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Post by Quorthon on May 16, 2006 10:37:32 GMT -5
The DS isn't killing the PSP just because of price--but also because of the innovation in the gameplay (which, granted, took nearly a year to really get going) along with free Wi-Fi access. The PSP also faces the shortcoming that the vast majority of the games aren't original titles--just straight PS2 ports. Who wants two copies of the same game? Even the GTA on the PSP is about to get shot over to the PS2 (unless it's already happened) to make up the sales. I've also heard people complain about needlessly expensive memory sticks for the thing.
General overviews of E3 slated Nintendo as, basically, the "winner" of the show, Microsoft in a strong 2nd place position, and Sony almost totally failing in every aspect. Hideo Kojima, the mastermind behind the Metal Gear Solid series, has actually stated that he'd like to jump ship from finishing MGS4 to develop for the Wii. Obviously, he's obligated to finish the game first, but he's already purpoted to have started up his own development studio--with an eye on the Wii.
My personal predictions are as such (in America):
1st place: X360 through at least 2nd or 3rd quarter of 2007
2nd: Wii
3rd: PS3
Japan:
1st: Wii
2nd: PS3
3rd: X360--which, despite being out for many months, still sells fewer units per month than Nintendo does GameCubes or Game Boy Advance SPs.
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Post by Quorthon on May 16, 2006 11:01:58 GMT -5
The people who want HD on Demand content & are pushy, pushy, blu-ray supporters will likely buy the $599 unit. It is the cheapest Blu-Ray compatible player on the market. Sony's stand alone will be $999.99 so it will be interesting seeing how sales are for gamers vs. movie lovers with the 2 seperate prices.. In case you didn't hear, the X360 will have an HD-DVD movie add-on by the time the PS3 hits stores. I don't know if Toshiba is making it, but it'll very likely be adaptable to the non-Blu-Ray HD-DVD format. Also, don't initially put too much stock in the Blu-Ray player in the PS3 just yet. Remember the PS2's rocky history: Early PS2's were well-known for breaking down, scratching DVD's (in the upright position for some reason), or just simply not playing quite a few DVD's fairly often. I think most of the reason the PS2 sold so well was the DVD player built into it--in fact, I knew a ton of people who only cared about that and the games were secondary. But I don't think that's gonna happen with the PS3--that won't be a primary selling point like it was before (only now with the yet-unproven Blu-Ray) if for no more reason than cost. Gas prices are going to continue to rise through the summer (or so they say) and by the holidays, we could be in full-blown wallet rape. Aside from that, there still won't be too damn many HDTV sets out there. If the Toshiba-developed HD-DVD player is far less expensive than the Blu-Ray player, Sony could be left alone on this. Keep in mind, Hollywood may already be getting wary of the Blu-Ray with the encroaching failure of the PSP UMD's. There have already been major Hollywood studios/companies pulling out of that financial black hole. Sony could really be shooting themselves in the foot this year. I can see the marketing now advertising and hyping the high-end PS3 with an * that states there's a "value-priced" PS3 also available, sans HD/large HDD/other gimicks. And if you buy the HD PS3, but don't have an HDTV, you'll likely need to buy adapter cables to hook it up to that plain old regular TV you've got. Also, I have to wonder, why the hell are they hyping up Final Fantasy XIII when FFXII won't even be released until about August or September...? That game's gotta be about 2-3 years away! While I think Sony will do fairly well with the PS3's initial sales, the history of $600+ game machines is beyond awful. The Atari Jaguar ($650 I think) died faster than a disemboweled man in a shark tank. However, it had wildly awful, legendarily bad, games polluting the system and more power than any designer really knew what to do with at the time--just about the time 3-D first person games came along, but years before Mario 64 showed what a 3-D game could actually be like. The Neo-Geo, however (also $650 as I recall), had excellent games (here's where the Metal Slug franchise was born), but the games themselves cost $125 and it didn't even have the name recognition of Atari! The Jaguar was advertised as a 64-bit system when, in reality, it was 2 32-bit processors, so it was a faux-64 bit system. The N64 remains the only true 64-bit system ever made, just as the PS2 was the only 128-bit system--and the last home console to be measured by the bit-rate of the main processor. The Neo-Geo was a 24-bit system, released prior (as I recall) to the Jaguar. The games cost so much because they weren't ports--they were the actual arcade-style engines that SNK used in it's arcade machines. In theory, you could jam a Neo-Geo cartridge into one of SNK's arcade cabinets and it would work. This system still sells for big bucks on eBay and I'm hoping Nintendo gets the Neo-Geo stuffed into the Virtual Console download system along with the NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, and TurboGrafix-16. Hell, I hope the Saturn makes it in there, too. Sometimes I wonder, with all my knowledge and love of video games, why I even bother being interested in things like movies and television... |
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Post by Quorthon on May 16, 2006 12:03:02 GMT -5
More fun: ClickersSay, who's that playing Tennis on the Wii against Shigeru Miyamoto--the greatest mind in the history of video games...? |
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