POL: February Console sales numbers

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by Deattribution

Yeah how dare they release a system and try to take the smallest hit possible to their bottom line! Those fucking bastards at Sony, what do they think they're running? a business!?!?

The gaming public never held a gun to Sony's head saying "include a Blu-Ray player".

The same people in this thread shit all over Sony's online gameplan and now that they have it up and running - free of charge, there hasn't been one positive thing said about it here despite all of them being proven wrong.

Proven wrong? How many reviewers of both online services feel that Sony's is superior, or that you are getting what you pay for with each?

There was pissing and moaning about overheating before launch, and there have been less overheating issues than the 360, yet nobody mentions anything about that.

There has been plenty of discussion of overheating issues with the 360 on this board and elsewhere. Are you saying we're supposed to be praising Sony because their hardware is working as it should?

People complain about the price, but the 360 cost less than the PS3 to make, so naturally it's going to be cheaper --- it's not as if Sony is getting rich with every console sold. They *try* to give you more for your dollar (obviously with some of their own interest in mind but MS has the same thing in mind with Xbox live), whether you feel that way is subjective but it doesn't make Sony the devil.

Again, the gaming public didn't force Sony to include Blu-Ray - the vast majority of them don't give a shit about the format with regard to games.

There are dozens of other things that have nothing to do with Sony 'fucking up' yet the same 4 or 5 people harp on it as if they actually know what theyre talking about while screaming they are unbiased cause they own a PS2 or think the Wii is best. Sad, sad people, really.

How in the fuck can you continue to think that Troy is biased against Sony when he constantly praises the PS2 as the best console in history is beyond logic.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Deattribution

Yeah how dare they release a system and try to take the smallest hit possible to their bottom line!

While selling as many consoles as possible. Since there have been tons of PS3s readily available in stores since the middle of January, they took too small of a hit and priced themselves out of the market. And each month, it seems like there are more PS3 available, yet fewer are selling. Is that not a valid point to make?

The same people in this thread shit all over Sony's online gameplan and now that they have it up and running - free of charge, there hasn't been one positive thing said about it here despite all of them being proven wrong.

I don't remember ever saying anything about Sony's online system (I don't even play game online with the 360). What were their problems with it and what did Sony do to fix it?

There was pissing and moaning about overheating before launch, and there have been less overheating issues than the 360, yet nobody mentions anything about that.

Bullshit. I remember people talked about the overheating problem with the 360 on this board when the system was released. There were a few times where people said to make sure to buy some 3rd party fan because of 360's heating problems.

People complain about the price, but the 360 cost less than the PS3 to make, so naturally it's going to be cheaper --- it's not as if Sony is getting rich with every console sold. They *try* to give you more for your dollar (obviously with some of their own interest in mind but MS has the same thing in mind with Xbox live), whether you feel that way is subjective but it doesn't make Sony the devil.

The compalints about price are directly tied to the complaints about having to essentially buy a Blu-Ray player, something that I personally have no interest in. If they had just used a regular DVD drive instead of Blu-Ray, they easily could have launched with the same price as the 360. Yeah, they try to give us more for our dollar....but they didn't. I'm not saying Sony is "OMFG GREEDY BASTARDS 600 DOLARS!!", I'm saying I don't want to have to pay for a fucking Blu-Ray player I'll never use. And because they are forcing me to pay for something I don't want which causes them to price their console so high, they are forcing me not to buy their console.

I'm not saying the are the devil, I'm saying they made a mistake, with regards to this "generation war", by including the Blu-Ray player.

The big question though is, what will serve Sony's purposes more, having the PS3 win this console war, or having Blu-Ray win the next-gen format war? Seriously, if Blu-Ray wins, how much money does Sony stand to make off of it?

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

I'm gonna guess what they'll say to this:

"If they didn't include a Blu-Ray Drive with the system, they could make it cheaper. BLAH BLAH BLAH selling proprietary format BLAH BLAH BLAH."

And this is wrong how?

"Obviously we'd rather PAY MS for the rights to play the games we've already purchased than get it for free. Obviously in some way or manner the games are better on XBox Live. BLAH BLAH BLAH Halo is great online BLAH BLAH BLAH."

How many reviews can you find that state that the PS3 online experience is as good as Xbox Live? How many reviews can you find that don't say, essentially, "You get what you pay for with regards to the two competing online services"?

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

If I was a mod, I would lock this thread, on the grounds that its boring.

Wouldn't it be beyond hilarious if I just deleted this thread?

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

It's real simple - if Sony doesn't fuck up, there's nothing to "bash" them for. Plenty of time was spent debating the pros and cons of the 360 launch around the time it happened - if you want to stoke your anti-Microsoft fires, go dig up those threads. But don't be surprised if you find more criticism of the PS3 launch. Then pause to contemplate the very real possibility that this isn't because of any bias, but because there's been more to criticize.

Bingo... and in addition if the execs at Sony don't act like no one has fucked up anything, there'd be little to "bash" them for. I mean it's like during the US-Iraq War II with Baghdad Bob standing there saying things that people KNEW were true. If he doesn't go to the extremes there, no one is really talking about him, are they?

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Bingo... and in addition if the execs at Sony don't act like no one has fucked up anything, there'd be little to "bash" them for. I mean it's like during the US-Iraq War II with Baghdad Bob standing there saying things that people KNEW were true. If he doesn't go to the extremes there, no one is really talking about him, are they?

Careful - you're liable to get tagged as a 360 fanboy...

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

Careful - you're liable to get tagged as a 360 fanboy...

Unfortunately I don't own a PS2, so I'm sure I'm there already .

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Wouldn't it be beyond hilarious if I just deleted this thread?

I would rejoice.

[WVUFAN]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

And this is wrong how?

Because it's the same thing the nay-sayers said about the DVD Drive on the PS2.

They were wrong, and only time will tell if you are. Sony has said from the very beginning the PS3 is more than a gaming system, the same as they said about the PS2. Y'all are screaming "THE PS3 IS ON IT'S LAST LEGS!!!" when Sony has said time and time again the system is designed for the long haul.

But, you don't pay attention to anything Sony says, right?

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

Because it's the same thing the nay-sayers said about the DVD Drive on the PS2.

They were wrong, and only time will tell if you are. Sony has said from the very beginning the PS3 is more than a gaming system, the same as they said about the PS2. Y'all are screaming "THE PS3 IS ON IT'S LAST LEGS!!!" when Sony has said time and time again the system is designed for the long haul.

But, you don't pay attention to anything Sony says, right?

There's no comparison between Sony putting a DVD player in the PS2 and putting a Blu-Ray player in the PS3. DVD was already a viable format and the added cost wasn't even comparable to the added cost of the Blu-Ray player. Sony also wasn't forcing DVD as a format on people because they had a vested interest in it.

Of course they're going to say its more than a gaming system because they're trying to sell Blu-Ray as a format when its in direct competition with HD-DVD.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

Because it's the same thing the nay-sayers said about the DVD Drive on the PS2.

But the DVD Drive in the PS2 didn't cause the system to launch at $600, it didn't cause the system to be priced out of the market. (The PS2 launched at $300, the same price the PS(1) launched at, the same price the XBox launched at, the Wii launched at $250....)

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

Because it's the same thing the nay-sayers said about the DVD Drive on the PS2.

They were wrong, and only time will tell if you are. Sony has said from the very beginning the PS3 is more than a gaming system, the same as they said about the PS2. Y'all are screaming "THE PS3 IS ON IT'S LAST LEGS!!!" when Sony has said time and time again the system is designed for the long haul.

But, you don't pay attention to anything Sony says, right?

Three things here.

1) The DVD player in the PS2 was essentially 'bonus.' The system was always going to read DVD-based games anyway, and so it de-facto had the capability to read movies. Sony didn't put more expensive tech into the system that drove the cost up to around double that of the competition and then say "But it's a good deal, you also get a DVD PLAYER!"

Which is essentially what they're saying here. And it's absolutely true if the purchaser is truly interested in Blu-ray as a format. It is NOT true for the majority of the mass market, and that's where they've shot themselves in the dick here.

2) PSone launched at $299 initially. There was nobody who would have purchased a PlayStation 2 who was going to be scared off by that price tag, no otherwise-early adopters who would have taken pause at the price point and said "Gee, I don't know..."

Sony had proven that they could be successful at that price point, and so for the PS2 demand was the issue more than capability and price point.

3) Design for the long haul is great, and it's fantastic that Sony is taking the long view...but if in so doing you cause a significant hit to your market share, what good have you really done there? Yes, you may ultimately sell just as many units this time around as last once you hit a mass market price point, but you've also given your competition a tremendous foothold against you.

Microsoft has shifted over 10 million units, and it's going to take something incisive, either in the way of a must-have game, or price movement, to jump-start the sales engine to the point of catching up. That also assumes that Microsoft will just stand stilll and let Sony back into things. Microsoft will hit a mass-market price point far sooner than Sony will, and Sony won't have nearly the library of third-party exclusives to hit Microsoft with in this generation that they did last time around.

They've got Final Fantasy and MGS4, and there's even some debate about the former. So what does that mean? It means that without the exclusives hammer hanging over their heads, Microsoft will be able to win converts far more easily once they hit that pricing sweet spot, and they'll have the benefit of having most of the same games that the PS3 does, if not a few of their own (such as Lost Planet and Dead Rising).

I don't think anybody here has been screaming "THE PS3 IS ON ITS LAST LEGS!!!!!"

What we're saying is that Sony have made one misstep after another, and they're making those mistakes in the face of intense competition. 6 1/2 years ago, they came to market with one primary competitor gimped and the other two in the position of coming late to the party. They haven't got that luxury this time, and that just magnifies every mistake they make.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by Deattribution

Yeah how dare they release a system and try to take the smallest hit possible to their bottom line! Those fucking bastards at Sony, what do they think they're running? a business!?!?

The same people in this thread shit all over Sony's online gameplan and now that they have it up and running - free of charge, there hasn't been one positive thing said about it here despite all of them being proven wrong.

There was pissing and moaning about overheating before launch, and there have been less overheating issues than the 360, yet nobody mentions anything about that.

People complain about the price, but the 360 cost less than the PS3 to make, so naturally it's going to be cheaper --- it's not as if Sony is getting rich with every console sold. They *try* to give you more for your dollar (obviously with some of their own interest in mind but MS has the same thing in mind with Xbox live), whether you feel that way is subjective but it doesn't make Sony the devil.

There are dozens of other things that have nothing to do with Sony 'fucking up' yet the same 4 or 5 people harp on it as if they actually know what theyre talking about while screaming they are unbiased cause they own a PS2 or think the Wii is best. Sad, sad people, really.

Who in the hell is saying Sony is the devil? Could you please point them out to me? I've said their launch strategy sucks ass. Tell me how it doesn't?

The only biased people are the ones who refuse to buy anything from the other company. If I hated Sony or thought they sucked, I would not own a PSP (and lets be honest here, the PSP has not did as well ass Sony thought it was going to do, there aren't exactly a ton of supporters of that platform)

You call my "bias" sad, but nobody has said a damned thing to contradict any of my points. OK, Mizzou came up with the Sony/TV article from above. Score one for the Sony fan club.

What other point have I made that has been proven wrong?

Now you are at the point you are just making crap up to try to prove your superiority. I questioned how good Sony's online service would be, but haven't mentioned it in the last four or five months. (long before the system came out) I've been critical of the price point from the time it was announced. I thought Sony was pricing themselves out of the market and that they'd be hurt badly by that decision.

Was I wrong in that assessment, or is there maybe some logic to it now that Sony is sitting in a distant 3rd place?

BTW, there is an article on video game charts that has the PS3 estimated at 600k in Europe. The mod says their numbers are showing about 520k, but that it could be as high as 650k. It doesn't look like 750k is going to be reached and that Sony sold in the area of 55-65% of their systems in Europe at launch.

Lets see if those systems start flying off the shelf next month. Sony still has some huge advantages long term:

1) They are Sony. The PS2 users will want to convert to the PS3 because of how great the PS2 was.
2) MS is dead in Japan and is going to find some tough sledding in Europe with the region code issue once better titles start coming out for the PS3.

But I'm not sure those are enough at this point. The Wii is going to keep flying off the shelves. The 360 has a huge lead and is wiping out Sony exclusives all over the place while at the same time producing a series of exclusive hits of their own. (Gears of War, Crackdown, Forza, etc.)

We'll see how it plays out. I'm just a Sony hater, what the hell do I know?

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

Because it's the same thing the nay-sayers said about the DVD Drive on the PS2.

Not quite the same thing:

- The DVD was clearly the new video media of choice at that time (DIVX was never really a threat), while it's taking the forced marriage of Blu-Ray to the PS3 to make Blu-Ray the leader in hi-def DVD media

- The jump in picture quality from VHS to DVD was much bigger than the jump from DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD

- The relative difference in disk storage from the CD to the DVD, relative to the general amount of RAM in gaming systems at that time (and thus the positive effect on game quality) was much bigger than the difference from DVD to Blu-Ray; i.e., Blu-Ray as a format (despite Sony claims to the contrary) isn't likely to produce a significant impact on game quality

They were wrong, and only time will tell if you are. Sony has said from the very beginning the PS3 is more than a gaming system, the same as they said about the PS2. Y'all are screaming "THE PS3 IS ON IT'S LAST LEGS!!!" when Sony has said time and time again the system is designed for the long haul.

I've never claimed that the PS3 is on its last legs - I figure when we look back on this round of consoles that MS and Sony will have roughly equivalent market shares, and Nintendo will be ahead of both.

As a trojan horse for promoting their Blu-Ray media format, the PS3 will be a huge success, as it will likely be the thing that pushes Blu-Ray clearly past HD-DVD (though whether this will prove to be worth it to Sony's bottom line is up for debate). And over time, as the price drops and the game library improves, more gamers will pick up the PS3. But it's not at all hard to see why the gaming community has had real issues with the decisions Sony has made with regards to the PS3.

But, you don't pay attention to anything Sony says, right?

I'm taking much of what they say with a grain of salt given how much of it has either been clearly false, or gross exaggeration. And yes, you could say the same thing about Microsoft I'm sure, though with regards to this round of consoles I think Microsoft's statements have held up better in general than those from Sony.

[cartman]

I find it oddly humorous that the guy who has stated he would like to stop all immigration is defending the console from a Japanese company versus the one from an American company...

[WVUFAN]

Originally Posted by cartman

I find it oddly humorous that the guy who has stated he would like to stop all immigration is defending the console from a Japanese company versus the one from an American company...

In this case, I find the Japanese company much more honorable and more worthy of my money generally speaking than a company that essentially forced a monopoly and thumbs its nose at the anti-trust laws in this country.

If Microsoft didn't behave like bastards, I would support them. Hell, I still may -- Mass Effect may push me into buying a 360.

And, for what it's worth, just because I don't want more immigrants in a country already overpopulated doesn't mean I don't enjoy the products they make in their own country.

I do see your point though.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

Mass Effect may push me into buying a 360.

Mass Effect is looking incredible from previews and has become my most anticipated 360 game by a wide margin.

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

If I was a mod, I would lock this thread, on the grounds that its boring.

It has certainly become that. Things were more interesting when we were getting some WrongWay/jbmagic style predictions that kept coming up short and the resulting spin/proding that went back and forth.

The recent Wah-fest has drained all the fun.

[wade moore]

FWIW - I am a huge PS2 fan. I haven't bought my next generation console yet because I'm waiting to see how things pan out. At this point, I agree with TroyF, EF27, etc... As much as I REALLY want to want a PS3, there are so many things making me realize that a 360 would be a smarter purchase.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Oh dear. This thread went severely downhill in 12 hours time.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Long article from a independent developer concerning the current platform battle. I'm actually just hoping that it will minimize the personal attacks by giving people something to read and we can get back to discussion......

Mar 27, 2007 : 10 Reasons Why PS3 Will Win This Console Generation


Insomniac Games Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings discusses why the PS3 is the console to beat

First of all, let me make it clear that Insomniac is a 100% independent development studio. Sony has neither endorsed nor authorized what I’m writing here.

When I started this blog post I was planning to write about Home and Little Big Planet from a developer’s perspective. But as I read some of the media and message board responses to Sony’s GDC presentation, I wanted to address an ongoing industry phenomenon. Specifically, the sheer volume of negative spin toward Sony from both the mainstream press and the internet community. Mere minutes after Sony announced a beautiful, ground breaking, free, community-enhancing online PS3 service, 100 internet posters were trying to argue that this was somehow a bad thing. Whether you love or hate Sony, if you’re trying to spin Home as a bad thing I can only conclude that you’re part of Microsoft’s $3.2 billion viral marketing campaign.

I’ll be the first to say that Sony has had a very rough road from last E3 up through this year’s GDC. Some of their wounds have been self-inflicted, but they’ve also had to face a conspicuously hostile media. Take the New York Times article “How the PS3 will kill your dog, steal your girlfriend, and infect you with Ebola.” And Time magazine’s piece “Global Warming: Is It The PS3?” And more recently, GameSpot’s “Ten Complaints We Thought Up While Everyone Else Was Watching Little Big Planet.”

For the last nine months it has been fashionable to bash the PS3. At first it was controversial, even titillating, to make sensational and dire predictions about the PS3’s future. You could watch it happen again and again – a rumor starts on a message board (“The PS3s all caught on fire at TGS!”, “Blu-Ray won’t have any Porn!”), then it gets picked up by a games industry website, and a few days later USA Today runs the story with the headline “Experts Say PS3 Doom3d!1!!” But the tide has changed so much now that it’s downright controversial to suggest that the PS3 may yet be a success. So, in the spirit of sensationalism and controversy, let me present to you 10 reasons why the PS3 will be the console market leader by 2010:

1. Home & Little Big Planet
One of my jobs at Insomniac is to try to come up with “the next big thing.” This is something everyone at Insomniac does, but as Chief Creative Officer it’s also part of my job description. For the last two years there have been two concepts that I have felt had the strongest potential to be the next big thing. At GDC, Sony came out of the blue and delivered fully-realized versions of both concepts.

The first concept is a realization of the ‘Metaverse’ from Neal Stephenson’s groundbreaking novel Snow Crash. For those who haven’t read it, it’s what inspired Second Life. Over the last couple years, many of us at Insomniac have come up with lots of different ideas on how to make such a system for consoles. So when Home came out, already nearly complete and looking beautiful, it was both amazing and humbling at the same time. In short, Home is exactly what the online console community needs. I’m not saying that because it’s on the PS3. I’m saying that because Home is a fully realized version of something I’ve been trying to figure out how to do for two years.

The other “next big thing” I had been thinking about is how to make a game that is primarily driven by player-generated content. So when Little Big Planet was announced I felt like Orville Wright tinkering on a bicycle-powered balsa wood plane as a learjet suddenly flew overhead. Not only does Little Big Planet have stunningly beautiful graphics, gorgeous animation, brilliant physics and intuitive controls, it’s also a cooperative four player online game! This alone makes it accessible to a much greater audience than player vs player games. And most important of all, it has an absolutely ingenuous system for creating and sharing your own levels. This is HUGE. This is something that’s never been done on consoles and now it’s being introduced not as a half-baked add-on to another game, but as an absolutely brilliant, fully realized, breathtaking experience. You can bet that dozens of developers will create their own Little Big Planet levels as soon as it comes out. Many future game designers will get their start by designing Little Big Planet levels. Gamers who previously had no way to get their foot in the door as a game designer will have developers calling them in the middle of the night if they make a top-rated LBP level. I say again, Little Big Planet is HUGE.

It’s humbling to know that other developers had not only thought of these two concepts, but brought them to fruition in such stunning fashion. Mostly, though, it’s very encouraging to see Sony taking more of a lead in online innovation. While some people were accusing them of merely copying the competition, Sony has been quietly working on two of the most innovative ideas of this generation. “Mii too?” Give me a break.

2. Free Online
Among all the talk about the price of Sony’s console, I almost never see anyone mention the significance of Sony’s free online service. Xbox Live Gold costs $70 to sign up for 1 year, or $20 for three months. You can renew your membership for $50 a year. So if the Xbox 360 stays around for five years, you’ll be paying 70 + 50 + 50 + 50 + 50 = $270 to access features that Sony gives you for free.

I agree, Xbox Live is overall offering a better online service right now. But $270 better? And Sony is steadily narrowing the gap in online features. With improvements to the messaging system and support for background downloading, Sony is rapidly catching up with many of the key advantages that Live has enjoyed. Add to that the fact that Sony is offering virtually lag-free dedicated servers at no cost, while on Xbox Live you are paying for a more laggy peer-to-peer service. Furthermore, one of the biggest advertised features of Xbox Live is matchmaking, yet the implementation of this feature has been inconsistent since it is left up to the developer. The matchmaking service on Resistance: FOM, meanwhile, has been one of its biggest successes, proving that even at this early stage the PS3’s online capabilities are very competitive. And free. As the PS3 community continues to grow with new features and player-generated content from Home and Little Big Planet, Sony’s online service is looking better and better. And, again, they’re not charging you $270 for it.

3. 50 GB games
If you ever hear someone say “Blu-Ray isn’t needed for this generation,” rest assured they don’t make games for a living. At Insomniac, we were filling up DVDs on the PS2, as were most of the developers in the industry. We compressed the level data, we compressed the mpeg movies, we compressed the audio, and it was still a struggle to get it to fit in 6 gigs. Now we’ve got 16 times as much system RAM, so the level data is 16 times bigger. And the average disc space of games only gets bigger over a console’s lifespan. As games get bigger, more advanced and more complex, they necessarily take up more space. If developers were filling up DVDs last generation, there are clearly going to be some sacrifices made to fit current generation games in the same amount of space.

Granted, some really great Xbox 360 games have squeezed onto a DVD9. Gears of War is a beautiful game and shows off the highest resolution textures of anything yet released, partly because of the Unreal Engine’s ability to stream textures. This means that you can have much higher resolution textures than you could normally fit in your 512 MB of RAM. It also means that you’re going to chew up more disc space for each level. With streamed textures, streamed geometry and streamed audio, even with compression, you can quickly approach 1 GB of data per level. That inherently limits you to a maximum of about 7 levels, and that’s without multiplayer levels or mpeg cutscenes.

Sometimes people ask us, “If Resistance takes 14 gigabytes, why doesn’t it look better than Gears?” Well, for one, Resistance didn’t support texture streaming, so we had to make choices about where we spent our high-res textures. Resistance also had 30 single-player chapters, six multiplayer maps, uncompressed audio streaming, and high-definition mpegs. That all added up to a lot of space on the disc. Starting with Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction we are supporting texture streaming, which will make the worlds look even better, and will also consume even more space on disc.

There’s no question that you can always cut more levels, compress the audio more, compress the textures more, down-res the mpeg movies, and eventually get any game to fit on a DVD. But you paid for a high-def experience, right? You want the highest resolution, best audio, most cinematic experience a developer can offer, right? That’s why Blu-Ray is important for games, and why it will become more important each year of this hardware cycle.

4. Casino Royale
Casino Royale is the first high definition title to crack the top 10 on Amazon’s DVD charts, rising up to number seven shortly after being released. This is significant because it dispels the myth that high definition discs are merely a niche and will never take off with the mainstream.

A lot of people have been waiting on the fence to see whether Blu-Ray or HD-DVD would emerge as the winner of the format war. Well, at this point the war is as good as over. Blu-Ray has won a TKO. It always had superior technical specs and much wider studio support, but there was the question of whether HD-DVD’s earlier release and initially lower price would capture enough of the market to make it the winner. But Blu-Ray has already surpassed HD-DVD in overall discs sold, and is currently outselling HD-DVD discs at about a 3:1 rate. Many neutral observers in the A/V community have called the war in favor of Blu-Ray. If you want minute-to-minute updates, you can follow what’s left of the format war at various locations on the internet:
http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/
http://www.hdgamedb.com/amazon/versus.aspx
These sites mainly compare Amazon sales data, but the Nielsen sales data shows the same thing: Blu-Ray discs are outselling HD-DVD by a steadily increasing margin.

Many of Disney, Fox and Sony’s biggest box office movies will release exclusively on Blu-Ray in the next three months, likely pushing the sales separation between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD to a margin where many retailers will begin phasing out HD-DVD. Retailers hate a format war even more than consumers, and I suspect they’ll take the initiative to end it as quickly as possible.

5. HDMI
A lot has been said about Sony’s choice to ship with composite cables. I won’t say I agree with that decision, but I think too little has been said of the fact that even the cheaper PS3 SKU supports HDMI 1.3. The PS3 was the first consumer device to support it, and this is a very important future-proofing step. When you go to buy higher-end TVs, the PS3 will support the highest possible audio and video input the TV and receiver can accept. If and when high-def movies start requiring an Image Constraint Token, the PS3 will still be able play them in high definition.

Right now, HDMI seems primarily to be a selling point to the hardcore audio and videophiles of the world. But HDTVs are getting cheaper and more popular all the time, and consumer sophistication and knowledge of high definition audio and video is growing. In a couple years, HDMI devices will be the standard. Graphics and audio in games will also continue to improve, and more and more consumers will want HDMI in order to get the best results on their home theater setups. As this happens, Microsoft has a difficult choice – do they stick with “last gen” video output, or do they release a premium version of the Xbox 360 that includes HDMI but effectively forces early adopters to re-buy the system to get the best results? Sony ultimately made their console more expensive by including HDMI, but over the next couple years it’s likely to play out as the right choice.

6. Standard HDD
When we were developing for PS2, I was jealous of Xbox’s standard hard drive. There are so many things this allowed you to consider as a developer – virtually unlimited save data, improved load times, custom music, downloadable content and user-created content just to name a few. But since hard drives, no matter what the size, never get cheaper than about $50, Microsoft lost money trying to compete with the PS2’s price. That may be the reason they left it out of the cheaper Xbox 360 SKU, thinking that Sony would again leave out the hard drive on the PS3. Instead, Sony made the hard drive standard for both SKUs. This added to the cost of the PS3, but it also let developers use the HDD in games.

The problem with including a hard drive in one version of the 360 and not in the other is that developers can’t use it for the games. Or, at least, they can’t use it for any required features. When you are guaranteed to have at least a 20 GB hard drive in the console, you can write your load caching routines around it, or use it for your application’s storage needs. To a developer, an optional hard drive is roughly equivalent to no hard drive at all.

Another advantage of the PS3 is that it will let you put in any third party hard drive you want. From a developer’s standpoint, this is good news because the market will gradually be able to support larger downloadable games over the course of the PS3’s life. As downloadable content gets larger and more sophisticated, PS3 owners can choose to buy larger hard drives at the best market price. The more this happens, the more developers will be encouraged to create better and better downloadable games.

7. The Wii Fad Will Fade
OK, this one’s going to be controversial, but I have to say it. I like Nintendo a lot. I think Nintendo has innovated far more than any other company in the industry. And I think the Wii is really, really fun. But… let me relate to you a story that may sound familiar:

Your friend Reggie invites you over for a Wii Party. It’s awesome. You and your friends partake in whatever beverages are legally appropriate for your age group. The next day everyone who went to the party rushes out and buys a Wii.

A week later Reggie hosts another Wii Party. This time only half the group comes. It’s still fun, but there isn’t quite as much shoving to get at the Wiimote.

The next week Reggie hosts another Wii Party. You tell him you have bird flu.

Obviously I’m exaggerating, but the Wii does have many characteristics of popular mainstream fads. It’s instantaneously accessible, it’s unlike anything you’ve tried before, and it’s great fun to share with friends. In short, it’s everything Nintendo said it would be and it has captured the world’s imagination. The only downside is that the world is easily distracted. Tickle Me Elmo captured the world’s attention at one point, as did Furbies. They were both instantly accessible, were unlike anything people had seen before, and were fun to share with friends. But a year later, after everyone had seen them and tried them out, their popularity waned.

The Wii is currently riding on a massive wave of mainstream attention and has been purchased by lots of people who don’t normally play games. But how many of those people who are hooked on Wii Sports will also buy Wii Need For Speed? Mainstream fads usually run their course within a year. As the honeymoon period fades, the Wii will be going up against more and more graphically impressive games on the PS3 and Xbox 360. More people will be buying HD televisions and looking for the most immersive and stunning experiences available. For these reasons, I think the Wii will be more successful than the GameCube or N64 but in the long run will still be outsold by the PS3.

8. PS3 Has a Major CPU Advantage
The GPUs on the Xbox 360 and PS3 are roughly equivalent, with the Xbox 360 arguably having a slight edge. The difference in CPU power, however, is far greater with the PS3 enjoying the advantage. The PS3’s eight parallel CPUs (one primary “PPU” and seven Cell processors) give it potentially far more computing power than the three parallel CPUs in the Xbox 360. Just about any tech programmer will tell you that the PS3’s CPUs are significantly more powerful. The problem is that it has been challenging thus far to take advantage of the Cell’s parallel architecture.

With the PS2, Sony got away with making a fairly developer-unfriendly system, and its success allowed their hardware designers to ignore developer’s complaints as they made the PS3. People high up at Sony have realized that approach simply won’t work anymore and are trying to fix the problem. Sony is actively improving their libraries, tools and developer support in order to make PS3 development easier. They are giving first party developed techniques and code to third-party developers so that multi-platform games should start looking better on PS3.

Games developed from the ground up on PS3 are the ones that will really show off the PS3’s CPU advantage. The complexity of the distributed processing architecture means that PS3 engines won’t fully blossom until a little later in the lifecycle than the PS2. This has put the PS3 at a disadvantage early in its lifecycle, but within two years you will see games that surpass what is possible on the Xbox 360.

9. PS2 still outselling 360
I know, it’s outselling the PS3 by an even larger margin. But the continued strong PS2 sales really are a good thing for Sony. Anyone buying a PS2 at this point is probably not going to buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 in the next year. And when they do choose to buy the current generation of hardware, the PS3 will be in a lot better position. The price will have come down, the game library will be broad, and the top PS3 titles will probably have the edge in both graphics and sound. Just as important, the people buying into the PS2 now will be getting into many of Sony’s exclusive franchises that they will then later want to play on the PS3.

10. Something For Everyone
One of Sony’s biggest advantages is that it has strong franchises in every genre. Whereas Microsoft’s successful titles are mostly M-rated, and Nintendo’s are mostly E-rated, Sony has a big list of hit titles across the spectrum. When a 30-something gamer (like me) goes to buy a game console, it’s a lot easier to justify the purchase when there are games he can play with his kids as well as more mature stuff.

To Microsoft’s credit, they are doing a good job of catching up. The acquisition of Rare and the development of Viva Pinata have helped to broaden their spectrum. But it takes time to build a franchise, and Sony has been building their suite of titles for over a decade. Consider the breadth, success and critical acclaim of some of their exclusive properties: The Getaway, God of War, Gran Turismo, Hot Shots Golf, Jak and Daxter, Killzone, Ratchet & Clank, Shadow of the Colossus, Singstar, Sly Cooper, SOCOM, and Twisted Metal. These are all million-plus sellers worldwide that are either already announced or likely to appear on PS3. Add to this Sony’s new line up of first-party titles, including Heavenly Sword, Lair, Motorstorm, Resistance: Fall of Man, Uncharted and White Knight Story, and they have an even deeper and stronger line-up than what they had on PS2.


A lot of industry watchers and even a handful of publishers have been quick to write Sony off this generation, and I think that’s near-sighted. Sony has made a lot of decisions with the PS3 that may have slowed them down in the short run, but should give them a big advantage in the long run. The high price, hardware complexity, and the uncertainty of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war have contributed to the PS3’s slow start out of the gate. But as the price drops, developers master the hardware, and Blu-Ray becomes the new DVD standard, Sony’s early disadvantages turn to advantages. As downloadable games become more common, the 60 GB hard-drive will be a big advantage to developers and consumers. As games get bigger and more sophisticated, Blu-Ray storage will increasingly become a major advantage. And as more and more of Sony’s exclusive first-party titles get released, the PS3 will begin to outsell the competition on a monthly basis. Those publishers who have shifted resources away from PS3 development will find themselves behind the curve and losing money as the market center gradually shifts toward the PS3 over the next two years.

I’m sure many of you may have comments about my point of view. If you do, please email [email protected] and I’ll do my best to respond. Also, I’ll be visiting the various forums to see what people think, including our own at www.insomniacgames.com (click on the community tab). Hope to see you there.

[wade moore]

Do you have a link to that article? (I want to pass it on to a friend)

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by wade moore

Do you have a link to that article? (I want to pass it on to a friend)

It actually was leaked from a forum on Insomniac's website to several websites. Here's the link, though it may be blocked to subscribers only.

http://www.insomniacgames.com/commun...ull.php?bid=30

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

As a consumer, I find the reduction of supply to increase demand that is often done by companies selling platforms to be a deplorable way of doing business. As a consumer, I want to get the console as soon as possible.

Geez, who knew someone else would back me up on this point on a day after I posted it. From Bill Harris' blog........

Lastly, in Gamestop's earnings conference call, CEO R. Richard Fontaine floated a tantalizing theory about the Wii:

When asked if the retailer believes if the Wii shortage will be a recurring problem, the executive responded, “I don't think it's going to be an issue...and this just my opinion, but I think [Nintendo] intentionally dried up supply because they made their numbers for the year. The new year starts April 1, and I think we're going to see supply flowing.”

[Coder]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Geez, who knew someone else would back me up on this point on a day after I posted it. From Bill Harris' blog........

That's what I was trying to imply with my post yesterday about Sony's strategy.. while Wii obviously succeded with this, Sony didn't, despite trying to use this very tactic.

Do I condone the strategy? No. I think it's stupid, but long lines and reports about how hard the machines are to get seems to be considered "free PR" by all console-creators, and like I just said..

Sony had this approach as well but it didn't work out very well.

What I've been trying to say all along, and I think we all agree here, the marketing strategy has made Sony look stupid, and this has nothing to do with the quality of their product.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Coder

That's what I was trying to imply with my post yesterday about Sony's strategy.. while Wii obviously succeded with this, Sony didn't, despite trying to use this very tactic.

What I've been trying to say all along, and I think we all agree here, the marketing strategy has made Sony look stupid, and this has nothing to do with the quality of their product.

I actually think that Sony didn't have the supply and wasn't holding back. They air-freighted a large number of systems around launch just to make sure they even had a decent number at launch. That's a much higher cost to do that.

Second statement is pretty accurate. The product isn't the problem in this case, which is even worse. I can't think of a worse scenario than having sales issues of any sort when you actually have a great product.

[dawgfan]

Insomniac Games? You mean the company that makes Playstation-exclusive content? Yeah, they're unbiased...

[ISiddiqui]

I'm disagreeing about Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD. At this point it is too soon to tell. What will be interesting is when HD DVD players drop in price in the future to, say, $200 while Blu-Ray will be at $600 or $700. I think the lower price will have a big effect on ordinary consumers. Right now deciding between a $500 and a $1000 player is a choice many ordinary consumers are saying 'pass' because both are beyond their price range.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

Insomniac Games? You mean the company that makes Playstation-exclusive content? Yeah, they're unbiased...

I think that one of the issues in general (not just with this particular review) is that it is hard to find people who care/know enough about console gaming to give valid opinions but who are also disinterested.

The people whose immersion in the industry allows them to provide informed opinions almost certainly have a stake (directly or indirectly) in certain aspects of that industry.

Like me. I don't really care who wins the console wars. But that also means that I have not paid enough attention to know who will win the console wars.

[stevew]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

I'm disagreeing about Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD. At this point it is too soon to tell. What will be interesting is when HD DVD players drop in price in the future to, say, $200 while Blu-Ray will be at $600 or $700. I think the lower price will have a big effect on ordinary consumers. Right now deciding between a $500 and a $1000 player is a choice many ordinary consumers are saying 'pass' because both are beyond their price range.

Eh, I think it's over now. I don't think that BD will supplant standard DVD's anytime soon, though. I don't think either is really for "ordinary" consumers just yet. Most people still have a SDTV for now, so even if the HDDVD is 100 bucks, it won't really matter cause they won't be getting any kind of benefit from it.

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

I actually think that Sony didn't have the supply and wasn't holding back. They air-freighted a large number of systems around launch just to make sure they even had a decent number at launch. That's a much higher cost to do that.

Second statement is pretty accurate. The product isn't the problem in this case, which is even worse. I can't think of a worse scenario than having sales issues of any sort when you actually have a great product.

It knows no bounds, eh? So Nintendo and M$ are evil and limit supply, while Sony was the do-gooder trying their best but just couldn't meet demand? huh?

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

Insomniac Games? You mean the company that makes Playstation-exclusive content? Yeah, they're unbiased...

I agree with about 3 points of the article:

1) BluRay is going to win and it's going to be by KO. No question it's going to win and I never really thought that was in doubt.

2) I think MS screwed up with the core system. They should have made the HDD mandatory. I think you'll see many game makers act as though everyone has an HDD in the next year or so. I think MS wanted to lower the price point so bad they made a huge mistake in cutting the system.

3) The PS2. I don't care how many times it gets said, if people think I'm trying to hide my bias with it or what. . . the PS2 is Sony's biggest hammer right now. If we pretend this firestorm never existed, polled all PS2 owners and said "would you want the next console Sony makes?" it would be something like 95% in favor. Seriously, how many people here who owned a PS2 were going to hold off on the PS3 2 years ago today? How about 1 year ago today? People want to buy the next version of something they've enjoyed. I'll buy more labs because I love the two I have. I'll buy FOF2040 because I've had so much fun with this series. I'll buy NBA2k8 without a feature list. Movie makers realize this, it's why they pump out sequal after sequal.

I don't agree with a ton of his other points. It's amazing he'd even have the audacity to talk about Sony exclusives when they are losing them by the handfull. Sony's 3 biggest exclusive titles were Guitar Hero, GTA (having it a year before any other platform was HUGE) and FF. Two are already gone and there are some big hints of the third being wiped out.

And his Wii point is idiotic. Look, this isn't some fad where 40 year olds are buying the system and hosting Wii parties every other week. Using his example, "Reggie" is 8 and his friends are going to keep coming over for hours and hours of play. The system has already sold 6 1/4 million units and has shown no signs of slowing down.

If the Wii continued at it's current pace through the end of the year and then STOPPED selling systems altogether, it would be tough for the PS3 to catch it by the end of '08. New flash for you: It isn't going to stop selling. Not now, not next month, not by the end of the year, not by next year. This is like me waiting for the Patriots to fall apart a few years ago. . . moronic.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

I'm disagreeing about Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD. At this point it is too soon to tell. What will be interesting is when HD DVD players drop in price in the future to, say, $200 while Blu-Ray will be at $600 or $700. I think the lower price will have a big effect on ordinary consumers. Right now deciding between a $500 and a $1000 player is a choice many ordinary consumers are saying 'pass' because both are beyond their price range.

That's probably the only point in that article that is a near certainty. HD-DVD is not going to be around much longer. It's all but over at this point.

[stevew]

I want wii Guitar Hero like now already.

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

Insomniac Games? You mean the company that makes Playstation-exclusive content? Yeah, they're unbiased...

Heh. I'm glad you pointed that out.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

Insomniac Games? You mean the company that makes Playstation-exclusive content? Yeah, they're unbiased...

So are you going to discuss his points or dismiss them solely because of the connection? I think there is some validity to some of his points. Note that he admits at the start of his discussion that it may widely be seen as controversial. He's well-aware that most critics will prematurely write off his opinion without actually reading it because of the business relationship.

I'm not surprised you noted that relationship. But I am a bit surprised that you dismissed it rather than actually discuss some of his points. I thought you'd be a bit more open to the discussion.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

I'm not surprised you noted that relationship. But I am a bit surprised that you dismissed it rather than actually discuss some of his points. I thought you'd be a bit more open to the discussion.

I didn't have time earlier to go in depth regarding his contentions, but I did want to quickly point out that he's hardly as objective as he's trying to present himself in that article. I'll be addressing his points shortly.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

I didn't have time earlier to go in depth regarding his contentions, but I did want to quickly point out that he's hardly as objective as he's trying to present himself in that article. I'll be addressing his points shortly.

My guess was that most people involved in the discussion would know that relationship, but perhaps I assumed too much. Probably should have been specific.

[WVUFAN]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

I didn't have time earlier to go in depth regarding his contentions, but I did want to quickly point out that he's hardly as objective as he's trying to present himself in that article. I'll be addressing his points shortly.

I post some quotes about the usefulness of the Blu-Ray, and you dismiss them out of hand because they're a Sony executive, saying 'post something from a 3rd Party developer. Mizzou does EXACTLY that, and you dismiss it out of hand because it's a Playstation-only developer.

What exactly do you want. Bill Gates talking about how great the Blu-Ray is?

Jeez.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by Brian Hastings, CEO of Insomniac Games

First of all, let me make it clear that Insomniac is a 100% independent development studio. Sony has neither endorsed nor authorized what I’m writing here.

As I mentioned before, Insomniac produces Sony-exclusive content. They may be technically "independent", but they're really not. If they're Sony-exclusive, they're getting money from Sony to be exclusive. It also means that it's in Hastings and Insomniac's best financial interests to see the PS3 do as well as possible. Keep all this in mind when reading his statements.

1. Home & Little Big Planet

Home is an interesting idea that could potentially be very cool, but based off of what was shown at GDC, Sony is a long ways off from realizing that potential. That was the consensus of the contingent at my company that was there, and it seems like that's the general consensus from the gaming press as well. That's not to say that Sony can't and won't improve it, but right now I don't think it's going to be a big selling point.

Little Big Planet on the other hand looks very cool. I give them all the credit in the world for such a cool concept, and for what appears to be very good execution on that concept. Little Big Planet is a definite plus for Sony and their online initiative.

2. Free Online
Among all the talk about the price of Sony’s console, I almost never see anyone mention the significance of Sony’s free online service. Xbox Live Gold costs $70 to sign up for 1 year, or $20 for three months. You can renew your membership for $50 a year. So if the Xbox 360 stays around for five years, you’ll be paying 70 + 50 + 50 + 50 + 50 = $270 to access features that Sony gives you for free.

I agree, Xbox Live is overall offering a better online service right now. But $270 better? And Sony is steadily narrowing the gap in online features. With improvements to the messaging system and support for background downloading, Sony is rapidly catching up with many of the key advantages that Live has enjoyed. Add to that the fact that Sony is offering virtually lag-free dedicated servers at no cost, while on Xbox Live you are paying for a more laggy peer-to-peer service. Furthermore, one of the biggest advertised features of Xbox Live is matchmaking, yet the implementation of this feature has been inconsistent since it is left up to the developer. The matchmaking service on Resistance: FOM, meanwhile, has been one of its biggest successes, proving that even at this early stage the PS3’s online capabilities are very competitive. And free. As the PS3 community continues to grow with new features and player-generated content from Home and Little Big Planet, Sony’s online service is looking better and better. And, again, they’re not charging you $270 for it.

It's cute that he quotes a price of $270 as if that's gospel. From a business perspective, it's hard to imagine that there will continue to be the price disparity between Xbox Live and Sony Online, unless the 360 absolutely kicks the PS3's ass in sales or Sony Online services suck ass - neither of which is likely.

What is likely is that, if Sony Online continues to improve and their experience closes the gap with the (consensus opinion) better service on Xbox Live, Microsoft will feel a lot of pressure to lower their pricing on Live.

What is true right now is that you are getting what you pay for with the 2 online services - a superior experience that costs extra for Xbox Live, or an OK experience that is free with Sony Online.

3. 50 GB games
If you ever hear someone say “Blu-Ray isn’t needed for this generation,” rest assured they don’t make games for a living. At Insomniac, we were filling up DVDs on the PS2, as were most of the developers in the industry. We compressed the level data, we compressed the mpeg movies, we compressed the audio, and it was still a struggle to get it to fit in 6 gigs. Now we’ve got 16 times as much system RAM, so the level data is 16 times bigger. And the average disc space of games only gets bigger over a console’s lifespan. As games get bigger, more advanced and more complex, they necessarily take up more space. If developers were filling up DVDs last generation, there are clearly going to be some sacrifices made to fit current generation games in the same amount of space.

Granted, some really great Xbox 360 games have squeezed onto a DVD9. Gears of War is a beautiful game and shows off the highest resolution textures of anything yet released, partly because of the Unreal Engine’s ability to stream textures. This means that you can have much higher resolution textures than you could normally fit in your 512 MB of RAM. It also means that you’re going to chew up more disc space for each level. With streamed textures, streamed geometry and streamed audio, even with compression, you can quickly approach 1 GB of data per level. That inherently limits you to a maximum of about 7 levels, and that’s without multiplayer levels or mpeg cutscenes.

Sometimes people ask us, “If Resistance takes 14 gigabytes, why doesn’t it look better than Gears?” Well, for one, Resistance didn’t support texture streaming, so we had to make choices about where we spent our high-res textures. Resistance also had 30 single-player chapters, six multiplayer maps, uncompressed audio streaming, and high-definition mpegs. That all added up to a lot of space on the disc. Starting with Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction we are supporting texture streaming, which will make the worlds look even better, and will also consume even more space on disc.

There’s no question that you can always cut more levels, compress the audio more, compress the textures more, down-res the mpeg movies, and eventually get any game to fit on a DVD. But you paid for a high-def experience, right? You want the highest resolution, best audio, most cinematic experience a developer can offer, right? That’s why Blu-Ray is important for games, and why it will become more important each year of this hardware cycle.

He's toting the company line here, which is to greatly exaggerate the impact on gaming quality of the storage space on a Blu-Ray disk.

I'll go over this again: the biggest limiting factors on content quality in games is the amount of available RAM and the speed and power of the CPU & GPU. Putting it in simple terms, what you see onscreen at any one time is what can be loaded in to RAM and the speed at which everything runs is governed by processor speed. Yes, you can stream content from the disk or hard drive, but that doesn't change the limits of what you can display at any one moment in the game. Any compression that we might have to do to fit all the art and audio content on the DVD is trumped by the compression that is required to fit our content into RAM. With our PS3 SKU, we could put the biggest, most beautiful textures on the Blu-Ray disk, but it's not going to do us much good because we'll quickly wipe out our texture memory budget in RAM.

Think of it this way - there's a certain amount of polygons, total texture size, lighting effects, joints and other deformers, audio, etc. that can be presented on screen at once. It's up to the developers to decide how best to distribute memory budgets and performance priorities, but there's still an overall limit. There are obviously ways to optimize performance and compress content with minimal effective quality loss, and the skill of your advanced programming team and the capabilities of the game engine mean can vary how much you can squeeze out of the available memory and performance, but get the idea - there are hard limits that have to be worked around. You know how, generally speaking, games with few onscreen characters and closed-in environments (like hallway shooters and most fighting games) look better than big open-world games like GTA? That's because with fewer characters and more limited environments, you can spend more polys on your characters and environments, your textures can look better as your texture budget is being spread across less objects meaning each textured object has a higher relative resolution and you can use more joints and deformers in each of your characters and interactive objects (because there are less of them to be driven).

Where the extra space that Blu-Ray provides gives a developer an advantage is when you have a game that needs to stream a tremendous amount of unique content. If a game uses pre-rendered videos, you can fit way more of that on the disk, though it should be noted that most games these days don't use pre-rendered content - they use in-game content and render everything in real-time in the game engine for cinematic cut-scenes. A more useful scenario where Blu-Ray capacity would make a difference is in games that use a huge amount of unique levels where you don't want to be limited in the textures and polygonal models you can utilize. That said, this impact isn't as big as it might seem at first - many developers do a good job of using sectional building blocks to create environmental content allowing a level designer to re-use and re-arrange a lot of existing content to provide unique-looking environments, with little effective impact on the overall look of the game.

It's also important to note that extra content doesn't come free to a developer - to create that extra, unique content means that many more man hours (i.e. money spent) by artists to create it, designers to place it, programmers to hook it up and testers to make sure it works correctly. You could create a shooter or RPG that has enough unique content to give you 150 hours of gaming, but compared to a game with 50 hours of gameplay, will all that additional unique content translate into enough greater demand to make sales increase enough to cover the cost of creating all that extra content? Not typically...

4. Casino Royale

I think it's very likely Blu-Ray wins hi-def media war. If that's the case though, I'm still not sure how much that helps sell PS3 consoles, unless they continue to lose a lot of money per console by subsidizing the extra cost of the Blu-Ray player. I also wonder if winning this media war will ultimately pay off on the overall Sony bottom line, given the growing trend by consumers to accept and embrace downloadable content. Hard drives continue to drop in price, broadband connections are becoming the standard and there are already services where you can buy or rent hi-def movies and TV shows through an online connection and download them to your computer or 360.

5. HDMI

HDMI will continue to grow in importance as more people upgrade to new HDTV's with HDMI inputs. And yeah, early 360 adopters may feel some burn seeing newer 360 versions come out with upgraded features like HDMI output. There's a valid argument to be made that the 360 should've included HDMI output from the very start, rather than in the upcoming elite system. On the other hand, perhaps Microsoft's tiered strategy was/is the better business decision in terms of reading the market and providing the best options at the time, though the risk of pissing off some early 360 adopters is there.

6. Standard HDD

Valid points - I too was curious as to why Microsoft would risk splitting the install base of the 360 for developers by offering a system with no hard drive. I'll give Microsoft credit for at least making their basic system upgradeable unlike the PS3, but developers still face a tough choice in whether or not to make their game require the buyer to have a hard drive on their 360. That said, I think sales figures will show that the vast majority of 360 owners have a hard drive, and I suspect you'll see most 360 games from here on out designed to use a hard drive, so ultimately I don't think this is going to be a big difference between the two systems. I also like that with the 360, you have the option of swapping out hard drives if you want.

7. The Wii Fad Will Fade

I've wondered the same thing, whether this is really just a fad and if the unique controller/gameplay experience will hold up. However, it's already sold so well and has proven to be so appealing that it has expanded the gaming market that I have a hard time seeing the popularity fade in a significant way. It also fills a somewhat different niche in the gaming market - given the price point and the unique appeal of the system, I think it is far more likely that you'll find people buying a 360 and a Wii or a PS3 and a Wii than you would people buying a 360 and a PS3 - in other words, it's the fun, different, relatively cheap 2nd console that most gamers will buy (or have bought) in addition to their more hardcore gaming console, whether that be a 360 or a PS3.

And with more time to work with the system, I think you're going to find that games for the Wii are going to get better at working out the kinks with the controller scheme and make the experience even more fun and not just an interesting fad.

8. PS3 Has a Major CPU Advantage

I really can't speak to his points here - we just haven't spent much time here yet really digging into the guts of the PS3. I'm sure over the next year I'll start to hear more info from our programmers about the differences between the hardware in each system, though it will of course be filtered by the prism of the particular game engine we're using and how well it is optimized for each platform.

I also wonder, since Insomniac is a Sony-exclusive developer, how he would have first-hand knowledge of the actual pluses and minuses of programming for the 360 and how impartial he'd be in relating what he knew (or was told).

9. PS2 still outselling 360

This is a very good point. Still, unless the PS3 starts gaining ground on the 360, it's going to become ever more likely that you see fewer exclusives on the PS3 and you see Microsoft emboldened to spend the money to get more exclusives, which will certainly have an effect on the late-adopters and what they ultimately decide to buy. Given the 360's head start in production and sales, Microsoft is in a position to always trump price drops by Sony and remain the less-expensive choice between the two. And if the games are essentially the same choices between the two (and most developers are going to program for the 360 and make minimal upgrades to their PS3 SKU's given the differences in hardware and the install base advantage of the 360, so differences are unlikely to be major) and the 360 is less expensive (and more of your buddies have them than PS3's), then the install base advantage of the PS2 fades in importance.

10. Something For Everyone

We'll see - as noted above, there aren't many Sony exclusives anymore, and if Sony loses Square as an exclusive, there goes their biggest remaining advantage in terms of game content. For the most part, the gaming libraries are identical between the two systems.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by WVUFAN

I post some quotes about the usefulness of the Blu-Ray, and you dismiss them out of hand because they're a Sony executive, saying 'post something from a 3rd Party developer. Mizzou does EXACTLY that, and you dismiss it out of hand because it's a Playstation-only developer.

What exactly do you want. Bill Gates talking about how great the Blu-Ray is?

Jeez.

C'mon WVUFAN - I know you're smarter than this. Insomniac is an exclusive developer for Sony platforms. Technically speaking they may not be a part of Sony, but practically speaking they are. Hastings has every incentive in the world to promote Sony's platform and none at all to promote Nintendo or Microsoft. Insomniac isn't a true 3rd party developer - as an exclusive provider for Sony, they are essentially a 1st party developer.

[Big Fo]

haha, so much Xbox 360 v. PS3 arguing when they'll probably both get smoked by Wii.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by Big Fo

haha, so much Xbox 360 v. PS3 arguing when they'll probably both get smoked by Wii.

Haha, that points been made about six times in the thread already.

[Blade6119]

And when you have to buy a new nintendo system in 3 years, and still loving my PS3, we can both have a good ol laugh

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by Blade6119

And when you have to buy a new nintendo system in 3 years, and still loving my PS3, we can both have a good ol laugh

Why would you have to buy a new Nintendo system in 3 years?

[Blade6119]

Becuase technologically it will be outdated by then, where as the 360 and PS3 will not be...why did the wii, ps3, 360 come out? Becuase the previous systems were outdated. Microsoft and Sony built machines that are intended to last 5-6 years...nintendo didnt. Now, not to say they didnt make a better business decision in the short term(they did, no question). But im interested to see how sales hold up over the shelf life of the systems, of which i think nintendo's is much shorter then the other 2 simply due to techology. Thats just my opinion, having played all 3 systems to some extent(i have a ps3, my best friend a 360, and my other a wii).

[dawgfan]

Nintendo will put out another system when it makes sense from a business standpoint. As far as being outdated, in many ways the Wii is already outdated from a horsepower perspective. But here's the thing - Nintendo made a conscious decision to back away from the horsepower race and focus instead on innovative gameplay, and I'd say it's working out extremely well for them so far.

And another thing to consider - let's say Nintendo does put out another console in 3-4 years - more than likely, I'll have spent less to own both than you have spent to own your PS3.

[Atocep]

Its been quoted many times here that PS2 is outselling both the 360 and the PS3. Is that because of its graphical horsepower or superior gaming library along with with cost?

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Atocep

Its been quoted many times here that PS2 is outselling both the 360 and the PS3. Is that because of its graphical horsepower or superior gaming library along with with cost?

It's just a great value right now, whether your a previous owner picking up a new one to replace an old one that wore out or you're looking for a good gaming experience. You can go to places like Gamestop right now and pick up great used games for $10 or less. I still play GTA:San Andreas here and there and Guitar Hero gets regular play as well. I kept my PS2 when I bought my PS3 just to play Guitar Hero I & II.

[Daimyo]

Originally Posted by Blade6119

And when you have to buy a new nintendo system in 3 years, and still loving my PS3, we can both have a good ol laugh

$600 for PS3 now or $250 for Wii now and $250 for Wii2 in three years....

Are you sure that's an advantage for Sony?