The Official PS3 thread!

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » January 19, 2007, 12:24 am

I'm not sure that the recent Microsoft vs Sony media war is really necessary... But I am finding it entertaining for some reason.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » January 19, 2007, 4:47 am

Why do you people even bother posting on this thread? Those of you that hate on the PS3 - we get it. Those that hate on the 360 - we get it.

The way some of you twist, pick and choose what's an acceptable point or not based on the flavor of cock you're sucking is really pathetic. None of the systems are going away and they're all doing quite well. Enjoy the options available to you.

Buy whatever the fuck you want. I seriously doubt anyone on this board gives a rats ass.

Except Winnow of course.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » January 19, 2007, 11:52 am

Siji wrote:Why do you people even bother posting on this thread?

You can pretty much say that about any thread.

We bother because we can. That's about the only reason needed!

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » January 19, 2007, 12:57 pm

Siji wrote:Why do you people even bother posting on this thread? Those of you that hate on the PS3 - we get it. Those that hate on the 360 - we get it.

The way some of you twist, pick and choose what's an acceptable point or not based on the flavor of cock you're sucking is really pathetic. None of the systems are going away and they're all doing quite well. Enjoy the options available to you.

Buy whatever the fuck you want. I seriously doubt anyone on this board gives a rats ass.

Except Winnow of course.

Well that would be fine, oh mighty one.. except one thing.. The PS3 is NOT doing well. The 360 is beating it down, not that it needs to.. because the PS3's are already collecting dust on the shelves in stores across the country.. not to mention that people are returning them for the Wii, when Nintendo hasn't been a threat to anyone but themselves in nearly ten years.

miir · Post by **miir** » January 19, 2007, 1:09 pm

The PS3 is NOT doing well. The 360 is beating it down

In what fucking reality is selling 2 million units in 7 weeks considered NOT doing well. If they could have met demand, they probably could have sold 3-4 million.

Compare the release of the 360 to the release of the PS3.
Which one sold more units in the first 2 months?

If the PS3 is not doing well, than the 360 must have been a complete and utter failure.

Are you really that fucking dense?
Is xbox cock so far down your throat that you can't even understand basic sales figures?

If the 360 is beating down the PS3, than the PS2 has been making the 360 it's bitch for the past 14 months.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » January 19, 2007, 1:18 pm

miir wrote:
The PS3 is NOT doing well. The 360 is beating it down
In what fucking reality is selling 2 million units in 7 weeks considered NOT doing well. If they could have met demand, they probably could have sold 3-4 million.

Compare the release of the 360 to the release of the PS3.
Which one sold more units in the first 2 months?

If the PS3 is not doing well, than the 360 must have been a complete and utter failure.

Are you really that fucking dense?
Is xbox cock so far down your throat that you can't even understand basic sales figures?

If the 360 is beating down the PS3, than the PS2 has been making the 360 it's bitch for the past 14 months.

Miir, please quit spewing the same exact response (probably almost to the word) everytime someone says something negative about the PS3. Just accept that I am right and you are wrong, son.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 19, 2007, 1:35 pm

It all comes down to price. Had Sony decided to scrub Blu-Ray and sell the machine at the same price as the 360, they would be losing less money per-machine, have been out the door in March as they had originally planned and would be doing much better business as a result than they are doing now and Sony win this gen would almost be a certainty.

Sony will do well this round again though I think. They have the big exclusives on existing IP's that people want (namely FFXIII and MGS4). They seem to be on top of their manufacturing problems and are cranking the machines out at a steady enough pace that you can somewhat easily walk into a store now and drop the 599 on a machine if you want. (Saw 3 myself at WalMart on Saturday, no Wii's however).

However, I think the Wii will spank them both for the next 2-3 years.

Microsoft will be in the position of offering a price drop much earlier than Sony however and they may run away with it if it comes around Holiday 2007.

It will strongly hinge on what happens in Nov/Dec of this year.

miir · Post by **miir** » January 19, 2007, 1:40 pm

please quit spewing the same exact response (probably almost to the word) everytime someone says something negative about the PS3.

Well some people are too fucking dense read and understand the sales figures that I have to repeat it.

Just accept that I am right and you are wrong, son

Kids say the darndest things.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » January 19, 2007, 2:28 pm

miir wrote:In what fucking reality is selling 2 million units in 7 weeks considered NOT doing well. If they could have met demand, they probably could have sold 3-4 million.

I thought the numbers were units shipped and not units sold? Which is totally not the same thing. But feel free to tow the Sony line. Might be a marketing position opening up you could fill!

However, he continued, "The PlayStation brand doesn't appear to be helping the PS3. If NPD's numbers are correct, there are over 300K PS3s on retail shelves. That is not good for a console launch of only a million and it's not good for publishers with PS3 software."

Unfortunately for Sony, last year the company had insisted on worldwide sales figures of 2.4 million PS3s, by the end of 2006, and having sold under 500,000 units in Japan, Sony have fell short by some margin.

Units have been sitting on the shelf so I'm pretty sure demand has been met for awhile now. Initial demand was high due to the eBay scalpers. I seriously doubt if they had 4 millions units sitting on the shelf on Nov 22nd (or whatever) for the launch that they'd all be gone now.

I don't think the PS3 is doing terrible and I'm not calling it a failure. But I don't think it's doing as well as Sony expected it to either. At least at this point.

miir · Post by **miir** » January 19, 2007, 3:25 pm

It all comes down to price. Had Sony decided to scrub Blu-Ray and sell the machine at the same price as the 360, they would be losing less money per-machine, have been out the door in March as they had originally planned and would be doing much better business as a result than they are doing now and Sony win this gen would almost be a certainty.

If their sole aim was to compete with the 360, that would have been a sound strategy. But Sony has been the leader in consoles for so long, I think that if they had taken that route it might have been seen as them resting on their laurels... bringing nothing more to mix than what is already available.

By incorporating Blu-Ray, they are obviously looking forward. Because this year will be crucial in determining which HD disc format will become dominant. They didn't just sell 2 million PS3s.. they got really big fucking foot in the door in regards to helping their HD format in becoming the standard.

Sony's fortunes rest more on Blu-Ray becoming the standard than the PS3 beating the 360.

Both the PS3 and 360 are without a doubt going to be successful game consoles... but in big picture, the PS3 stands to be far more influential.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 19, 2007, 3:38 pm

Still as of now, Blu-Ray seems to be more of a liability than an advantage to the PS3 because the tech is in it's infancy.

They may have been looking forward but it still is a huge gamble for them for a couple of reasons.

A - Blu-Ray costs more to produce per-disk than HD-DVD and requires apparently pretty important re-tooling of the production lines.

B - If HD-DVD were to become the de-facto standard of HD movies or if both should actually fail and Digital Download or another disk were to become the standard, Sony would have inflated their price by quite a sum of money, would be stuck producing a part that would never get cheaper to manufacture since the volume would not be there and the PS3 would be in the same position as the PSP, with a disk format that noone cares about.

I just think that in this MS made the better decision ideally. DVD isn't going anywhere anytime soon and the people that want the HD movies can do so right now. If Blu-Ray wins the war in the short-term, MS can do like any hardware maker and license the Blu-Ray tech and release another add-on player for the media.

miir · Post by **miir** » January 19, 2007, 3:49 pm

Still as of now, Blu-Ray seems to be more of a liability than an advantage to the PS3 because the tech is in it's infancy.

They may have been looking forward but it still is a huge gamble for them for a couple of reasons.

Sony survived their betamax failure....
Did they learn from their mistakes?
Was it foolish to put all their eggs in one basket?

Blu-Ray costs more to produce per-disk than HD-DVD and requires apparently pretty important re-tooling of the production lines

I remember when blank CDs used to cost $10.
It wasn't so long ago that blank DVDs were $5.
If the production costs of media isn't already a non-issue, it will most certainly be a non-issue in the near future.

I just think that in this MS made the better decision ideally.

Well they did take the less risky route... which is actually pretty surprising, all things considered.

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » January 19, 2007, 4:09 pm

The units sitting on shelves thing is in outlying stores in bum fuck egypt. California, you have to be in the right place at the right time to get one. The real reason they are available at all is because people kind of gave up on finding them. As luck would have it, though, my wife snapped one up when she was at gamestop last night and after toying with it for a couple hours here are my observations:

Good:
Setup was extremely easy and the interface is the same one from the PSP, so navigating it was simple. Wireless was up and running within a minute, which made it even easier than the Wii. Video resolutions can be enabled for the TV you are on and the game automatically uses the best one it is capable of. Unlike the Jet engine oven my wife and I call the 360, the PS3 is extremely quiet and produces very little heat. The controllers are the lightest ones I have used since the super nintendo and they stayed with the standard PS layout, though the analog triggers took some adapting to.

The built in memory card emulator and adapter meant I could pretty much migrate all of my old PS2 and PS1 games to the hard drive. Emulation on all the games I tested seemed flawless (Tactics Ogre and Bushido Blade 2 for the PS1, Fallout and FF12 for the PS2), but I have not played an old game extensively on it yet, so the jury is till out on that. The abundant USB ports accepted my cordless mouse and keyboard instantly without any hastle. Finally, the native HDMI cable was nice to see and the other AV output is the same as the old PS2, so any previous component cable will work just fine.

The two games my wife got, MArvel Alliance and Fall of Man, both played very smooth. The Alliance game looked nice, but not really especially better than the 360 version, which I would expect with it being a port. Fall of Man looked absolutely incredible and the sound quality just blew me away. I would probably have to see Gears of War to make a fair comparison, but there was deffinitely an order of magnitude of difference in the video quality between Fall of Man and anything I have seen on the 360, with Oblivion being the only thing I would put in the same ballpark.

Bad:
Load times on this beast are longer then the 360 in nearly every case. Also, you cannot download games/demos and continue to navigate around the machine like you can on the 360. IT is also slightly larger and SIGNIFICANTLY heavier than the 360. HAving to plug the controllers into the USB cord to charge the unit only while it is on is beyond gay, though they do charge pretty fast and last a long time. They really should have ditched two of the USB ports and put a PS2 Memory Card port in its place instead of making people shell out for some gay ass adapter. They were also megajews on the cord, as only an old style composite cable came with the console and the extra controller we got did not come with its own USB cord, despite a $50 price tag. Finally, their online store interface is pretty sluggish and their web browser does not scale well on an HD TV, making both a pain to use (though their online store is much better organized than either the Wii or the 360) especially if you lack a USB keyboard.

Stuff to wait and see about:
Downloading PS1 games directly to the PSP is definitely cool, but I think it may be more of a novelty. The tilt function on the controller will probably not get enough use to justify its cost, but its not worth crying over the loss of rumble over. While I do not want to pass judgement on the game library until it has been out a year, its immediately obvious that multiplatform ports are not taking full advantage of the systems abilities (the 360 suffers from this somewhat as well) and it remains to be seen if they will as time goes on.

Load times may be solvable by putting multiple copies of data on the disk (the oblivion port evidently is using this approach), but ultimately people are just going to blame that shit on blu-ray and be pissed about it, no matter what occurs technically. The Blu-Ray movie impressed me with its quality, but I don't think it was worth waiting an extra year and adding a couple hundred to the price tag to the console for and I won't be rushing out to get an HDDVD player (though I will be getting some sci-fi ones to watch on the PS3) after seeing it in action. Finally, I could not help but notice that there was an option to load a different OS on the machine, but I don't know how mod friendly this box will truely be.

Final Verdict:
IF they come out with a charging method that is less gay and they develop games to the console's capabilities, then its going to be probably the equal to the Wii down the road, in terms of audience.

If Sony gets lazy and no one develops to its potential, then mainstream gamers will probably favor the Wii long term and the PS3 will wind up being a sort of multimedia box that you can also play your old games on as opposed to the must have that the PS2 was. Unfortunately, Sony did very little to stack the odds in their favor with the release and now their fate is out of their hands and in the developers.

It will trump the 360 in the next two years no matter what happens, however, not because of differences in the consoles, but rather due to the nature of how MS has handled its product and the narrow genre of games that are successful on it (shooters). Like it or not, RPGs, platformers, and backwards compatibility make a console long term; just look at the Wii and the PS2. The 360 will be profitable, because the market for shooter fanatics and software pirates will always be there, but it is going to have to settle for third again. But realistically, MS tends to dump anything older than its newest toy (which is why the XBox1 is deader than elvis) and any hopes it has of being competitive with the PS3 will be instantly crushed when FF13 comes out in a year or so, especially how good FF12 was. If Blue Dragon turns out to be a huge success, then we may have a more competitive race.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 19, 2007, 4:11 pm

miir wrote: Both the PS3 and 360 are without a doubt going to be successful game consoles... but in big picture, the PS3 stands to be far more influential.

PS3 doesn't stand to be more influential. You base that entirely on Blue Ray. Microsoft has already introduced IPTV for the 360 which will be far more important in the grand scheme of things as even Sony said that the next generation won't have optical drives at all.

Once again, as with XBox Live, Microsoft is leading the way with IPTV which from reports, is very well done.

Sony is left an expensive box with a betamax type format which really isn't clear cut better than HD-DVD as Betamax was over VHS, and a machine that has a nice CPU but poor integration between the rest of its parts including the GPU and internal WiFi/Bluetooth conflicts inside the box.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » January 19, 2007, 4:12 pm

Jice Virago wrote:The units sitting on shelves thing is in outlying stores in bum fuck egypt.

Wow, I didn't realize I was in the middle of nowhere.

They were sitting on the shelves here immediately before Christmas, and they have been there since then.

Other than that, there was a lot of good info there, thanks Jice

miir · Post by **miir** » January 19, 2007, 4:18 pm

PS3 doesn't stand to be more influential. You base that entirely on Blue Ray. Microsoft has already introduced IPTV for the 360 which will be far more important in the grand scheme of things as even Sony said that the next generation won't have optical drives at all.

What's stopping the PS3 from supporting IPTV?

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » January 19, 2007, 4:30 pm

Boogahz wrote:
Jice Virago wrote:The units sitting on shelves thing is in outlying stores in bum fuck egypt.
Wow, I didn't realize I was in the middle of nowhere.

They were sitting on the shelves here immediately before Christmas, and they have been there since then.

I disagree with his statement as well. While in Florida I saw PS3s sitting there on the shelf at numerous stores. Not a Wii (nor DS) to be found. Clearwater isn't exactly BFE so I think he pulled that out of thin air.

Of course that doesn't necessarily mean that those same units were there all the time. It's possible those could be new ones that replaced the ones originally sitting there. However it strongly points to the conclusion that demand is not keeping up with the supply.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 19, 2007, 4:31 pm

What's stopping the PS3 from supporting IPTV?

Nothing, save that they trail Microsoft in experience by about two years in Live development and no one is suggesting that Sony is anywhere near as well done as Xbox Live and Microsoft has been planning Live Anywhere for awhile now with even more integration between PC's, 360's and mobile devices.

Could go on and on...

more points for the 360

-easier to develop games for
-easy to port games between the 360 and the biggest game platform of all which is the PC
-shared online games between 360 and PC
-much better SDK support for upcoming game designers and small companies
-cheaper and going to get even cheaper sooner than PS3

If you're basing the outcome on the 360 having more FPS games (or less RPGs) than the PS3, you're in trouble. Even PS3 launched without an RPG and their "big hitter" game was an FPS. The 360 has been focused on expanding it's game offerings and taking away exclusive games from Sony (GTA4, etc)

Sony is down to a blue ray player and two games:

Final Fantasy (comes out once every 2 years) and Metal Gear Solid (of which #4 is the last in the series announced by the developer)

Hell, Microsoft already has that matched with Halo and Gears of War. Halo may be ending as is MGS but Gears of War is already planned for a trilogy.

If you take the time to read the linked articles above that review both platform's games being released in the next year, you'll see that Sony has nothing on Microsoft and IMO is trailing Microsoft going into 2008. We'll take another look then.

miir · Post by **miir** » January 19, 2007, 4:35 pm

Winnow wrote:
What's stopping the PS3 from supporting IPTV?
Nothing, save that they trail Microsoft in experience by about two years in Live development and no one is suggesting that Sony is anywhere near as well done as Xbox Live and Microsoft has been planning Live Anywhere for awhile now with even more integration between PC's, 360's and mobile devices.

Could go on and on...

more points for the 360

-easier to develop games for
-easy to port games between the 360 and the biggest game platform of all which is the PC
-shared online games between 360 and PC
-much better SDK support for upcoming game designers and small companies
-cheaper and going to get even cheaper sooner than PS3

If you're basing the outcome on the 360 having more FPS games (or less RPGs) than the PS3, you're in trouble. Even PS3 launched without an RPG and their "big hitter" game was an FPS. The 360 has been focused on expanding it's game offerings and taking away exclusive games from Sony (GTA4, etc)

Sony is down to a blue ray player and two games:

Final Fantasy (comes out once every 2 years) and Metal Gear Solid (of which #4 is the last in the series announced by the developer)

Hell, Microsoft already has that matched with Halo and Gears of War. Halo may be ending as is MGS but Gears of War is already planned for a trilogy.

If you take the time to read the linked articles above that review both platform's games being released in the next year, you'll see that Sony has nothing on Microsoft and IMO is trailing Microsoft going into 2008. We'll take another look then.

Does that mean you're going to keep your xbox faggotry off of all future PS3 threads?

Didn't think so.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 19, 2007, 4:45 pm

It's too much fun making you look like an idiot. Searyx made better arguments than you.

At least unhappy PS3 owners can't hang themselves with the PS3's wireless recharger/re-sync cable...they're too short! Sony's always looking out for its customers.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 19, 2007, 5:13 pm

Jice Virago wrote:It will trump the 360 in the next two years no matter what happens, however, not because of differences in the consoles, but rather due to the nature of how MS has handled its product and the narrow genre of games that are successful on it (shooters). Like it or not, RPGs, platformers, and backwards compatibility make a console long term; just look at the Wii and the PS2. The 360 will be profitable, because the market for shooter fanatics and software pirates will always be there, but it is going to have to settle for third again. But realistically, MS tends to dump anything older than its newest toy (which is why the XBox1 is deader than elvis) and any hopes it has of being competitive with the PS3 will be instantly crushed when FF13 comes out in a year or so, especially how good FF12 was. If Blue Dragon turns out to be a huge success, then we may have a more competitive race.

If you look at what's coming down the pipe in the near future, MS does seem intent on diversifying their portfolio quite a bit.

Just look at (as you mentioned) Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata and Lost Oddyssey for RPG's coming out of Japan and Mass Effect from Bioware makes for some nice RPG gaming.

Square-Enix, instead of porting seems intent of taking IP's and making them exclusive to specific platforms. Dragon Quest is going to the DS, FFXIII to the PS3 and a new IP, Project Sylpheed (Arcade space flight sim) for the 360.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » January 19, 2007, 6:00 pm

Aslanna wrote:
Boogahz wrote:
Jice Virago wrote:The units sitting on shelves thing is in outlying stores in bum fuck egypt.
Wow, I didn't realize I was in the middle of nowhere.

They were sitting on the shelves here immediately before Christmas, and they have been there since then.
I disagree with his statement as well. While in Florida I saw PS3s sitting there on the shelf at numerous stores. Not a Wii (nor DS) to be found. Clearwater isn't exactly BFE so I think he pulled that out of thin air.

Of course that doesn't necessarily mean that those same units were there all the time. It's possible those could be new ones that replaced the ones originally sitting there. However it strongly points to the conclusion that demand is not keeping up with the supply.

I second your agreement. Every store I have been at in Minneapolis and the immediate (within 20 minutes of the city) suburbs has had multiple PS3's there every single time I have been in the store over the past month.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 20, 2007, 6:00 am

Awwwww

Media Create Co. has compiled a set of data from around 3,000 shops across Japan, extrapolated that into national sales estimates for the week ending January 14 and published figures this Friday.

The PlayStation 3 had sales at 25,531 units, the worst week since its launch in Japan.

They don't seem to be flying off the shelves in Japan either. Made more, sold less.

In other news:

Speaking with EGM, a paper magazine, Bethesda Software's Todd Howard commented on the upcoming PS3 version of Oblivion:

"Drive speed matters more to me [than capacity], and Blu-ray is slower."

The developer is apparently duplicating critical data on the Blu-ray disc in order to fill up all the unused space, which improves load times for the game. Tests have shown that load times on the PS3 could be slightly slower than those on the Xbox 360, which has lead the developer to using data duplication techniques to improve the PS3's performance.

Nice. Data duplication! ...sounds like sweet technology that requires that.

Is Blu-ray really a good medium for games?

So there you go: you can either install game assets on the hard drive or by place redundant game data around the disc. The problem in both of these solutions is that one of the advantages of Blu-ray become less compelling. Why bother with a large Blu-ray disc when you're putting that data on the hard drive before you play anyway? You could have simply put that extra information on a DVD and then moved it onto the hard drive The same can be said about the redundancy approach: why not just use a standard DVD and have it load quickly in the first place instead of doubling or tripling up your data on a slower but larger disc?

The Blu-ray drive is useful for movies, of course, but for gaming, Blu-ray doesn't look like it's the best choice until faster drives are released. There is every possibility of a future PS3 revision with a faster Blu-ray drive, but that won't help current PS3 owners. Blu-ray may be the future for storage that's both large and fast, but right now it seems shoe-horned into gaming applications. It seems like developers may actually do better by shipping some of their PS3 games on DVDs. Games will load faster and manufacturers will save money on the discs. Would Sony allow it?

Sony...always looking out for the best interests of it's gaming fans. That Blu-ray sure was critical for the PS3!

miir · Post by **miir** » January 20, 2007, 11:58 am

Why don't you compare the 360 sales from this time last year to the PS3 sales this year?

How much slower are load times in Oblivion on the PS3 than the 360 or PC?

How many xbox fanboy sites do you have to plow though to find these negative opinions of the PS3? How much time do you spend on average per day digging up negative opinions of the PS3?

Why are you so concerned about the PS3?

Niffoni · Post by **Niffoni** » January 20, 2007, 6:47 pm

Winnow's posts are the only reason I even remotely want a PS3, and even then I'd only buy it to watch his emotional breakdown after learning that someone still bought one after all the countless hours of work he's put into dissuading total strangers from purchasing it.

Isn't there some other way to scratch that itch?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 20, 2007, 7:59 pm

miir wrote: How many xbox fanboy sites do you have to plow though to find these negative opinions of the PS3? How much time do you spend on average per day digging up negative opinions of the PS3?

Actually you can find most of this stuff on PS3's own fanboy site:

http://www.ps3scene.com/

Not much effort required.

Niffoni wrote:Winnow's posts are the only reason I even remotely want a PS3, and even then I'd only buy it to watch his emotional breakdown after learning that someone still bought one after all the countless hours of work he's put into dissuading total strangers from purchasing it.

Isn't there some other way to scratch that itch?

It's been light entertainment over the past year watching things progress. I'm just pointing out how considerate Sony's been in making sure their fans are taken care of with the optimal equipment. I'd hate to think they removed rumble, screwed up their wireless controllers, forced Blu Ray, and didn't provide cables deliberately because they were cheap while at the same time tried to force their proprietary format on users.

As much as I point out the shortcomings of the PS3 and 360 (360 is kind of loud), I'm still going to be forced to buy a PS3 in a year or two when Final Fantasy XIII comes out. Of course by then, it will probably be a couple hundred dollars cheaper if they still want to compete against the 360. I'm disappointed in Sony's choices with the PS3. Not being a fanboy of theirs, I don't blindly accept whatever box they pump out as being perfect.

Niffoni, that would be the most pathetic reason for buying something. I should start telling everyone how bad eating fiber glass is and see if you chow some down to spite me. Anyone with half a brain should be able to view all opinions and then decide for themselves if a product, politician, view on morality, etc is worth considering based on their broader research of the subject.

I welcome posts pointing out areas where the 360 (and Wii) are lacking as well.

You could compare of the PS3, Wii, 360 "battle" to sports teams. Some people hate a sports team simply because many like them. The Dallas Cowboys for example. Due to their success in the 70's through 90's, they have many bandwagon fans. Sony could be considered the Dallas Cowboys of consoles. No matter how they are performing presently, the Sony fans will support them much like Dallas fans supported them after they started sucking. Slowly, I've noticed the Dallas bandwagon fans migrating back to their own local teams or to the new "best" team. It usually takes a few losing seasons for this to happen. This is the same with consoles. Sony is not what it used to be but it will take most people awhile to figure this out. While you can have loyalty to a team without hurting your experience, it's a little different with products. I tend to take a look at the company that is trending in the right direction. Microsoft wasn't the best with the original XBox, but what they did right was learn from it and spent a shitload of time developing the 360 in order to improve upon it in all areas. With Sony, I see an agenda to push Blu Ray no matter what. They envisioned a powerful console with nice features but screwed up the development and integration of its parts. It remains to be seen if Sony would have profited more if they agreed to a compromise in HD formats. If there was a universal format, Microsoft probably would have included it in the 360 which would have made the two consoles prices closer. I can see why Microsoft didn't want Blu Ray considering all this data duplication and slowness of the drive compared to HD DVD. HD DVD works great for both Data and Movies, is cheaper, and they already have a way to make ten layer disks which would provide 50GB storage.

I haven't heard much Wii talk lately. From what I've read, after Wii Sports is played out (and Zelda hans have had their fun), the games that are planned for 2007 aren't that exciting. I heard lots of Wii talk after Christmas from co-workers that got their parents to bowl in Wii Sports and they had a great time. I haven't heard much since. Maybe I will again when Thanksgiving rolls around and the families get together and need something to pass the time instead of listen to Undle Ed talk about his gallstones. The Wii is still flying off shelves so my opinion on this is probably wrong. I'll admit as much in a year if the substandard graphics and arm flailing remains popular. Whatever happens, it wouldn't stop me from buying a version of the Wii that supported at least 720P if they ended up putting out games I wanted to play.

Niffoni · Post by **Niffoni** » January 21, 2007, 12:20 am

I think you may have taken my post a little too literally, I am only poking fun at what appears to be an signifigant overreaction based on the subject matter. I have no Winnow h8.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » January 21, 2007, 2:01 am

Winnow wrote:At least unhappy PS3 owners can't hang themselves with the PS3's wireless recharger/re-sync cable...they're too short! Sony's always looking out for its customers.

Haha yeah great point, Winnow. Yeah the charge cord for my Xbox 360 is like twice as long! Too bad I had to pay like $30 for it as well as $25 for a rechargable battery. This is after spent about $90 on batteries for my low low price Xbox 360. Oh yeah and I have four controllers so multiply all those costs (other than the battieries) by four. Oh, and a USB hub because the 360 only has one USB port way in the back of the machine.

Right. Oh, $200 for a decent sized "Xbox 360 compatible" HD. And $9 a month just to play games online. Oh yeah, and another $200 for an HD DVD player.

I'm wondering though. Do you ever get bored of looking like a fucking jackass?

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 21, 2007, 2:23 am

kyoukan wrote:
Winnow wrote:At least unhappy PS3 owners can't hang themselves with the PS3's wireless recharger/re-sync cable...they're too short! Sony's always looking out for its customers.
Haha yeah great point, Winnow. Yeah the charge cord for my Xbox 360 is like twice as long! Too bad I had to pay like $30 for it as well as $25 for a rechargable battery. This is after spent about $90 on batteries for my low low price Xbox 360. Oh yeah and I have four controllers so multiply all those costs (other than the battieries) by four. Oh, and a USB hub because the 360 only has one USB port way in the back of the machine.

Right. Oh, $200 for a decent sized "Xbox 360 compatible" HD. And $9 a month just to play games online. Oh yeah, and another $200 for an HD DVD player.

I'm wondering though. Do you ever get bored of looking like a fucking jackass?

You have a point on the issue of only having the 1 USB post in the back.
Using the front one for that external HDD would be an option though.

The only thing you can store on the external HDD on the 360 is media anyways so having one for the 360 is somewhat pointless. Just stream it from your PC. I'm pretty sure that has a "decent size HDD".

As for the battery thing, What happens to that Sixaxis once the internal battery dies? (Assuming that Sony-built battery doesn't blow your fingers off) That's right, you plop down an entirely new 60$ cdn for a new Sixaxis! (Don't forget the additional cost of 4 USB cable upfront cause Sony didn't deem those important enough to include with their wireless controllers).

At least with the 360 controller, a year or two down the line when the thing holds about a 15 minute charge, you can always just pop down 15$ bucks for a new battery and be off to the races.

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetai ... atid=23562

You might want to click the link up top while you're at it as well. sounds like you got fucked for your Live sub.

59.99 + BC's sales taxes is approx 68$. Unless you're using fuzzy math, that comes down to about 5.75$ a month. Not 9 bucks.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » January 21, 2007, 3:28 am

Animalor wrote:As for the battery thing, What happens to that Sixaxis once the internal battery dies?

In 8 years? Take it to a Sony store and have them put a new one in it? This nullifies my point, how? Are you telling me that the cost of getting a NiMH battery replaced is more than having to purchase a play and charge and a Microsoft NiMH battery, or eight years worth of duracells?

Assuming that Sony-built battery doesn't blow your fingers off)

lllooooolzllzlzzzz because $$ony productz suck, am i rite guyz?!

That's right, you plop down an entirely new 60$ cdn for a new Sixaxis!

What fucking idiot would do that? Oh... now I see where you're going.

(Don't forget the additional cost of 4 USB cable upfront cause Sony didn't deem those important enough to include with their wireless controllers).

a generic usb cable? 99 cents at any radio shack? I had about 8 of them in my desk from various other products, and they all work fine with my SIXAXIS controllers. funnily enough, the 360 controllers are unique so you have to buy the official MS or liscenced versions, and pay the official MS $20 markup.

You might want to click the link up top while you're at it as well. sounds like you got fucked for your Live sub.

Yes. By Microsoft.

What is it about these PS3 threads that make you tremendous faggots troll in every single one like a bunch of pathetic fucking nine year old fanboys? didn't you drop a load in your fucking diapers once when I posted something mildly negative in one of your shitty Xbox threads? does bill gates pay you cunts money to ruin every PS3 discussion on the internet?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 21, 2007, 4:14 am

360 > PS3

Alert: Off topic a bit

(kyoukan will still blow a gasket and fire off some caps)

Anyone see this clip of Bill Gates and Napoleon Dynamite? The audio is a little distorted as well as the camera angle but its from a Microsoft introducing Office 2005. Props to Bill for letting Napoleon slap him in the face in one scene. Bill's got a good sense of humor unlike Jobs!

Bill Gates > Steve Jobs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YktZkyx4wtM

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » January 21, 2007, 4:22 am

kyoukan wrote:
Assuming that Sony-built battery doesn't blow your fingers off)
lllooooolzllzlzzzz because $$ony productz suck, am i rite guyz?!

their batteries caused a few issues in 2006...

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 21, 2007, 9:33 am

In what land of the fairies do you live where you can buy a USB cable for 99 cents?

I'm assuming that the connector is a mini USB 5-pin in the Sixaxis side of things.

http://www.thesourcecc.com/estore/Searc ... &pagenum=1

The cheapest cable they sell at Radio Shack is still at least 20$.

In 8 years? Take it to a Sony store and have them put a new one in it? This nullifies my point, how? Are you telling me that the cost of getting a NiMH battery replaced is more than having to purchase a play and charge and a Microsoft NiMH battery, or eight years worth of duracells?

Hopefully for you replacing those batteries will be easy as that. Odds are though that you'll have to ship the controller to Sony and for a fee they'll replace the battery for you. You'll only have to pay for the replacement and shipping to their facility.

BTW - The iPod uses a Lit Ion battery from Sony and/or Sanyo. Most likely the same ones as the Sixaxis. The good news is that if you just recharge the thing when it's completely depleted instead of at the end of your gaming session you should be just fine.

Oh and you can buy the 360 rechargable pack without the play and charge cable. I got 2 controllers, 1 kit and haven't run into an issue where 2 controllers were dead at the same time yet.

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » January 22, 2007, 1:22 pm

For the record, I just purchased some of those USB cords from Frys for my workplace and they were 2$ a piece.

Also, the more I read some of the posts here, the more I feel like someone is shilling for MS.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 22, 2007, 9:00 pm

A price cut less than two months after launch! Maybe by November we'll be able to buy a PS3 for the price of a Wii.

Price Drops of PS3 in Japan
January 22nd 2007
---
It seems that the PS3 is not only stalling here in the states but, back in Japan as well. Kotaku is reporting that PS3s are stacking up on shelves. Retailers are taking matters into their own hands and offering temporary price cuts of up to 10,000 yen ($82). I wonder how long till we see similar measures taken here in the US. One, thing is clear something needs to happen soon to jump start lagging sales. As much as I hate to say this, it's starting to feel like the Dreamcast all over again.

Niffoni · Post by **Niffoni** » January 22, 2007, 11:05 pm

Sounds like great news for those precious few of us left who don't seem to have unrequited romantic feelings for a_corporation01!

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » January 22, 2007, 11:34 pm

Winnow wrote:A price cut less than two months after launch!

Well this is at the retailer level and not from Sony directly. The PSP has been out almost two years with no price drop (other than removing the value pack crap and selling it standalone) so I doubt you'll see an official pricecut on the PS3 anytime soon.

In an interview with Gamepro magazine (on shelves, not online), Sony's Jack Tretton revealed that it will be a long while before the PS3 sees any sign of price cut. Tretton commented that a lot of cash was spent in R & D and it will not follow the same price cutting system as the PS2.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » January 23, 2007, 11:42 am

I just read an interview in Game Informer yesterday with the CEO of Sony that said to not expect price cuts on the PS3 to come as soon as or be as drastic as the price cuts in the PS2.. but we'll see.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » January 23, 2007, 11:46 am

Funkmasterr wrote:I just read an interview in Game Informer yesterday with the CEO of Sony that said to not expect price cuts on the PS3 to come as soon as or be as drastic as the price cuts in the PS2.. but we'll see.

Kind of like the post directly above yours?

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » January 23, 2007, 12:32 pm

Boogahz wrote:
Funkmasterr wrote:I just read an interview in Game Informer yesterday with the CEO of Sony that said to not expect price cuts on the PS3 to come as soon as or be as drastic as the price cuts in the PS2.. but we'll see.
Kind of like the post directly above yours?

Haha, yeah I just read what Aslanna posted, not the quote below it

shame on me.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 23, 2007, 12:40 pm

How have $500+ game consoles fared over the years?

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 23, 2007, 1:52 pm

Winnow wrote:How have $500+ game consoles fared over the years?

Looking at that graph, the consoles that were as expensive as the premium 360 doesn't fare all that great either.

If you were to baase this gen on what happened historically, the Wii is on track as being the winner of the console war.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 23, 2007, 2:48 pm

Animalor wrote: Looking at that graph, the consoles that were as expensive as the premium 360 doesn't fare all that great either.

If you were to baase this gen on what happened historically, the Wii is on track as being the winner of the console war.

Yep.

360 needs to drop about 100.00 for the premium sometime this year to hit the sweet spot but at least the core system does offer a 300.00 version for the consumer that just wants to play offline games or likes online multiplayer but doesn't want to mess with Live Arcade or demos. 199/299 price points would be great though. Maybe with the new CPU/HDMI/120GB 360 rumored hitting the 399 price target, the other two will drop 100.00.

The PS3 is way over priced for the general consumer while the 360 is right on the fringe. I think Sony will have to compete with a Halo 3/299.00 Premium Console combo this November. Not necessarily packaged that way, just announced at the same time.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » January 23, 2007, 2:50 pm

Well, the fact that inflation is not takien into account completely skews that graph. Without that little piece of inormation, it's just some pretty colored bars.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 23, 2007, 2:53 pm

Fairweather Pure wrote:Well, the fact that inflation is not takien into account completely skews that graph. Without that little piece of inormation, it's just some pretty colored bars.

Adjusted for inflation, you could make an argument that the 360's premium $399.00 is the sweet spot.

miir · Post by **miir** » January 23, 2007, 3:00 pm

Since the PS2 has been the sales leader for the past 6 years (and of all time), we could conclude that it is the proverbial sweet spot and that the 360 is underpriced.

That doesn't really explain why 360 sales have been so poor.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » January 23, 2007, 3:03 pm

All that graph includes is the price at release for each of the systems. It says nothing about sales at those prices, and it includes nothing about price drops.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 23, 2007, 3:55 pm

miir wrote:Since the PS2 has been the sales leader for the past 6 years (and of all time), we could conclude that it is the proverbial sweet spot and that the 360 is underpriced.

That doesn't really explain why 360 sales have been so poor.

Isn't it true however that the PS2 really only took off in sales when it hit the 199$ pricepoint?

miir · Post by **miir** » January 23, 2007, 4:24 pm

Yeah I guess the PS2 wasn't really so popular when it was realeased... before the price drop. It only sold 20 million units in the first 14 months of release.

I guess that makes the 360 a complete and utter fucking failure because it only sold 10 million in the same timeframe from release.

Maybe 360 sales will take off if they drop the price to $199.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » January 23, 2007, 4:39 pm

lol.. miir takes everything so personally. Again why are people trying to make comparisons between the 360 to the PS2? I guess I'm missing the point.

But since we're there.. It doesn't really look like the pricecut on the PS2 made that much of a difference although sales did seem to 'stall' after the 2001 Holidays and picked up after the price cut so who knows. Here's some quick data I put together. Unfortunately it was from two different sources so the dates don't match nicely.

2000/03/06 720,000 units (Japan only)
2000/03/15 1 million units (Japan only)
2000/03/31 1.41 million units (Japan only)
2000/05/24 2 million units (Japan only)
2000/06/30 2.54 million units (Japan only)
2000/08/01 3 million units (Japan only)
2000/09/30 3.52 million units (Japan only)
2000/12/31 6.4 million units (Japan: 3.94 million/ USA: 1.46 million/ Europe: 1.0 million)

2001/03/23 10.04 million units (Japan: 4.65 million/ USA: 2.76 million/ Europe: 2.63 million)
2001/03/31 10.61 million units (Japan: 4.75 million/ USA: 3.01 million/ Europe: 2.85 million)
2001/06/30 14.95 million units (Japan: 5.94 million/ USA: 5.15 million/ Europe: 3.86 million)
2001/09/30 19.57 million units (Japan: 6.85 million/ USA: 8.24 million/ Europe: 4.48 million)
2001/10/10 20.04 million units (Japan: 6.86 million/ USA: 8.55 million/ Europe: 4.63 million)
2001/12/31 24.99 million units (Japan: 8.30 million/ USA: 9.87 million/ Europe: 6.82 million)

2002/01/31 26.33 million units (Japan: 8.95 million/ USA: 10.05 million/ Europe: 7.33 million)
2002/03/31 28.68 million units (Japan: 9.65 million/ USA: 10.59 million/ Europe: 8.44 million)
2002/05/05 30.02 million units (Japan: 9.99 million/ USA: 11.25 million/ Europe: 8.78 million)
Price Cut - US$199.99 (May 14, 2002) (CAD$299.99)
2002/06/30 33.27 million units (Japan: 10.16 million/ USA: 13.67 million/ Europe: 9.44 million)
2002/09/17 40.04 million units (Japan: 10.97 million/ USA: 17.01 million/ Europe: 12.06 million)
2002/09/30 41.56 million units (Japan: 10.98 million/ USA: 17.94 million/ Europe: 12.64 million)
2002/12/31 49.59 million units (Japan: 12.47 million/ USA: 21.20 million/ Europe: 15.92 million)

2003/01/15 50.03 million units (Japan: 12.53 million/ USA: 21.48 million/ Europe: 16.02 million)
2003/03/31 51.20 million units (Japan: 12.70 million/ USA: 22.21 million/ Europe: 16.29 million)
Price Cut - US$179.99 (May 13, 2003, "temporary" pricing) (CAD$249.99)[1]
2003/06/30 53.85 million units (Japan: 13.60 million/ USA: 23.65 million/ Europe: 16.60 million)
Price Cut - US$179.99 (August 18, 2003, official pricing)[2]
2003/09/06 60.03 million units (Japan: 14.17 million/ USA: 26.42 million/ Europe: 19.44 million)
2003/09/30 62.63 million units (Japan: 14.26 million/ USA: 27.42 million/ Europe: 20.95 million)
2003/12/31 69.46 million units (Japan: 15.90 million/ USA: 29.09 million/ Europe: 24.47 million)

2004/01/13 70.00 million units (Japan: 16.18 million/ USA: 29.26 million/ Europe: 24.56 million)
2004/03/31 71.30 million units (Japan: 16.98 million/ USA: 29.53 million/ Europe: 24.79 million)
Price Cut - US$149.99 (May 11, 2004) (CAD$179.99)
2004/06/30 72.01 million units (Japan: 17.52 million/ USA: 29.53 million/ Europe: 24.96 million)
2004/09/30 74.00 million units (Japan: 17.89 million/ USA: 30.23 million/ Europe: 25.88 million)
2004/12/31 81.39 million units (Japan: 19.47 million/ USA: 32.86 million/ Europe: 29.06 million)

2005/03/31 87.47 million units (Japan: 20.71 million/ USA: 35.35 million/ Europe: 31.41 million)
2005/06/02 90.00 million units (Japan: 21.04 million/ USA: 36.48 million/ Europe: 32.48 million)
2005/06/30 91.00 million units (Japan: 21.25 million/ USA: 36.78 million/ Europe: 32.97 million)
2005/09/30 96.01 million units (Japan: 21.70 million/ USA: 38.78 million/ Europe: 35.53 million)
2005/11/29 100.01 million units (Japan: 22.22 million/ USA: 40.65 million/ Europe: 37.14 million)
2005/12/31 101.37 million units (Japan: 22.83 million/ USA: 40.99 million/ Europe: 37.55 million)

2006/03/31 103.69 million units (Japan: 23.27 million/ USA: 41.82 million/ Europe: 38.60 million)
Price Cut - US$129.99 (April 20, 2006) (CAD$129.99)
2006/06/30 106.23 million units (Japan: 23.55 million/ USA: 42.97 million/ Europe: 39.71 million)
2006/09/30 111.25 million units (Japan: 23.99 million/ USA: 44.86 million/ Europe: 42.40 million)

(Price cuts being on US/Canada pricing. I didn't look for other regions.)