Sony's comeback.

Thaed

It's been cool to Sony bash for a long time. It brought it on itself. In the last few years, Sony has seemingly focused on proprietary standards versus catering to consumer needs.

With all the PS3 hype, it seemed that Sony had doomed itself. The product is going to be delayed and there won't be a whole lot of them for Christmas.

Despite this, I'm seeing some trends that indicate the fat lady isn't quite ready to sing for Sony just yet. For one thing, some commentators are suggesting that Blu-Ray will win the format war; it's a better standard and this time the better standard may win. For another, it's starting to look like that, from a technology perspective, the PS3 really is going to be significantly better than the X-box 360. It's faster and has true 1080p output. Moreover, the Nintendo Wii arguably isn't even a competitor because the markets are different. The Wii, as awesome as it is, is more of a toy than a game and video system. The Wii is not HD and that's not the target audience. The PS3 is all about HD and HD movies as well as games. It's expensive, but the target market has the money.

It doesn't matter that the PS3 isn't going to make it this Christmas. Most people don't have HD TVs anyway. The PS3 is a game system and movie system for the future. It's a long term strategy.

It may well win.

glimpster

I completely agree with you Thaed. Great post. The PS3 is faster, has a better output, and does have a larger capacity media disk. I wouldn't disagree with you at all. However, I've heard that HD-DVD are looking better than Blueray already, not because of their sizes, but because nobody on the blueray side has taken time to do a quality transfer. I've heard that it's very grainy, and it just looks like they up scaled the movies.

To continue on the PS3 specifically, who cares about the price? Am I the first one to say this? This is something that's going to last you for a long time, five or six years. Think of it as buying a really cheap high end computer for playing games. Stop complaining about the price. Plus, if you compare the Xbox 360 Premium + HD-DVD to the PS3 60GB, you'll find that the PS3 is a much better deal. First of all, you have a much faster machine, and there's no denying that. You'll have wireless, which I desperately need, HDMI output, that destroys the HD-AV cable on the 360, you get true 1080p output, instead of 720p, and you'll get to watch Blueray instantly.

I don't know if anyone else is taking a notice of this, but the games on the PS3 launch look a million times better and are getting more supporters than the Xbox 360 launch titles. Plus, Motorstorm and MGS4 are completely blowing me away with the visuals they're showing, and they look much better than any 360 I've played.

And We can go back and argue that graphics don't matter, and that it's just stupid of us to like that kind of thing. I don't care. The games look amazing, and I want to play them immediately.

Also, I think it is true that more people want PS3s. I wouldn't doubt it. I don't think those statistics were completely off. And I agree with Thaed once again that the PS3 has a very good chance of winning this console war in the future.

I'm the guy who raved about the 360, and it is great, but personally, I think a lot of us could be buying a PS3 in the next 6 months to a year.

trogdor9

Ahem.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

That is all.

Kilarney

I agree that the Sony and the Wii are not true competitors. Howevery, I just can't see many families dropping $600 plus for the PS3 if they've already bought an XBox 360. That takes a lot of players out of the game. I also don't think that many people are going to see the PS3 as a home entertainment system. The PS2 sucked as a DVD player - and people aren't ready to accept an all in one device yet.

Sony will sell plenty of PS3s - they are Sony after all. But the question is how many fewer systems they sell than they did with the PS2. After all, whoever thought that Sega would lose the console game? It can happen. The question is how quickly Sony is sliding. If it isn't too much, they can recover. If Blu-Ray loses, they PS3 is DOA and Sony may become the new Sega.

tuttle88

I think Sony has enough other areas to their company that they won't go under if the PS3 fails. What concerns me is the Sony people saying that this (the PS3) will be a 10 year console. I hope that is just hype because if they think that the PS3 will last 10 years and plan to realse the PS4 in 2017 they are going to find themselves totally screwed.

glimpster

I don't know where you got the ten years from, but that obviously won't happen. Sony's not that stupid.

tuttle88

They have been saying 10 years, I'm sure I heard that, around E3? Now I'm not so sure although I don't often dream about Sony press releases. Anyone else heard that?

Cremlian

Why Don't you do a Simple Google search!

pwned!

Cremlian

My two cents.

PlayStation 3 will do pretty well. However, it will not do as well as the PlayStation 2, as the X-box 360 and Wii will erode away some of its market share. Sony will either evolve and start to act smarter in the business realm, or they will fall from grace just like Nintendo did when they got too full of themselves.

tuttle88

Woo Hoo! I can be proved right even when I'm too lazy to do the proving myself.

glimpster

If Sony is planning on 10 years, it's probably a good idea. Now that I think about it, it will probably take 10 years for everybody to get HDTV's, plus like we said before, graphics on the PS3 look much better than the Xbox 360's. I don't know. I hope my 360 lasts that long.

glimpster

And back to the price of the xbox 360 vs the PS3, Sony's announced that it's online service will be absolutely free. If you count up all the money you'll spend on xbox live, if you had it for five years, it'd cost $250, if you paid yearly. If you paid monthly, it'd be $480, not including tax. I don't know what to think now.

Cremlian

yea, all console makers say that they want their system to last 10 years. But that never happens. You can pretty much place your bets if the a New X-box comes out in 5 years that has stats that will completely blow the PlayStation out of the water then they will quickly release a new system. It's nearly impossible to guess how Tech is going to be in 10 years these days let alone 5. I'd rather my console maker put out a product that was cheap and reliable and upgrade it over the years, giving it steady improvements. (As in the DS phat and then the DS lite, you don't have to buy the new one but it has added useful features)

Xbox on Sale; Sony Fears Shorter Console Life-span