants to even try out the Xbox 360, Microsoft has to abandon Japan as a console market. If you can't give away your product, how can you sell it?
Impressive visuals for something about 50 MB. I still think that there may be reasons to lift the 64 MB cap, but you do make a good point. The bigger implication: why does the PS3 need a Blu Ray drive again? I guess if you insist on pre-rendering everything or you are trying to piggyback a Blue Ray install base on the PS3.