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More Next-Gen Console Smack-Talk 123

Posted by Zonk from the because-that-never-gets-old dept.
With the PS3 now out the door in Japan, Nintendo and Microsoft are engaging in what is essentially the last moment for smack talk before everyone's cards are on the table in the U.S. On Microsoft's part, they're complaining in Europe that they want to go head-to-head with the PS3, and can't until next year. Xbox EU Boss Neil Thompson says: "In a lot of ways we'd like people to put the system side-by-side and see whether people want a platform where they're paying for Blu-ray straight away." Meanwhile, Nintendo is taking shots at both companies, saying that the next-gen DVD format war is bad for consumers. Says Nintendo Canada's Pierre-Paul Trépanier: "I think forcing a decision on consumers would certainly not be part of Nintendo's strategy, because we want to get more people into gaming and we want to make it affordable. Forcing people to adopt a technology and a model that's proprietary and still not established is unfair to gamers."
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More Next-Gen Console Smack-Talk More

More Next-Gen Console Smack-Talk

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  • I do not think it means what you think it means (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Control Group ( 105494 ) * on Monday November 13, 2006 @01:07PM (#16825946) Homepage
    I don't see how M. Trépanier's comments qualify as "taking shots at both companies." He's saying that forcing unproven, proprietary formats on consumers is a bad decision. As far as I know, only Sony is "forcing" such a format. The HD-DVD add on to the 360 is just that, an add on, and won't even be used for game content (unless there's been news to the contrary that I've missed...?). So the 360 is using DVD as the medium for its core functionality (games), just like the Wii is.

    (Or is it "Wii are"?)

    Either way, I'm going to be one of the losers in line hoping for a Wii this weekend. Hopefully, the combination of deer season and a Wisconsin November will keep them short for me.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bym051d ( 980242 )
      That's exactly what it means. But look at it this way, if Blu-Ray fails, your PS3 is still an incredible game machine. If HDDVD fails, your XBOX360 add-on is a useless piece of plastic. Obviously, Sony is pushing Blu-Ray because of the upside for their A/V business. Obviously Microsoft is doing the same with HDDVD since they're one of the founders (and because Sony supports the other).

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
        "But look at it this way, if Blu-Ray fails, your PS3 is still an incredible game machine."

        But with the 360 you have the option of waiting to see how it will all shake out. With the PS3 YOU HAVE TO BUY the Blue-Ray.

      • Re:I do not think it means what you think it means (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Control Group ( 105494 ) * on Monday November 13, 2006 @01:24PM (#16826222) Homepage
        But you're comparing the PS3 to the HD-DVD add on, which just doesn't hold water. If Blu-Ray fails, the PS3 is still a great games machine. If HD-DVD fails, the 360 is still a great games machine.

        What you're doing is equivalent to: "if Blu-Ray fails, the PS3 is still a great games machine, but if HD-DVD fails, your Toshiba HD-DVD player is a useless piece of plastic." The two statements are unrelated, except that the HD-DVD add on for the 360 is cheaper than the Toshiba was in the first place - so, if anything, you're better off with the add on (assuming you've got a 360).

        Sony opened themselves up for this by including the Blu-Ray drive as part of the core machine. MS avoided this by making it an add on. By the same token, of course, Sony has set themselves up to be successful if/when game developers start utilizing the extra storage capacity of the format, while MS has precluded themselves from so doing.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Aladrin ( 926209 )
          The proper response was:

          o_O i c wut u did thar.

          It actually sums up everything you said and also jabs them a bit about their inability to think it through. I quite like it.
      • But look at it this way, if Blu-Ray fails, your PS3 is still an incredible game machine. If HDDVD fails, your XBOX360 add-on is a useless piece of plastic.

        But the question is, does the Blu-Ray make the PS3 an incredible game machine, or is it the other technologies (cell, etc.)? If the Blu-Ray isn't adding that much to the gaming experience, then it's just adding extra cost to the customer. Some people are saying that developers are already filling Blu-Ray discs for individual games, but I wonder if

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by 7Prime ( 871679 )
          Correct, Microsoft has nothing to do with the HD-DVD standard. HD-DVD is largely a Toshiba endevour. Microsoft did, however, throw themselves entirely behind Toshiba in this, so they have quite a bit to lose if it doesn't pan out.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by amuro98 ( 461673 )
          What it really comes down to is:

          IF Blu-Ray is successful, then the PS3 has a big leg up, as it already includes the means to play Blu-ray movies.

          IF, on the other hand, Blu-Ray is not successful, Sony must still support it for the PS3, just as Sony must still support UMD for the PSP because both mediums didn't just play movies, but are used for software (the games) as well.

          Sony is gambling that the higher prices NOW will pay off in the future by launching Blu-ray into millions of homes, striking a large blow
      • That's exactly what it means. But look at it this way, if Blu-Ray fails, your PS3 is still an incredible game machine. If HDDVD fails, your XBOX360 add-on is a useless piece of plastic. Obviously, Sony is pushing Blu-Ray because of the upside for their A/V business. Obviously Microsoft is doing the same with HDDVD since they're one of the founders (and because Sony supports the other).

        And if neither fails? Then you have to buy the one you didn't get anyway, or miss out on half of the movies.

        Or you wait unt

        • And if neither fails? Then you have to buy the one you didn't get anyway, or miss out on half of the movies.

          Aside from exclusives intended to push one format or the other, do you really think that the majority of movies will be coming out on only one HD format?

          Which means in terms of the current choices, I see the xbox hddvd as being the most useless, since all it does is play half of next-gen movie content.

          All Blu-Ray does is play half of next-gen movie content (actually more than half) and allow

          • Aside from exclusives intended to push one format or the other, do you really think that the majority of movies will be coming out on only one HD format?

            Right. The studios could also get around the fatal split-market problem by releasing all their movies in both formats. I notice that some already are released in both, but some of the biggest studios are backers of a single format. Multi-format releases are not a great solution anyway, because it increases costs for movie studios who have to press two v

            • and it complicates things for consumers because they have to buy the right version for their player (so they have to know and care what version they use, as do any friends/relatives intending to buy them an HD movie as a gift)

              In my opinion, this is the number one stumbling block for both formats. This was a problem with VHS and Beta when they came out as well, but people had an easier time discerning the two as the physical size of the tapes were quite different. You could tell aunt Martha that your VCR

              • The new format war is going to stifle acceptance and sales of both types of HD media as the public is not going to be able to figure out what the hell they need to buy.

                I completely agree. The only way it will work is if Joe Blow can walk into Best Buy and ask "What do I need to buy?" and the clerk can say "Buy one of these players, they play everything" and then he never has to care about formats again -- until of course the Powers That Be decide we need to re-purchase our movie libraries once again.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GreyyGuy ( 91753 )
        If Blu-Ray fails, then there will never been an increase in Blu-Ray production, meaning that the component price will not drop nearly as quickly as expected (if at all), and it is possible that since it would then be a niche item that it might even increase in price. As would the games that need to be produced on Blu-Ray discs that no one else would be using.

    • Re:I do not think it means what you think it means (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HappySqurriel ( 1010623 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @01:17PM (#16826104)
      Nintendo is a very classy company by most standards and tends not to make (unreasonable) negative comments about their competition; in almost all cases of negative comments made by Nintendo about their competition you can interpret what they're saying as "We respect what are competition is trying to do, but we do not believe that this is the best strategy for Nintendo to try to achieve our goals at this time". On another note, it is always interesting to watch reporters get Nintendo to talk trash about Sony and Microsoft; you'll see someone ask Nintendo whether they think that it was a huge mistake for Sony to release so few PS3s in Japan and Nintendo would say "We understand the difficulty of maintaining a decent supply of systems, but our goal is to try to expand the market and we believe that the best strategy for that is to ensure that someone can buy our console in a store for the MSRP" ... or something like that
    • So the PS3 has enough room to provide massive content in it's games.. and XBox and Wii don't. To me that's all I need to know. What's the point of a next gen console that can't even provide more detailed and massive enviroments to game in? A graphics boost is nice as is improved controllers but I want better gameplay and that means more data available to the games, better physics, better AI, etc.

      I'll get a PS3 but I have no plan at all to upgrade my movie buying to HD-DVD or Blue-Ray or to use my next gen c

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by 7Prime ( 871679 )

        Physics, AI, etc. have almost NOTHING to do with disc capacity. These things are dry code, which takes up an insignificant amount of drive space. A good 95% or more of a disc goes into graphics and sound. Code for most contemporary games could still fit in an N64 cartridge. Maybe this is an exaduration, but not by much. All the disc capacity is for is for "pretty". Disc capacity has NO overarching effect on gameplay, WHAT SO EVER. Now, I'm not saying that disc capacity is pointless. Graphics and sound enhan

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by MikeFM ( 12491 )
          Maps and a wide range of objects DOES take up disc capacity. If you want massive worlds you can spend hundreds or thousands of hours exploring you need the disc space to store all the information. Maybe you're happy with repetitive textures and a limited number of different objects but I love to see huge and diverse worlds. You can have diverse and flexible AI by using that disc space to put many different personalities (or whatever you want to call different AI) in the game. The bare executables may not ta

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Yvan256 ( 722131 )
            Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2 are good examples of huge worlds to explore, but each game fits onto a small DVD for the Gamecube.

            If those worlds aren't big enough, then try Final Fantasy XI. This game is huge, the maps are numerous and quite huge too, not to mention dungeons, etc. And it still fits on a regular DVD-ROM, even with 3 expansion packs.

            I'm still predicting the same old "let's fill the rest of the disc with FMV" crap, even though this new generation should be able to render cut-scenes in real-

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by 7Prime ( 871679 )

              Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2 are good examples of huge worlds to explore, but each game fits onto a small DVD for the Gamecube.

              Although I would agree, we're talking with someone who's on a whole different level of "need to walk everywhere" syndrome. Did you notice his "like GTA but where I can walk into every building" comment? I mean, sure it would be nice... but... why? If the creators did that, then they won't have the time to put any time into making those buildings interesting, or at all inspire

        • the Wii will probably have the best gameplay (AI, Physics, etc.) since companies are being persuaded to concentrate more on that than "oooh... pretty".

          That's just like saying that if a girl is ugly she must have a great personality.

      • That's all well and good, to be sure...but what does it have to do with my comment, that Nintendo's criticism only applies to the PS3, not to both the PS3 and the 360, as the blurb indicates?

      • Re:It's all about having space for game content. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by HappySqurriel ( 1010623 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @03:58PM (#16828560)
        So the PS3 has enough room to provide massive content in it's games.. and XBox and Wii don't. To me that's all I need to know. What's the point of a next gen console that can't even provide more detailed and massive enviroments to game in? A graphics boost is nice as is improved controllers but I want better gameplay and that means more data available to the games, better physics, better AI, etc.

        I'll get a PS3 but I have no plan at all to upgrade my movie buying to HD-DVD or Blue-Ray or to use my next gen console for playing movies. The biggest deciding factor for me as to when I will switch to a HD movie format is when the format is cracked so that the security measures no longer work. I won't buy movies I can't copy and modify (removing menus, etc).

        In the previous generation (PS2/XBox/Gamecube) most of the games produced easily fit on a single layered DVD, with only a few requiring a double layered DVD and (almost) none requiring multiple dual layered DVDs; in fact, most games were easily ported to the Gamecube on its single layered (1.5GB) optical disc. The Wii (we assume) now has about 6 times as much storage as the Gamecube did without requiring much more data in game (because of it's modest graphics).

        The XBox 360 may not have the storage capacity of the PS3 but that shouldn't be too big of a problem because FMV should be far less necessary on a next generation console (the few double layered DVD games for the PS2 were mostly filled with MPEG-2 encoded FMV) and the XBox 360 can handle much greater compression on FMV than the XBox could, the XBox 360 can handle greater texture compression than the XBox could, and most polygonal data can be stored as a spline on the disc and polygonalized in memory; I know someone will say that polygonalizing a spline would take longer but the reality is that (with how slow optical drives are) it is much faster to store a model as a spline and then polygonalize it then to load a polygonal model from disc.

        Anyways, I'm not so sure you will see more detailed massive environments then are already being provided on the XBox 360. the more detailed the enviroment becomes, or the more massive it becomes, the more people are required to produce the content; if game budgets are already in the $20-$40 Million range (requiring 1 to 2 Million sales to break even) I doubt you will see many game budgets explode to $40-$80 Million (requiring 2 to 4 Million sales to break even) to produce your massive detailed worlds.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MikeFM ( 12491 )
          Most games are crap anyway so I'd never think that most games will take full advantage of the system they are on. The really impressive ones though are the ones that push the system to the limits. A bunch of FMV isn't a very useful way to use disc capacity given the quality of graphics on next gen consoles but you have a lot of other possible uses for disc space.

          I won't quite agree that more people are required to produce larger and more detailed enviroments. You only have to carefully craft the parts that
          • I won't quite agree that more people are required to produce larger and more detailed enviroments. You only have to carefully craft the parts that are important to gameplay. Even that isn't that important given the open nature of many of today's games. Most of the expanded maps and certain ranges of objects can be produced algorithmicly. A lot of things such as textures, sounds, and object primitives can be copied from title to title. A little work on world-generation and source materials such as textures a

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by MikeFM ( 12491 )
              It's not that hard to give primitive objects options that can vary the objects quite a bit without killing yourself with flexibility. You can define certain types of trees for instance but their exact number of limbs, health, etc can be varied. Then using a system which lays out these objects and configures them so they'll seem natural isn't that difficult either. Likewise with things like street layout or building layout. You have a given number of building types and each have certain types of rooms and pr
        • Actually I am not a PS3 fan, it simply is too expensive, but you mentioned better pyhsics, that is one area where the ps3 definitely will shine, the vector units in the cell processor have two areas where they probably can shine, physics calculations and 2d/3d caluculations, all of them can be made highly parallel. The hardware of the PS3 is really interesting, but for a console it is way too expensive. I just wonder how the general purpose computing thing, Sony has planned for the box works out. It could

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by iainl ( 136759 )
        The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion looks bloody gorgeous, causes powerful PCs to faint, seems to take the average person north of 100 hours to get through all of, and is generally pretty packed with content whichever way you choose to measure that.

        Yet there's a couple of gig spare space on the single DVD9.

        So I'm not convinced it's a terminal crippling of the 360 yet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

      Props, to my fellow Wisconsinite. Where you around for the snow store that blew through the SE on Friday? Just to let you know, Wal-Mart has listed in their latest flyer that they will sell at 12:01am the day of. They also claimed (strangely enough) that all stores will have a minimum of 20 Wii's and 10 PS3.

      Good luck. I'll be at Wally World only to pickup 2 extra controllers, since GameStop isn't pre-ordering them anymore and I stupidly thought the classic controller was a stand-alone, when it's just

      • Sure was; got to watch that roll through pretty much just in time for me to leave my office in Madison.

        Good to know on Wal-Mart. Looks like I'll be doing what I did when I picked up my 360 (albeit a couple months after launch): find a Wal-Mart that's halfway out in the sticks and take my chances. I expect 20 Wiis to last a lot longer in, say, Dousman than in Madison.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kuukai ( 865890 )
      Actually, the medium used for core functionality is irrelevant. Nintendo's games have been on weirdass proprietary media since... forever... The only "format-pushing" is in the movie-playing function. Really though, each company has a decent justification: Microsoft isn't forcing you to buy it, and Sony's games will actually use it. Yes, the motive behind each offering is ultimately to get you to buy a bunch of movie discs in their format, but if you just ignore the entire format war you won't be too hu

  • The 'choice' (Score:5, Insightful)

    by steveo777 ( 183629 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @01:23PM (#16826206) Homepage Journal
    I think /. as a whole tends to agree with Trépanier. Don't FORCE proprietary media formats at us through a console. In the end it comes down to what the consumer spends their money on. A good percent of people know they're getting a Blu-Ray player and that it's non-gaming functionality directly competes with HD-DVD if they purchase a PS3. I'm sure a lot of them see the Blu-Ray as a bonus. But I'd say even more people are outraged that Sony is offering them a product that is overpriced because of functionality they don't want or need. The consumer has a right to be angry, too. I know I wanted to play the next Gran Turismo, but now I doubt I ever will.
    • You had it half right. Nobody knows what Blu-Ray is or that it's included in the PS3. But I'd also say that people aren't "angry" about the price. If people think it's too much, they just won't buy it. But, all of the armchair punditry in the world is all pointless. We'll see if they'll sell. Personally, I'm excited as hell about the PS3, and I'm buying one ASAP.

    • Don't FORCE proprietary media formats

      An honest question: at what point do formats cease being 'proprietary' and become 'open'? At some point in history, even DVD was 'proprietary' - the average consumer did not have tools to generate content and store it on that medium. And what about the old cartridge-based consoles - those were 'proprietary' media as well, and not many people complained about that.

      There is really nothing new about companies choosing different formats for their devices; I don't understan

      • Actually, when the N64 stuck with the cartridge format, there was plenty of complaining. Publishers were hyped by the fact that pressing CDs for the PS1 was going to be incredibly cheap while publishing for the N64 required exorbitant royalty payments to Nintendo along with the high cost of cartridge manufacture.

        Gamers complained, too, because the use of the cartridge jacked up the price of the games. It was not uncommon to drop $70 for a title, a price that now brings wailing and gnashing of teeth from t
      • Honestly, I don't think it's the "proprietary" nature of it that's irksome in itself, it's that it's proprietary in an effort to lock you in outside the realm of the console. A proprietary format that was only going to be used for PS3 games would probably draw some ridicule (see the GameCube's disc format), but not such contempt.

        The problem is that Sony appears to be pushing a format that makes the console more expensive, that is suspected of not particularly enhancing the games, but that they're pushing f

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 7Prime ( 871679 )
          Nintendo had a very legitimate reason for staying with cartridges. It probably wasn't the best decision, as they lost the entire RPG market, but they did have a few very good reasons for the direction they took, which you outlined above. Some PS1 and PS2 games are incredibly painful to play because of their load times (Suikoden V, for example). But Nintendo's constant concentration on decreasing load times has lead them to be fairly good even when they switched to optical media, much better than Sony or Mic

    • I think /. as a whole tends to agree with Trépanier. Don't FORCE proprietary media formats at us through a console.

      If you are making the argument that the cost of the Bluray laser is not worth the price, I understand that argument. But these formats are all proprietary. Every one of them. I can't do anything with a 'Nintendo DVD' or a 'Playstation DVD', even though they are in fact on DVD media.

      Really, it doesn't matter if they sell games printed on sponges or in vials of liquid or anything, as

      • Oh, I don't disagree that the BR drive is an amazing piece of equipment. I'd really be interested in read-times and seek-times for the drives. One thing I don't like is that it can't be considered reliable right now (especialy after all the PS2 drive failures).

        But what I really don't like is that Sony is using PS3 to drive/push their format through. I understand and totally agree that they have every right to use whatever media they want for their games. But it's very frusterating considering the histo

        • I'm prefectly fine with Sony using the PS3 to push their format, it's a product they built, and using the same technology for their next generation DVD players is pretty much common sense for them. Microsoft was going to do it too, but figured out that HD DVD drives would delay the launch and they desperately wanted to be first to market.

          What I don't like is Sony passing on the cost of the Blu-Ray drive to the customer. Everything else is just people griping because they want something to gripe about. Re

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by ClamIAm ( 926466 )
          But what I really don't like is that Sony is using PS3 to drive/push their format through.

          Hey, guess what I heard? Nintendo is using the Wii to push their Wii format through. Focusing on Bluray ignores the reality that all these formats are proprietary, which is exactly what the parent said. And by "all" formats, I don't mean just video discs: I'm including the games themselves. Hell, the formats for PS3/X360/Wii games are even more locked down than say DVD, as the game formats are controlled by one com

  • Proprietary Models (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TPIRman ( 142895 ) * on Monday November 13, 2006 @01:24PM (#16826228)
    Nintendo is a great gaming company, and I'm excited about their resurgence with the DS and the Wii, but it will be a long time before I'm willing to hear someone from Nintendo lecture the industry about a "proprietary model." The Wii's support for DVD is one of very few times that the big N has strayed from its defining "not made here" syndrome. Have we already forgotten Nintendo's numerous examples of proprietary lock-in—one example that comes to mind being the GBA-SP's notorious "headphone jack [wikipedia.org]"?
    • The main thing is "not established." Where-as Big N has used MANY proprietary doo-dads in their products, none of them was something along the lines of the whole BluRay/HDDVD fiasco. There's a difference between them using small discs or funky headphone jacks, relatively cheap/minor nuisances, and picking an expensive disc player (for movies) that may become the next BetaMax.

      Honestly though, I have to say I'm surprised at Microsoft during this whole thing. I was expecting them to be as assinine as Son

    • Re:Proprietary Models (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chrismcdirty ( 677039 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @01:55PM (#16826678) Homepage
      Don't forget, Nintendo as run by Iwata is much different than Nintendo as run by Yamauchi. Iwata seems to be more in touch with the people who play games, whereas Yamauchi was a crazy old man, rumored to have five heads.
    • "Have we already forgotten Nintendo's numerous examples of proprietary lock-inone example that comes to mind being the GBA-SP's notorious "headphone jack"?"

      How is that lock-in? It says right there in the article that it was a form factor limitation.

    • Re:Proprietary Models (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @02:30PM (#16827198) Homepage
      Yeah, the GC mini-DVDs are also a nice example. Dragged kicking and screaming into the world of optical media, they still couldn't go with something mainstream. Most of their weird proprietary decisions seem to involve preventing piracy and enforcing their licensee agreements -- the GBA-SP thing was at least allegedly a form factor issue, though I don't buy that it would have been impossible to use a normal jack. Anyway, the point is that Nintendo has always been weird and supported strange proprietary tech, but only for purposes of locking down their own console. Sony and MS use proprietary tech as a lever to force consumer's to do things in other markets. This has always been the difference to me: Nintendo's megalomaniacal urges seem to only run as far as ruling video games with an iron fist.
      • the GC mini-DVDs are also a nice example. Dragged kicking and screaming into the world of optical media, they still couldn't go with something mainstream.

        Yeah, and you also couldn't play your PS2 games on your XBOX. What does it matter that your games use a format that won't work on another console or player? The point with the GC was that they were keeping it's cost down at the expense of being able to play movies. They weren't trying to sell anything more than a game system.

        With the Wii, they've added DVD
        • Yeah, and you also couldn't play your PS2 games on your XBOX. What does it matter that your games use a format that won't work on another console or player? The point with the GC was that they were keeping it's cost down at the expense of being able to play movies. They weren't trying to sell anything more than a game system.

          It doesn't matter. It was an example of Nintendo's fetish for strange proprietary formats and hardware. And I doubt it kept costs down to use non-standard DVD players, particularly fo

    • The Wii's support for DVD is one of very few times that the big N has strayed from its defining "not made here" syndrome.

      No kidding. That's an argument that I've never understood - often employed in the whole Bluray discussion. "If it doesn't catch on, its useless to consumers". Well its not like I can take a Nintendo 'DVD' or a Playstation 'DVD' and do anything else with it, is there?

      Nintendo used to sell games in boxes of RAM. Doesn't get much more proprietary than that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
        actually they were ROM chips, not RAM. there was small amounts of battery backed up RAM to store save files and sometimes extra chips for the system to use such as the SuperFX chip.
    • Yes Nintendo is one of the worst companies when it comes to vendor lock in, fortunately they usually are too small to roll really their own hardware, which usually opens their consoles after a while. The ds for instance just uses SD cards with a different proprietary form factor. The Wii finally uses a normal DVD drive and SD slots. But the history of Nintdos attempty to bypass existing standards is endlessly and also their list of having fallen flat on their face with it.
  • and remember Sony originally backed BetaMax....
    • So HD-DVD will win even though Blu-Ray is the superior product?

      *That's history talking, not me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jdgeorge ( 18767 )
      and remember Sony originally backed BetaMax....

      Great Scott, you're right! That amazing coincidence nearly slipped past us, in the same way that a steamroller nearly slips past the tar in a freshly poured road surface!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Osty ( 16825 )

      and remember Sony originally backed BetaMax....

      Sony didn't just back BetaMax, they created it. It was just the first in a long line of media duds for Sony: BetaMax, MiniDisc, Memory Stick, UMD, and soon to be Blu-Ray. Sony just doesn't learn. It's like the entire company is operating under a Kutaragi reality distortion field where they honestly believe they've won all of the past media wars.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by VJ42 ( 860241 )
        It's like the entire company is operating under a Kutaragi reality distortion field where they honestly believe they've won all of the past media wars.

        Either that or "if a first you don't succeed, try, try and try again" was drummed into him really hard as a child.
    • Except that back then, it was EITHER betamax OR vhs. 1 was bound to superceed the other.

      Whereas today, while Microsoft and Sony kill each other in a blood bath, the consumer will only start buying once no-name asian constructors bring to market dual standart recorder that records both HD-DVD and BlueRay.

      It's more "DVD-R vs. DVD+R vs. brand-less multi-standarts".

  • Oh, so it's not *the* Smacktalk.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Channard ( 693317 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @02:08PM (#16826872) Journal
    .. and here was me thinking this was news that there was a PS3 of the Smacktalk being released. Which is, for anyone who's not heard of it, a device that sits between the 360's headset and console and lets you assign swearing and sound samples to various buttons. I'd buy one to assign a bunch of Dr Weird voice samples to if they weren't so expensive, and if they were actually available in the UK.
  • ... check out these head to head screenshot comparissons of RidgeRacer on the Xbox360 vs the PS3 :)

    http://microsoftisawesome.blogspot.com/2006/11/ps3 -vs-xbox-360-screen-shots-update-2.html [blogspot.com]

  • Wii and a 25$ divx player.

    I mean, c'mon guys. I know the next-gen storage format war is important to movie enthusiasts and people who have huge storage needs, but the rest of us are still happy with our "old" technology, and don't see (or care about) the artifacts or "bad quality" of the image. I mean, there's being interested in bleeding-edge, and then there's being anal about a percent performance increase.

    I thought we geeks cared about content, low prices, and squeezing the most life out of any piece of

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