Microsoft Sides With Nintendo Against Sony

rafemonkey writes "Looks like Microsoft loves the Wii. The Washington Post has an article in which VP Peter Moore says that since the PS3 is so expensive, gamers might as well get an Xbox 360 and a Wii for the cost of one Sony console." From the article: "Microsoft predicted on Tuesday it will have 10 million Xbox 360 consoles in the market before Sony launches the PS3. The high-end Xbox 360 sells for $399, but it does not include a built-in high-definition DVD video player that comes with Sony's PS3. Sony plans to sell a premium PS3 model for $599 when it debuts in North America on November 17, and Nintendo has not yet disclosed pricing for Wii." On that last note there is much speculation that Nintendo is aiming for a $249 price point. Sony's Kaz Hirai has in turn responded that the PlayStation 3 is priced for consumers, who are getting a lot for their money.

Tricks microsoft

[rootofevil (188401)]

Sounds like they are trying to generate more positive press for the 360 by riding Nintendos coattails from the Revolution presentation.

You mean "Tricks Sony"?

[jchenx (267053)]

I know this is a troll post by a Sony fanboi, but I couldn't resist.

It seems to me the company that needs to defend themselves the most from claims of lies and trickery is Sony. Shall we jump into the time machine and see what claims Sony made last E3? Let's see here ... 4 ethernet ports (now only 1), 2 HDMI ports so you can output to two TVs (now only 1, and that's only on the premium), the boomerang controller is gone (although that's probably a good thing), Killzone 2 with awesome "in-game graphics" mysteriously missing this E3, and a Spring 2006 ship that has been delayed. Furthermore, they scoffed at MS for the 2 SKU model, but then went ahead and did it themselves (and WORSE since the core model is far crappier than the premium). Then during this year's conference, they talked about how their controller was truly innovative, even though everyone in the audience knew it's just a knock-off of the Wii-mote. And finally, their slides of the two SKU model during the conference listed the only difference as the size of the HD. But the press release later showed drastic differences between the two.

I'm not saying MS is amazing, doesn't make mistakes, etc. In fact, I think the 2 SKU model is pretty stupid as well, and the supply issues were pretty damaging. But man, compared to Sony, they look like saints recently.

And if MS is looking saintly, then Nintendo must be God. :)

Re:You mean "Tricks Sony"?

[jchenx (267053)]

Well, "far crappier" is relative. I was mostly comparing to the difference between the core and premium 360, which is essentially a different set of AV cables, and an HD or no HD (which you can upgrade up from). To go from the PS3 core to premium, you'd need to upgrade to the larger HD, buy a WiFi adaptor, buy a memory card/stick adaptor, and buy the HDMI add-on ... assuming they all exist.

As for the question whether or not the TV-out is a big deal, I assume you mean the HDMI output. There's an open question as to whether or not the PS3 core will be able to output Blu-ray movies to their full potential, since it won't be able to utilize HDMI. Technically, you're supposed to use HDMI, but it looks like most content companies are backing off that requirement. Note that MS is in the same boat, since their HD-DVD add-on won't use HDMI output either.

This is mostly a moot point since many HDTVs apparently don't have an HDMI input. The funny thing is that most Sony fanbois *were* downplaying that fact, trying to trumpet up just how necessary HDMI output was, because the original PS3 specs had TWO of them, while no other console even had one. But now Sony and their fans are backpedaling, since the core version doesn't have it, and they're trying to defend the core version as not being totally worthless.

Personally, I don't really care. My HDTV does have HDMI input, but I highly doubt I'm going to be buying that many HD-DVD or Blu-ray discs, until I know which format wins ... and that won't be known for a while.

But if I were to get a PS3 (and I probably will at some point, since I'm a sucker for Square-Enix fans), it seems like a no brainer to get the premium one. The core one has just too many open questions, and it's only $100 cheaper. But $600 is a lot of money, so I'm going to be waiting until well into 2007 or even later.

Re:Tricks microsoft

[Serapth (643581)]

God I wish I had to MOD points to mod you stupid right now, but sadly I dont. Instead im going to have to take the hit to my Karma. Oh well, well worth the cost to insult someone who is so mindlessly a Microsoft basher as to not take time to make a logical argument.

Oh... I suppose I should back up what ive said... um ok.

First off, the GPU in the Xbox 360 would probrably cost about the same retail as the PS3 GPU would, infact probrably more due to that 12MB of static, highly expensive framebuffer memory and the silicon that goes into almost free post pixel effects ( like 4x AA ).

As to money losing business, read Microsofts latest quarterly earnings statement... they expect to be cash positive on the 360 business within a year or so. I cant imagine Sony is anywhere close to that number this generation.

As to a huge leap over the Xbox 360, then why is it gaming media is pretty much united in slaming the PS3 right now for not showing any great superiority. Infact, any game they have shown as playable as been pretty much acknowledged as being doable on the 360.

Point blank, Sony stumbled and fell at E3 this year ( like microsoft did last year ). The only people that dont seem to notice that are Microsoft, er Micro$oft bashers and Sony fanboys. Which of the two are you? Maybe both?

Fuckit, who needs karma.

I bet he said that...

[moore.dustin (942289)]

While the rest of the world said I will just get a Wii and save the rest or buy games/accessories.

I dont know about the rest of you, but Nintendo really made it easy to choose which next gen to invest in.

Re:I bet he said that...

[Lumpy (12016)]

If Nintendo is smart they will aim for and hit the $199.00 target price and kick the ever living crap out of the PS3 and Xbox360. If they are also able to keep controls on the game prices like they have with the DS they will solidify their top spot like they did with the DS versus the PSP.

Nintendo is not stupid, they know there are many MANY more people that can and will part with $199.00 per console and $39-$49.00 per game than the Xbox360 and it's insane game pricing currently has. and with the PS3 rumored to have games near the $85.00 mark there will be no competition at all.

If you get your gamers buying a game or two weekly you get much more money out of them than the 1 game every month or two you get with the high prices of the competition.

Re:Wii is great if you like Mario, Zelda, and Samu

[conigs (866121)]

Wii needs more 3rd party support.

You mean like these [ign.com]:

Activision - Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, Marvel: Ulatimate Alliance, Call of Duty 3
AQ Interactive - Boxing Action
Atari - Dragon Ball Z Budokai: Tenkaichi 2
Atlus - Trauma Center: Second Opinion
Buena Vista Games - Disney's Chicken Little: Ace in Action Disney's Meet the Robinsons
Capcom - Resident Evil series
D3Publisher - SIMPLE series
Electronic Arts - Madden NFL '07, Medal of Honor Airborne
Hudson - Bomberman
Koei - Sengoku Action
Konami - Elebits, Soccer game
Majesco - Bust-a-Move Revolution
Marvelous Interactive / Natsume - Harvest Moon Heroes, Legend of the River King
Mastiff - Mr. D Goes to Town
Midway Games - The Ant Bully, Happy Feet
MTO - SAN-X All-star Revolution
Namco Bandai - Final Furlong, Mobile Suite Gundam, Digimon, One Piece Ulimited Adventure, Tamagotchi
SEGA - Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, Sonic Wild Fire
SNK - Metal Slug Anthology
Spike - Necro-Nesia, Jawa
Square Enix - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
Taito - Turn it around!, Let's go by train!, Cooking Mama -Cooking with International Friends
Tecmo - Super Swing Golf Pangya
THQ - Avatar: The Last Airbender, SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab, Disney/Pixar Cars
TOMY - Battle Action
Ubisoft - Open Season, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Red Steel

Yeah, I sure with they had at least some third-party support. While I'm not necessarily defending the quality of some of these games (I'm not necessarily a Spongebob fan), the point it that third-party support exists.

Re:I bet he said that...

[Niten (201835)]

I disagree... the GameCube is considerably more powerful than the PS2, and pretty much on par with the original Xbox. Have you ever played Resident Evil 4 or Beyond Good and Evil on the Cube? Nintendo's outgoing console is capable of some beautiful graphics.

The Wii is, of course, equipped with much more powerful graphics hardware than the GameCube; I'm confident that its games will look more or less as pretty as those on the 360 or the PS3. However, with its inventive controller and internet-based game distribution system, the Wii is the only one of these new consoles that brings something entirely new to the equation. In that sense, I would argue that it is the only one of the three that is truly "next generation."

Re:I bet he said that...

[Tim Browse (9263)]

The Wii is, of course, equipped with much more powerful graphics hardware than the GameCube

Well, the last I heard, '50% better' was a fair description. i.e. CPU/GPU are roughly 50% faster. I think there's 2-3 times as much RAM than the GC. All unofficial, of course. If that counts as 'much more powerful', I don't know, especially if you're looking at 360/PS3 hardware in comparison.

But don't get me wrong - I'm looking forward to Mario Galaxy and waving my Wii wand around :)

Re:I bet he said that...

[justchris (802302)]

Actually, if you watched or read any of the information about the Nintendo press conference, you would have heard how much they stressed the physics used in Red Steel and Metroid Prime. Havok, one of the two leading physics software products (the other being Ageia's PhysX) is developing middleware for improved Physics on Wii. All the latest physics buzzwords, everything that made Half-Life 2 so great, is already included in Red Steel, and that's a first generation game.

As for AI, Wii potentially has better AI than either PS3 or 360. The only difference is, with a slower processor, it'll be able to control fewer AI at a time. So while you won't be able to have 100 reasonably intelligent AI, you will get 20 brilliant AI. It's a tradeoff, and will work better for some games than for others.

Add to that truly next generation controls, persistent, free internet service, and yes, more eye candy, and you still end up with a next generation system. The Wii will by no means be as powerful as the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but it will be a comparable solution.

Re:I bet he said that...

[drinkypoo (153816)]

All three (that is right three) of the last generation of consoles were more powerful then the PS2. For those missing one, it is the Dreamcast.

The dreamcast's CPU is a 200MHz Hitachi SH-4, which is a 32 bit RISC processor. The PS2's EE is a pair of ~300MHz 64-bit MIPS cores tied together with another, slower core. Even just one of those cores would be more powerful than the SH4.

I'm a little less sure about graphics comparisons. The clock rate of the PS2's GS is half again higher than the PowerVR II in the Dreamcast, but we know what clock rates are good for, and it's not much outside of marketing. On the other hand, the PS2's graphics solution definitely has more bus bandwidth than that in the Dreamcast.

Finally, I have both a Dreamcast (and maybe a third to a half of the games available for the platform) and a PS2. Even some of the earlier PS2 games look better and play smoother than some of the snazziest titles on Dreamcast.

Neither the numbers nor my experience suggest that the Dreamcast is more powerful than the PS2. I call shenanigans.

OH!....

[joe 155 (937621)]

dare I say it? the man is right. The games which come out for the 360 will be pretty much the same as those for the PS3, they have been for the xbox and ps2. There are very few unique games between those two consoles. The Wii will sport unique games from the other two so for me it's a must, also the 360 and PS3 will have similar styles of play, the Wii will be different. If you were to want both styles then it is only logical to get the Wii and 360 for the price of a PS3.

Personally I can only afford one - and because I live in the UK I'll be paying twice what you are anyway *shakes fist* - so for me it'll be the Wii

Please no!

[hal2814 (725639)]

"Hirai said different versions of gaming machines will likely be the norm from here on out, likening it to buying a computer today, where buyers can select from different configuration options to what best suits them."

There's a reason I play games on consoles nowadays. Consoles are simple. I really don't want to start having to study the game box to see if my console will play game X for that console.

It makes perfect sense

[glindsey (73730)]

Of course Microsoft is going to endorse Nintendo over Sony, because the Wii is not as much of a direct competitor to the 360 as the PS3 will be. So MS pushes a "360 for the bling, Wii for the party games" solution.

Why you'll want to buy an Xbox 360 and a Wii

[sjonke (457707)]

Microsoft's thinking is that every swing of the club/bat/racket Wii remote will send a cooling breeze of air over the Xbox 360, ensuring a longer lifespan for it. Of course this logic is flawed because users of the Wii remote will get so infuriated with the voodoo, not quite in sync gameplay of Wii games that they'll throw the Wii remote and nunchaka with great force, likely hitting the Xbox 360 in the process.

MS has said this lots of times before

[SilentChris (452960)]

Microsoft has said this before. When Nintendo first showed off the controller, MS called it "innovative" (the same buzzword they used when they were trying to protect themselves from the Justice Department, e.g. "freedom to innovate"). In every interview I've ever read since then, the interviewers hit hard with Sony/Microsoft questions then always toss in "So what do you think of Nintendo?" You always get "Revolution/Wii's innovative" and "I can't wait to play X Mario, Y Zelda, etc."

Does this mean a deathknell for Nintendo? Not at all. At their core, Moore, Allard, etc. are gamers. They're MS businessmen, but they're gamers. They know what good games look like and try to court the best talent (well, except Rare... :P ). I'm sure if Nintendo hung up the towel they would have no problem letting them develop on Xbox 460 and a Halftwist, but I don't think they're serious about buying them out or forming a partnership.

Re:MS has said this lots of times before

[barawn (25691)]

but I don't think they're serious about buying them out or forming a partnership.

Well, buying them out is a non-starter, as has been mentioned many times before. Nintendo's a 116-year old company. To them, Microsoft would be this little kid coming up and saying 'hey, I got 100 bucks from my parents, can I have your house?' Nintendo - the company - is worth a lot more to them than Microsoft would be willing to pay.

But I think you're right in that Microsoft definitely is not trying to compete with Nintendo. There was a quote from an editor at 1UP [1up.com] that sums this up nicely:

Nintendo's "job" now is to keep everyone honest. They're the voice that the industry needs.They're the conscience, and the guy at the back of the room reminding everyone why we got into this stuff in the first place.

Microsoft is targeting core gamers. That market isn't expanding (they're just spending more money, but that will of course end). In Japan, it's contracting. Moreover, modern gaming is getting more expensive, and margins are becoming much thinner, but hardcore gamers won't accept any less - they expect graphics to improve, effects to get bigger and better, etc.

Which means that, in some sense, Microsoft and Sony need Nintendo to succeed. I don't think Sony's figured that out yet (probably because Nintendo is out back in a Japanese alley beating Sony's new baby PSP into a bloody pulp) but I think Nintendo has.

Sony's tricks again....

[yeoua (86835)]

"We felt that if you want to save something on your Memory Stick, most people have those readers on their PC, which is easily adaptable to the PlayStation 3 with a USB cord," said Hirai. "The only difference is HDMI - and at this point, I don't think many people's TV's have that. The ultimate result, to my eyes anyway, is there's not a discernable difference between what you get between HDMI and other forms of high definition."

This seems utterly bizarre. Over the course of the PS3's development, Sony has promised quite a bit, and yes they did include most of what they said (Cell, Blu Ray), but one of the biggest bits of HD. And now the president says there aren't enough TV's to warrant putting HDMI on the low end PS3?

Wasn't Nintendo getting flak for just this for the entire time that they said that HD wasn't yet the norm? Granted... Nintendo's max resolution still pales to the PS3's max resolution even without the HDMI.. but BluRay movies with the DRM bit set won't even work at max resolution on the low end PS3. Perhaps this was the point of the delay over the DRM announced previously.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...

[TheNoxx (412624)]

After seeing things like the recent real-time trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4 [youtube.com], Sony could ask for my left nut and $600, and I'd still go for it.

Re:I've said it before, and I'll say it again...

[by Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, you might want them to take the right one as well. We're trying to weed stupidity out of the gene pool.

different demographics, though

[nicer (521808)]

My housemate has an Xbox 360.

He's a bearded, long-haired, late-twenties guy who can usually be found swigging a can of Strongbow [bulmer.com] while he blows seven shades of hell out of *whatever* on his Xbox.

I could imagine him doing exactly the same thing if it were a PS3. However, I just can't see him rushing out to buy a Wii so that he can wave his arms around like a demented orchestral conductor to the tune of 'Bubble Bobble'.

He's just not the type, and he'd only end up knocking his can of cider over.

I reckon the intersection of 'possible Xbox 360 gamers' and 'possible PS3 gamers' is a lot larger than either of the two intersected with 'possible Nintendo Wii hand-wavers'. Regardless of the low price point of the Wii.

Re:Eeep!

[youknowmewell (754551)]

Evil? Why are they evil? Have they killed countless millions of people? Have they disenfranchised an entire population and brought them under a brutal dictatorship? Have they done scientific experiments on unwilling human-beings? Have they enslaved millions of people to do their bidding in extremely harsh and abusive environments? Have they ever attempted ethnic cleansing?

Let's try a less exaggerated term. Unethical or something similar perhaps. Let's keep the use of superlatives like evil for things that really deserve it.

Re:Eeep!

[Marbleless (640965)]

>Have they enslaved millions of people to do their bidding in extremely harsh and abusive environments?

Yes, it's called Windows ;)

Seriously though, I agree that calling Microsoft evil is silly.

Re:So who do we hate again?

[7Prime (871679)]

While I would agree with you that Mario Kart is probably the most static of the series you just cited, I would like to point out that it's probably the least static series in a genre of extremely static games (racing). Seriously, how much do you expect a racing game to change?

That said, all the other games change more between two games then any other two games in their respective genre's (and I would include MarioKart in that statement as well). Just because a game is a sequal doesn't make it any more or less innovative. For the most part, if anything, it just places the game in a particular genre (Zelda is Nintendo's adventure games, Mario is their platformers and family games, Metroid is their sci-fi horror).

As to who to hate, I used to be a big PlayStation fan because of its plethora of RPGs, but now I'm seeing so many companies jumping ship on the PS3, I have to wonder what's really going to happen. Still, it's hard for me to imagine not having the system that Metal Gear Solid 4 and FF13 will be on. MGS4 looks... well... solid. And FF13 is bound to be good (every game in the series I've at least enjoyed, I don't think Square has produced a dog in their main line so far), and from what I've heard about FF12, they're back on their feet again. That said, I won't pay $600 to be able to play two games, so if there isn't a massive catalog to go with the system, it might be time to jump ship. I hate what Microsoft has done to gaming: gone and brought American developers's into the console market, but I have to admit, they have a solid product this time around, although if the Wii is as good as I think it might be, it may be the only system I'll need this generation.

Re:Getting a lot for thier money!?

[DrWho520 (655973)]

Considering the amount of tech in the box, the PS3 is decidedly a bargain. I mean, Toshiba has to sell their HD-DVD player, just a player mind you, for $499.99 [bestbuy.com]. An Sony can sell the premium PS3 for $599?

This is one of two things:

A - The game playing capability of the PS3 is only worth $100.

B - Sony is dumping its product onto the market.

I may be a Nintendo fanboy, but I am a capitalist first. Wii...