The only real issue with the PS3 over the 360 and Wii is price. If the system was $400 then is would sell a ton more systems and Sony appears to be aware of this. They have dropped the price twice in Japan and will probably do it here in the U.S. late this fall. His response pretty much says it all when he didn't flat out deny a price drop this year.
The real question is if Nintendo can get their act together and sell over 15 million this year. If Nintendo could have met demand; or if they could meet demand they could bury both Sony and Microsoft in this race. Every day that goes by, HDTVs go down in price and more great games come out for the 360 and PS3 AND the chance of a price drop to the PS3 becomes more of a reality.
Xbox 360 - 9.5 million consoles sold (Channel stuffed big time so numbers will remain flat, majority of games are FPS, no standard hard drive, HD-DVD add on never used for games, no )
Nintendo Wii - 6.5 million consoles sold (Supply constrained, very limited game selection, poor 3rd party support, poor online support, weakest hardware platform)
PS3 - 3 million sold (Priced WAY too high, limited game selection, slowly growing online support, no kids games)
As I stated, I am a developer and I have been a typical white box buyer for years but the new Macintosh systems seems like a good system for me. The RAM issue isn't that big of a deal for me as much as the video cards.
As for the idiot who said that I would be "sticking" with Windows because of a video card doesn't realize that I will be running Ubuntu as my primary OS on my new machine.
It was said by others but it bears repeating. You can only have 3 different (old) video cards in your new >2,000 dollar Mac Pro and be supported. Also the memory is significantly more expensive.
Again, I am an Apple and Linux fan, I am just not afraid to admit when one makes a mistake and this was one mistake that cost them my sale. For "me" this was a huge mistake by Apple, for you it was small.
You say that every Xeon of this generation needs this type of RAM. You may be correct, but go to NewEgg and buy RAM for a Xeon and then go buy it for a Mac Pro. There is definitely a difference in price. Also it appears that apple has some tight standards. weird memory in mac pro
I mentioned upgrading the video card and you say that you have been able to do that for 8 to 10 years. You imply that you can put in a new(er) Nvidia card in a Mac Pro and it will work. It won't! You cannot put in a 8k series Nvidia card in a Mac Pro and get it to work in OSX. Toms hardware also has an article on this, and I believe they mention that it actually worked if they booted Windows on the Mac. This tells me that it is just an OS thing and something they should have fixed. You have 3 different video cards that will work and be supported on this Macintosh. One slow Nvidia 7300 and an older ATI card and a non gaming, expensive Nvidia card. All suck bad compared to the higher end cards that have been out for almost two years now.
"Personally, I'm glad Apple is forward looking and pushes current standards instead of decade old ones. If they lose a few sales from people who can't wait 6 moths for the Windows crowd to play catch up and for more widespread support from third party vendors, I think it is a small loss."
Guy I am with you on Apple pushing new standards! Firewire2, USB2, DVD, BluRay, heck all would be great. That is great, just give me a $4000 machine with a video card that isn't two freaking years old, and no real method of upgrading. It is a sad day for Apple when the Linux community has better support for Nvidia that Apple does. Yes I know that Nvidia releases Linux drivers, but even the FOSS drivers do work with 7900 and newer cards. Think about that, the 7900 has been out for two years now and that card freaking smokes the 7300 that is in the new Mac Pro.
Lastly, I wish Apple well and no ill feelings, I will enjoy my new fast machine and hope that they will continue to support Java for the next 10 years.
I am a software developer that likes Linux and the Macintosh, but am stuck mostly in the Windows world for my development. Now I develop in Java so getting "my" code to run on these platforms is no problem, but getting the code that I need to run working on any of these platforms except Windows is a pain. (Netbeans, Postgresql, Dreamweaver etc) I also do play an occasional game on my PC but I find that more and more of my gaming time is on my PS3.
So when I saw that Apple went to Intel and could run Windows I thought that this was the machine for me. I can use the dual boot function for games and emulation software for development. I would want a ton of RAM, and a good video card for the occasional PC must have game. Then I saw the video card(s) that they offered. They don't suck, but for an expensive machine they are not at all what I would want. I decided to wait until they did a 'refresh' of the system in hopes that they would finally offer a more "standard" RAM and hopefully a 8k Nvidia card. (This mac uses weird slow RAM that is very expensive and the newer Nividia card is the only one that does DX10).
I thought it "might" be possible to upgrade the video card myself, but found out you can't do that. It makes little to no sense to me that Apple chose to not use the same freaking graphics cards as a standard PC. So I have put away over 3k for this new machine and was waiting for this new mac to be released.
Today was the day I was going to order my new Macintosh!!! Unfortunately this day came and it will be the day that I now go to NewEgg and spec out my new machine.
I would have been nice to see how Java development would have been on a Macintosh, but the good news is that my new 64bit Ubuntu + Microsoft Vista box will rock.
I wish Apple well and hope that in 3 to 5 years when I buy another machine they will get my money.
Apple, you almost had a Windows/Linux user switched, but your RAM and Video card selection lost you one.
Actually someone at Nintendo should loose his or her job. Everyone agrees that the Wii isn't nearly as powerful of a system as the 360 and that the 360 generally is less powerful than the PS3. The significant difference is that it cannot do 1080P or even 720P HDTV. Most budget consumers don't care about this.... at this time. Every day that goes by HDTV prices are falling and more and more homes are getting them. This small(ish) window of opportunity for the Wii is closing and by them not getting consoles out fast enough definitely hurts them in the long run. This is the year for the Wii to try and strike it big because Nintendo doesn't really want a bunch of people with HDTV's comparing Madden (#1 selling game) on the Wii to the PS3.
So at the end of the day, having supplies still massively constrained on a product that is by most account inferior in technology isn't a good thing at all. Now "if" they could have met the real demand, they probably could have been around the 20-30 million mark by the end of this year and basically have saturated the market and made the PS3 and to a small extent the 360 non factors for the next few years. As it stands now they will have a greater share than the GameCube and possibly enough to get more 3rd party developers on this time.
Again, the guy or gal responsible should be fired. This cost Nintendo many millions of yen.
So yes, Nintendo loves the fact that it is sell well (who wouldn't), but for them to still have major production issues (almost April) is unacceptable.
Go back to the original post. This all is around price, and his point is that if there are PS3's sitting on the shelves but they are selling all of them before the next shipment comes in then the price is perfect. If they are sitting on the shelves and not selling at all then the price is too high. If (like the Wii) they are gone in a few minutes then the price "may" be too low, but there is definitely a problem with supply.
Now, in my opinion the price is too high for the average console buyer and needs to drop around $150 by October of this year. It also needs three of four exclusive must have games for it, and it appears they will have this. The HOME idea is great and LBP is an excellent idea, so Sony is moving in the right direction. They will probably add rumble back in later this year since the settlement is finished and I can understand them NOT discussing a price drop any time soon even if one is coming later this year (who wants to kill off current sales), but I am sure they are prepared to do so if they need to. Sony also seem more willing to work with 3rd party developers and put them on a somewhat equal footing as themselves (something Nintendo has never learned). So all in all this is great news coming from the Sony camp.
Of all the companies I would say Nintendo has made the largest error by not producing enough Wii's, and as every month goes on the difference in hardware will start to show up more and more so their inability to flood the market with last gen technology (I like the Wii, but lets be honest it is just a GameCube 1.5 with a different controller) is only giving more time for Sony and Microsoft to roll out great HD games and allow them more time to recoup their development cost and thus lower the price.
Again, I am a Sony and Nintendo fan and I hope that both do well, and I see them in different markets for this year and probably next year. I just wonder how games like Madden will look at 480P against 2nd and 3rd generation Madden on the PS3 at 720p or worse yet 1080p? Then "if" the price is close, which one will the average consumer pick up? This leads me to think that Nintendo plans on a 4 year lifespan for the Wii, and Sony plans on cutting the price late this year and probably another cut the following year. I don't see a price cut helping Nintendo much at all. Microsoft does have the advantage of a one year lead and they did an excellent job of hitting around 10 million consoles sold, so they may be a factor in this also, but their inability to sell in Asia is going to hurt them and their lack of HD-DVD in those 10 million consoles will limit their long term growth.
And when you look at the movies that are coming out in 2007 you will see that BluRay has 2X as many as HD-DVD. Now add to that fact that the players are selling at around a 10 to 1 advantage for BluRay and the fact that most of the content providers are behind BluRay and life looks very bleak for HD-DVD.
I have said it before on Slashdot and will say it again. This war was over on Nov 17th 2006 in the U.S. Now Sony didn't hit the 400k at launch, but they did hit 1 million by 2007.
You are correct, I should not have said "a lot", but enough to sway the election. I would disagree that because Democrats are more liberal they are less racist. I would point to how well black candidates do in regards to the black voters. Black voters are generally Democrat but time and time again they tend to vote a lot on race and less on party. To be fair I am sure that the same amount of white conservatives vote based upon race.
We agree that Obama would fair better against any of the Republicans than Hillary, but my original point is that the Democrats could almost lock up the win with putting a more moderate candidate forward. Specifically Evan Bayh. He would carry Indiana (never done in modern history for the Democrats), and would probably carry a lot of the swing voters out there that are the types of republicans you mentioned. Liberman would also be a fair pick.
Now the Republicans, Rudy would make a great choice IF he can survive the primaries and if Condi would run then she would also pull in a lot of votes that traditionally go to the Democrats (mentioned above). I would imagine that a Rudy and Condi ticket would be a powerful combo for the republicans, but it isn't going to happen.
If history has anything to show us, it will be two candidates that we don't know much about and that are not on the radar of the media yet.
There are a lot of democrats that won't vote for a woman, and there are a ton of people that won't vote for an extreme left woman. Unfortunately there are also a ton of democrats that won't vote for a black person.
I think what the poster meant was not Chicago, Gary or other inner cities where the majority of people/unions vote for the Democrats, but rather the vast rural areas of the mid-west where the people (generally white people), want smaller government, are religious (generally Christian), and want a strong America. For the most part these people hate taxes and see the government as a very inefficient system for social projects. They see most of their money go away and they get little to no benefit from it; more specifically it appears to go to the people in the inner cities after the government takes their large cut. Most of these people do want less reliance on oil, but understand that all the corn in the world won't make a serious dent in our energy needs for today, let along tomorrow. So having said all that, most of these people vote Republican.
Now this election will probably be far different because of one BIG reason. The war. That one issue gives whomever is running against the Republicans a huge advantage. Granted I would imagine the Republicans will bring to light that there hasn't been a major attack in the U.S. since the terrorist Muslim attack on Sept 11th, but from what I see the "mid-west" people here are swayed a lot by the war more than any other issue, although the traditional media (paper and tv) appear to be loosing their ability to sway people on this issue here. The other growing change in the mid-west is the giant influx of Hispanic (Mexican) people moving in. These people, the legal ones appear to vote with whomever wants an open border with Mexico.
Lastly, I do mention that anyone running against the Republicans has a significant advantage because of the war, but that advantage will be gone if someone like Hillary or Obama runs as opposed to someone like Evan Bayh or Liberman runs. Now "if" Rudy could survive the primary (not going to happen), he could hold his own against any Democrat, but again that probably isn't going to happen.
I would love to see someone like Liberman and Condi win. It would be fun to see the Republicans put forth a black female while the Democrats put up a more traditional white male.:-) Not going to happen, but it would be fun to see.
Of course. THE PS3 CAME WITH A MOVIE. It's natural they'd try it out. It might even be natural that they'd buy one that's actually going to show off the hi-def much better than a comedy. Does that mean they'll keep buying Blu-Ray discs?
Well it look like they are because of the Amazon and Netflix data. Blu-Ray has now surpassed HD-DVD in both total and monthly volume.
The PS3 has shipped 2 million units and sold over 1.4 million. As far as them "collecting dust", well there are 600k out there unsold, so yes 600k are CURRENTLY on the shelves. They are selling, but not like the first few weeks.
(given the choice, would you buy a Samsung stand-alone for ~$1000, or a PS3 at ~$500?) I would buy a PS3, now some early adopters don't want a game machine but a true player and those "few" will buy the Sony or Samsung stand alone unit. Seeing that everyone benefits with greater blu-ray manufacturing though, the cost for everyone will go down quickly because of the PS3. Just to be clear on one point though, Sony has said that by the end of this year they will be making money on the PS3. That tells us that they are either greatly reducing manufacturing cost or the loss isn't as bad as previously reported. It also tells us that stand alone blu-ray players have a large markup. You do also realize that Toshiba is selling their HD-DVD player at a $200 loss? That would imply that Microsoft is probably loosing money on their HD-DVD plug in device for the 360.
Lastly on that point, HD-DVD is far cheaper to manufacture than Blu-Ray. I'd be willing to bet that while Sony takes a hit on every player and every movie sold (yes, the movies probably cost more to make right now than they are being sold for, even excluding capital costs), HD-DVD is probably seeing as much profit on movie sales as they see on DVDs, and the players are at LEAST break-even (even the HD-DVD add on).
For now we agree, but every day 10X as many blu-ray devices are made as hd-dvd. The manufacturing cost advantage that hd-dvd currently has is going away very fast. However, at the end of the day both players are around $500 (although you can get $100 from Sony online, so technically a PS3/blu-ray player is $400), and to the consumer, they can get a PS3 that happens to also play blu-ray movies or they can go get a hd-dvd player that only plays movies, and has a very dim future.
You ignore lots of facts here. Manufacturing something is not the same as selling something. Without cash flow soon, Sony may just bleed out and find itself unable to make the capital investments required to increase yields and reduce costs. Struggling to produce on a few production lines won't reduce costs at all - it will increase them, and yields will likely go down.
As I said earlier, Sony is on target to make a profit on the PS3 late this year. Now you may not know much about manufacturing of electronic chips, but the yield rate on the early blu-ray players flat out sucked, and didn't ramp up as fast as expected, and because of this there was a shortage of PS3s. Now those problems have been solved and the quantity of diods per batch is increasing. Thus the cost goes down. If they only got around 10% per platter, and now they are over 25%, well you see the point... Again, they are over 2 million and HD-DVD isn't at 200k.
As for HD-DVD, remember, it's based more on DVD technology, and already has a built-in reduction in production costs.
We agree! The cost of HD-DVD isn't going to go down much over what it currently is now. That is, in my opinion more bad news for HD-DVD.
HD-DVD was created in response by a consortium seeking to rein in the costs of manufacturing and deliver a product that was far more reasonable in price, as well as keep Sony from grabbing a huge piece of the pie.
Wrong! HD-DVD was created by Toshiba, and Microsoft only got involved because blu-ray can use Java and they hate Java. Toshiba and Sony had these technologies years ago and only cam
How many of all those PS3s will be used to watch anything more than a lackluster (for Hi-Def, at least) Talladega Nights?
It appears that around 75% of the people that have bought a PS3 have tried a blu-ray movie in it.
The problem with "updated numbers" is that most people bought a PS3 as a GAME SYSTEM. The movie player, for the PS3 owners, just happens to be there, but that doesn't mean they will go out and buy movies, or use the player.
Not exactly true. There are a ton of reasons that people bought the PS3 and having a cheaper blu-ray player is, for some a reason. Is it the ONLY reason? No, but it is a reason.
So Sony has only managed to muddy the Blu-Ray numbers by forcing consumers who bought a game console to also buy a player./Owns a PS2 but doesn't use it to watch DVDs
Sony gave the game manufacturers a 50GB storage media for games and the ability to play BluRay movies on your PS3. They do this at a current loss of around $150 to $200 on the system (which will be reduced greatly this year by manufacturing improvements). You like Microsoft want to bitch about a company leveraging a product to push another product? That is kind of like the pot calling the kettle black isn't it?
Like it or not there will be 6 to 10 million blu-ray players manufactured this year. That will definitely reduce the manufacturing cost of blu-ray and something HD-DVD will not have. Now, I will assume that Microsoft is working hard on getting out a HD-DVD version of the 360, but they have a huge issue of 7-10 million current 360 users that will force games developers on that platform to stick with DVD. Also, the vast majority of people that wanted a 360 bought one. So, expecting another 10 million new 360 owners over the next year is unreasonable. They will be hard pressed to get another 3 to 4 million. So basically HD-DVD is screwed.
Now, the real question is will downloadable content make both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray irrelevant? I think it will, but that won't be for at least 5 to 8 years.
Just to be a little more accurate there are over 2 million PS3's shipped now, and around 1.4 million sold. There are less than 200k HD-DVD players sold.
Now looking at those numbers it starts to look a little more bleak for HD-DVD as compared to Blu-Ray.
This could explain the large number of Blu-Ray movies out this year vs HD-DVD. It looks like there are around 2X as many movies coming out for Blu-Ray as HD-DVD. That also isn't very good for HD-DVD.
The price appears to be about the same now with a PS3 going for $500 and a HD-DVD player going for around $500, so the price advantage that HD-DVD had is gone.
Recent data on Amazon show that Blu-Ray movie purchases has now exceeded HD-DVD as of Nov of last year and it appears that total sales will be greater for Blu-Ray than HD-DVD in less than a month (if it isn't already), adds to the near death nail for HD-DVD.
Then you look at the content providers that are behind Blu-Ray and you start to see HD-DVD being killed off later this year.
Did anyone notice the HD-DVD presentation vs the Blu-Ray presentation at CES this year? Yet another bad sign for HD-DVD.
I will say that the pr0n industry picking HD-DVD will help it, but it appears that most pr0n is downloaded now, and the loyalty of that business isn't exactly as strong as say Disney.
So I guess Microsoft better get use to having Java run on even more stuff out there.
"That seems to be a popular "promise" but so far it hasn't really panned out. While I don't care for the Madden series I am a big Tony Hawk fan and the latest offering of that franchise is markedly superior on the Xbox 360 when compared to the PS3 version. Having played both the 360 simply looks better and has a really nice online mode, while the PS3 version has none. All things equal I'd still prefer the 360 version because I find the controller much more comfortable and I enjoy the achievement system as I mentioned earlier. "
Yep, that is too be expected with a first gen PS3 game and a second gen 360 game. But given the hardware difference between the two consoles one can conclude that the PS3 version could be done better. Just the fact that every PS3 has a HD alone could make streaming of levels somewhat possible in games like Tony Hawk. Now another difference is the soundtracks and levels, heck with a 9GB limit on the DVD that could be HUGE compared to 25GB or even 50GB (DL-BRDVD). As far as you not liking the controller, I would imagine there will be plenty of 3rd party controllers out there, but I am somewhat shocked that you like the 360 controller, but again that is personal preference. I like quiet systems, or more specifically near silent systems. To me this is huge because the system is right next to me when I play.
Unfortunately this is a negative for me. I don't like either "next gen" disc format as I'm annoyed with the large amounts of DRM that's been implemented."
This is good and bad news for you then. The good news is that you will have the system that will be the clear winner in the format war and thus have something similar to your DVD's of today but with more storage. The bad news is that DRM is here to stay, and even Microsoft appears to LOVE it. You and I totally agree on DRM, but the content providers are kind of sick and tired of all the stealing going on and they are serious about trying to stop it. The good news is that for honest people like you and myself this won't really effect us that much.
On that note, I fully expect games to go to a download and pay method to get around all this piracy out there. Games like Everquest and WoW prove that this model works well and I fully expect to see more games like Tekken 5 released. It will be a download only game.
In short you will buy your PS3 this year if a few of the big names hit.
Then when you compare games like Madden (the number one selling game), and others for all your console, you will more than likely see the PS3 is a better game. Thus you will probably buy the PS3 versions of cross platform games and then the Sony dominance continues again.
The good news for you is that you may be able to get your PS3 cheaper than $500. My prediction is that by Q4 of this year they will be in the low $400 range. Sony just needs to finish the software emulation of the PS2 and PS1, then they can remove those chips from the PS3, thus being able to lower the price.
The other good news is that you will be able to watch BlueRay movies with the other six to ten million other people that will have a Blue Ray player.
PS3 Pros: 1. Graphics is far better. 2. Processing power is far better. 3. Sound is far better. 4. Capacity for data is far better. 5. DVD and BlueRay playback. 6. HD storage for larger downloadable games. 7. Wired and wireless connectivity. 8. Backward compatibility with the PS2 and PS1. 9. Exclusive games Cons: 1. Cost 2. Difficult for developers
Nintendo Pros: 1. Similar processor as GameCube - thus easier for Nintendo developers. 2. Controller - This is a pro and a con. Some hate it and some love it. 3. Cost 4. Exclusive games 5. Backward compatible with the gamecube (small pro)
Cons: 1. No HD. Thus similar games will look worse 2. Small processor upgrade, thus shorter lifespan 3. Expensive controller 4. Poor sound.
So, you appear to not have a HDTV, don't care about watching movies and like Mario and Zelda games.
Now if you got or plan to get a PS3 then you probably have a HDTV and have a PS2 and the additional cost isn't that bad to you. You also don't care about kids games as much but want a system that will have great games for the next 5 to 7 years.
The real question comes in next year and the year after. Currently more HDTV's are being sold than standard definition TV's and one can only assume that the price of the PS3 and HDTVs' will go down, along with the price of the Wii (but the difference will shrink between the PS3 and the Wii), and when people start to compare games like Madden and Tony Hawk on the PS3 vs the Wii. Will the Wii start to look very much like a gamecube 1.5 at that point? Yes, Nintendo will have the nicer price point, but then again they are one serious price cut away from loosing that one large advantage. Then what do you have? You have a console that looks very old very fast and games that look and act poor compared to the PS3.
I wish Nintendo well, and they got off to a great start, but I wonder how many people will get tired of the controller and Mario golf, Mario cart, Mario baseball, Mario fishing, Mario library... with the occasional Zelda and Pokemon game in there...
Now the question for Sony is can they lower the price by $100 or more by next fall? They will have some killer games out by then and the manufacturing should be ramped up, so will they lower the price in less than one year? They did in Japan, so it appears that they will, but time will tell.
Plasma has better colors and definitely better black. LCD's can show weird pixel blur for fast motion stuff. Sonys' new LCD TVs rival Plasma in color. (My opinion). They are expensive though. 1080P at 42" or under is currently a lot cheaper with LCD. The half life of Plasma brightness is a major concern unless you lower it to 50% out of the gate. The half life of LCD brightness is a major concern, but not as bad as Plasma.
Now for the deciding factor for me. Ask what a 3 year warranty is on both TV's. For the Panasonic, it was around $2,800 for the TV and a freaking grand for the 3 year warranty. That tells me a lot, and yes I did find it a bit cheaper but come on. If the warranty is more than $150 for a TV like these then there is something seriously in doubt about the quality of the system.
I don't want to bash Plasma, and I would love a 1080P 42" for under $2,000 (with a 5 year warranty), but it appears that LCD is winning this battle and Panasonic was on the wrong end when it chose high end plasmas.
Good luck on your new TV purchase and be sure to ask about the warranty. The last thing you want is a 1 or 2 year old TV that cost you near $3,000.00, broke down with more than a $1,000.00 worth of repairs needed.
1. Include Suns JVM. Get rid of the GCJ stuff. I believe the JVM is GPL2 now, so it should be easy to do now.
2. Easy video driver support. This has improved, but it would be great if it was like SuSE. I have an Nvidia card and I can get it to work, but at the end of the day another update comes out and it appears to break all over again. At the worst case, please have an official way to get it installed and then support it in your updates.
3. Audio/Video Playback - Make it easy to play DVD's MP3. Again, like the video card, this can be done, but I wish it was an option during the install, or at least I wouldn't have to go to the command line to accomplish this.
4. Flash 9. Like the others mentioned, please make it easy to install this during the initial install.
5. Update the ISO's every so often so if I download Core 6 and install it, I won't have to then download 100+ updates.
Lastly, thanks for all your effort so far. It does appear to be a nice distro. Given the recent sellout by Novell, I am looking forward to working with Fedora or Ubuntu in the future.
Ok, tell me why Microsofts service is so much better than Sony.
I don't want to start a console war here, but I am curious why you believe Sony can't match or exceed Microsofts online service.
I do want to say that I own a PS3 and here is what I like about the online experience so far. 1. No points. I hate points and want everything in $$$. 2. Parent account. I love that I can limit my son to what he does. 3. Downloadable trailers. This is somewhat cool, and I love the 1080P stuff. 4. Downloadable demos and games.
Now I haven't tried the wireless headsets yet, nor have I tried RFOM to see what it is like, but I hope to try Marvel Ultimate Alliance soon via online play.
I will say that I didn't like the following: 1. Password restrictions - They suck and Sony is aware of it. 2. Login account id issue. In short there is a bug with their wizard, again they are aware. 3. Registration process - Man it takes a while without keyboard. 4. Wireless setup message. There is an error message that is actually a success. They are aware. 5. Can't do anything while downloading - Again they are aware. 6. Large demo downloads of stuff. A HD in every system is nice. 7. 1080i/720p issue. They are aware, but it isn't clear if a solution will be developed.
From the forums I visit it appears that the RFOM online experience is very good and without a doubt Sony is playing catchup to Microsoft, but I am curious why you don't believe they won't catch up. From where I sit it appears that Sony has done a fair job of its online service at this point and it looks like they are working hard on making it even better.
As you can tell from my post I am not about to sugar coat my experience with the PS3, but I will say that I do like the machine a lot and so far my family has loved the machine.
Have you worked with both the 360 and PS3 online? If so what functionality is missing from the PS3 that can't be fixed with a code update?
Also, how much does XBOX live gold/platinum (whatever) cost per year? If it is something like $5 to $10 then this isn't that big of an issue either, but if it is like $50 or $100 then I can see this being a larger issue for Microsoft.
Either way, I will say the 360 games this year look very good and happy gaming. It looks like March will be the killer month for the PS3, in that a ton of great games come out that month... I just hope our tax check is good and that 1080P TV's keep falling in price.
Sony said that they would ship 400k units on launch day in North America. They said that the first 500k would have a movie included. My buddy just went to Target yesterday and was lucky enough to get one of the 20GB systems that "just came in" and it also had the movie. So, by my simple math Sony did not ship 400k to N.A. on 11/17.
Now for Nintento... They said they would have 2 million for NA launch. However, now it appears that they actually meant 600k worldwide.
So it looks like both Sony and Nintendo lied. Now Nintendo is saying 2 million by the end of the year, and Sony is saying 1 million. I guess time will tell...
Having said all that I have a PS3 60GB, and so far I like it. It definitely has its issues, like downscaling 720P games to 480P on my 1080i only TV, and the registration process flat out needs to be redone. The password restrictions are ridiculous and some of the error screens need to be better worded. Having said all that, the downloadable games (motorstorm, blast factor etc) are very fun and Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a great game for an old comic book fan like myself. The sixaxis controllers rock and I love that they are wireless. The wireless worked right out of the box and the quality of the system appears to be excellent. I will say that I had around 25 people over for Thanksgiving and most thought that Marvel was "ok" not much better than other games, but Motorstorm was a HUGE hit, it actually got some people that would never watch a game to play it.
Also, I have dorked around with putting pictures on it and showing them to the family during thanksgiving. I found this quite easy to do and love the fact that the pictures come out in HD and the sideshow features are great. Family members had no clue the PS3 could do that and started to understand that it is more than "just a game machine".
I tested a couple of 1080P movies and they look great on my 1080i TV, and coming from the PS2 DVD playback, I can say that the PS3 is much better at playing/managing DVD's and bluRay(PS3 only). Again, I don't have a 1080P set, but I can say that the 1080P content looks better than any of the HD cable stations I have. It isn't a ton better than the Discovery station, but I can tell a difference. I have a 52" RCA Scenium TV...
At the end of the day the people that saw the PS3, played with it thought it was too expensive initially, but then started to change their toon a bit after "messing" with it. (Seeing pictures, videos, and games) My observation of them is that "if" the PS3 was down to say $400 by next Christmas a few of them would buy it. "If" it was down to $300 then most of the families there would buy one. I want to point out that this is almost exactly what happened with the PS2. My family got it year one, then some year two and then the rest year 3.
I will say that the ONLY person that flat out wouldn't give the PS3 a fair shake is the 19 year old Windows Gamer. He is a gamer and I thought he would love the PS3, but it appears that if it doesn't run on a PC, then he doesn't like it. He kept wanting to argue that the graphics at 1920X1080 isn't as good as 24XXX by 2XXXX. I wonder what it will take to convince the Windows gamers to give the PS3 a fair shake.
Lastly I want to say that most enjoyed the "tilt" control of the PS3, few wanted to use if for long and switched back to using a "normal" control. It appeared that people liked to see a motorcycle do weird stuff and would laugh with the tilt controls, but after 20 or so minutes would want to go back because their hands got tired of holding the controller in the "correct" way.
Anyway, back on topic....
I think it is pretty much a fact that this year is really BETA for the PS3 and Wii. Next year will be interesting. I can say that I give the PS3 a 7.5 on a scale of 10 so far. If they "fix" the downscaling issue soon that will go to a 8.5. If they continue to put up more fun demos then is could go to a 9.
"Selling another 100k per week for the rest of the year in Japan. Where did you get the time machine, dude?"
So are you willing to bet that Sony won't sell 400k consoles at launch? Is ANYONE here on Slashdot willing to say that? I doubt it.
"Obviously selling out the second shipment to America ~600k by the end of the year. Seriously stop predicting stuff no one can possibly know."
Again I ask, are you willing to say that Sony won't sell an additional 600k consoles by the end of the year? Look at the demand! It is more than obvious that they will.
". Bill Gates could pay the Japanese to take an Xbox360 home, they'll still buy Sony because Sony is Japanese."
So what? What does this have to do with anything? If Japan is willing to buy millions of PS3's much like they did PS1 and PS2's then those still count as sales.
"With the DS, there were people camped out for the launch of each new color"
Not nearly the same amount of people. People didn't quit their jobs and camp. There were literally over 1,000 people waiting in some lines in Japan. By most accounts there were around 300 or so people in line(s) for the DS lite.
"Seeing that people are already camping in the U.S. over a week in advance. People camped out for months to watch Phantom Menance. So there's actually less interest in ps3 than Jar Jar Binks. Color me impressed."
Yes, and we all know how poorly the StarWars franchise has done. My point is that by these HUGE early lines it shows that there is significant interest in the PS3.
"Having a launch lineup of around 20+ titles, downloadable demos and music day one. And our Gigantic System Seller? A game the average gamer is dying to play? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Buehler?"
You need to define "average" gamer. I was one of the people in the preorder lines and I can say that even the "hard core" gamers had a very different view on "must have" games. Out of the first 10 people in line, you couldn't find more than three people saying that any game was the must have game. If by "average" you mean kids games, then I would agree that the PS3 doesn't have a great lineup for the 10 and under crowd. However, for that market I would say just pick up one of the 1,000+ PS2 kids games for your PS3. It is backward compatible. I for one am looking forward to Marvel Ultimate Alliance at 1080P. Yes it can be bought for multiple consoles, but most people would agree that 1080P will look far far better than 480i. The same can be said for Tony Hawk. Now seeing that the majority of people picking up a PS3 before March of 2007 will not be kids under 10, is this really that big of an issue?
"Seeing that you just sold more BlueRay players in Japan, in one day than all HD-DVD players world wide for the entire year.:-) Seeing that HD-DVD is cheaper to make, both for the players and the media itself, and thus is cheaper for the public, I don't see an advantage.:-)"
Cheaper for now, how much "cheaper" will it be when the manufacturing of blueRay hits in the millions. Also, I don't know where you get your information from on the disk format, but the pricing is around the same. At the end of the day you will have MILLIONS of BlueRay players and at best 50k HD-DVD players. HD-DVD is all but dead.
"Seeing that a ton of people are willing to pay 2 and even 4 times the list price to get a PS3 on Ebay. Seeing that you can buy a grilled cheese sandwhich with a burn mark that looks like Jesus, or if you prefer Elvis, all I see is that people are willing to pay lots of money for items of questionable value."
How many people? Have you looked at the number of EBAY sales? It isn't 5 or 10 or 20 or 50. At what point do you have to concede that a ton of people want a PS3 and are willing to pay 2X or 3X the price to get one? It looks like thousands of them will sell for ~2X their price or greater. That is a far cry from one sandwich. If there were hundreds of sandwiches out there selling for hundre
300+ people camping out for a console many days in advance, that most people on Digg and Slashdot said wouldn't sell.
Selling out ~100k consoles in record time in Japan.
Selling out every preorder in America in record time.
Seeing that people are already camping in the U.S. over a week in advance.
Selling another 100k per week for the rest of the year in Japan.
More than likely selling 400,000 units in American as fast as the stores can process the orders on launch day.
Obviously selling out the second shipment to America ~600k by the end of the year.
Having a launch lineup of around 20+ titles, downloadable demos and music day one.
Seeing that you just sold more BlueRay players in Japan, in one day than all HD-DVD players world wide for the entire year.:-)
Seeing that you will sell 8X as many BlueRay players in America, in one day than all HD-DVD players sold last year world wide, and giving them a "test" movie to help them try out playing movies.:-)
Seeing that a ton of people are willing to pay 2 and even 4 times the list price to get a PS3 on Ebay.
Being able to produce ~6 million consoles by March of 2006, and having a market that looks like it will buy every last one of them.
Having a "last gen" console still continually outsell your competitors "next gen" system month after month.
Providing support for Yellow Dog Linux out of the gate and also helping with OpenGL (setting it as the default for all PS3 games, thus helping out the entire open source community).
Helping to make 1080P a reality in console gaming.
Priceless...
Now I am not going to say that Sony could have done a ton better by getting all 6 million consoles out before Christmas, but their future doesn't look too bad from a lot of peoples perspective. It is very safe to say that Sony will sell 6 million consoles by March of 2007, and then they can decide if they need to do anything about the price.
So, Mr Gates, I realize that you are still stinging from dropping over 4 Billion in the last XBOX and never making a profit, but don't worry I am sure that someone will want a 360 this year. I hear that they are going like "fire", or was that they are actually "on fire"... either way you should get some people that will want to buy/replace one until they can get a PS3. Good luck on the new Xbox 720, I heard that you may release it next Christmas, and I am sure that won't make too many of your customers angry. You obviously have learned a lot from Sega. Their partnership with you has worked out great! Come to think of it, your partnership with every company has worked out great. Well, perhaps not so great for your partners... Oh yeah, one last thing; keep up the point system, people love it! Whatever you do don't use real currency, that would confuse them.
Slashdot Mirror
The only real issue with the PS3 over the 360 and Wii is price. If the system was $400 then is would sell a ton more systems and Sony appears to be aware of this. They have dropped the price twice in Japan and will probably do it here in the U.S. late this fall. His response pretty much says it all when he didn't flat out deny a price drop this year.
The real question is if Nintendo can get their act together and sell over 15 million this year. If Nintendo could have met demand; or if they could meet demand they could bury both Sony and Microsoft in this race. Every day that goes by, HDTVs go down in price and more great games come out for the 360 and PS3 AND the chance of a price drop to the PS3 becomes more of a reality.
Xbox 360 - 9.5 million consoles sold (Channel stuffed big time so numbers will remain flat, majority of games are FPS, no standard hard drive, HD-DVD add on never used for games, no )
Nintendo Wii - 6.5 million consoles sold (Supply constrained, very limited game selection, poor 3rd party support, poor online support, weakest hardware platform)
PS3 - 3 million sold (Priced WAY too high, limited game selection, slowly growing online support, no kids games)
As I stated, I am a developer and I have been a typical white box buyer for years but the new Macintosh systems seems like a good system for me. The RAM issue isn't that big of a deal for me as much as the video cards.
As for the idiot who said that I would be "sticking" with Windows because of a video card doesn't realize that I will be running Ubuntu as my primary OS on my new machine.
It was said by others but it bears repeating. You can only have 3 different (old) video cards in your new >2,000 dollar Mac Pro and be supported. Also the memory is significantly more expensive.
Again, I am an Apple and Linux fan, I am just not afraid to admit when one makes a mistake and this was one mistake that cost them my sale. For "me" this was a huge mistake by Apple, for you it was small.
First, as I said I am an Apple and Linux fan.
You say that every Xeon of this generation needs this type of RAM. You may be correct, but go to NewEgg and buy RAM for a Xeon and then go buy it for a Mac Pro. There is definitely a difference in price. Also it appears that apple has some tight standards.
weird memory in mac pro
I mentioned upgrading the video card and you say that you have been able to do that for 8 to 10 years. You imply that you can put in a new(er) Nvidia card in a Mac Pro and it will work. It won't! You cannot put in a 8k series Nvidia card in a Mac Pro and get it to work in OSX. Toms hardware also has an article on this, and I believe they mention that it actually worked if they booted Windows on the Mac. This tells me that it is just an OS thing and something they should have fixed. You have 3 different video cards that will work and be supported on this Macintosh. One slow Nvidia 7300 and an older ATI card and a non gaming, expensive Nvidia card. All suck bad compared to the higher end cards that have been out for almost two years now.
"Personally, I'm glad Apple is forward looking and pushes current standards instead of decade old ones. If they lose a few sales from people who can't wait 6 moths for the Windows crowd to play catch up and for more widespread support from third party vendors, I think it is a small loss."
Guy I am with you on Apple pushing new standards! Firewire2, USB2, DVD, BluRay, heck all would be great. That is great, just give me a $4000 machine with a video card that isn't two freaking years old, and no real method of upgrading. It is a sad day for Apple when the Linux community has better support for Nvidia that Apple does. Yes I know that Nvidia releases Linux drivers, but even the FOSS drivers do work with 7900 and newer cards. Think about that, the 7900 has been out for two years now and that card freaking smokes the 7300 that is in the new Mac Pro.
Lastly, I wish Apple well and no ill feelings, I will enjoy my new fast machine and hope that they will continue to support Java for the next 10 years.
I am a software developer that likes Linux and the Macintosh, but am stuck mostly in the Windows world for my development. Now I develop in Java so getting "my" code to run on these platforms is no problem, but getting the code that I need to run working on any of these platforms except Windows is a pain. (Netbeans, Postgresql, Dreamweaver etc) I also do play an occasional game on my PC but I find that more and more of my gaming time is on my PS3.
So when I saw that Apple went to Intel and could run Windows I thought that this was the machine for me. I can use the dual boot function for games and emulation software for development. I would want a ton of RAM, and a good video card for the occasional PC must have game. Then I saw the video card(s) that they offered. They don't suck, but for an expensive machine they are not at all what I would want. I decided to wait until they did a 'refresh' of the system in hopes that they would finally offer a more "standard" RAM and hopefully a 8k Nvidia card. (This mac uses weird slow RAM that is very expensive and the newer Nividia card is the only one that does DX10).
I thought it "might" be possible to upgrade the video card myself, but found out you can't do that. It makes little to no sense to me that Apple chose to not use the same freaking graphics cards as a standard PC. So I have put away over 3k for this new machine and was waiting for this new mac to be released.
Today was the day I was going to order my new Macintosh!!! Unfortunately this day came and it will be the day that I now go to NewEgg and spec out my new machine.
I would have been nice to see how Java development would have been on a Macintosh, but the good news is that my new 64bit Ubuntu + Microsoft Vista box will rock.
I wish Apple well and hope that in 3 to 5 years when I buy another machine they will get my money.
Apple, you almost had a Windows/Linux user switched, but your RAM and Video card selection lost you one.
Actually someone at Nintendo should loose his or her job. Everyone agrees that the Wii isn't nearly as powerful of a system as the 360 and that the 360 generally is less powerful than the PS3. The significant difference is that it cannot do 1080P or even 720P HDTV. Most budget consumers don't care about this.... at this time. Every day that goes by HDTV prices are falling and more and more homes are getting them. This small(ish) window of opportunity for the Wii is closing and by them not getting consoles out fast enough definitely hurts them in the long run. This is the year for the Wii to try and strike it big because Nintendo doesn't really want a bunch of people with HDTV's comparing Madden (#1 selling game) on the Wii to the PS3.
So at the end of the day, having supplies still massively constrained on a product that is by most account inferior in technology isn't a good thing at all. Now "if" they could have met the real demand, they probably could have been around the 20-30 million mark by the end of this year and basically have saturated the market and made the PS3 and to a small extent the 360 non factors for the next few years. As it stands now they will have a greater share than the GameCube and possibly enough to get more 3rd party developers on this time.
Again, the guy or gal responsible should be fired. This cost Nintendo many millions of yen.
So yes, Nintendo loves the fact that it is sell well (who wouldn't), but for them to still have major production issues (almost April) is unacceptable.
Go back to the original post. This all is around price, and his point is that if there are PS3's sitting on the shelves but they are selling all of them before the next shipment comes in then the price is perfect. If they are sitting on the shelves and not selling at all then the price is too high. If (like the Wii) they are gone in a few minutes then the price "may" be too low, but there is definitely a problem with supply.
Now, in my opinion the price is too high for the average console buyer and needs to drop around $150 by October of this year. It also needs three of four exclusive must have games for it, and it appears they will have this. The HOME idea is great and LBP is an excellent idea, so Sony is moving in the right direction. They will probably add rumble back in later this year since the settlement is finished and I can understand them NOT discussing a price drop any time soon even if one is coming later this year (who wants to kill off current sales), but I am sure they are prepared to do so if they need to. Sony also seem more willing to work with 3rd party developers and put them on a somewhat equal footing as themselves (something Nintendo has never learned). So all in all this is great news coming from the Sony camp.
Of all the companies I would say Nintendo has made the largest error by not producing enough Wii's, and as every month goes on the difference in hardware will start to show up more and more so their inability to flood the market with last gen technology (I like the Wii, but lets be honest it is just a GameCube 1.5 with a different controller) is only giving more time for Sony and Microsoft to roll out great HD games and allow them more time to recoup their development cost and thus lower the price.
Again, I am a Sony and Nintendo fan and I hope that both do well, and I see them in different markets for this year and probably next year. I just wonder how games like Madden will look at 480P against 2nd and 3rd generation Madden on the PS3 at 720p or worse yet 1080p? Then "if" the price is close, which one will the average consumer pick up? This leads me to think that Nintendo plans on a 4 year lifespan for the Wii, and Sony plans on cutting the price late this year and probably another cut the following year. I don't see a price cut helping Nintendo much at all. Microsoft does have the advantage of a one year lead and they did an excellent job of hitting around 10 million consoles sold, so they may be a factor in this also, but their inability to sell in Asia is going to hurt them and their lack of HD-DVD in those 10 million consoles will limit their long term growth.
And when you look at the movies that are coming out in 2007 you will see that BluRay has 2X as many as HD-DVD. Now add to that fact that the players are selling at around a 10 to 1 advantage for BluRay and the fact that most of the content providers are behind BluRay and life looks very bleak for HD-DVD.
I have said it before on Slashdot and will say it again. This war was over on Nov 17th 2006 in the U.S. Now Sony didn't hit the 400k at launch, but they did hit 1 million by 2007.
You are correct, I should not have said "a lot", but enough to sway the election. I would disagree that because Democrats are more liberal they are less racist. I would point to how well black candidates do in regards to the black voters. Black voters are generally Democrat but time and time again they tend to vote a lot on race and less on party. To be fair I am sure that the same amount of white conservatives vote based upon race.
We agree that Obama would fair better against any of the Republicans than Hillary, but my original point is that the Democrats could almost lock up the win with putting a more moderate candidate forward. Specifically Evan Bayh. He would carry Indiana (never done in modern history for the Democrats), and would probably carry a lot of the swing voters out there that are the types of republicans you mentioned. Liberman would also be a fair pick.
Now the Republicans, Rudy would make a great choice IF he can survive the primaries and if Condi would run then she would also pull in a lot of votes that traditionally go to the Democrats (mentioned above). I would imagine that a Rudy and Condi ticket would be a powerful combo for the republicans, but it isn't going to happen.
If history has anything to show us, it will be two candidates that we don't know much about and that are not on the radar of the media yet.
There are a lot of democrats that won't vote for a woman, and there are a ton of people that won't vote for an extreme left woman. Unfortunately there are also a ton of democrats that won't vote for a black person.
I think what the poster meant was not Chicago, Gary or other inner cities where the majority of people/unions vote for the Democrats, but rather the vast rural areas of the mid-west where the people (generally white people), want smaller government, are religious (generally Christian), and want a strong America. For the most part these people hate taxes and see the government as a very inefficient system for social projects. They see most of their money go away and they get little to no benefit from it; more specifically it appears to go to the people in the inner cities after the government takes their large cut. Most of these people do want less reliance on oil, but understand that all the corn in the world won't make a serious dent in our energy needs for today, let along tomorrow. So having said all that, most of these people vote Republican.
:-) Not going to happen, but it would be fun to see.
Now this election will probably be far different because of one BIG reason. The war. That one issue gives whomever is running against the Republicans a huge advantage. Granted I would imagine the Republicans will bring to light that there hasn't been a major attack in the U.S. since the terrorist Muslim attack on Sept 11th, but from what I see the "mid-west" people here are swayed a lot by the war more than any other issue, although the traditional media (paper and tv) appear to be loosing their ability to sway people on this issue here. The other growing change in the mid-west is the giant influx of Hispanic (Mexican) people moving in. These people, the legal ones appear to vote with whomever wants an open border with Mexico.
Lastly, I do mention that anyone running against the Republicans has a significant advantage because of the war, but that advantage will be gone if someone like Hillary or Obama runs as opposed to someone like Evan Bayh or Liberman runs. Now "if" Rudy could survive the primary (not going to happen), he could hold his own against any Democrat, but again that probably isn't going to happen.
I would love to see someone like Liberman and Condi win. It would be fun to see the Republicans put forth a black female while the Democrats put up a more traditional white male.
Of course. THE PS3 CAME WITH A MOVIE. It's natural they'd try it out. It might even be natural that they'd buy one that's actually going to show off the hi-def much better than a comedy. Does that mean they'll keep buying Blu-Ray discs?
Well it look like they are because of the Amazon and Netflix data. Blu-Ray has now surpassed HD-DVD in both total and monthly volume.
The PS3 has shipped 2 million units and sold over 1.4 million. As far as them "collecting dust", well there are 600k out there unsold, so yes 600k are CURRENTLY on the shelves. They are selling, but not like the first few weeks.
(given the choice, would you buy a Samsung stand-alone for ~$1000, or a PS3 at ~$500?)
I would buy a PS3, now some early adopters don't want a game machine but a true player and those "few" will buy the Sony or Samsung stand alone unit. Seeing that everyone benefits with greater blu-ray manufacturing though, the cost for everyone will go down quickly because of the PS3. Just to be clear on one point though, Sony has said that by the end of this year they will be making money on the PS3. That tells us that they are either greatly reducing manufacturing cost or the loss isn't as bad as previously reported. It also tells us that stand alone blu-ray players have a large markup. You do also realize that Toshiba is selling their HD-DVD player at a $200 loss? That would imply that Microsoft is probably loosing money on their HD-DVD plug in device for the 360.
Lastly on that point, HD-DVD is far cheaper to manufacture than Blu-Ray. I'd be willing to bet that while Sony takes a hit on every player and every movie sold (yes, the movies probably cost more to make right now than they are being sold for, even excluding capital costs), HD-DVD is probably seeing as much profit on movie sales as they see on DVDs, and the players are at LEAST break-even (even the HD-DVD add on).
For now we agree, but every day 10X as many blu-ray devices are made as hd-dvd. The manufacturing cost advantage that hd-dvd currently has is going away very fast. However, at the end of the day both players are around $500 (although you can get $100 from Sony online, so technically a PS3/blu-ray player is $400), and to the consumer, they can get a PS3 that happens to also play blu-ray movies or they can go get a hd-dvd player that only plays movies, and has a very dim future.
You ignore lots of facts here. Manufacturing something is not the same as selling something. Without cash flow soon, Sony may just bleed out and find itself unable to make the capital investments required to increase yields and reduce costs. Struggling to produce on a few production lines won't reduce costs at all - it will increase them, and yields will likely go down.
As I said earlier, Sony is on target to make a profit on the PS3 late this year. Now you may not know much about manufacturing of electronic chips, but the yield rate on the early blu-ray players flat out sucked, and didn't ramp up as fast as expected, and because of this there was a shortage of PS3s. Now those problems have been solved and the quantity of diods per batch is increasing. Thus the cost goes down. If they only got around 10% per platter, and now they are over 25%, well you see the point... Again, they are over 2 million and HD-DVD isn't at 200k.
As for HD-DVD, remember, it's based more on DVD technology, and already has a built-in reduction in production costs.
We agree! The cost of HD-DVD isn't going to go down much over what it currently is now. That is, in my opinion more bad news for HD-DVD.
HD-DVD was created in response by a consortium seeking to rein in the costs of manufacturing and deliver a product that was far more reasonable in price, as well as keep Sony from grabbing a huge piece of the pie.
Wrong! HD-DVD was created by Toshiba, and Microsoft only got involved because blu-ray can use Java and they hate Java. Toshiba and Sony had these technologies years ago and only cam
How many of all those PS3s will be used to watch anything more than a lackluster (for Hi-Def, at least) Talladega Nights?
/Owns a PS2 but doesn't use it to watch DVDs
It appears that around 75% of the people that have bought a PS3 have tried a blu-ray movie in it.
The problem with "updated numbers" is that most people bought a PS3 as a GAME SYSTEM. The movie player, for the PS3 owners, just happens to be there, but that doesn't mean they will go out and buy movies, or use the player.
Not exactly true. There are a ton of reasons that people bought the PS3 and having a cheaper blu-ray player is, for some a reason. Is it the ONLY reason? No, but it is a reason.
So Sony has only managed to muddy the Blu-Ray numbers by forcing consumers who bought a game console to also buy a player.
Sony gave the game manufacturers a 50GB storage media for games and the ability to play BluRay movies on your PS3. They do this at a current loss of around $150 to $200 on the system (which will be reduced greatly this year by manufacturing improvements). You like Microsoft want to bitch about a company leveraging a product to push another product? That is kind of like the pot calling the kettle black isn't it?
Like it or not there will be 6 to 10 million blu-ray players manufactured this year. That will definitely reduce the manufacturing cost of blu-ray and something HD-DVD will not have. Now, I will assume that Microsoft is working hard on getting out a HD-DVD version of the 360, but they have a huge issue of 7-10 million current 360 users that will force games developers on that platform to stick with DVD. Also, the vast majority of people that wanted a 360 bought one. So, expecting another 10 million new 360 owners over the next year is unreasonable. They will be hard pressed to get another 3 to 4 million. So basically HD-DVD is screwed.
Now, the real question is will downloadable content make both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray irrelevant? I think it will, but that won't be for at least 5 to 8 years.
Dude that was one million in Japan!
Look at a pro Microsoft site like nexgenwars.com.
Just to be a little more accurate there are over 2 million PS3's shipped now, and around 1.4 million sold. There are less than 200k HD-DVD players sold.
Now looking at those numbers it starts to look a little more bleak for HD-DVD as compared to Blu-Ray.
This could explain the large number of Blu-Ray movies out this year vs HD-DVD. It looks like there are around 2X as many movies coming out for Blu-Ray as HD-DVD. That also isn't very good for HD-DVD.
The price appears to be about the same now with a PS3 going for $500 and a HD-DVD player going for around $500, so the price advantage that HD-DVD had is gone.
Recent data on Amazon show that Blu-Ray movie purchases has now exceeded HD-DVD as of Nov of last year and it appears that total sales will be greater for Blu-Ray than HD-DVD in less than a month (if it isn't already), adds to the near death nail for HD-DVD.
Then you look at the content providers that are behind Blu-Ray and you start to see HD-DVD being killed off later this year.
Did anyone notice the HD-DVD presentation vs the Blu-Ray presentation at CES this year? Yet another bad sign for HD-DVD.
I will say that the pr0n industry picking HD-DVD will help it, but it appears that most pr0n is downloaded now, and the loyalty of that business isn't exactly as strong as say Disney.
So I guess Microsoft better get use to having Java run on even more stuff out there.
"That seems to be a popular "promise" but so far it hasn't really panned out. While I don't care for the Madden series I am a big Tony Hawk fan and the latest offering of that franchise is markedly superior on the Xbox 360 when compared to the PS3 version. Having played both the 360 simply looks better and has a really nice online mode, while the PS3 version has none. All things equal I'd still prefer the 360 version because I find the controller much more comfortable and I enjoy the achievement system as I mentioned earlier. "
Yep, that is too be expected with a first gen PS3 game and a second gen 360 game. But given the hardware difference between the two consoles one can conclude that the PS3 version could be done better. Just the fact that every PS3 has a HD alone could make streaming of levels somewhat possible in games like Tony Hawk. Now another difference is the soundtracks and levels, heck with a 9GB limit on the DVD that could be HUGE compared to 25GB or even 50GB (DL-BRDVD). As far as you not liking the controller, I would imagine there will be plenty of 3rd party controllers out there, but I am somewhat shocked that you like the 360 controller, but again that is personal preference. I like quiet systems, or more specifically near silent systems. To me this is huge because the system is right next to me when I play.
Unfortunately this is a negative for me. I don't like either "next gen" disc format as I'm annoyed with the large amounts of DRM that's been implemented."
This is good and bad news for you then. The good news is that you will have the system that will be the clear winner in the format war and thus have something similar to your DVD's of today but with more storage. The bad news is that DRM is here to stay, and even Microsoft appears to LOVE it. You and I totally agree on DRM, but the content providers are kind of sick and tired of all the stealing going on and they are serious about trying to stop it. The good news is that for honest people like you and myself this won't really effect us that much.
On that note, I fully expect games to go to a download and pay method to get around all this piracy out there. Games like Everquest and WoW prove that this model works well and I fully expect to see more games like Tekken 5 released. It will be a download only game.
In short you will buy your PS3 this year if a few of the big names hit.
Then when you compare games like Madden (the number one selling game), and others for all your console, you will more than likely see the PS3 is a better game. Thus you will probably buy the PS3 versions of cross platform games and then the Sony dominance continues again.
The good news for you is that you may be able to get your PS3 cheaper than $500. My prediction is that by Q4 of this year they will be in the low $400 range. Sony just needs to finish the software emulation of the PS2 and PS1, then they can remove those chips from the PS3, thus being able to lower the price.
The other good news is that you will be able to watch BlueRay movies with the other six to ten million other people that will have a Blue Ray player.
I think a better comparison.
PS3
Pros:
1. Graphics is far better.
2. Processing power is far better.
3. Sound is far better.
4. Capacity for data is far better.
5. DVD and BlueRay playback.
6. HD storage for larger downloadable games.
7. Wired and wireless connectivity.
8. Backward compatibility with the PS2 and PS1.
9. Exclusive games
Cons:
1. Cost
2. Difficult for developers
Nintendo
Pros:
1. Similar processor as GameCube - thus easier for Nintendo developers.
2. Controller - This is a pro and a con. Some hate it and some love it.
3. Cost
4. Exclusive games
5. Backward compatible with the gamecube (small pro)
Cons:
1. No HD. Thus similar games will look worse
2. Small processor upgrade, thus shorter lifespan
3. Expensive controller
4. Poor sound.
So, you appear to not have a HDTV, don't care about watching movies and like Mario and Zelda games.
Now if you got or plan to get a PS3 then you probably have a HDTV and have a PS2 and the additional cost isn't that bad to you. You also don't care about kids games as much but want a system that will have great games for the next 5 to 7 years.
The real question comes in next year and the year after. Currently more HDTV's are being sold than standard definition TV's and one can only assume that the price of the PS3 and HDTVs' will go down, along with the price of the Wii (but the difference will shrink between the PS3 and the Wii), and when people start to compare games like Madden and Tony Hawk on the PS3 vs the Wii. Will the Wii start to look very much like a gamecube 1.5 at that point? Yes, Nintendo will have the nicer price point, but then again they are one serious price cut away from loosing that one large advantage. Then what do you have? You have a console that looks very old very fast and games that look and act poor compared to the PS3.
I wish Nintendo well, and they got off to a great start, but I wonder how many people will get tired of the controller and Mario golf, Mario cart, Mario baseball, Mario fishing, Mario library... with the occasional Zelda and Pokemon game in there...
Now the question for Sony is can they lower the price by $100 or more by next fall? They will have some killer games out by then and the manufacturing should be ramped up, so will they lower the price in less than one year? They did in Japan, so it appears that they will, but time will tell.
Here is my simple opinion of this debate.
Plasma has better colors and definitely better black.
LCD's can show weird pixel blur for fast motion stuff.
Sonys' new LCD TVs rival Plasma in color. (My opinion). They are expensive though.
1080P at 42" or under is currently a lot cheaper with LCD.
The half life of Plasma brightness is a major concern unless you lower it to 50% out of the gate.
The half life of LCD brightness is a major concern, but not as bad as Plasma.
Now for the deciding factor for me.
Ask what a 3 year warranty is on both TV's. For the Panasonic, it was around $2,800 for the TV and a freaking grand for the 3 year warranty. That tells me a lot, and yes I did find it a bit cheaper but come on. If the warranty is more than $150 for a TV like these then there is something seriously in doubt about the quality of the system.
I don't want to bash Plasma, and I would love a 1080P 42" for under $2,000 (with a 5 year warranty), but it appears that LCD is winning this battle and Panasonic was on the wrong end when it chose high end plasmas.
Good luck on your new TV purchase and be sure to ask about the warranty. The last thing you want is a 1 or 2 year old TV that cost you near $3,000.00, broke down with more than a $1,000.00 worth of repairs needed.
thanks for the link about the updated ISO's
However, as far as non free software, Fedora could provide a much easier way to get that software and then work on not breaking it with an update.
How many people try Fedora out for a client and don't want to load Flash, MP3 and DVD support?
Again, this is just a wish list, but the video driver issue is a real pain.
Ok, here is my wishlist.
1. Include Suns JVM. Get rid of the GCJ stuff. I believe the JVM is GPL2 now, so it should be easy to do now.
2. Easy video driver support. This has improved, but it would be great if it was like SuSE. I have an Nvidia card and I can get it to work, but at the end of the day another update comes out and it appears to break all over again. At the worst case, please have an official way to get it installed and then support it in your updates.
3. Audio/Video Playback - Make it easy to play DVD's MP3. Again, like the video card, this can be done, but I wish it was an option during the install, or at least I wouldn't have to go to the command line to accomplish this.
4. Flash 9. Like the others mentioned, please make it easy to install this during the initial install.
5. Update the ISO's every so often so if I download Core 6 and install it, I won't have to then download 100+ updates.
Lastly, thanks for all your effort so far. It does appear to be a nice distro. Given the recent sellout by Novell, I am looking forward to working with Fedora or Ubuntu in the future.
Ok, tell me why Microsofts service is so much better than Sony.
I don't want to start a console war here, but I am curious why you believe Sony can't match or exceed Microsofts online service.
I do want to say that I own a PS3 and here is what I like about the online experience so far.
1. No points. I hate points and want everything in $$$.
2. Parent account. I love that I can limit my son to what he does.
3. Downloadable trailers. This is somewhat cool, and I love the 1080P stuff.
4. Downloadable demos and games.
Now I haven't tried the wireless headsets yet, nor have I tried RFOM to see what it is like, but I hope to try Marvel Ultimate Alliance soon via online play.
I will say that I didn't like the following:
1. Password restrictions - They suck and Sony is aware of it.
2. Login account id issue. In short there is a bug with their wizard, again they are aware.
3. Registration process - Man it takes a while without keyboard.
4. Wireless setup message. There is an error message that is actually a success. They are aware.
5. Can't do anything while downloading - Again they are aware.
6. Large demo downloads of stuff. A HD in every system is nice.
7. 1080i/720p issue. They are aware, but it isn't clear if a solution will be developed.
From the forums I visit it appears that the RFOM online experience is very good and without a doubt Sony is playing catchup to Microsoft, but I am curious why you don't believe they won't catch up. From where I sit it appears that Sony has done a fair job of its online service at this point and it looks like they are working hard on making it even better.
As you can tell from my post I am not about to sugar coat my experience with the PS3, but I will say that I do like the machine a lot and so far my family has loved the machine.
Have you worked with both the 360 and PS3 online? If so what functionality is missing from the PS3 that can't be fixed with a code update?
Also, how much does XBOX live gold/platinum (whatever) cost per year? If it is something like $5 to $10 then this isn't that big of an issue either, but if it is like $50 or $100 then I can see this being a larger issue for Microsoft.
Either way, I will say the 360 games this year look very good and happy gaming. It looks like March will be the killer month for the PS3, in that a ton of great games come out that month... I just hope our tax check is good and that 1080P TV's keep falling in price.
Here is what I do know.
Sony said that they would ship 400k units on launch day in North America. They said that the first 500k would have a movie included. My buddy just went to Target yesterday and was lucky enough to get one of the 20GB systems that "just came in" and it also had the movie. So, by my simple math Sony did not ship 400k to N.A. on 11/17.
Now for Nintento... They said they would have 2 million for NA launch. However, now it appears that they actually meant 600k worldwide.
So it looks like both Sony and Nintendo lied. Now Nintendo is saying 2 million by the end of the year, and Sony is saying 1 million. I guess time will tell...
Having said all that I have a PS3 60GB, and so far I like it. It definitely has its issues, like downscaling 720P games to 480P on my 1080i only TV, and the registration process flat out needs to be redone. The password restrictions are ridiculous and some of the error screens need to be better worded. Having said all that, the downloadable games (motorstorm, blast factor etc) are very fun and Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a great game for an old comic book fan like myself. The sixaxis controllers rock and I love that they are wireless. The wireless worked right out of the box and the quality of the system appears to be excellent. I will say that I had around 25 people over for Thanksgiving and most thought that Marvel was "ok" not much better than other games, but Motorstorm was a HUGE hit, it actually got some people that would never watch a game to play it.
Also, I have dorked around with putting pictures on it and showing them to the family during thanksgiving. I found this quite easy to do and love the fact that the pictures come out in HD and the sideshow features are great. Family members had no clue the PS3 could do that and started to understand that it is more than "just a game machine".
I tested a couple of 1080P movies and they look great on my 1080i TV, and coming from the PS2 DVD playback, I can say that the PS3 is much better at playing/managing DVD's and bluRay(PS3 only). Again, I don't have a 1080P set, but I can say that the 1080P content looks better than any of the HD cable stations I have. It isn't a ton better than the Discovery station, but I can tell a difference. I have a 52" RCA Scenium TV...
At the end of the day the people that saw the PS3, played with it thought it was too expensive initially, but then started to change their toon a bit after "messing" with it. (Seeing pictures, videos, and games) My observation of them is that "if" the PS3 was down to say $400 by next Christmas a few of them would buy it. "If" it was down to $300 then most of the families there would buy one. I want to point out that this is almost exactly what happened with the PS2. My family got it year one, then some year two and then the rest year 3.
I will say that the ONLY person that flat out wouldn't give the PS3 a fair shake is the 19 year old Windows Gamer. He is a gamer and I thought he would love the PS3, but it appears that if it doesn't run on a PC, then he doesn't like it. He kept wanting to argue that the graphics at 1920X1080 isn't as good as 24XXX by 2XXXX. I wonder what it will take to convince the Windows gamers to give the PS3 a fair shake.
Lastly I want to say that most enjoyed the "tilt" control of the PS3, few wanted to use if for long and switched back to using a "normal" control. It appeared that people liked to see a motorcycle do weird stuff and would laugh with the tilt controls, but after 20 or so minutes would want to go back because their hands got tired of holding the controller in the "correct" way.
Anyway, back on topic....
I think it is pretty much a fact that this year is really BETA for the PS3 and Wii. Next year will be interesting. I can say that I give the PS3 a 7.5 on a scale of 10 so far. If they "fix" the downscaling issue soon that will go to a 8.5. If they continue to put up more fun demos then is could go to a 9.
"Selling another 100k per week for the rest of the year in Japan. Where did you get the time machine, dude?"
:-) Seeing that HD-DVD is cheaper to make, both for the players and the media itself, and thus is cheaper for the public, I don't see an advantage. :-)"
So are you willing to bet that Sony won't sell 400k consoles at launch? Is ANYONE here on Slashdot willing to say that? I doubt it.
"Obviously selling out the second shipment to America ~600k by the end of the year. Seriously stop predicting stuff no one can possibly know."
Again I ask, are you willing to say that Sony won't sell an additional 600k consoles by the end of the year? Look at the demand! It is more than obvious that they will.
". Bill Gates could pay the Japanese to take an Xbox360 home, they'll still buy Sony because Sony is Japanese."
So what? What does this have to do with anything? If Japan is willing to buy millions of PS3's much like they did PS1 and PS2's then those still count as sales.
"With the DS, there were people camped out for the launch of each new color"
Not nearly the same amount of people. People didn't quit their jobs and camp. There were literally over 1,000 people waiting in some lines in Japan. By most accounts there were around 300 or so people in line(s) for the DS lite.
"Seeing that people are already camping in the U.S. over a week in advance. People camped out for months to watch Phantom Menance. So there's actually less interest in ps3 than Jar Jar Binks. Color me impressed."
Yes, and we all know how poorly the StarWars franchise has done. My point is that by these HUGE early lines it shows that there is significant interest in the PS3.
"Having a launch lineup of around 20+ titles, downloadable demos and music day one. And our Gigantic System Seller? A game the average gamer is dying to play? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Buehler?"
You need to define "average" gamer. I was one of the people in the preorder lines and I can say that even the "hard core" gamers had a very different view on "must have" games. Out of the first 10 people in line, you couldn't find more than three people saying that any game was the must have game. If by "average" you mean kids games, then I would agree that the PS3 doesn't have a great lineup for the 10 and under crowd. However, for that market I would say just pick up one of the 1,000+ PS2 kids games for your PS3. It is backward compatible. I for one am looking forward to Marvel Ultimate Alliance at 1080P. Yes it can be bought for multiple consoles, but most people would agree that 1080P will look far far better than 480i. The same can be said for Tony Hawk. Now seeing that the majority of people picking up a PS3 before March of 2007 will not be kids under 10, is this really that big of an issue?
"Seeing that you just sold more BlueRay players in Japan, in one day than all HD-DVD players world wide for the entire year.
Cheaper for now, how much "cheaper" will it be when the manufacturing of blueRay hits in the millions. Also, I don't know where you get your information from on the disk format, but the pricing is around the same. At the end of the day you will have MILLIONS of BlueRay players and at best 50k HD-DVD players. HD-DVD is all but dead.
"Seeing that a ton of people are willing to pay 2 and even 4 times the list price to get a PS3 on Ebay. Seeing that you can buy a grilled cheese sandwhich with a burn mark that looks like Jesus, or if you prefer Elvis, all I see is that people are willing to pay lots of money for items of questionable value."
How many people? Have you looked at the number of EBAY sales? It isn't 5 or 10 or 20 or 50. At what point do you have to concede that a ton of people want a PS3 and are willing to pay 2X or 3X the price to get one? It looks like thousands of them will sell for ~2X their price or greater. That is a far cry from one sandwich. If there were hundreds of sandwiches out there selling for hundre
300+ people camping out for a console many days in advance, that most people on Digg and Slashdot said wouldn't sell.
:-)
:-)
Selling out ~100k consoles in record time in Japan.
Selling out every preorder in America in record time.
Seeing that people are already camping in the U.S. over a week in advance.
Selling another 100k per week for the rest of the year in Japan.
More than likely selling 400,000 units in American as fast as the stores can process the orders on launch day.
Obviously selling out the second shipment to America ~600k by the end of the year.
Having a launch lineup of around 20+ titles, downloadable demos and music day one.
Seeing that you just sold more BlueRay players in Japan, in one day than all HD-DVD players world wide for the entire year.
Seeing that you will sell 8X as many BlueRay players in America, in one day than all HD-DVD players sold last year world wide, and giving them a "test" movie to help them try out playing movies.
Seeing that a ton of people are willing to pay 2 and even 4 times the list price to get a PS3 on Ebay.
Being able to produce ~6 million consoles by March of 2006, and having a market that looks like it will buy every last one of them.
Having a "last gen" console still continually outsell your competitors "next gen" system month after month.
Providing support for Yellow Dog Linux out of the gate and also helping with OpenGL (setting it as the default for all PS3 games, thus helping out the entire open source community).
Helping to make 1080P a reality in console gaming.
Priceless...
Now I am not going to say that Sony could have done a ton better by getting all 6 million consoles out before Christmas, but their future doesn't look too bad from a lot of peoples perspective. It is very safe to say that Sony will sell 6 million consoles by March of 2007, and then they can decide if they need to do anything about the price.
So, Mr Gates, I realize that you are still stinging from dropping over 4 Billion in the last XBOX and never making a profit, but don't worry I am sure that someone will want a 360 this year. I hear that they are going like "fire", or was that they are actually "on fire"... either way you should get some people that will want to buy/replace one until they can get a PS3. Good luck on the new Xbox 720, I heard that you may release it next Christmas, and I am sure that won't make too many of your customers angry. You obviously have learned a lot from Sega. Their partnership with you has worked out great! Come to think of it, your partnership with every company has worked out great. Well, perhaps not so great for your partners... Oh yeah, one last thing; keep up the point system, people love it! Whatever you do don't use real currency, that would confuse them.