jesusofwales

Agreed. Currently the only thing stopping me getting a 360 is its appalling failure rate so I'm waiting until it moves to a 65nm process and runs a bit cooler.

Also, VulcanDragon although I don't agree with everything you say (MGS = best series evar IMO) I'd like to commend you for taking the time and effort to write such detailed and even handed posts.

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Steve-0

Yeah I remember when MGS first came out that game was awesome. I liked MGS 2: Sons of Liberty because the game had a twist to it at the end.

Oldboy

i could never get into #2, i think that was partly due to not playing as snake, so i only played 5 hours worth of gameplay....the original was amazing though, and i played it thru a couple of times. Definetly a key part in the original playstation's great history.

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jesusofwales

Remixed MGS4 Trailer

Considering that MGS has been one of the few console games that actually ends up looking even remotely like its trailers, I am well and truly pumped.

I loved the MGS1 (first game I played on the PS1) and while not quite as good (lack of Snake was very bad IMO) MGS2 was still fun. I've played MGS3, Twin Snakes, AC!D 1 + 2 and the originals. Currently playing Portable Ops which is just pure awesome.

Yep, I'm a Metal Gear fanboy through and through. For what its worth, I can see why people could dislike it, but for me, the games fit like a glove .

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VulcanDragon

Well, a lot of people are doing just that, in essence...all three consoles are serving up the old classics from the NES, SNES, Genesis, arcases, etc. on their download services, and it's been pretty popular from what I've seen. And it's because they remember them being fun, despite having no flashy graphics.

Of course, half the time, nostalgia doesn't hold up under the light of modern day. Some games just don't age well.

I think the reason you don't see too much of this is because the Wii never made any bones about being some uber-tech machine. They're a weaker system and they know it...and they still manage to make fun games anyway.

No, my logic is fine. The fact that some small group of people bougbt a PS3 because it was the cheapest Blu-Ray player (which it isn't anymore, by the way) does not invalidate the point that the "Playstation" brand has been associated with video game consoles for 10 years now. The PS1 played CDs...who cares. The PS2 played DVDs...who cares. Maybe it was a marketing point for Sony at one blip on the product timeline, but in the grand scheme of things all Playstation consoles have been, are, and always will be game machines first. I didn't make it this way, Sony's marketing did.

So it's the people that make the argument that the PS3 is more than a game console, and the price is therefore justified, that are arguing a fallacy. It is too expensive for a game console...and that's why it's not selling, the uber-majority consider the PS3 to be a game console, not some multimedia center. What Sony could have, and maybe should have, done is offer two SKUs: one without Blu-Ray for $400, and one with Blu-Ray for $600. Everyone is satisfied, the PS3 would be selling much more. But no, Sony wanted to use the PS3 to "back door" Blu-Ray into every household to win the format wars de facto, assuming that we are all sheep and would buy a PS3 at any price. Most of us won't.

Thanks, I do tend to get long winded at times. These are fun topics for me, so I get carried away. I just hope everyone I debate with realizes that I'm not picking a fight with them or flaming them when I get long-winded like that, I'm just enjoying the conversation.

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Vulcan Dragon
Core i7 920 @ 3.7 GHz
Currently Playing: Dragon Age Origins (PC); GTA4:Lost and the Damned (X360);Portal (PC); New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)
XBox Live Gamertag: Vulcan Draggon

jesusofwales

Heh, I'm pretty much the same, I'd spend more time debating here if I wasn't so bogged down with revision. That said...

Before I start, I'll just make this point: the PS3 is a media center. Its a console, a BD player an internet browser, photo viewer and music player. For a lot of people (myself included), this is a good thing, for most it's unnecessary. Whether you want it to be or not, this is Sony's plan for the PS3 and it fits into Sony's "grand plan".

Its no secret that the PS2 played a major role in standardizing DVD, and it is quite clear that Sony is trying to do the same with the PS3 and Blu-Ray. Their logic is simple:
- PS3 helps Blu-Ray sales (which it is).
- Increased sales result in more industry support for Blu-Ray (BR is currently outselling HD-DVD, so increased industry support is to be expected).
- As BR becomes the standard, PS3 becomes a more viable purchase.

Sony is following the same plan as last time and early signs are showing success. Needless to say the playing field is very different this time around; now there is a real format war and prices of the media, the players and the HD-TVs are far higher which (predictably) means that PS2/DVD comparable success will take longer to come around. All this also means that it is a much bigger gamble for Sony, if BR looses the format war, a possibly titanic asset becomes a huge liability.

There probably isn't a person in Sony who would deny this is a risky move, but so far we can see Sony's grand plan playing out (albeit very slowly) and as prices fall across the board and more people begin to buy into the HD era, it isn't beyond the realms of plausibility that BR and PS3s dominance will grow exponentially as they bolster each others sales.

And on the gaming side of Blu-Ray, I fully support Sony's decision to implement it as the media for its games (as opposed to an optional add-on a la 360) for a very simple reason: History. There was a time when 2MB was classed as mass storage. There was a time when games came on Floppy Disks. There was a time when a few CDs of data was the most a game would ever take up. Now games fit comfortably on DVDs. But if we look at the past, it is inevitable that they will need to be replaced. Resistance took up 16GB of disk space (though this claim is a little questionable), Dan Houser has claimed that the capacity of DVDs is a limitation for GTA IV and now Kojima is saying that Blu-Rays are too small! Say all you want about Oblivion fitting on a DVD, the age of DVDs isn't over yet, but is coming to an end.

Of course there will always be artificial limits placed upon multi-platform games - a dev is not going to add an extra 5 or 10 GB to content just to the PS3 version of a game, it just doesn't make financial sense and likely never will. Regardless, this does mean that certain games will only really be possible on the PS3. As games get bigger, sometimes even multiple DVDs will be too limited to be a viable storage medium.

Put simply, all signs point to DVDs being surpassed during the lifetime of the PS3.

On that note I would like to refute Sony's claim that the PS3 will have a life cycle of 10 years. Again looking at the past, we can see that in 10 years Blu-Ray will be the new floppy-disk and the Cell and RSX will be a P3 and a Voodoo card. I don't know how Sony plans to deal with this, but it will be interesting to watch. Maybe they'll cut their losses like MS did with the Xbox or maybe they'll stick it out till the bitter end, who knows? The next 10 years could be the most interesting we've ever seen in the console industry.

In before Cell and RSX are already a P3 and Voodoo card...

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Oldboy

No it isn't, you keep generalizing everything. Yes a majority buy it for videogames, but Alot have bought it for BluRay first, Games second. Some have even bought it to connect their PSP to their hdd from anywhere in the world. It is the same exact thing as the PS2. It was the first multimedia console, instead of just video game console, tons of people bought it just because of the dvd player. There are many reasons to buy a PS3, and games is just one of them. It's basically like buying a computer, except it isn't as accessible. You buy it for EVERYTHING it can do, as compared to a 360 which is games and dvds only, though everyone already has a dvd player so it is just a game player, as with the wii, there is only one main reason to buy it. Unless you go to every PS3 Owner, and ask them why they bought it, you cannot generalize it like that, there are to many variables to generalize it to just games.

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johonm333

[console|owner]

PS3: Steve's

PS3 is fun as hell. Tekken 5 was very enjoyable, and i HATE fighting games

Resistance... yea. It took me 2-3 tries to get into it, but DAMN! thats a very addicting game through all of the constant elements that some FPS's dont offer

Wii: GF's

i wuvs the wii.

1)Zelda is the shiznit the first time around.
2)wii sports is godly when with friends
3)my GF has one (jk that is not a valid point)

X360: brother's

i enjoy playing GoW and GRAW, but they seem to bore me after a while. i guess i am waiting for assasin's creed....

EDIT: i have no grudge against either systems, but i dont seem to feel the need to care about the senceless fanboyism. just buy what console you want and stop having a sh** fit just because other people dont feel the same as you.

YOU can have your reasons for buying a console, but hell, its your money. I'm not sleeping with you, so im not gonna tell you how to spend it

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E2140@3560mhz on air
Ph2 X2 550 @ 3.6ghz 1.34v

VulcanDragon

Yep, I get Sony's grand plan. And I also get that there are a few of you who have embraced Sony's grand plan wholeheartedly. But what I keep coming back to is that you guys are the minority. Sony spent 10 years beating into the world's brain that the Playstation was the best game console around...and now they're trying to turn the message into something else: that it's not a game console, it's a media center. The masses either simply don't care, or are at best confused by this new marketing strategy. They still see the Playstation as a game console, and all of that value-added stuff doesn't make sense to most people. The brand they built up cannot be changed into something else just because they want to...Playstation = games, just like Kleenex = tissues and Frisbee = flying disc.

Which is why I think they should have gone for multiple SKUs at minimum...and perhaps an entirely new brand, actually. That PSX they tried to launch a couple of years ago was probably a good idea, just not at the time they launched it.

I won't go so far as to agree to the "standardizing" comment. I think it sped up adoption of DVDs because standalone players were so darned expensive. It was a cheap DVD player, albeit not a great one (but we all know that I believe cheap trumps better anyway). But without any real competition, DVD as a standard was a foregone conclusion.

Now obviously Sony is trying to use the PS3 as one weapon to standardize on Blu-Ray, and I believe it's been working. In no small part, the PS3 is certainly directly responsible for the increased sales of Blu-Ray over HD-DVD for movies available in both formats. However, it's becoming very interesting now...Sony has recently cut the price of their standalone BR players to below the PS3 costs but have announced no similar PS3 price cuts, no the PS3 is not the cheapest Blu-Ray player anymore. Seems like it undercuts that entire strategy a little. And of course, HD-DVD is making some severe price cuts now to try and stop the ship from sinking...Best Buy has standalone players for $299, and I've heard that you can get them as cheat as $200 if you shop online aggressively. Cheap is good to most people...

I probably wouldn't be so hard on Sony if I knew this to be true. A lot of my rhetoric comes out as anti-PS3, which it really isn't; it's anti-Sony. Their corporate attitudes at times border on complete condescension for their customers. I still think they are completely taken aback that the world didn't line up like the sheep they thought we were to happily given them a huge pile of cash for the privilege of touching their lovely little PS3. If they knew now what they knew then, that the PS3 would be the worst-selling console in the last few generations at the six-month point, worse even than the often derided GameCube; and that one of reasons for the lack of sales is the high price point required because of the Blu-Ray player; I have to think they would not have gone forward as planned. When I listen to interviews from game magazine editors lambasting the PS3 launch as a total disaster, I can't help but thing they would do things differently.

But that said, I still recognize when Sony makes good products. I've got a Sony receiver, and as I said the other day, am having an XBR3 installed next Friday.

Coming to an end, sure. I just don't believe we're there yet. The stats have shown that, on average, last-gen games (e.g. Xbox and PS2) grew from CD size to DVD-R size over the life of those consoles. I have no doubt that the average game in this gen would continue to do fine with DVD-9s.

Does that mean that some games will have trouble? Probably, especially Kojima. That guy's got some sort of moral opposition to compression, or something. I'm sure someone could make a version of Super Mario Bros that wouldn't fit on a DVD if they went to riduclous lengths...used 32-bit textures large enough for wall posters, used super-duper 14.2 THX II uncompressed audio, yada yada yada. But personally, I think that's all just silly. It's not going to enhance the game as much as he thinks it will...he's just being an "artist" in that regard. I can respect his artistic vision, but I don't respect bloatware. Everytime Microsoft tells us we need higher system specs to run Windows, Bill Gates gets attacked for forcing bloatware on us. Why aren't people like Kojima held to those same standards?

Also, when did people become so averse to switching a disc every 10 hours of gameplay or so? Man, that's silly at best, whining at worst. As long as you don't have to constantly keep swapping discs as you go from place to place, what's the big deal? If my generation were such crybabies about this sort of thing, we wouldn't even have a lot of game franchises right now. Cripes, Ultima 5 was four double sided floppies that we had to swap out every time we entered a town, entered a dungeon, etc. Modern games ask you to put in the next disc after you've been playing for ten hours, and you never need the old disc again...boo frickin hoo.

Yeah, I don't buy it either. I think it's just more marketing along the same lines of the backwards compatibility: it encourages you to make a purchase now because it's supposed to have a reallllly long life. But realistically, Microsoft will have an XBox III out in 2011 or whatever, and Sony will have to respond somehow.



I don't see it as "generalizing", I see it as recognizing the wider world of consumerism beyond the technogeeks that all of us are.

The PSP connection is a pretty cool feature. However, since PSP sales are kind of sluggish (to put it nicely), that's only a sales point to established Playstation fans...not the wider world. What does that do for GBA or DS owners, of which there are legions? Nothing of course, so they don't care.

People are buying the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player first, games second...I have a hard time swalling that wholesale. I believe that PS3 owners are using their PS3s as Blu-Ray players more than game machines because the game library is so thin. But it's hard to believe that Average Joe Shopper looking for a Blu-Ray player but with little interest in gaming is going to pick tghe PS3 as his Blu-Ray player of choice. I would be very interested in seeing some sales figures on that, if any exist. Even if I accept the premise, I would expect this scenario to diminish substantially soon since the PS3 isn't the cheapest player anymore.

Arguably, wouldn't the PS1 be the first multimedia console? It played music CDs.

Allow me to change the emphasis: YOU bought a PS3 because of everything it can do. While she may come to appreciate everything it can do over time, Average Martha Wal-Mart Mom buys a Playstation branded machine because it's a video game console.

This simple disconnect from the reality of the masses, what you refer to as me "generalizing", is truly the primary reason the Wii is beating the living snot out of both its competitors right now. It's a game console and it knows it. To hell with convergence: do one thing and do it well, and the masses will love you for it.

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Vulcan Dragon
Core i7 920 @ 3.7 GHz
Currently Playing: Dragon Age Origins (PC); GTA4:Lost and the Damned (X360);Portal (PC); New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)
XBox Live Gamertag: Vulcan Draggon

Oldboy

Hmmm so Sony has to make the PS4 to compete with their new Xbox....Last i looked the PS2 was still selling more games than the Wii, PS3, and 360...Yet they still need to answer the 360 when a 6 year old console is still kicking that much ass....come on it's a fact that once you ahve the install base, you can go alot longer if you support it with quality games, which Sony and other companies have yet to even lift the pedal from the floor....


The reason that the PS3 would sell to people wanting BR, is the fact it does all these others things, and is basically the same price....Which would be smarter, a BR only, or an all around player that does everything well(games, web, photos, movies, music, Home...). It's the same exact reason alot of people here want to spend $600 on the Iphone, yet the iphone doesn't really have an advantage overs it's competition when it comes to hardware and software which the PS3 does.


No the PS2 would actual be since it Surfed the Web, Played DVDs, Games, and so on. It did alot more and is why the 360 and PS3 have a ton more features besides gaming, and the people want these features.



Yet the Wii doesn't do anything well, the Game you put into the Wii does it well(well you say they are good....). The controls are annoying for the wii, and get boring extremely fast when you aren't with a group of people. So all the console does is play boring games that are good multiplayer games....

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