Call me cynical, but I've always thought that one of the seller's motivations in using blister packs is to force the consumer to mangle the packaging so badly when opening it that he or she will only bother trying to return the item if it has severe defects.
"First thought I had too. I'm not sure how someone can see the backlash against the PS3 on the web, and not conclude that the PS3 is on shaky groud well before launch..."
I suspect that the negative hype around the PS3 will be another manifestation of the Snakes on a Plane effect, in which a small core of dedicated fanatics voicing their opinion ad nauseum is misunderstood as a widespread grassroots movement. I suspect that the small group of hardcore "Wii60" fans will, like their SoaP brethren, turn out to be a mostly inconsequential factor in the overall performance of the PS3.
The games-related discourse on the web is dominated by the voices of hardcore gamers and (to a greater extent in the case of hardware releases) system-specific fanboys. However, time and time again, these groups have been shown to be an imperfect reflection of the overall market. Take Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, for example. It was a critical darling and holds a hallowed place on many gamers lists of the all-time greatest games, yet it still sold terribly. Another good example is Madden. Each release meets with a flurry of "Roster Update: 200x" criticisms from the online community, yet the series is a top-seller in the US every year.
The majority of gamers aren't keeping with the bad press on the PS3. What they do know is that the Playstation 1 and 2 were excellent systems. They're also likely to see the PS3's higher price as meaning that it really is leaps and bounds ahead of the 360. As much as you may hate to acknowledge Sony's arrogant statements that they don't need a killer app and that the PS3 will sell out on sheer brand recognition, they are probably correct. The real question on PS3's future is whether the manufacturing costs of Blu-Ray and Cell will drop at a fast enough pace that they can lower the price to a more mainstream-friendly level after the initial shipments have sold out. The real question of whether or not the PS3 can become a market success will be determined next holiday season, not this one.
Except that selling music videos is not a main revenue stream for record labels. Their money is made selling CDs, and music videos are little more than advertisements for songs.
Imagine the following scenario:
Your buddy sends a YouTube link to a funny music vid. You play the video a few times, and the song gets stuck in your head. There is now a much greater chance that you'll go out and buy the album that the song is on.
MTV used to be a great advertising venue for the music industry, but execs have probably come to realise that people in their teens and twenties, a prime music-buying demographic, are no longer watching television with any frequency. YouTube is a great venue for reaching this demographic.
YouTube is an even better match because, unlike Apple's music video downloads, YouTube makes its videos difficult for the average user to download. Even when downloaded, the file is in the uncommon.FLV format, which will need to be re-encoded to be played on any portable media player. For those reasons, downloads from YouTube will not be a viable replacement for purchasing the album to the vast majority of consumers.
To summarize:
1. Good advertising venue for a key demographic.
2. Not threatening as a replacement to album purchases.
Comparing potenial CPU, graphics, memory, or storage upgrades to failures like 64DD, 32X, and PS2 HDD misses an important point.
In the PC world, having different configurations is accepted, which faster configurations yielding higher resolutions, the choice of more advanced effects, or better framerates. On the other hand, look at the upgrade from CD-ROM to DVD-ROM, which changed the delivery method for the PC. Even today, years after the DVD-ROM was introduced, most games still ship on multiple CDs rather than on a single DVD.
The key difference is that the DVD-ROM, like the 64DD, 32X, and PS2HDD, comprised a change in delivery mechanism that ensured that games made for the upgraded systems would not be compatible with un-upgraded hardware. On the other hand, differences in CPU, RAM, etc. do not inherently exclude a game from running on a given system, as long as the developers design the game to run on the lowest common denominator hardware. Since there will be financial incentive for developers to do so, it makes sense that they would.
NextGen's translation of the interview includes a lot more information than the linked article.
Kutaragi went into greater detail about how he feels the PS3 will be a computer. "The HDD is not the only element which gives the PS3 its computer nature. Everything has been planned and designed so it will become a computer. The previous PlayStation had a memory slot as its unique interface. In contrast, the PS3 features PC standard interfaces. Because they are standard, they are open.
"We put up no restrictions. Because it is a computer, it can interact with anything, freely. If someone is familiar with PC building, he or she can upgrade easily PS3's HDD."
Slashdot Mirror
Call me cynical, but I've always thought that one of the seller's motivations in using blister packs is to force the consumer to mangle the packaging so badly when opening it that he or she will only bother trying to return the item if it has severe defects.
"First thought I had too. I'm not sure how someone can see the backlash against the PS3 on the web, and not conclude that the PS3 is on shaky groud well before launch..."
I suspect that the negative hype around the PS3 will be another manifestation of the Snakes on a Plane effect, in which a small core of dedicated fanatics voicing their opinion ad nauseum is misunderstood as a widespread grassroots movement. I suspect that the small group of hardcore "Wii60" fans will, like their SoaP brethren, turn out to be a mostly inconsequential factor in the overall performance of the PS3.
The games-related discourse on the web is dominated by the voices of hardcore gamers and (to a greater extent in the case of hardware releases) system-specific fanboys. However, time and time again, these groups have been shown to be an imperfect reflection of the overall market. Take Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, for example. It was a critical darling and holds a hallowed place on many gamers lists of the all-time greatest games, yet it still sold terribly. Another good example is Madden. Each release meets with a flurry of "Roster Update: 200x" criticisms from the online community, yet the series is a top-seller in the US every year.
The majority of gamers aren't keeping with the bad press on the PS3. What they do know is that the Playstation 1 and 2 were excellent systems. They're also likely to see the PS3's higher price as meaning that it really is leaps and bounds ahead of the 360. As much as you may hate to acknowledge Sony's arrogant statements that they don't need a killer app and that the PS3 will sell out on sheer brand recognition, they are probably correct. The real question on PS3's future is whether the manufacturing costs of Blu-Ray and Cell will drop at a fast enough pace that they can lower the price to a more mainstream-friendly level after the initial shipments have sold out. The real question of whether or not the PS3 can become a market success will be determined next holiday season, not this one.
Except that selling music videos is not a main revenue stream for record labels. Their money is made selling CDs, and music videos are little more than advertisements for songs. Imagine the following scenario: Your buddy sends a YouTube link to a funny music vid. You play the video a few times, and the song gets stuck in your head. There is now a much greater chance that you'll go out and buy the album that the song is on. MTV used to be a great advertising venue for the music industry, but execs have probably come to realise that people in their teens and twenties, a prime music-buying demographic, are no longer watching television with any frequency. YouTube is a great venue for reaching this demographic. YouTube is an even better match because, unlike Apple's music video downloads, YouTube makes its videos difficult for the average user to download. Even when downloaded, the file is in the uncommon .FLV format, which will need to be re-encoded to be played on any portable media player. For those reasons, downloads from YouTube will not be a viable replacement for purchasing the album to the vast majority of consumers.
To summarize:
1. Good advertising venue for a key demographic.
2. Not threatening as a replacement to album purchases.
Comparing potenial CPU, graphics, memory, or storage upgrades to failures like 64DD, 32X, and PS2 HDD misses an important point.
In the PC world, having different configurations is accepted, which faster configurations yielding higher resolutions, the choice of more advanced effects, or better framerates. On the other hand, look at the upgrade from CD-ROM to DVD-ROM, which changed the delivery method for the PC. Even today, years after the DVD-ROM was introduced, most games still ship on multiple CDs rather than on a single DVD.
The key difference is that the DVD-ROM, like the 64DD, 32X, and PS2HDD, comprised a change in delivery mechanism that ensured that games made for the upgraded systems would not be compatible with un-upgraded hardware. On the other hand, differences in CPU, RAM, etc. do not inherently exclude a game from running on a given system, as long as the developers design the game to run on the lowest common denominator hardware. Since there will be financial incentive for developers to do so, it makes sense that they would.