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PlayStation (Games)

PS3 On Track For Spring 2006 47

Posted by Zonk from the in-japan dept.
Reuters is reporting that, despite some reservations by analysts, Sony's next-gen console appears to be on-track for a Spring 2006 launch. From the article: " The timing of the release of Sony's updated PlayStation console has become a matter of speculation in the $25 billion video game industry and among the studios, hardware makers and other companies looking to handicap the battle over next-generation DVD technology. A spokesman for Sony, the No. 1 provider of game consoles, said it was still targeting a spring 2006 launch for the PS3, which is key to maintaining its lead in the game console market against Microsoft Corp. which recently launched its competing Xbox 360 console."
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PS3 On Track For Spring 2006 More

PS3 On Track For Spring 2006

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  • Let the marketing spin... begin! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Walkiry ( 698192 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @01:33PM (#14220984) Homepage
    Hey, it worked for the Dreamcast, right? The PS2 was supposed to be like a quantum supercomputer, hi tech industries would buy stacks of them for nuclear reactors and satellite guidance applications, it's going to have all the games in the world and we're going to release soon soon soon NOW! Wait a little bit and it can be yours!

    History does have a liking for repeating itself.

    • Re:Let the marketing spin... begin! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mrgreen4242 ( 759594 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @01:38PM (#14221030)
      I predict that the PS3 will be not much more powerful than the 360, cost about the same, and will be wilding disapointing to everyone who actually believed Sony's hype. Also, I predict that "Spring 06" means that in June we will see a few units come out, with mass availability (anyone can walk into any store at any point in time and buy one) sometime around September, perhaps as late as October.
      • Yes, but when will we get a price drop on the current generation so I can buy a PS2?
        • You do realize the $50 you'll save will only buy you between 1 and 5 games right? Probably 2 or 3 really good ones, or 1 new release. What have you been playing all this time instead?
          • I don't know. The $50 I save could buy 3 or 4 games if I shop around.
            It's really the principle, though. If I buy a PS2 or XBOX and a month from now they go down $50, that means I spent around $1.40 a day extra just so I could have it now.
            Plus I really don't have time to play right now, what with finals and Christmas and work, so it would just sit there taunting me.
            Computer games will hold me over until the price drop.
            • Which makes sense except that the PS2 dropped [wikipedia.org] from $179 to $149 way back on May 11th, 2004. You could've been enjoying it for a year and a half now. If you'd been willing to pay another $50, it dropped to $199 back on May 14th, 2002. That's 3 and a half years ago.

              Basically I'm sure you had your reasons and things going on to keep you busy, but there's a limit to the depths of frugality that make sense. If I still had time for PC gaming, I wouldn't spend $500 to upgrade my video card, nor even $300. The
              • But by your logic I should go ahead and fork the moolah over for an XBOX360. If I spend the $400 then I get to enjoy next-gen technology for years before the next next-generation technology comes out.
                We all have busy schedules and limited income, but I figure I can wait until things get cheaper to buy a console I'm only going to play a few hours a week.
                Damn. I wish I had all the money I had now when I was younger and had more free time.
                • Nooo, do the math. Fine I'll do it for you.
                  If you bought a PS2 in November 2000 for $300, that's $5 per month going to today.
                  If you bought a PS2 in May 2002 for $200, that's $4.65 per month
                  If you bought a PS2 in May 2003 for $179, that's $5.77 per month
                  If you bought a PS2 in May 2004 for $150, that's $7.89 per month going to today.

                  Yes you'll get to keep playing the PS2 after today, but the newest systems have the "hottest" games. Anyway, the most bang for the buck is if you'd paid $200.

                  Likewise you should
      • Also, I predict that "Spring 06" means that in June we will see a few units come out in Japan, with limited availability in North America sometime around September, perhaps as late as November.

        That's my prediction.

    • Well let us see, the PS2 has the highest number of titles (not even including the PSX ones) out of any other consoles, so all the games in the world: check.

      We're releasing soon! Well they've hardly shifted the launch date, and I'd say one season is pretty soon relatively. check.

      Quantum supercomputers? Well not quite quantum, but clusters of PS2s have been used for supercomputing [bbc.co.uk]. check.

      I do hope history repeats itself, if they make good on the promises this time, like they did last, we're all in for a real
      • Sony didn't make good on their promises, and "all the games in the world" only came because so many people like you just bought the things up when it had no real competition (because quality doesn't sell and the DC was shunned), so before anybody said "Where's my HDD? Where's my online play? Where's my online network to download music and preview movies? Where's all this crap you promised me?", they'd already sold 10 million units and developers knew they were gonna keep making games for it. Also, support b

        • Er (Score:2)

          by oGMo ( 379 )
          Sony didn't make good on their promises

          Er, yes they did [slashdot.org].

          • "Where's my HDD? Where's my online play? Where's my online network to download music and preview movies? Where's all this crap you promised me?"

            What part of that was hard to understand? Sony barely beat MS online (with a year head start), the HDD barely even released in the states, and Sony promised pretty much what Xbox Live currently is back when the console was in its infancy, and they failed to deliver. But it's ok, they're Sony and not MS so we're allowed to look the other way and not hold them resp

            • "("Spring 2006" launch announcement comes to mind, but TFA indicates that they feel more bold now)"


              Whoa, I made that comment without even first deciding to RTFA. I take the second part of that quote back, Sony hasn't changed their tune at all. All that Sony's done is reiterate the point that was made at E3, and I figure we should only take this statement seriously for the Japanese launch.

            • Re:Er (Score:3, Insightful)

              by oGMo ( 379 )

              Sony barely beat MS online (with a year head start), the HDD barely even released in the states, and Sony promised pretty much what Xbox Live currently is back when the console was in its infancy, and they failed to deliver.

              They did? Where? They say the same thing about the PS3 they said about the PS2... that the hardware would be there, and the developers could use it as they saw fit. Where did they ever say they'd deliver XBOX Live?

              Also, on the Toy Stoy matter, no I can't find quotes relating

              • Re:Er (Score:1, Troll)

                by RoadDoggFL ( 876257 )

                "They did? Where? They say the same thing about the PS3 they said about the PS2... that the hardware would be there, and the developers could use it as they saw fit. Where did they ever say they'd deliver XBOX Live?"

                Yes, they did. I can't find a more damning article because it was so long ago and most searches bring up retail sites, but Ctrl+F "movies" and the statement is there. I've seen screens for the PS2's proposed all-encompasing online multimedia network (that almost made me vomit at the time, I'm

                  • Re:Er (Score:2)

                    by oGMo ( 379 )

                    Again, still no claims of any sort of "PlayStation Live" in this article. We have:

                    Microsoft has made the biggest promises for Xbox Live, but Sony will actually get to the Internet first. The giant consumer electronics conglomerate will release on Aug. 27 a network adapter that allows its PlayStation 2 game console to tap into a broadband or a dial-up Internet connection.

                    So, MS promises Live, Sony is going to ship a network adaptor.

                    Q: Will Sony do all the heavy lifting with online gaming via th

                    • "You've talked before about the potential of using the PS2 as a conduit for downloading and playing back music, movies and other forms of entertainment. When will that materialize?

                      Like I said earlier, that's the best I can find right now because searching for "PS2 movie downloads" just gets me a bunch of crap results. A network where movies and music can be downloaded (an agreement with AOL was also announced, IIRC) that also features possible web browsing and/or (not too sure about this one) email check

                    • Re:Er (Score:2)

                      by oGMo ( 379 )

                      Now Xbox Live is featuring some of those things, and that's where the comparison came from. I don't know the extent to MS's multimedia ambitions with Xbox Live, but they were surpassed by those of Sony with the PS2.

                      Well this is true for the most part; my point is that Sony didn't really promise anything other than what was delivered.

                      If you remember the PSX... not the PS1, but the PSX that was a PS2 with extra networking and TiVo-like abilities... they actually did try some of this. And it didn't re

                    • No, the promise was a network that supported this. It was going to be elaborate and it was being seriously touted. The PSX was pretty much a precursor to the 360 and PS3 crap that everybody should've seen coming long ago (when they announced the online network I'm talking about), but the network was previewed and it was on its way. Sony dropped the ball with the HDD (don't know how significant that was in the scrapping of the plans), and they didn't follow through with their online promises. If I had subscr
                    • The games are only there because of the audience. That seems to be something people fail to grasp. I was floored with the approach MS took with the Xbox and it sucked to see it not pay of, almost as a warning to (potential) future console manufacturers (read: Samsung) that doing things right won't get them shit in the grand scheme of things.

      • Re:Guess which console I want! (Score:5, Informative)

        by oGMo ( 379 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @02:39PM (#14221651)
        I do hope history repeats itself, if they make good on the promises this time, like they did last, we're all in for a real treat.

        I'd like to add some detail to this. There are two big myths regarding PS2 pre-launch claims:

        1. Sony said the PS2 could render Toy Story in realtime
        2. The Final Fantasy 8 demo was faked, and we haven't seen anything like it on the PS2 to date

        The first myth is wrong; Sony never said this. If you don't believe me, try and find a quote, from a Sony spokesperson, that says this. Given all the articles are still on the web, this should be fairly easy to do, if this is true. However, it's fairly easy to find quotes from Microsoft spokespeople, like Bill Gates [weekly.org], that the XBOX would have "Toy Story quality graphics" (this particular case is from CES 2001).

        The second myth is a result of people being wowed by realtime graphics that blew away the current stuff, and forgetting how crappy the graphics at the time were. Here are two screenshots I managed to find from the FF8 tech demo:

        Decent. Way better than the PS1 [ign.com]. (Note, in that screenshot, only the characters are 3D, the background is prerendered.) However, the original FMV was still far superior:

        Now, regardless, the claim is that the original demo was faked, and they haven't matched the quality. You be the judge:

        Most of these are at least as good, if not better than the screenshots for the FF8 demo, and most of them are early to mid PS2 games. There are many more examples, but this is enough to compare.

  • do they have games planned to actually release with or soon after the launch of the console? Cuz they still don't have PSP games...though that "mega pack" does look tempting, however it is basically Sony conceding that they made a really sexy video player with a decent screen.

  • How can the PS3 top the PS2? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @01:43PM (#14221072) Homepage
    How can the PS3 top the PS2? I mean the PS2 had an EMOTION engine for crying out loud!
    • is the game library. Yeah, I know, backwards compatible. But I've got a backlog of ps2 games to play a mile long (Star Ocean, Raditia Stories, FFX, Digital Devil Saga, Atlier Iris, Virta Figther 4, Soul Calibur III, ZOE 2, Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3, Kingdom Hearts II, I could go on like this all day). The market isn't just saturated, it's saturated with really great games. It's gonna be years until I really feel the need for a new console.
      • I think that will be really hard to do. The more these consoles advance, the more work has to go into making content for he games. Just look at the polygon count of the objects in these new games.
    • Maybe the PS3 will have a Whining Bitch Engine....

      <duck/>
    • Yeah, well the PS3 has a reality synthesizer. No really. Look it up.
  • I can't imagine the PS3 being ready for launch in 5-6 months. However, no one will be happier than me if it is. Competition between Sony and Microsoft is going to be brutal this time around, especially with the added concern both companies have for the support of their next-gen video disk formats. This can only be good for the gamer. We will see cheaper consoles, better games, and amazing high-definition video formats flying at us from every angle very soon. The 360 got in early with a launch somewhere
  • But when can I pre-order the thing? Unlike the 360, this will play nearly all its predecessors' games. Since I don't have a PS2, I'll jump on the bandwagon for this baby so I can play all those PS2 games I missed with some AA? Maybe? Pleeeease...!
  • does this mean launch in japan? i feel like i read something about how sony is going to try to launch simultaneously here and there. if that's the case this is much bigger news. otherwise, it'll be till fall till the US sees them anyway.

  • I'll wait until... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @04:58PM (#14223078)
    ... the launch bugs are shaken out and I'm not forced to buy a bundle.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @06:07PM (#14223705)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

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