One more point for Nintendo

[StormRunner]

I can not wait, I really can not wait, to see what sort of "screw you out of every penny" job Sony pulls on the people foolish enough to but their system. They look at customers the same way a wolf looks at a sheep. I hope you like buying your games one car/team/item at a time. You know it's coming.

Every corporation looks firsthand to their own profit. To keep the end of the year report in black ink. Holding this against Sony is nonesensical.

Buy a console for the games, not for the brand.

[lankycheese]

Exactly, and I'm buying a Wii for Zelda and Smash Brawl.

One day when the PS3 comes down in price I will no doubt pick one up, so I can play MGS4 and FFXIII, aswell as the latest Dynasty Warriors game.

But for now, the Wii. ^^

[Oosey]

Amen

[muletang]

heh I bought a ps2 and use it as a dvd player. I do have backyard wrestling2 and TIF2004 though which make nice coasters. heh, I'll wait till they sell these things for $100 with 10 games and then decide which to get.

[NortherlyNanook]

Even though Sony may be losing money on each PS3 sale, it doesn't mean that you still aren't getting screwed.

[broncoblitz]

Even though Sony may be losing money on each PS3 sale, it doesn't mean that you still aren't getting screwed.

Well unless it involves a girlfriend im not a fan of the potential for getting screwed.

[superpoweredchimp]

I'd pay that much for better graphics, 1.8 trillion calculations per second, and more storage (HDD and disc media). People would blow over twice, even three times that amount on a PC, so why not?

Look at the previous generations sales. The PS2 sold 111 million units, and the Xbox sold 24 million. If every single Xbox owner bought a 360, and only one fourth of PS2 owners bought a PS3, Sony would still have a lead.

Sony's using some similar marketing strategies as it did with the PS2. When that came out, they were losing $150-250 per console. I don't know that many people with 25 PS2 games, but apparently Sony still managed to stay in the market.

Blu-ray might not matter right now if you don't own an HDTV or PS3, but when HDTVs become the standard for everyone's home, it will really make a difference. Have you ever watched a DVD on an HDTV? Not very pretty at all.

[broncoblitz]

If sony sells 100 million PS3's they will have lost 30 billion dollars.

Needless to say that is not an insignificant amount.

Plus dvds on an hdtv look amazing so long as you have a device that can upscale the signal to a higher resolution, which the xbox 360 is able to do.

[StormRunner]

If sony sells 100 million PS3's they will have lost 30 billion dollars.

You forget to account for the declining cost of manufacturing the console. The only console I know of that never was sold at a profit was the Xbox. Either that, or it was never profitable for Microsoft. Can't quite remember.

Something that does worry me about this generation of consoles (not counting Wii which is more or less "last gen" or "new gen") is the skyrocketing development costs. With the leap not only in these machines graphics capabilities, but also Ai, physics and more, people will come to expect a new standard. Namco predicts that they'll have to sell 500 000 copies per game to make a profit. This will most likely make it very hard for niche titles to be released.

[lankycheese]

Or maybe they could just come up with some original and solid gameplay ideas instead of making all the technical aspects bigger and 'better' each time.

And I wouldn't buy the PS3 to pre-empt the rise of Blu-Ray. The PS2 had a damn horrible DVD player in it that wouldn't play half of the formats, that I know from first hand experience as yes I owned a PS2, and yes many a DVD I bought would not work on it. Aswell as the fact that in general it was just crap, and after 2 years from its release a $300(Aus) DVD player from K-Mart worked 10 times better anyway.

Blu-Ray will be like every other technology, wait a little bit until it becomes cheaper and more developed, then buy it. That's if it even takes off. The jump from VHS to DVD was a fair leap in quality, aswell as VHS had reigned for a long time, I don't see too many of us getting sick of the quality of our DVD's, nor too enthused with upgrading our sparkling collections all over again.

[StormRunner]

Or maybe they could just come up with some original and solid gameplay ideas instead of making all the technical aspects bigger and 'better' each time

Better technology gives more freedom to the developers. There is only one thing that's stopping them from creating entirely new ideas without top notch graphics, sounds, ai and physics.

The market. It doesn't sell. We've come to expect the 'best' out of the 360 and PS3. We think we know what they can do and won't settle for less.

Also, technology doesn't stagnate. To ask of them stop using "bigger and better" things is like wishing we never moved away from Computer Space.

[jawsofhana]

I would never buy a PS2 not for the price it's at. I generally avoid consoles alltogether since there is usually only one or two games that are worth having.

The X-box would in my opinion be a better purchase (which also has HD support). And the Wii is also a good system as long as you are after fun gameplay and don't care too much about the graphics.

I have a 42" Philips Plasma TV and a 40" Samsung LCD HD-Monitor. HD-DVD quality does look better than normal, but the difference is not really noticeable unless you put a TV with a normal signal and one with an HD signal beside eachother.

However, I am pleased with my setup at the moment. Running games at 1980x1080 16:9 format on my LCD.

[lankycheese]

To ask of them stop using "bigger and better" things is like wishing we never moved away from Computer Space.

I mean more to stop using them as the main marketing push for the game. New graphics and all that jazz are awesome, but please do it on a new game that I havn't played a million times before.

[StormRunner]

To ask of them stop using "bigger and better" things is like wishing we never moved away from Computer Space.

I mean more to stop using them as the main marketing push for the game. New graphics and all that jazz are awesome, but please do it on a new game that I havn't played a million times before.

If the entire gaming-market thought as you do, we'd have a better gaming-world. Though as long as millions of people keep buying Madden, Fifa and GTA clones, we're pretty much stuck with what we've got.

[ThePhotoshop]

Better technology gives more freedom to the developers.

This is only half true. Better technology can give more freedom to developers, however the actual quantity of developers will seriously diminish. As you adequately put it, "This will most likely make it very hard for niche titles to be released." Which brings me to...

The market. It doesn't sell. We've come to expect the 'best' out of the 360 and PS3. We think we know what they can do and won't settle for less.

This I agree with. We expect the best out of the 360 and PS3 because we have very little alternative. The cost of developing a game on this new technology is so risky that independents might as well code their games with their heads under a guillotine and the publisher at the lever. This shunting of independents leaves us with the big-name development houses who stick to proven franchises and formulas backed by flashy marketing campaigns of beautiful graphics, true artificial intelligence and dynamic environments. Thus:

Better technology = more developer "freedom" = rising development costs = less total developers = lack of industry innovation = less end-user freedom.

This is only when taking internal console components into account. When factoring in new media such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, or even output such as 1080i HDTV, the above pattern is infinitely compounded.

Technology may not stagnate, but developer output inevitably does. Nintendo is definately guilty of this, possibly more so than any other due to their being one of the oldest game developers. What they do different, though, is focus on innovating gameplay rather than graphics. Was Halo 2 really that much more innovative than Halo? No. It had all been done in first-person shooters before. However, it had bump mapping and bloom, which made it look nice and shiny. The mainstream had just never experienced this before, and hailed it as a game that "redefined the genre."

Though as long as millions of people keep buying Madden, Fifa and GTA clones, we're pretty much stuck with what we've got.

I truly believe that video games are, as a whole, on a downward slope, and that it is due to exactly this; the gloss and exposure of finally becoming "mainstream". The underlying cause of all this?

Better technology.

I want my hobby back.