I'm sure you'll see many people who DO like FPS buying the Wii. It is, in fact, the only console which has a controller that lends itself perfectly to FPS's.
Sure, I saw an interesting gun mod for the Wii online from E3, so I expect you're right. But, at first glance, it looks like the PS3 will be much more FPS rich (in terms of quantity of games) than the Wii, based on the game lists I saw.
Now, if we were talking Samurai and Ninja - well, Wii has an edge, surprisingly over PS3, strange in that they're both from Japan.
but, while the new consoles do have HDTV output, they don't require HDTV, and cable networks expect to provide service for many people who don't have HDTV sets but want to watch HDTV on their digital (not the same thing) TV sets that they do have.
Thus, the decision point for buying HDTV is not, actually, in 2007 when all channels will switch over, it's somewhere around 2012 when service for non-HDTV sets is expected to cease.
By that point, HDTV sets will probably cost $100 (for a standard 24 inch or 30 inch set) and game consoles - like the PS3, xBox360, and Wii - will cost less than $100 as well.
I'm sure they'll have another new console or four by that point, of course... so we can always wish we could buy something "better".
Seriously, you can buy an HDTV for about $500 now if you look around, it will be $300 by Christmas 2007 or shortly thereafter, and you can even get a 1080p version right now for $500 (check out the NY Times electronic reviews a couple of weeks back, and in the Wall Street Journal two weekends ago in the Saturday issue).
And you can buy a Nintendo Wii by about Presidents Day 2007 for a reasonable price at Costco - maybe even by Christmas 2006.
The world isn't over. Your old TV works fine with a cable box, you don't need a 64 inch screen HDTV, you can settle for a 32 inch or 40 inch one.
Good point, but we also know that Microsoft is not gaining that much on console sales, and in fact has minimal worldwide marketshare. Perhaps Sony would rather sell more PS3s, lose a teeny bit of cash on them (break even), just so that the xBox360 doesn't get their footing again - when we look at worldwide revenue, we see that the xBox lost out to PS2, and the xBox360 to date is a very small fraction of xBox (think it's something like one-tenth the number of boxen). In fact, worldwide, Nintendo has sold as many Gamecubes as Microsoft has sold both xBox and xBox360. In the US, sure, xBox has sold more, and is more of an even player with Sony PS2, but even here they are second-place in marketshare, even though US Gamecube sales are really low compared to xBox.
So, to dominate with PS3, and get all that juicy Blu-Ray revenue (from players, movies, music, games, etc) and license fees, if they can keep dominance they can lock out the HD format and keep us using Sony Blu-Ray by selling PS3 at a price point that spurs widespread adoption.
I don't seriously expect them to compete with the price point of the Nintendo Wii, that would be silly. Nintendo always makes a profit on selling their consoles - and a profit on selling their games. Sony doesn't always make a profit on consoles, and Microsoft generally doesn't. That's why a lot of people wanted to put Linux on the xBox360 - it sells below the normal retail price for its components.
I do not want to come out sounding too much like a conspiracy nut, but Sony is trying to use the PS3 to launch BD and not the console itself. There is much more money to be made in movies then in the game market, since movies are a much more "universal" form of entertainment. If Sony made the console with only DVD support, like 360 and Wii, I would almost bet that they would have pricing that is much more competitive to the other consoles; however, I think their true competitor is HD-DVD and other Blu-Ray drive makers.
Well, from a marketing and format-domination perspective, wouldn't a larger user base for Sony PS3s mean that more people would use Blu-Ray and its DRM, thus giving them a lock on the next format?
So, yes, I think at some point they will realize that they want to win the war, not be stuck on past glories. And to succeed at selling movie titles, which is probably more revenue than games, it helps to sell more PS3s.
Retail of $500 is not going to make them bleed to death - $600 is a sweet price for them, but if they sell way more volume at $500 and then people end up buying Blu-Ray movies, they end up making more in the long run.
The fact is, the Sony of the 80's is NOT the Sony of the 90's-00's. They lost touch with reality.
Well, I still think it's early to say that, although I did notice my son sold his old Nintendo box for $50 recently, so maybe you're right. Maybe they did have cooler games back then.
Hmmm. While I do think that it is true that Nintendo won E3, based on all the blogs at Washington Post, Seattle Times, Seattle PI, and New York Times, as well as more typical ones on gamer sites, I don't know that, as an investor, I'd say that Sony killed themselves.
I would instead say that they missed an opportunity and need to rethink their marketing price points and possibly their game releases.
Sure, Microsoft (nope, don't own it, sold it to lock in a technical loss, and as of today don't own any of these companies) did manage to get the media to cover their GTA release on the xBox360 and most press never clued in that it is releasing on both the P3 and the 360.
Sure, Nintendo got all the buzz and those of us who really aren't into FPS very much are buying the Wii (hate the name). Heck, they even demo'd a really cool FPS or two, and Red Steel swordplay sold me on the controller more than even the fishing and driving demos.
But, in the end, if they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, reset the retail price for the non-crippled P3 to something reasonable - as in, less than $500 US and less than 500 EUs - then they can still regain the market.
Battles frequently can be won even with major setbacks - sure, Sony was routed at E3, but they've got six months to get their act in gear and learn from their mistakes.
In most emails, especially those I get from an international research team, I find that two other missing elements in emails are:
1. Context - frequently, someone sends off an email, but the subject line references some other topic - they replied to you and changed the topic, but did not change the subject line Re: UDS Extract 1.2 forms to what it should be Kramer SNP Project Request, or they bury the context change in the middle of the text without warning - starting with one topic thanks for fixing the forms and then three paragraphs in, in what you thought was a routine thanks for all the fish email, you realize they had dropped in the fact that Earth is about to be destroyed and you need to appeal it in the subbasement filing cabinet last week but you haven't developed time travel.
2. Replies - sometimes they have all these nested replies - my mother is famous for this, and then halfway down what just looks like reply re reply re reply re reply there's a lone sentence typed in that say oh, the car stopped working so we're spending your inheritence on taxi service but we can't be bothered having the car repaired since we must get on the internet now that we're retired.
Seriously, for those of us who have laptops, does anyone have an opinion or link on which budget graphics cards exist that are USB plug-ins, so that people with laptops (where the graphics cards are not normally upgradeable, unless someone knows how to upgrade an eMachine laptop) can get better video and graphics performance?
Just to clarify, it's not that humans are to blame
on
Blaming The Bats
·
· Score: 1
it's that diseases such as Sarburg and Ebola have an easier transmission vector if humans engage in direct contact with bat feces by either eating them, collecting fresh bat guano in caves (where the infectious load is still in active form), or collect fruit near bat caves where it is more likely to be active.
or would you rather admit that, since noone reads EULAs, this is all totally unenforceable from a legal standpoint and binds noone except the gullible.
good point, I was reading a print copy of the Wall Street Journal in which they pointed out that the FCC in the Bush regime years has done more to encourage mergers, and stifle real capitalist competition, than any prior FCC.
Internet delivered in hot piping straight to your home.
But here we're in a race to the bottom, and we'll spend twenty years talking about letting a provider be a carrier for both signal and content, instead of doing something about it.
Inaction may not get things done, but when your political masters don't want real competition in a classic market capitalist form to exist, you say what you have to in order to ensure that such actual reforms never see the light of day.
I would think that a few Windows engineers might leave, given that their talents in getting Windows working on the Mac platform might be more appreciated, but I doubt that mass defections are likely to occur.
Mind you, the weather down there is nicer... rain forecast for today and this weekend, as always, up here in Seattle area.
Not really. This account I created a couple of years ago, but I have two other accounts I no longer use that go back to pre-dot-com days.
I was on the Internet before it was Arpanet, used to be a student at Simon Fraser University and we used 300 baud modems if we were lucky (1200 baud was cool when it came out).
I totally agree with you that it doesn't have to be that way (flood insurance being paid for by other taxpayers), but the reality is that today in the US it is.
Hmm, paying 20 percent of the value of your house per year - now, that would be darned expensive.
Hello, we'd like to announce a new security patch, that's um, kind of critical. What is it? Well, let's just say when we say it, everyone said "OMFG!" and started running around like people with their hair on fire...
Now, we can't tell you what it is, because if we did that, you might clue in that we probably made the same mistake in pretty much all the code we rolled out to give you that latest Feature (Patent Pending), and telling you would mean that lots of script kiddies would be making your copy of Windows Vista turn into a large pr0n server that played Death Metal tunes.
So, just trust us on this one, and... well... it's not optional.
P.S.: Please ignore the large backdoor we installed to scope your box out to see if you're trying to run some kind of Linux device on your network. It's just there for... um... your security... yeah, that's right...
I'm just saying that taking a trip to Vancouver where we will do the obvious is a much better use of my money than on tech I don't need to overpay for.
Now, for you, perhaps you find that overspending on tech helps you in that regards, I really don't know. Each consumer has to decide where to spend his or her own limited resources.
For example, if you were Bill G, spending $5 million to get a really cool tech device is about what you made by thinking about it, so it's a reasonable amount of money to spend.
Your mileage may vary... especially if you're metric.
Like nearly everyone else involved the EFF has an agenda and a spin.
You'd have an agenda if you had the Secret Service come to your place of business back in the day and take virtually every top-of-the-line computer you had sunk all your cash into, and then a few years later return those very same computers crushed into small tiny bits.
Does noone remember History? I remember Steve Jackson helping out the WorldCon in New Orleans by loaning us his computers so we could rewrite the dBase III code that their author/artist registration ran on, so we could actually hold the convention with panels.
A year later, he couldn't do that, because the Secret Service took his computers since he was writing a game about Hackers.
Maybe you like living in Soviet Russia, but I don't.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure you'll see many people who DO like FPS buying the Wii. It is, in fact, the only console which has a controller that lends itself perfectly to FPS's.
Sure, I saw an interesting gun mod for the Wii online from E3, so I expect you're right. But, at first glance, it looks like the PS3 will be much more FPS rich (in terms of quantity of games) than the Wii, based on the game lists I saw.
Now, if we were talking Samurai and Ninja - well, Wii has an edge, surprisingly over PS3, strange in that they're both from Japan.
but, while the new consoles do have HDTV output, they don't require HDTV, and cable networks expect to provide service for many people who don't have HDTV sets but want to watch HDTV on their digital (not the same thing) TV sets that they do have.
... so we can always wish we could buy something "better".
Thus, the decision point for buying HDTV is not, actually, in 2007 when all channels will switch over, it's somewhere around 2012 when service for non-HDTV sets is expected to cease.
By that point, HDTV sets will probably cost $100 (for a standard 24 inch or 30 inch set) and game consoles - like the PS3, xBox360, and Wii - will cost less than $100 as well.
I'm sure they'll have another new console or four by that point, of course
Seriously, you can buy an HDTV for about $500 now if you look around, it will be $300 by Christmas 2007 or shortly thereafter, and you can even get a 1080p version right now for $500 (check out the NY Times electronic reviews a couple of weeks back, and in the Wall Street Journal two weekends ago in the Saturday issue).
And you can buy a Nintendo Wii by about Presidents Day 2007 for a reasonable price at Costco - maybe even by Christmas 2006.
The world isn't over. Your old TV works fine with a cable box, you don't need a 64 inch screen HDTV, you can settle for a 32 inch or 40 inch one.
Good point, but we also know that Microsoft is not gaining that much on console sales, and in fact has minimal worldwide marketshare. Perhaps Sony would rather sell more PS3s, lose a teeny bit of cash on them (break even), just so that the xBox360 doesn't get their footing again - when we look at worldwide revenue, we see that the xBox lost out to PS2, and the xBox360 to date is a very small fraction of xBox (think it's something like one-tenth the number of boxen). In fact, worldwide, Nintendo has sold as many Gamecubes as Microsoft has sold both xBox and xBox360. In the US, sure, xBox has sold more, and is more of an even player with Sony PS2, but even here they are second-place in marketshare, even though US Gamecube sales are really low compared to xBox.
... grin.
So, to dominate with PS3, and get all that juicy Blu-Ray revenue (from players, movies, music, games, etc) and license fees, if they can keep dominance they can lock out the HD format and keep us using Sony Blu-Ray by selling PS3 at a price point that spurs widespread adoption.
I don't seriously expect them to compete with the price point of the Nintendo Wii, that would be silly. Nintendo always makes a profit on selling their consoles - and a profit on selling their games. Sony doesn't always make a profit on consoles, and Microsoft generally doesn't. That's why a lot of people wanted to put Linux on the xBox360 - it sells below the normal retail price for its components.
Ok, plus it sticks it to the man
I do not want to come out sounding too much like a conspiracy nut, but Sony is trying to use the PS3 to launch BD and not the console itself. There is much more money to be made in movies then in the game market, since movies are a much more "universal" form of entertainment. If Sony made the console with only DVD support, like 360 and Wii, I would almost bet that they would have pricing that is much more competitive to the other consoles; however, I think their true competitor is HD-DVD and other Blu-Ray drive makers.
Well, from a marketing and format-domination perspective, wouldn't a larger user base for Sony PS3s mean that more people would use Blu-Ray and its DRM, thus giving them a lock on the next format?
So, yes, I think at some point they will realize that they want to win the war, not be stuck on past glories. And to succeed at selling movie titles, which is probably more revenue than games, it helps to sell more PS3s.
Retail of $500 is not going to make them bleed to death - $600 is a sweet price for them, but if they sell way more volume at $500 and then people end up buying Blu-Ray movies, they end up making more in the long run.
The fact is, the Sony of the 80's is NOT the Sony of the 90's-00's. They lost touch with reality.
Well, I still think it's early to say that, although I did notice my son sold his old Nintendo box for $50 recently, so maybe you're right. Maybe they did have cooler games back then.
Hmmm. While I do think that it is true that Nintendo won E3, based on all the blogs at Washington Post, Seattle Times, Seattle PI, and New York Times, as well as more typical ones on gamer sites, I don't know that, as an investor, I'd say that Sony killed themselves.
I would instead say that they missed an opportunity and need to rethink their marketing price points and possibly their game releases.
Sure, Microsoft (nope, don't own it, sold it to lock in a technical loss, and as of today don't own any of these companies) did manage to get the media to cover their GTA release on the xBox360 and most press never clued in that it is releasing on both the P3 and the 360.
Sure, Nintendo got all the buzz and those of us who really aren't into FPS very much are buying the Wii (hate the name). Heck, they even demo'd a really cool FPS or two, and Red Steel swordplay sold me on the controller more than even the fishing and driving demos.
But, in the end, if they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, reset the retail price for the non-crippled P3 to something reasonable - as in, less than $500 US and less than 500 EUs - then they can still regain the market.
Battles frequently can be won even with major setbacks - sure, Sony was routed at E3, but they've got six months to get their act in gear and learn from their mistakes.
In most emails, especially those I get from an international research team, I find that two other missing elements in emails are:
1. Context - frequently, someone sends off an email, but the subject line references some other topic - they replied to you and changed the topic, but did not change the subject line Re: UDS Extract 1.2 forms to what it should be Kramer SNP Project Request, or they bury the context change in the middle of the text without warning - starting with one topic thanks for fixing the forms and then three paragraphs in, in what you thought was a routine thanks for all the fish email, you realize they had dropped in the fact that Earth is about to be destroyed and you need to appeal it in the subbasement filing cabinet last week but you haven't developed time travel.
2. Replies - sometimes they have all these nested replies - my mother is famous for this, and then halfway down what just looks like reply re reply re reply re reply there's a lone sentence typed in that say oh, the car stopped working so we're spending your inheritence on taxi service but we can't be bothered having the car repaired since we must get on the internet now that we're retired.
Seriously, for those of us who have laptops, does anyone have an opinion or link on which budget graphics cards exist that are USB plug-ins, so that people with laptops (where the graphics cards are not normally upgradeable, unless someone knows how to upgrade an eMachine laptop) can get better video and graphics performance?
it's that diseases such as Sarburg and Ebola have an easier transmission vector if humans engage in direct contact with bat feces by either eating them, collecting fresh bat guano in caves (where the infectious load is still in active form), or collect fruit near bat caves where it is more likely to be active.
or would you rather admit that, since noone reads EULAs, this is all totally unenforceable from a legal standpoint and binds noone except the gullible.
Oh i dunno.. maybe the avergae temperature being on avg. 890F, for example?
Personally, I think it was a severe lack of Mint Juleps and Long Island Iced Teas.
That and having all one's wooden stir sticks light on fire.
Sending a probe to Venus ... $xx million dollars
... $x million dollars
... Priceless.
Getting back hi-res pictures of Venus under massive global warming
Realizing that this is what Earth might look at if we continue ignoring Global Warming
For everything else, there's Big Oil PetroldollarCard.
good point, I was reading a print copy of the Wall Street Journal in which they pointed out that the FCC in the Bush regime years has done more to encourage mergers, and stifle real capitalist competition, than any prior FCC.
Internet delivered in hot piping straight to your home.
But here we're in a race to the bottom, and we'll spend twenty years talking about letting a provider be a carrier for both signal and content, instead of doing something about it.
Inaction may not get things done, but when your political masters don't want real competition in a classic market capitalist form to exist, you say what you have to in order to ensure that such actual reforms never see the light of day.
did you mean Internet Explorer?
Dyson's nuts enough to believe Newt Gingrich.
Heck, even Newton lost a bundle investing in South Sea shares during that stock speculation bubble.
Having a great mind, doesn't mean you have common sense.
I would think that a few Windows engineers might leave, given that their talents in getting Windows working on the Mac platform might be more appreciated, but I doubt that mass defections are likely to occur.
... rain forecast for today and this weekend, as always, up here in Seattle area.
Mind you, the weather down there is nicer
I'm sorry, my head is spinning from all the spin you two are giving this topic.
I see you're new here. :)
Not really. This account I created a couple of years ago, but I have two other accounts I no longer use that go back to pre-dot-com days.
I was on the Internet before it was Arpanet, used to be a student at Simon Fraser University and we used 300 baud modems if we were lucky (1200 baud was cool when it came out).
I totally agree with you that it doesn't have to be that way (flood insurance being paid for by other taxpayers), but the reality is that today in the US it is.
Hmm, paying 20 percent of the value of your house per year - now, that would be darned expensive.
Those are features!
Hello, we'd like to announce a new security patch, that's um, kind of critical. What is it? Well, let's just say when we say it, everyone said "OMFG!" and started running around like people with their hair on fire ...
... well ... it's not optional.
... um ... your security ... yeah, that's right ...
Now, we can't tell you what it is, because if we did that, you might clue in that we probably made the same mistake in pretty much all the code we rolled out to give you that latest Feature (Patent Pending), and telling you would mean that lots of script kiddies would be making your copy of Windows Vista turn into a large pr0n server that played Death Metal tunes.
So, just trust us on this one, and
P.S.: Please ignore the large backdoor we installed to scope your box out to see if you're trying to run some kind of Linux device on your network. It's just there for
I'm just saying that taking a trip to Vancouver where we will do the obvious is a much better use of my money than on tech I don't need to overpay for.
... especially if you're metric.
Now, for you, perhaps you find that overspending on tech helps you in that regards, I really don't know. Each consumer has to decide where to spend his or her own limited resources.
For example, if you were Bill G, spending $5 million to get a really cool tech device is about what you made by thinking about it, so it's a reasonable amount of money to spend.
Your mileage may vary
Like nearly everyone else involved the EFF has an agenda and a spin.
You'd have an agenda if you had the Secret Service come to your place of business back in the day and take virtually every top-of-the-line computer you had sunk all your cash into, and then a few years later return those very same computers crushed into small tiny bits.
Does noone remember History? I remember Steve Jackson helping out the WorldCon in New Orleans by loaning us his computers so we could rewrite the dBase III code that their author/artist registration ran on, so we could actually hold the convention with panels.
A year later, he couldn't do that, because the Secret Service took his computers since he was writing a game about Hackers.
Maybe you like living in Soviet Russia, but I don't.