Game Publishers Pressuring Sony For PS3 Price Cut 232
Bloomberg is running a story about several video game publishers and developers who are pushing for a long overdue price cut on Sony's PS3 console. Sales of the PS3 are lagging behind both the Wii and the Xbox 360 despite the PS2's resounding victory in sales of the previous generation of consoles. One of the creators of LittleBigPlanet, a PS3 exclusive, made similar comments in an interview with Gamasutra, acknowledging that they're looking forward to the day Sony drops the PS3's price. An analyst from Janco said such an action is necessary if Sony doesn't want to "lose support from game developers and publishers."
Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way Sony can win is if they pretend they're not competing with Nintendo, [guardian.co.uk] and say that the Xbox 360 will be surpassed in 10 years. This conveniently ignores the high probability that the PS3 will be completely dead in ten years if they don't do something now.
Kaz Hirai is a lunatic and he's going to run the PS3 into the ground.
Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with your post. There's zero chance Microsoft will wait seven more years before releasing the next Xbox. Additionally, any student of MS product history will know that by version 3 of a product they've usually got the formula down and understand the market pretty well. Looking at the 360 and knowing how bad MS wants this market should keep Sony up a little later each night.
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But eventually Microsoft will have to stop subsidizing the XBox by diverting Windows and Office money to it. Anyone who's bought an XBox or XBox360 at the loss-leading prices Microsoft charges is benefiting from the Microsoft Windows/Office monopoly. Considering the billions the division has lost and the fact that even now it's barely break-even, it's going to be many many years before you could consider Microsoft truly competitive in this market.
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Additionally, any student of MS product history ...
Now THERE is a useless major. I thought "Communications" was bad, at least they can get hired by more than one company.
Mod parent +1 funny (Score:2)
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Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:4, Insightful)
The reality is that they aren't competing with Nintendo - it's not even close.
People rationalized the purchase of a PS3 by saying to themselves "well, I get a blu-ray player "free" with it" ... but now that blu-ray players are under $200, that rationalization is gone - you can buy either competitor + a stand-alone BD player for the same or less. and if you're not in the market for a BD player, then it's no contest, price-wise.
Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:5, Insightful)
People rationalized the purchase of a PS3 by saying to themselves "well, I get a blu-ray player "free" with it" ... but now that blu-ray players are under $200, that rationalization is gone - you can buy either competitor + a stand-alone BD player for the same or less. and if you're not in the market for a BD player, then it's no contest, price-wise.
Yes, just like the PS2 and DVD. The problem is that everyone HAD to have DVD, and everyone HAD to have a PS2 - the original Playstation having been the most badass system ever, right? (It was pretty fantastic.) The PS3 had a lot of competition, and it has failed to compete. Xbox 360 is just as fast, if not faster. Wii is cheaper and, you know, innovative. Like we always said we wanted, and we got it, and guess what? We did want it. And while we could all benefit from DVD, not all of us have the 1080i/p display that is necessary to derive any actual benefit from it.
RF modulator (Score:2)
And while we could all benefit from DVD, not all of us have the 1080i/p display that is necessary to derive any actual benefit from it.
True, DVD had the advantage of no rewinding. But at the time, a lot of paid-for TVs had no composite input jack, only an RF jack. The $25 RF modulators brought DVD's picture quality down near VHS's.
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True, DVD had the advantage of no rewinding. But at the time, a lot of paid-for TVs had no composite input jack, only an RF jack. The $25 RF modulators brought DVD's picture quality down near VHS's.
This is a lot of nonsense. I have a crappy Philips TV with a composite jack and an RF jack. I get basically the same picture whether I hook a player up to the Composite directly, or use the RF. In fact, my Xbox is connected to my TV via RF, through my Panasonic S-VHS which is basically just converting S-Video to RF. I realize that the conventional wisdom is that there is less bandwidth available for RF and so anything else should look better. In practice, the composite input is usually very poorly implement
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I have a crappy Philips TV with a composite jack and an RF jack. I get basically the same picture whether I hook a player up to the Composite directly, or use the RF.
But do you get the same picture if you use a VHS VCR, which most of DVD's target audience in the late 1990s already owned, as your RF modulator?
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But do you get the same picture if you use a VHS VCR, which most of DVD's target audience in the late 1990s already owned, as your RF modulator?
No, but that's irrelevant. Only the signal between the system and the RF modulator is relevant. All Playstation consoles can provide at least an S-Video signal, although to be honest I don't know what was actually used on the later model Playstations. Early model systems used composite-to-RF. As I recall, it wasn't that bad. The connector layout on the back included power so that the RF converter component could be active, and was borrowed from Sony Camcorders.
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[...] DVD players themselves were pretty common and available at reasonable prices. The "included DVD player" wasn't so much that you were getting a deal on one as that it let you reduce the number of components in your A/V stack.
Since I bought a DVD player and a PS2 at the time we're talking about, I disagree. The cheap DVD players of the day were pieces of crap, and so were most of the expensive ones. It was a big deal (to some people, heh) that the PS2 could play Dragon's Lair because it didn't have huge input lag. Today practically any DVD player will do it gracefully.
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Component in 2000? Only on high end, very expensive, large sets. I tried looking for a smaller TV set (15 - 17") with component, sync on green VGA, S-Video, composite and RF to hook my PS2 (and other game systems) up to in 2002. You simply couldn't buy one because they didn't make them. Manufacturers could make reasonably inexpensive small high res computer monitors (even LCD ones) but they didn't use that same technology to make cheap little high res TV' until recently. It's only in the past couple of ye
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At the time the PS2 came out, you would be hard pressed to find a TV on sale that didn't have s-video, let alone composite.
By "paid-for TVs", I was referring to TVs significantly older than 1997, when DVD came out. At that time, people were using their VHS VCRs as RF modulators for game consoles, but that didn't work for DVD-Video because unlike game consoles playing games, DVD players generate Macrovision copy-distortion signals.
More benefits of DVDs (Score:2)
And while we could all benefit from DVD, not all of us have the 1080i/p display that is necessary to derive any actual benefit from it.
DVDs worked wonders for users of the pirate bay.
Do you know how frigging hard it is to digitally rip a VHS tape?
:(
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People rationalized the purchase of a PS3 by saying to themselves "well, I get a blu-ray player "free" with it"
Really? I rationalised my purchase with "Well, it has exclusive games I want to play". It is a games console after all, that's what it's for
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You play games on your PS3? It's other functions are so useful that I actually play games less than I use the GameOS functions or run Linux on it, but I do use it... a lot.
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People rationalized the purchase of a PS3 by saying to themselves "well, I get a blu-ray player "free" with it"
For me it was "I get a Blu-Ray player that also plays Ratchet & Clank".
The R&C games are like digital crack to me. :-) I loved Uncharted and the Resistance games as well, and Infamous is nearly here.
I own all three consoles, and still play the XBox 360 the most, but with Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch developing PS3 games in full force now, I expect much better things.
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Sony is right - the PS3 doesn't compete directly with the Wii. However, in bang for the buck it surpasses the 360.
New PS3 80GB = $400.
Wireless Networking = built in
Network Gaming = free
Blu-ray = included
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TOTAL = $400
Xbox 360 60GB = $300.
Xbox Wireless Adapter = $87
Network gaming = $78 (covers your first 26 months only.)
Cheapest Blu-ray player on Amazon = $175
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TOTAL = $640
For an extra $240, you get a system with a smaller drive and an inferior Blu-ray player, and that
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Some people complain that you have to pay for Live, but if you buy the year membership, it works out to like $.16 a day. As someone else put it "you could literally pay for l
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The PS3 costs more because it comes with more.
Yes, but I can't drop any of it to drop the price. The fact is, here in the UK I can get a 60GB 360 here for just over $200. The cheapest PS3 bundle is $400. Which do you think people are going to look at first?
Also, 'bang for the buck' implies that games are better quality on the PS3 - which just isn't true. When you actually compare them as consoles, rather than as multimedia centres, the Xbox 360 looks just as good as the PS3 and is half the price.
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Ok; so where can I buy a PS3 without wireless networking (which I don't need) or Blu-Ray (which I don't care about)? By your reckoning that should cost about $140 right? ($400 - $175 Blu-Ray - $87 wifi) Which store do I pick it up at?
BTW, Sony Home might be free compared to Xbox Live Gold, but it's also only comparable to Xbox Live Silver, which is also free. If that makes sense.
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I bought a Wii and then a PS3. The Wii soon got relegated to the corner, and after a while I just gave it to one of my sisters so it would actually get some use. The PS3 isn't that expensive for what it is. I use mine as a DVD/blu-ray player, freeview PVR, I stream music and video to it from my computer to watch on my HDTV - oh, and I play the occasional game from time to time. I never even have to change the channel on the TV :)
As for cost, I'd go so far as to say the PS3 has probably paid for itself since
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I don't buy tons of DVDs. I check out DVDs from the library. I don't own an HD TV. I get a satisfactory DVR from the Dish Network thrown in as part of my satellite TV package. The PS3 has little to offer me and the
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Of course, if all you want is the games + DVR + streaming from computer, the XBox 360 has all that - use Media Center on the PC for the DVR functionality, and use the 360 as a Media Center Extender for the streaming. Really the only thing that the PS3 can do in media experience that the XBox 360 can't is Blu-Ray, and if Microsoft wanted to they could release an add-on for that too.
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Kaz Hirai is a lunatic and he's going to run the PS3 into the ground.
While I agree with you, what are we going to do for entertainment when that happens!?
I'd like to recommend Sony hire this guy to head the PS4 department: http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/ [welovethei...nister.com]
Re:Not according to Kaz Hirai (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually agree that PS3 would outsell Xbox360 in 10 years.
I doubt that. I don't think the system will stay alive that long, even if Sony doesn't give up on it the moment the PS4 releases they'll have a hard time gettimg more games for a system that is no longer a new system but not a huge market in the old generation either (and no more games support = no more sales). The PS2 received support for so long because it sold so much, it just made sense to put games there even with the new consoles taking off because the PS2 market is huge but the PS3 won't have that advantage, if anyone will then the Wii. Sony could artificially force a 10 year lifespan by making games for it themselves but the dev teams working on that are dev teams who won't be working on PS4 games in that time. Of course Sony can say "there's no point in a PS4, let's keep the PS3 going instead" and they might actually be right but if they're thinking like that their competition can do the same and the PS3 will remain away from the top while the competition keeps accumulating sales. I think by now Sony is like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, asking "when could we have said 'stop' and walked away?" Their situation is FUBAR by now and all they can do is hope they do better next time.
Then again their leadership is the kind that gets described as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the Wii came."
Pc games easier to pirate than PS3 games (Score:2)
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It's already easy to pirate everything else. I've had several friends buy PS3s once they realized it will play almost anything (mp3, wmv, divx, etc) without any DRM. Plus it upscales and looks great. When you add up the price of a great Bluray player (not all are created equal), an upconverting dvd player which plays divx, and a console the price isn't hard to justify.
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If only it could play PS2 games, I would be more tempted to acquire one.
I play in progrssive scan since the DreamCast, and would like to try some of the best games that the PS2 has.
But I'm afraid for Sony that PC-based emulators will get enough power with quad-cores CPU to run PS2 games flawlessly before they manage to provide a back-compatible PS3 again.
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... except the Xbox 360 can play all those formats, as well, so that's not really something that pushes Sony ahead.
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This is why despite a lower userbase, proportionally the games sell better.
The tie in ratio is the same as it is for the Wii and it looks like it's equivalent to the 360 when adjusted for time. Do you have any data that says PS3 games sell better across the board (not just the top tier exclusives, those sell on their own merits but the entire library combined tends to sell on the userbase's preferences)?
I want a PS3 (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never owned a console but lately I've been considering getting a PS3. The only thing stopping me is the price which when compared to the 360 is just plain silly. It's not that I can't afford the PS3 at the current price I just can't justify paying more than double the price of the 360 for something that is only a little better. The price of the PS3 really pushes it into the luxury / enthusiast bracket for me. I want something I can just kick back on occasionally not something where I feel guilty for not using it because I've spent a fortune on it.
Just my 1c worth.
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Well, I own both of them. I only paid for the PS3 (the 360 was a gift because I refused to buy one due to the RROD). RROD jokes aside, I actually use the 360 more for games. Mostly it's due to the controller, which on the 360 is FAR better then the PS3 one.
That's even before you count the stupidity of having to charge the PS3 controller by plugging it into the system, and leaving the system on for hours. On the 360, I just swap out a pair of rechargable AA batteries (conveniently the same ones that the Wii
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That's even before you count the stupidity of having to charge the PS3 controller by plugging it into the system, and leaving the system on for hours. On the 360, I just swap out a pair of rechargable AA batteries (conveniently the same ones that the Wii uses) and go right back to it.
The PS3 controllers will charge off any mini-usb plug. I think I have a dozen lying around right now. I try to avoid hardware unless it charges through that.
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Mostly it's due to the controller, which on the 360 is FAR better then the PS3 one.
Actually, that depends on preferences and the kind of games you play. The XB360's D-pad is notoriously flawed, so not good at all for fighting games for example.
Anyway, all of this doesn't matter.
What will make you want to buy the console are some features (like no region lock for example), and mainly the games, or rather exclusive games.
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F to the Y to the I, with the 360 rechargable kit, you plug in the controller, and turn off the 360. It will leave the USB port powered, to recharge the controller; once the controller's fully charged, the 360 will depower the USB port. Pretty slick.
Oh, and the rechargable battery pack just replaces the AA pack, so you can switch back as required.
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While BluRay players are dropping in the sub $200 range, it is nice to have all contained in one unit and to be able to keep stuff on the PS3 harddrive which the low end Xbox doesn't have. And there are things on the PS3 that are simply stunning which I haven't seen on the Xbox. There are a huge number of exclusives coming out as well. I'm a baseball fan and between MLB09 on the PS3 and 2K9 on the XBox... well... it was
Re:I want a PS3 (Score:4, Informative)
you are forgetting something.
The Xbox360 as it is CAN NOT PLAY ONLINE without you buying a gold membership. Some of the new games will play with the free membership but an Xbox 360 costs you an additional $59.00US a year to own if you want to play online.
Wii: Without a friend code, why not play vs. CPU? (Score:2)
The Xbox360 as it is CAN NOT PLAY ONLINE without you buying a gold membership.
Nor can the Wii, unless you have friends from the real world who happen to own a copy of the same game. Nintendo WFC does not have lobbies. Either you play with friend codes that have been exchanged mutually out of band, or you play against anonymous opponents that are indistinguishable from CPU opponents.
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Just because the anonymous users are anonymous does not negate the fact that you are playing games against human players. If they are indistinguishable from CPU opponents then 1) the game has great AI or 2) the human players are horrible.
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The Wii most certainly can play games online without buying a membership.
But can you even tell you're online, other than that it's laggier?
Just because the anonymous users are anonymous does not negate the fact that you are playing games against human players.
Some games are friend-code-only, such as Animal Crossing: Wild World and Animal Crossing: City Folk.
If they are indistinguishable from CPU opponents then 1) the game has great AI or 2) the human players are horrible. :-)
When Tetris DS was popular, most human players were horrible. As long as you were rated below 6500 in standard 2-player, the level 5 CPU opponent (Bowser) would hand you your behind more often than not.
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So basically you contradict yourself ?
You CAN PLAY the Wii ONLINE without having to pay anything more.
The XB360 is the only console that requires that you pay a yearly or monthly fee to play online against others.
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You CAN PLAY the Wii ONLINE without having to pay anything more.
Let me put it another way: With the Wii, how do I get friend codes without paying to join some AFK club? Nintendo doesn't want players posting friend codes online; they're considered "personal information".
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What makes you think Nintendo cares?
The NSider forum TOS banned sharing friend codes. (This policy changed once NSider left Nintendo.com for NSider2.com.)
Re:I want a PS3 (Score:5, Informative)
For the record, it doesn't cost anywhere near $59.00 a year, heck, the MSRP is 49.99. Amazon is selling the 13 month Live cards for $38.99. I bought mine from them a few months ago for something like $29.99.
http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-Live-Month-Gold-Bonus/dp/B000B9RI00 [amazon.com]
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doesn't cost anywhere near $59.00 a year, heck, the MSRP is 49.99 MOST people buy their cards at walmart or other stores, incredibly few but it online and wait a week for the card to show so they can use it.
Many places like California and Chicago have the cards in store for that price and if you give them your CC# Microsoft happily charges you MSRP online.
SO yes Many places it IS more expensive. and YES if you are savvy enough to go looking for a deal you can find them. Remember most consumers are NOT SAV
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Some of the new games will play with the free membership but an Xbox 360 costs you an additional $59.00US a year to own if you want to play online.
You're either spreading FUD, or getting ripped-off. The LIST price is $49.99 for 13 months, but you can easily find them for $35-40 if you even bother looking. Hell, here's the first entry on the Amazon search: http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-Live-Month-Gold-Bonus/dp/B000B9RI00/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1237408682&sr=8-1 [amazon.com]
Anyway, the theor
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The anti-MS sentiment on /. has nothing to do with Xboxes. If anything MS are more popular here because of the X-Box. My own anti-MS sentiment at least comes from their shoddy and uninspiring Operating Systems, and it started about a decade before I ever discovered slashdot..
PS3 != Xbox 360 != Wii (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sony's product IMO is a far better system to have in the living room. I mean you can actually copy movies and music onto the damn thing unlike the 360 (yeah I know direct cd import but not mp3 support???)
Install the Homebrew Channel on the Wii via Twilight Hack and you can copy movies and music onto that; I personally stream them to my Xbox, and only my Xbox games (original Xbox) are stored on my hard disk, along with XBMC.
Sony are not really competing with Nintendo or Microsoft here as their machines all concentrate on different aspects.
Aside from the lack of Blu-Ray support, XBMC is still a better media player than the PS3, with support for vastly more formats. Since I don't have any HD movies (yet) the Xbox is still serving my needs; it does have 720i/p and 1080i output so it can at least scale - scaling is done by the
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I like the Wii I find it much more fun when other people are playing as it is more of a multiplayer system.
Get LittleBigPlanet if you haven't got it (and if you do have it, just ignore the rest of this comment!) - it's honestly much more fun than I ever had on my Wii :) It's probably even worth buying 3 extra controllers if you have lots of friends round regularly. Definitely worth buying at least one extra controller anyway, and maybe your friends will have spare controllers. My best friend has 2 as well so we just share when we have LBP nights.
Whenever I've tried to explain LittleBigPlanet to someone they have
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It doesn't support .mkv because that's the preferred format of pirates. So don't use .mkv, convert directly to a PS3 supported format. It's kind of like how there's all those sites that serve flash video when they should just be using h264 directly, as god intended. These might help your mkv problem:
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Play-MKV-Files-On-Playstation-3 [hubpages.com]
http://www.bitburners.com/articles/convert-mkv-files-for-playstation-3-using-mkv2vob/4022/ [bitburners.com]
As for large 4GB+ video files, does burning them to dis
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Wii is a great gaming system, and its graphics are not "very poor". This is pure nonsense, but I see where you come from.
The Wii's graphics are "very poor". Piss poor, really ridiculously bad for a system sold today. The Wii has trouble matching something like Shadow of the Colossus in graphics quality, and that's a PS2 title.
The Wii also a really fun console which I enjoy a lot. It's the only current-generation console in this home. The Wiimote and the balance board are brilliant inventions.
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What ? Wii is a great gaming system, and its graphics are not "very poor". This is pure nonsense, but I see where you come from. Or are you saying the PS2 is not a great gaming system, as its graphics are even "poorer" than the Wii's, and it was still outselling the XB360 when it was alone on the "next-gen" market and even after ? The Wii is just as great a gaming system as its competitors actually. No, actually, it's better, and the sales show it.
I love the Wii, wouldn't have purchased one and all the accessories (like the wii fit, guns, extra controllers etc) if I didn't. I did not say the Wii was a poor gaming machine. I just think it is aimed at a different market. The wii untill the the price cuts started happening was the cheapest console. That helped them sell heaps of consoles. Also everybody who got the wii was mostly won over by the simple wii sports game. I was. Also correct me if I am wrong here (I am basing this on a report I read a year
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I did not say the Wii was a poor gaming machine. I just think it is aimed at a different market.
It's aimed at the videogame market, or the larger entertainment market, that is true. Sure enough, it's not always so clear with PS3 and XB360, with loads of features put forward that go against games.
For example, movies are competing with videogames in the entertainment market.
The wii untill the the price cuts started happening was the cheapest console. That helped them sell heaps of consoles.
And after XB360 price cuts, it broke records it set up the year before, selling 2 M consoles in november 2008, or selling 700 k consoles in january 2009 in USA alone. What helped them exactly at that time ?
If they sell more when they
Hidden Costs (Score:5, Informative)
With accessories and online costs considered, I'd say it evens out, and rather quickly at that.
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Xbox360 CAN be upgraded yourself. It's not easy but I bought a 120 gig drive from newegg and flashed it's firmware with a hacked one that identifies it as a xbox drive. used a few tools to move my bought games and other crud over and I now have a 120 gig drive for $39.95 and 2 hours of tinkering at home.
Honestly the bluetooth headset sucks. The wired ones are more comfortable and are less "icky" when you share with buddies or family members.
Finally, most people buying a ps3 vs an xbox360 do not factor in
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As for the built in Bluray. Most people dont care about bluray. The dismal sales of the players and discs scream that one loud and clear.
Sales for BluRay discs/players are beating DVD at this point in its lifecycle. We'll see what the economy does to that though.
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Exactly True. I'd love to have Blu-Ray. I've been incrementally upgrading my home theatre and have to do it as I can afford it. 2 years ago I got the nice TV & converted to HD Cable. Last year I got a nice Upconverting A/V receiver and an upconverting DVD player. Moved everything over to HDMI.
Blu-Ray is low on the list for 2 reasons. The Blu-Ray selection at my local rental shop isn't of interest to me yet (About 5 I'd like to see and 10 or 15 I've seen already on DVD). I know I can go netflix, b
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I didn't mean BluRay had actually beaten DVD now. I'm saying two years after its release (and scarcely one year after a format war) it is doing better than DVD did vs VHS at the same point in DVDs lifecycle.
I'm not sure if BluRay will have the 10 year timespan of DVD due to digital downloads, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. I keep hearing about people still using dial-up.
DNAS Error -103 (Score:3, Interesting)
PSN Online is provided free of charge, with multiplayer gaming. XBox Gold membership is something like $50/year, and is required to actually play multiplayer games on XBLive.
Sony also has less incentive than Microsoft to keep a given title's matchmaking servers going. In fact, Frequency and Dance Dance Revolution Supernova were turned off (DNAS Error -103: Title is not in service) before I could log in even once.
Most PS3 models have built in wireless support (although there were some that didn't), the XB360 Wireless Network adapter is something around $50.
Which isn't worth much if your existing network is all-wired. A lot of Wii owners had to buy a Wi-Fi gateway just to get the console onto Wii Shop Channel.
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Why not just put in a normal third party hd? You can do that you know...just premount it in a pc and use one of the ubiquitous online tools to prepare it.
hypocrisy (Score:3, Insightful)
Kicking fanboys when they're down (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the creators of LittleBigPlanet, a PS3 exclusive, made similar comments in an interview with Gamasutra, acknowledging that they're looking forward to the day Sony drops the PS3's price.
I look forward to the time when "exclusives" are no longer even pretended to be a good thing, and those who make those Faustian bargains are recognized as chumps.
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Lower console price is a good start... (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree, the price difference between the two is almost the same 'for most people' with all the peripherals considered.
But that initial price shock is enough to steer potential buyers the other way and that really is hurting the PS3's bottom line.
The XBOX 360 is Just as Expensive as the PS3 (Score:2, Informative)
That's right, folks. The XBOX 360 is just as expensive as the PS3.
A lot of people go around bashing the PS3, but I find that most of them don't own both systems, like I do. The PS3 is actually cheaper than the 360. Did you know that? Here's why:
1. The PS3 comes with wireless capability. The XBOX 360 requires a $100 wireless kit. That right there makes up the price difference.
2. The XBOX 360's controllers require batteries. An add-on rechargeable battery system costs about $20 per controller. The PS3's cont
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1. Not everyone needs wireless. My living room was already networked.
2. AA's are cheap, and the batteries last for months. I've had my 360 since Christmas and only changed them once.
3. Agree with this one. Bastards.
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1. The PS3 comes with wireless capability. The XBOX 360 requires a $100 wireless kit. That right there makes up the price difference.
Ok; so where do I buy a cheaper one without wifi, which I don't need and don't want to pay for?
2. The XBOX 360's controllers require batteries. An add-on rechargeable battery system costs about $20 per controller. The PS3's controllers are all rechargeable right out of the box.
Fair point.
3. If you buy something from the PlayStation store that costs $5 or more, you pay the exac
Oh, for crying out loud... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sony can't afford a price cut. Frankly, they can't even afford the current price, as evidenced by their having squandered almost all of the profits from both the PS1 and PS2 just keeping this train wreck afloat. That's the problem with predatory tactics like loss-leader hardware: sometimes you get burned by the risk, and Sony has gotten burned big time.
Ultimately, the core problem is that people won't pay $600 for a game console. Truth be told, they don't really even tolerate $400 at launch, if the 360's sales are any indication (for all that we -rightly- speak of the PS3 as a failure, it still consistently outdoes the 360 at corresponding points in its lifetime). This is because people understand that the value of a console derives not from what the devs put into it, but from what the gamers get out of it, and that there is really only a small section of the market that can actually be swayed by "better value through bloat" marketing Kool-Aid. The proper response, therefore, is to make sure that you can afford to release your console at a price people are willing to pay for it en masse -$300 at launch seems to be the limit- and if you can't do this, then you need to scale your technology back until you can. Sony failed to do that with the PS3, and their current situation is nothing but a natural consequence of that.
Truth be told, the 360 really isn't faring too much better. Neither market is large enough to sustain third parties on its own anymore, thus the glut of cross-platform games: the increased sales from being on both platforms can be just enough to eke out a profit despite the additional cost of porting. If anything, the real benefit of Microsoft's year-long headstart may be that it hasn't benefited from the marketing fallout of its failure due to there being no real basis for comparison. The PS3 has faced that in full measure.
But the real problem that faces both consoles, really, is that the self-described "hardcore market" is dying (and no, Netcraft has not confirmed it). This fanbase's obsessive pwn-the-n00bs mentality and fetish for gratuitous complexity have between them driven away most of the new gamers who might otherwise be interested, ensuring that there a healthy influx of new players. Meanwhile, many of the existing gamers in that market have frankly grown up, and in the process have either gotten bored with gaming altogether or started wanting more from their games than the generic "hardcore" formula; these have sought greener pastures and found them elsewhere.
But then, the attitude of the so-called "hardcore" has never been a gamer attitude anyway; it was a domination fantasy and nothing more. They've poisoned this market for far too long, and as a gamer I'm frankly relieved to see them being pushed back to the margins. If the 80s and early 90s were gaming's golden age, then let this generation be the start of a renaissance of gaming for everyone. The market will be so much healthier.
Speaking as a game developer (Score:3, Informative)
Now if we could only pressure Sony to make the damn thing easier to code for. Having developed for both I can tell you it's night and day. The XBox dev tools are much easier to use and better integrated into IDE and speaking from mostly writing multiplayer code the API are much simpler.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
As a graphics programmer, I must say that it's not so clear cut. Back in the day, the XDK-tools were much better. But nowadays, the PS3 has some really, really good tools. API-wise, I think it's a matter of taste. I prefer libgcm to DirectX, but the latter surely comes with more features "out of the box".
All in all, my experience is that you get stuff working so-and-so on the Xbox faster. But to get it up to maximum speed, you spend just as much time. So the 360 clearly wins in the prototyping department, b
Blu-Ray and the PS3 (Score:2)
Sony's between a rock and a hard place.
Firstly, they have to decide if they want to push the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player or a games console. The issue is that the PS3 is effectively a "price ceiling" for blu-ray players - the market for players more expensive than a PS3 is very tiny, and thus the majority of Blu-Ray players on the market must be under the price of a PS3 (otherwise, people will buy PS3s as Blu-Ray players).
Secondly, third party Blu-Ray manufacturers aren't dropping their prices fast enough - whi
The PS3 is a long term purchase... (Score:2)
Blu-Ray and the PS3 (and its power) are the future of gaming. The 360 is already at its limit as to what games it can handle. I'll still play Virtua Fighter 5 Online on my 360 until the day they drop the servers, but my PS3 is used for every other game I play on consoles.
http://play.tm/news/23623/tekken-6-pushing-360-limits/ [play.tm]
Katsuhiro Harada, one of the senior developers behind Namco Bandai's Tekken 6, has said that his new game is pushing the very limits of the Xbox 360 console, and that his game may have an influence over the specifications of the system's eventual successor.
"It is a challenge to fit this game onto one DVD and to make sure the data is read at a fast rate," Harada explained in a new interview.
Harada's title was conceived originally for the PS3, and squeezing the game on to the 360 seems to be quite a task, the designer struggling to ensure the title runs at a smooth 60fps on the new hardware.
When games like Tekken 6, or Killzone 2, or Metal Gear Solid 4, begin being regularly produced for the PS3 it will be only that, for the PS3. No one will be able to make those games for
Re: (Score:2)
including letting them run for hours and hours upon end running the Folding At Home client without shutting them off for days at a time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home#PlayStation_3 [wikipedia.org]
Wow, that's dedication. At my rather normal rates for electricity, that's $175/(console*year) for electricity to run F@H. Kudos.
Re: (Score:2)
[Citation Need]
And just where exactly did you "cherry pick" your statistics from?
I don't own an XBox, nor PS, but I'd like to know how your statistics are so absolute.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
[Citation Need]
And just where exactly did you "cherry pick" your statistics from?
I don't own an XBox, nor PS, but I'd like to know how your statistics are so absolute.
What ?
LOL, these numbers are taken right from TFA, using exactly the same data the "analysts" talk about.
It's absolutely right that for now, the PS3 sells faster than the XB360 despite the higher price point. You can see this clearly if you align launches.
You've clearly been fooled by MS cherry picking.
Most people don't realize it, because Nintendo flew past MS, despite being 1 year younger, so it skews most people's visions.
Re:I don't see how a PS3 price cut is "long overdu (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually you're wrong.
The PS3 is absolutely not outselling the 360 overall, nor is it doing so in Europe or North America. It is only outselling the 360 in Japan but only by around 10,000 units a week, whilst it's losing out to the 360 by around 20,000 a week in Europe and around 50,000 a week in the US.
The reason the AC parent has the stats he has (although they're rounded in favour of the PS3- the real stats are 21mill PS3s and 29mill XBox 360s) are because the PS3 had a period where it was outselling the 360, about 6 months into it's lifetime for around a year. It wasn't outselling it for the first 6months of it's life however and it has not been outselling it for the last 6, furthermore it's actually losing ground week on week in terms of the units shifted, so not only is it losing ground overall, it's losing ground at a faster rate week on week as an average trend across the last 6 months.
MS were cherry picking for a while for sure, but they're not now. They've got a healthy gain on the PS3 and it's almost certainly because the 360 is so cheap now whilst the PS3 remains too expensive.
It's also worth pointing out that MS is also selling over twice as many games per console as the PS3 so is making even more money than Sony in that repect too.
Go check the facts for yourself if you want at:
http://www.vgchartz.com/ [vgchartz.com]
Re: (Score:2)
So you asked for a citation, it was given, and now that's not good enough?
Where's your contrary evidence?
Re: (Score:2)
First question was mostly rhetorical, my point was, what makes these new digits, superior to any Microsoft have put out?
And I don't need contrary evidence, because neither evidence can be trusted, nor is it even relevant to the point I was making.
Seems like some people including "the industry experts" have been fooled by Microsofts cherry picked statistics.
So they "seem" to believe these statistics, and others "seem" to believe Microsofts statistics. I have absolutely no idea what Microsoft has said, or Sony either for that matter, but how can you say that people have been fooled by Microsoft, when these can just as
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
And? So they're doing slightly better than the 360 (not that the time adjusted sales really matter, what matters is the userbase you can sell stuff to). What does that get them? A medal in the special olympics? The 360 isn't the goal, the Wii is! Currently the Wii's userbase is about equal to the COMBINED userbase of the 360 and PS3. I know people love to fling around stupid claims like "it's a fad" (yeah, one that's already gone through half a console generation without ending) or "casual gamers don't buy
Re: (Score:2)
"Anyway, taking second place from the 360 is a worthless goal since..."
Actually, it's really not. This is a business, remember, not a race. Pepsi has been second to Coke since as long as they've existed, but because the cola market can easily support two competing companies, this means Pepsi can still turn a profit.
If there's one thing I've learned about the console gaming market over my twenty years experience with it, it's that the phrase "two is company, three's a crowd" has often been historically cor
Re: (Score:2)
Chances are as the market comes under greater and greater economic pressure they are holding off on discounting the PS3 for as long as possible so the can go with a major price drop for maximum marketing impact and a major sales surge rather than minor sales price reductions. Right now a lot of the component suppliers are starting to suffer and they will be looking for any opportunity to boost sales in a significant way even if it is with very low margins.
So who knows maybe as high as a 50% drop in price
Re: (Score:2)
There's a reason there's a long list of former PS3 exclusives that have Xbox 360 versions: DMC4, FFXIII spring to mind immediately, and rumors have it that Konami is considering porting MGS4 due to poor sales. There are others, (basically any 3rd party game developed for the PS3, ever) but I'm too lazy to look them up.
OK. You're even including rumors in your facts, which shows how well thought out your reply is.
Now, can you explain why some XB360 former exclusives are going to PS3 too ? Because of poor sales ?
Bioshock, Eternal Sonata comes to mind. There are also rumors of Mass Effect coming to PS3.
There are others, (basically any 3rd party game developed for the XB360, ever) but I'm too lazy to look them up.
Seems to me like XB360 and PS3 are in the exact same boat.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it doesn't. It seems expensive, because it is.
PS3 vs. PC? (Score:2)
PS3 offers you a Blue-ray player, an internet appliance, home media streaming AND a game console for around $540.
Couldn't one build a PC with a BD-ROM drive and a Windows OS for that price?
Re: (Score:2)
Sony should start releasing some old classics. Be it free downloads, chap downloads or updates to old games that people would jump on.
Final Fantasy WAS a Nintendo title till Sony came along...it worked before, do it again.
I for one would love to see updates to games like: Dragon Warrior, Battletoads, Contra, Ghouls & Ghosts, RC Pro AM, Baseball Stars and BaseWars...etc.
It's too late for releasing most of those old classics. They're available on the Wii virtual console already.
Unfortunately, the brands are installed now, it's too late to change anything.
And Final Fantasy never was a Nintendo title. It always was a Squaresoft title, and then a Square Enix title. These beliefs that 3rd parties' flagship games are tied to a console are part of what put Sony and its fans in this situation this generation.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of publishers AREN'T making everything for the PS3. The 360 seems to be the best supported console. Which is still odd, since it seems like it should be the wii. I get that it's not as powerful as the other two, and the controls were a new challenge, but it's been years, plenty of time to adapt, and it's been beating the other consoles this whole time. Where are the big games on the wii that aren't made by nintendo? Why aren't companies making games for the wii that are ported to the 360 and PS3?
Re: (Score:2)
"A lot of publishers AREN'T making everything for the PS3. The 360 seems to be the best supported console. Which is still odd, since it seems like it should be the wii."
It's only odd until you look a little closer at it. I'd say there's two main points about the Wii that make 3rd party developer a bit weary about the system.
1. The games that seem to sell the best are the ones made by Nintendo. Sure, there are exceptions to that rule (Guitar Hero, Carnival Games), but just a quick glance at NPD's charts