@wegster

>The controller may prove to be interesting...it WILL be interesting to compare it to the Wii's, certainly, and to see what may come of it's use in games.

I cannot imagine that many games making innovative use of the motion-detecting capabilities of the PS3 controller. The problem is that, with the ordinary dualshock layout there, most developers would probably rather stick with a control system they know works rather than leap into the unknown.

The Wii remote is a great shape to use for pointing/moving around etc, but pretty unergonomic if used as an ordinary controller (without the motion-sensing). The way I see it, Nintendo's forcing developers to use its unique capabilities and, hopefully, generate some games that really distinguish it from the PS3 and 360. Clearly a gamble, unlike the PS3 controller which tries to get the best of both worlds and isn't anywhere near as specialised.

_________________

@MikeB

Quote:

Official reaction to the rumour: "Konami has no plans to bring Metal Gear Solid 4 to the Xbox 360 at this time."

Of course. Konami hadn't announced it and that was most likely for a good reason (i.e. sort of keeping it exclusive for as long as possible). The "at this time" says it all really.

It would be almost poetic though; the series returning home (it was born on a Microsoft platform after all).

@alx

Quote:

The way I see it, Nintendo's forcing developers to use its unique capabilities and, hopefully, generate some games that really distinguish it from the PS3 and 360.

Indeed. I tried a Wii this weekend for quite a few hours. I must admit I wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped I'd be

One thing is that these were launch games and things can be improved, but my general observation was that while the wiimote made for a great pointing device (and as such potentially great for FPS, adventures and games like Trauma Center), it wasn't very good at full utilization of 3D space. In games where you have free movement it was pretty clear that the Wii wasn't fully aware of where the wiimote was at all times.

The Virtual Console was also a partial disappointment. You can't download trial versions of the games and you have to rely on tiny screenshots and reviews online to figure out whether you want to get them.

I hope it will improve in time and I honestly thought I'd never say this, but it does seem like a novelty machine At least for now. I hope the VC is at least improved a bit - trials really would work wonders - and maybe controls can be tuned further. I don't know.

At least I was missing the precision that I'm used to in games. You can adapt to the slight lag that the controller has, but when you feel that you don't have full control it's just frustrating. I'm sure it will still appeal to a much broader audience than the current consoles though - just because it's easier to pick up and to explain games using these control schemes.

I hope they get lots and lots of success, but after trying it, I don't know if the console is really for me.

@Trezzer

Quote:

The "at this time" says it all really.

Konami is an independent commercial company and wouldn't rule out anything. The answer basically says: "No" The same statement could be made with regard to the Nintendo Wii, PC or even a NG Amiga.

@wegster

I think it was you and/or AMiGR who claimed that there was more demand for the XBox 360 at ebay during the same period of its life cycle. As I pointed out that wasn't really the case back then, the PS3 was selling at much higher prices.

Tthe latest ebay sales data seems conclusive. 34,564 units PS3 sold at an average of $1,498.56.

http://news.punchjump.com/article.php?id=3546

@MikeB

According to Wikipedia around 40000 360s were sold during the first month and the machines fetched up to $2500.

What's really interesting is that Wii seems to be the really hot item here.

But either way.. the 360 was the first machine where this insane behaviour first started. It was no surprise that most PS3s were sold on ebay right after getting them considering what happened last Christmas.

The sad thing is that we're probably going to see this at every console launch from now on. Even the largest console launch in history (Wii) results in shortages.

@BrianK

Quote:

agree it's not like Sony is a friendly'company. They do those sorts of heavy handed tactics and think of all of the failed Sony 'standards'

Sony and Philips also were part of some of the biggest success stories. The Compact Disk has pretty much become the standard for Audio and has been the standard data computer disk for many years in the past.

Sony and Philips together with others were also founding partners of the DVD standard.

Sony also introduced the hugely succeful 3½-inch diskettes. Also a widely used standard for many years, including for the Amiga.

Philips introduced the compact audio cassette medium for audio storage and was also used by hugely popular computers like the Commodore 64.

These are just some examples regarding great storage media only, why does everyone seems to forget the rich history of such great companies? Why so many people all of the sudden want to hate Sony? Can't afford a PS3?, PS3 shortages?, XBox / Microsoft fanboyism?

@MikeB

Quote:

These are just some examples regarding great storage media only, why does everyone seems to forget the rich history of such great companies? Why so many people all of the sudden want to hate Sony? Can't afford a PS3?, PS3 shortages?, XBox / Microsoft fanboyism?

Microsoft uses their technology to leverage their position. Sony attempts to do the same but simply hasn't been as successful. Examples are things like the root-kit, Sony only DRM and non-open media formats. Sony makes some decent products and they make some overpriced crap. Sony has been hated for a while by quite a few people. Perhaps you're just waking up to the fact they're not as widely loved.

@MikeB

Quote:

Sony and Philips together with others were also founding partners of the DVD standard.

You mean of the DVD Forum? Haven't they accepted HD-DVD as the next step?

@MikeB

Quote:

These are just some examples regarding great storage media only, why does everyone seems to forget the rich history of such great companies? Why so many people all of the sudden want to hate Sony? Can't afford a PS3?, PS3 shortages?, XBox / Microsoft fanboyism?

Sony has a great history - but mostly just that. History. They used to be a great engineering company - especially in the 80s. They've obviously had successes since as well - mainly in the TV and console areas, but they have failed to pull things off properly.

One of the problems is that Sony is split up into parts that are fighting each other. The engineers make cool hardware and the part of Sony that owns music and movies do everything to make the hardware as useless as possible through proprietary systems and customer-hostile DRM implementations. They literally dropped the whole portable music market on the floor because of this. The console market could be next in line.

Btw. another cool thing the engineering section has pulled off is the Aibo. My Sony ghettoblaster from 1982 is a design marvel, but what did they do in recent times that are really cool? Pretty close to nothing.

@Trezzer

On average they went for far less than that after launch.

From 2005 launch:

"over 586,035 bids were placed on 39,562 systems. The success rate for Xbox 360 systems listed on eBay.com was 78.2%. The average selling price for units sold was $718 per unit."

If you want to look at single unit sales, then there have been winning PS3 bids of over 15,000 USD.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=110055209362

@BrianK

Quote:

You mean of the DVD Forum? Haven't they accepted HD-DVD as the next step?

Most DVD forum founders are now behind Blu-ray as a DVD successor.

The founding members were:

Now 100% backing Blu-ray:

1 Hitachi, Ltd.
2 Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd.
3 Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
4 Pioneer Electronic Corporation
5 Royal Philips Electronics N.V.
6 Sony Corporation
7 Thomson

Now 100% behind HD-DVD

1 Toshiba Corporation

Others
1 Time Warner Inc. (supporting both)
2 Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC) (neutral, but Blu-ray more likely)

@MikeB

Many more 360 systems were available as well.

@Trezzer

Sony didn't ivent DRM. They are present in Microsoft and Sony products as well as in product from endless other companies. There are government laws enforcing DRM spearheaded by the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management

@MikeB

Yes, I'm not oblivious of the world as it happens.

The real issue is that DRM in the form that Sony makes it, makes their products entirely irrelevant to me - and to a huge part of the world's population it would seem. Their resistance towards dropping their proprietary ATRAC format and their absolutely horrid Windows-only software for transferring music to their NetMD (which appeared about 5 years too late) cost them the portable music market for good.

They keep trying to push formats that the consumers aren't interested in down their throats.

@Trezzer

Quote:

Many more 360 systems were available as well.

"In the short term, prospects don't look good. Microsoft initially hoped to have shipped as many as 3 million systems by the end of February. But by the end of the year, Microsoft had shipped only about 1 million worldwide (about 800,000 to the USA and 100,000 each to Europe and Japan), according to estimates from analyst Michael Pachter with investment firm Wedbush Morgan Securities.

The NPD Group estimates that Microsoft sold 600,000 systems from Nov. 22 to Dec. 31."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-01-23-xbox-demand_x.htm

If Micheal Pachter's predictions are correct, Sony already sold way more PS3s in Japan alone than Microsoft shipped in total to Japan and Europe combined for 2005.

For the US market, it seems some time ago the PS3 has already shipped and sold over 500,000 units. We will have to wait till early next year to see how close Sony has come to shipping their target figure of 2 million PS3 units.

It may well be that the PS3 is already ahead.

Last edited by MikeB on 19-Dec-2006 at 07:36 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

For the US market, it seems some time ago the PS3 has already shipped and sold over 500,000 units. We will have to wait till early next year to see how close Sony has come to shipping their target figure of 2 million PS3 units.

We'll see about that. So far numbers indicate that this is not even true for world-wide.

@MikeB

From Wikipedia:

Quote:

Because of a manufacturing bottleneck for having started the massive manufacturing only 69 days before launching,[74] Microsoft was not able to supply enough systems to meet initial consumer demand in Europe or North America.[75] Many potential customers were not able to purchase a console at launch and the lack of availability led to Xbox 360 bundles selling on eBay at grossly inflated prices, with some auctions exceeding US$6000. It was reported that 40,000 units appeared on eBay during the initial month of release, which would mean that 10% of the total supply was resold.[76] By year's end, Microsoft had sold 1.5 million units; including 900,000 in North America, 500,000 in Europe, and 100,000 in Japan.

@Trezzer

We don't have official data from Sony yet, so we have to do with research data from firms like NPD at the time. If Microsoft states sold, they may well mean "sold" to dealers instead of customers, Sony prefers the word "shipped" to distinguish between the two.

@MikeB

Yes. Actually when these companies use "sold" it's like this:
Microsoft uses sold to dealers, Sony uses shipped to retail (i.e. not yet sold to dealers), Nintendo uses (afair) sold at retail - in as far as those numbers can be reliable.

Last edited by Trezzer on 19-Dec-2006 at 08:01 PM.
Last edited by Trezzer on 19-Dec-2006 at 08:00 PM.