Sony cuts PS3 price, will introduce cheaper model for Xmas

[Fash]

http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/18/technol ... tm?cnn=yes

NEW YORK (AP) -- Sony on Thursday cut the price of its PlayStation 3 game console in the U.S. and announced an even cheaper model that will arrive before the holiday shopping season.

The top-line PlayStation model, with an 80 gigabyte hard drive, now costs $499, down from $599. That effectively eliminates the lower-end model, which has a 60-gigabyte drive and has sold for $499.

A new low-end model with a 40-gigabyte drive will go on sale Nov. 2 for $399.

Unlike the other PlayStation 3 models, the new one won't be able to play games made for the PlayStation 2. In a statement, Sony said this was due to a more extensive lineup of games of the PlayStation 3.

The U.S. launch of the 40-gigabyte model was widely expected, since Sony has already announced it for Japan and Europe. It narrows the price gap with competing game consoles, but the PlayStation is still the most expensive.

Microsoft Corp.'s (Charts, Fortune 500) Xbox 360 costs $350 and Nintendo Corp.'s (Charts) Wii costs $250. The PlayStation 3 has been trailing them both in U.S. sales, and the Wii has been a breakout hit for Nintendo, with more than 9 million units shipped. Sony has sold 5 million PlayStation 3s since they went on sale in November last year.

I think this is a great idea to drum up some sales for the holiday... my only issue is how they use hard drive space as the main differentiator between SKU's... Hard drive space is cheap as shit, and my 360 came with a bigger HD than even the most expensive PS3 (and I've got at least 50 gigs on it already)

[Boogahz]

Unlike the other PlayStation 3 models, the new one won't be able to play games made for the PlayStation 2. In a statement, Sony said this was due to a more extensive lineup of games of the PlayStation 3.

I would say that there is more than just HD space that is different between the two. This is actually a pretty fucking big reason not to go for the low-end version for myself.

[Animalor]

I love that Sony used to bash MS for back compat and they go from full to none in under a year.

Aside from that, welcome to the world 'tard pack v2.0

[Aardor]

I really don't understand Sony. Back during the PS1 days, an emulator which allowed you to play PS1 games on the computer, "Bleem", was shut down by Sony through a lawsuit. Instead of opening their market to a new community (PC users), and boosting the sell of games, Sony completely ignored any potential use to them, being afraid of piracy. However, this didn't seem like a major concern since like the PS1, Bleem was not able to play copied Playstation games (sure, you could probably get around this, but you could also get around it on the PS1 itself). So when Microsoft began developing the 360, they wanted backwards compatibility, and what did they do?, Hire the person primarily responsible for Bleem, to do their software emulation of xbox games.

Sony releases the PS3. Instead of doing any software emulation, Sony initially (till May of this year) had the PS2 hardware soldered onto the PS3 motherboard. So games were run the exact same as a PS2 would run them, still being rendered in 480i, and then a software image scalar was used to output 720p/1080i/1080p. Ok so May comes, they remove the PS2 hardware, and start actually emulating the PS2. The hope is that now the PS3 will render the games in 720p/1080i/1080p similar to the way an xbox360 does it for xbox games. But no, instead the PS2 games are rendered at 480i, then upscaled through software, with a "smoother" (a ghetto form of anti-aliasing). So the "more powerful" PS3 which has 4 more processors than the 360 isn't able to do what the 360 does, which is render old games in HD resolution, it just outputs old games in HD resolution after upscaling.

Now, Sony releases a 40GB version of the PS3, which contains the same hardware as the 80GB version of the PS3 (minus the HD, and as far as I could tell, I was unable to find anything relating to another hardware difference), but they disable software emulation of PS2/PS1 games. Why? I guess to try to make people buy the 80gb version.

All of that being said, I realize that without an HD-capable TV, none of what I said really makes a difference. Furthermore, even with an HDTV, people probably care a whole lot less about it being render in HD than I do. I just get frustrated because as time goes on, my reasons for buying a PS3 keep dropping off: the system has yet to have a game which I really want to play, and is groundbreaking in some way; the system does not render old games in HD, which i have greatly enjoyed on the 360 (well, at least with halo 1/2 and ninja gaiden); and it looks more and more like spending $35 on a movie for a format which might disappear is completely ridiculous (this includes buying HD-DVDS also, not just Blu-Ray). The PS3 has some pretty amazing hardware; the cell processors and their use create an amazing environment for parallelism, and thus better video quality and physics within the games, but Sony has yet to take advantage of it, in any meaningful way (in my opinion).

[Animalor]

Here's what I understand of the PS3 back Compat.

The original 20GB(tard pack 1.0) and 60GB had both the PS2's Processor(Emotion Engine or EE for the rest of this post) and the PS2's GPU(RSX chip).

When the 80GB came out, to cut costs Sony decided to do away with the EE in every PS3 and left only the RSX GPU for PS2 emulation. This caused to lose perfect back compat with ~40% of the titles out there.

Now with the 40GB/tard pack 2.0 (and I suspect all PS3's in the future), RSX has been cut out and there's nbo back compat at all. With their statements that they are looking forwards and not back, they are essentially saying that they won't even by trying to look at software emulation, regardless of how powerful the platform is. This is how they'll ensure a 10 year lifecycle for the PS2.

Frankly, I suspect that perfect Back Compat was Ken Kutaragi's dream. I also suspect that cost cutting and dropping back compat is coming straight from Kaz Hirai himself.

All that is left to SCEA and SCEE is to try and spin this as positively as they can.

Also, the PS3 only has 1 processor. There's 1 main CPU that acts as the hub per say that farms out processing to each of the 7 cores on the chip. Without this one main core orchestrating the chip, the 7 other cores are useless.

It's a number crunching machine because there's akin to 7 processors but they can only do things as fast as the main core is feeding em so in reality the PS3 has 1 processor whereas the 360 has 3 dual-core processors.

IBM is the real winner of the console wars cause they designed the processors for the Wii, 360 and PS3.

[Aardor]

Ah, I didn't even realize that they had left the PS2 GPU on after removed the EE. So, they aren't just disabling a feature due to a lower price bracket, so kudos for that.

My comparison between the 360 processors and the PS3 processors above was pretty off base, for exactly what you said (the 6 slave cores not being processors in the classic definition). I am still really excited for the Cell processor, due to how it will attempt to achieve the same things as traditional mutli-processor systems, but with a very different architecture. That is, if they actually take anything close to full advantage of it.

[*~*stragi*~*]

The new 40 gig model still has HDMI and comes with WIFI so I think I'm actually going to pick it up... I'm glad Sony didn't completely chop it's balls off.

The only difference is 40 gigs HD space,2 USB ports, and PS2 backwards compatability which I don't care about. (It will still do PS1 apparently.)

[Winnow]

40GB PS3s run cooler, quieter, use less energy

A report from German site Computer Base reveals that consumers giving up backward compatibility on their 40GB PS3s are at least getting something in return. The new systems utilize the new 65nm version of the Cell processor, reducing the power usage from 200 watts to 135 and further limiting the heat and noise the system gives off.

That's not a bad trade for losing backwards compatibility. If I didn't own the 60GB already, I'd get the 40GB version. Low power and noise are nice benefits.

[Boogahz]

but what the fuck would you play if there was no backwards compatability?

[Winnow]

but what the fuck would you play if there was no backwards compatability?

Nothing, the same as I play now. It needs to be turned on for that lower wattage to make a difference so that might not be a big deal as well. It's ninja quiet right now in my closet.

Edit: don't think things are all rosy for PS3. There is still a ton of bad news that fills the front page of PS3 web sites.

From current front page of PS3Scene.com:

PS3 Blacksite plagued with development trouble, says insider

From arstechnica.com:

Yesterday, we talked a bit about Blacksite: Area 51 and the missing online features in the PlayStation 3 version. Since that story ran, an insider contacted us to say the PS3 version's problems may run deeper than a lack of voice chat.

"The PS3 version is experiencing issues and missed deadlines," he tells us. The insider also notes Midway's unhappiness with these issues; the PS3 demo and launch will likely end up being delayed as a result.

"Midway isn't happy at all about the progress, and it's a story I've heard over and over this year across the industry when it comes to the PS3 and cross-platform titles," the insider states.

Sony PlayStation Operating Losses Double in Q2

From next-gen.biz:

Sony said Thursday that quarterly operating losses for its games unit had more than doubled, but that it hoped the division would break even or better in the second half of the financial year.

Former Harmonix developer shoots down PS3 tech in rant

From ps3fanboy.com:

A former developer at Harmonix, the team behind the hotly anticipated Rock Band, had some choice words against Sony's PS3 in his personal blog. His outrage comes as the most recent in many public outcries against Sony's next generation machine. He tackles so-called "misconceptions" that PS3 fans seem to have. Firstly, he says that the graphics capabilities of the machine have been misconstrued. "Fill rate is one of the primary ways to measure graphics performance - in essence, it's a number describing how many pixel operations you can perform. The fill rate on the PS3 is significantly slower than on the 360, meaning that games either have to run at lower resolution or use simpler shader effects to achieve the same performance ... And I'm not talking about small differences here, we're talking roughly half the pixel pushing power."

In regards to Blu-ray, the developer criticized the lower read speeds of the medium. "Great for watching movies, but not so great for games. Getting data off the Blu-ray drive takes about twice as long as it does to get the same data off the 360's DVD drive. That translates into longer load times."

A good 50% of news posted is bad still.