Sony, Nintendo Announce 'Fixes' For Their Consoles

Gamasutra reports that both Nintendo and Sony still have a few kinks to work out from their newly launched systems. It may seem funny to an onlooker, but the spectacular Wii strap blowouts are being taken very seriously by Nintendo. People are evidently 'even more excited' by playing the little white console than the company anticipated, and they're investigating the possibility that the straps aren't strong enough. Meanwhile, Sony has updated the PS3's firmware to 1.30 in an effort to take care of the much-complained-about resolution scaling issues. Ars Technica (and several other sites) are saying that the fix doesn't really do anything, despite Sony's reassurances. From that article: "The priority of resolutions has been changed, putting 1080i over 720p. So if you prefer 720p as a resolution, be sure to uncheck 1080i as a possible resolution on your television, or else games that support both resolutions will automatically display at 1080i. Of course, if you uncheck 1080i as a resolution, your Blu-ray movies will display at 480p. So you'll have to just manually switch the resolution yourself depending on what you're doing ... If you have a 720p set, not only has Sony not fixed the scaling issues, they've made the process of playing games and watching movies less user friendly. Sony really wants you to upgrade into a 1080p set, and they seem to want to punish you if you don't have one."

foobar

[jrwr00]

i can understand the Wii's prob, but wow, the PS3 is having some high-def issues here

Sony...

[Mysteerie]

Sony, fix the price first!

Cushy retirement job

[DingerX]

Okay, so before it was: "If my machine doesn't show 1080p, fall back on 720p, and 1080i (only) is screwed". Now it's "If my machine doesn't show 1080p, fall back on 1080i, and everyone else is screwed".

So it went from a minor annoyance to a severe problem?

Who put Don Rumsfeld in charge of patches?

Heh...

[Otter]

People are evidently 'even more excited' by playing the little white console than the company anticipated, and they're investigating the possibility that the straps aren't strong enough.

Even by Zonk standards, this is some impressive spinning -- it's not a defect, it's just that the fantasticness of the Wii is so all-encompassing that the designers couldn't have anticipated how much players would love it!

Microsoft should have come up with that: "Players are so exhilarated by the 360 that they can sometimes set the carpet on fire!"

Re:Cushy retirement job

[WidescreenFreak]

"Well, there are known knowns and known unknowns. The 1080p to 720p problem was a known known, but the 1080p to 1080i problem was a known unknown. But, we didn't know that it was a known unknown until it became a known known. But the best solution is still unknown, apparently."
-- D. Rumsfeld on the Sony high-def concerns

Re:Sony...

[Anonymous Coward]

You misspelled 'Ebay'

Which, if anything, demonstrates that Sony got the price right.

Re:Sony...

[DotWarner]

Yeah, Sony, fix the price! You've already got all that experience doing it in the music industry, so it should be easy!

Re:Heh...

[DotWarner]

Yes, but if you quote that one, you have to give equal time to this one, too... http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/13 [penny-arcade.com]

Re:It's time to stop the lawsuits

[GrayCalx]

On a related note, society on the whole is far to sue happy and I'm of the opinion that they should institute a mandatory penalty for bringing frivolous law suits.

How dare you insinuate I'm sue happy... you'll be hearing from my lawyer.

Re:What spin?!

[rlp]

Nintendo designed the Wiimote to what they felt would be appropriate safety standards when used responsibly and with a modicum of common sense.

And then released it to the gaming public!! The height of irresponsibility!

Re:"even more excited"

[LordVader717]

Wow, that's a relief. I think it even makes up for the $83 extra we're paying.

Re:If you look...

[Trigun]

They didn't expect Americans to be fit enough to smash a television, and even should the unthinkable happen, the player would surely die of the shock of destroying his God.

Ooh, I'm going to hear it for that one.

That's not fair!

[XnavxeMiyyep]

Damn you! How could you be so culturally insensitive as to insult my god!?