@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @wegster Quote: a broken idea that people will pay *real money* for a new shirt or a couch for their 'apartment.' Home items selling like hotcakes http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/12/23/home-items-selling-like-hotcakes/ Maybe being a little bit more open minded would be a good idea?

Read some of the comments, and you'll see they're in agreement with me - basically, *why* would someone pay for online Home 'crap,' and why does Sony think anything more than micro-payments is reasonable there in the first place?

$1-$5 for an online world outfit, with no use whatsoever - sorry, it's not being open minded.

How much have YOU personally spent on Home, Mike?

Unlike you, I do have experience writing online games, the pre-cursors to todays MMORPGs, it's more than being 'open minded' here..Home doesn't allow user created content, for one, which is a big fail waiting to happen in my book, and you can tell, it's their first attempt. Micropayments would work well here, but Sony consistently overcharges for everything, from 'Home stuff' to video on demand, to $50+ controllers.

Nope, I don't get it, and even your link says it's 20% are spending 80% of the money.

So, which percentage are you in, are you at least putting your money where your mouth is on this, or no?

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@wegster

Quote:

Read some of the comments

You mean forum comments? Why would I? I can imagine fanboy trolls working overtime on this one. You see it everywhere on US fora. Last night I watched some live feeds of a new PS3 game, which looks quite good together with another 1000 people. Some just logged on to say: 'Sony sucks! Get a 360 instead!' 'This is boring, get Fable 2.' and a whole lot of arrogance, name calling and narrow mindedness.

I think US civil society seems to be going down the drain for whatever reason.

Quote:

So, which percentage are you in, are you at least putting your money where your mouth is on this, or no?

I don't mind paying a few euros or so for a nice pretty unique dress and jewellery for my girlfriend's virtual avatar if she likes them. I'm not that poor.

Those Namco virtual arcade machines with pacman, galaga, xevious and such look interesting. Wouldn't mind spending a few bucks on those if they are well done and I can keep them inside my Playstation Home.

We will buy the content that appeals to us. No matter what some random internet troll may say. If you don't want it, nobody is holding a gun to your face to buy stuff. All the basic functionality is there to use freely.

Last edited by MikeB on 25-Dec-2008 at 09:17 AM.
Last edited by MikeB on 25-Dec-2008 at 09:09 AM.

@BrianK

Quote:

think you might need some rephrasing here. It sounds as if you believe that the Blu-Ray Dark Knight beat the first week record of DVD sales? That's not the case for example Transformers sold about 8.3M DVDs on their first week in the USA. FInding Nemo sold 8M DVDs in their first day.

Taking equal time frames, so at a similar point of the format's life cycle. DVD penetration is of course huge at this point, after well more than a decade on the market. But Rome wasn't build in a day, of course.

Quote:

I don't mind paying a few euros or so for a nice pretty unique dress and jewellery for my girlfriend's virtual avatar if she likes them. I'm not that poor.

But yet you complain about the few euros that the xbox live membership costs you.....
And what is unique about those virtual dresses? You will see a bunch of avatars wearing the exact same dress anyways since there is such a low selection of items.
Things would have been different if they allowed people do create their own contents like in second life.

@Tomas

You are wrong as usual. I really don't know why people constantly put words into other people's mouths.

Quote:

But yet you complain about the few euros that the xbox live membership costs you.....

Although I do think such costs need to be known up front when buying the console. Online multi-player support is IMO a very baisc service and should of course be hassle free and out of the box for a modern game console advertised for online gaming. It's not even like Microsoft published games use dedicated servers like Sony does, resulting in lag free 60 player online FPS or 12 player lag free racing.

For comparison, virtual dresses are not what I consider to be basic console functionality. You buy then if you want to, when you want to. That's a big difference!

@MikeB

Quote:

Taking equal time frames, so at a similar point of the format's life cycle.

Thank you for rephrasing what you mean by timeframe. That helps us better understand what you are trying to convey.

How old do you see Blu-Ray as? The first Blu-Ray player was in 2003. Albeit it was different and didn't have the encryption and had a shuttle for the Disc. It wasn't until 2005 till Blu-Ray grew something I'd consider more close to what we have today. So, BluRay is either 3 or 5 years old depending on how you view it. DVD has a similar problem the first one's were available in 1994 but it didn't really launch until 1997. If we take the later dates for both formats as the offical launch, since that's when they were more mainstream, in the first 2 years of the US DVD sold about 1.5M players in 3 years about 5.5M players. Blu-Ray the first 2 years sold about 700K players the one exception is the PS3 isn't in that count and clearly has an impact.

However, as the market progresses the Blu-Ray players will be the $100-$200 players not the $400 PS3. The days of early adopters are over and a $400 price point for Blu-Ray can't be sustained in a down economy or in the average consumer market. Answer -- PS3 needs a price cut to sustain marketshare. This will hit Sonys profits.

Lower price gaming consoles Wii and 360 are giving it to the PS3 on the chin. Answer -- PS3 needs a price cut to sustain marketshare. This will hit Sony's profits.

Blu-Ray could have a good future. Its facing competition from video downloads (more cost effective) and for the computer from memory devices (more cost effective and easier use). Blu-Ray's answer to take off at this point is lower priced movies and players. Answer -- movies need a price cut. This will likely hit Sony's profits.

One of the better ideas I've seen to save Sony is a PS3.5 (called PS4). When the Wii2 and Xbox3 launch Sony should be ready to update the PS3 with the latest videochipset and add more memory. Sony could have a low cost PS3 and high cost PS4. It might take the market back. Comparing last gen to this gen it appears Sony moved from 1st place to 3rd.

@BrianK

First Blu-Ray movies released on June 20, 2006 (almost 2 and a half years ago). The first DVD movies for the United States appeared in March 1997 (although in 2006 already for Japan). So that's about what I use as rough timeframes.

Best first week sales for DVD in 1999 was the Matrix, 780,000 copies worldwide. So Dark Knight performed much better for North America alone.

Million Mark Twice as Fast as CD And Five Times Faster Than VHS (news from 1999)

"Setting another industry record, "The Matrix," released on DVD Sept. 21, generated sales to consumers of approximately 780,000 or 52 percent of shipments, making it the most successful DVD in first week sales."

DVD has been highly acclaimed for its remarkably fast uptake by consumers, but Blu-Ray disc so far performs better.

@MikeB
Quote:

You mean forum comments? Why would I? I can imagine fanboy trolls working overtime on this one. You see it everywhere on US fora. Last night I watched some live feeds of a new PS3 game, which looks quite good together with another 1000 people. Some just logged on to say: 'Sony sucks! Get a 360 instead!' 'This is boring, get Fable 2.' and a whole lot of arrogance, name calling and narrow mindedness. I think US civil society seems to be going down the drain for whatever reason.

You sort of side-stepped the question. Have you purchased anything on Home, or plan to?

Regardless, you've apparently missed the point - many don't agree with you, and Sony charges quite a bit for what you 'get.' Micropayments I suspect would be much less offensive, and might actually result in more sales for them, video on demand included. I wager I'm 'less poor' than you, but perhaps more selective in what I do spend my money on...it's still low/no value for the $.

Regarding forum comments. Hello, kettle. People should for some reason hold yours in higher regard than the majority of comments agreeing with me, that you don't deign to read for some reason? Nice logic there, Mike.

Also, very nice, is there some reason you're assuming the people that logged on to Home saying Sony sucks are actually from the US, or do you simply assume everyone *else* in the world would somehow just agree with you, which they don't, by those same forum comments you yourself make but don't read, and by people's comments in Home itself?

I seriously think you need to re-read, or better yet, re-*think* some of your statements just made.

Last edited by wegster on 25-Dec-2008 at 09:47 PM.
Last edited by wegster on 25-Dec-2008 at 08:06 PM.

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@BrianK

Quote:

One of the better ideas I've seen to save Sony is a PS3.5 (called PS4). When the Wii2 and Xbox3 launch Sony should be ready to update the PS3 with the latest videochipset and add more memory. Sony could have a low cost PS3 and high cost PS4.

What's the point?
Upping the GPU without the upping the CPU only leaves you with bottlenecks.
The next gen will be a lot easier and cheaper than this gen, they don't have to design a completely new architecture this time, they just need to improve the current one.

With the Xbox possibly going with Larrabee there's no way Sony can not improve the CPU.

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Whyzzat?

@wegster

Quote:

Also, very nice, is there some reason you're assuming the people that logged on to Home saying Sony sucks are actually from the US

I think you somehow mix things up, one was a website where people could see a live stream of someone playing the White Knight Story, some people were just logging in to say things like "XBox rulez, PS3 sucks" and proclaiming the US to be better than the rest of the world.

The US version of Home I tried seems to suffer far more from bad taste behaviour than the PAL version. Lots of foul language, for example a girl sitting on a couch and a dude walks up just in front of her face and says"suck it". Things like that, you get the picture.

@MikeB

Quote:

Although I do think such costs need to be known up front when buying the console. Online multi-player support is IMO a very baisc service and should of course be hassle free and out of the box for a modern game console advertised for online gaming. It's not even like Microsoft published games use dedicated servers like Sony does, resulting in lag free 60 player online FPS or 12 player lag free racing. For comparison, virtual dresses are not what I consider to be basic console functionality. You buy then if you want to, when you want to. That's a big differene!

I have never noticed any lag problems using xbox live service. I do however agree that the customer should be clearly informed about the price before purchase.

@MikeB

Quote:

I think you somehow mix things up, one was a website where people could see a live stream of someone playing the White Knight Story, some people were just logging in to say things like "XBox rulez, PS3 sucks" and proclaiming the US to be better than the rest of the world.

Oh, you meant random forums, and not people logging onto Home? Ok, shrug, doesn't deal with the meat of the issue, regardless, you discredit the majority of postings as uninformed or trolling, yet for some reason seem to think people should treat *your* posts any differently.

Now, we can certainly discuss what would make Home not suck so badly, in the future, but right now, Home = Fail.

Some links for your enjoyment, or to discard saying their opinions somehow aren't valid...
http://www.askmen.com/entertainment/gaming/ps2/Home-Ps3/news-14-1.html
http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=52753
http://nanogeektech.blogspot.com/2008/12/sony-home-beta-impressions.html
http://www.obsessable.com/feature/playstation-home-beta-first-impressions/
http://www.totalgamingnetwork.com/main/showthread.php?t=181509
http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/vexed+alex/home-impressions-114528.phtml
http://www.ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id=16904
http://secondstorygamer.com/2008/12/impressions-playstation-home-beta/

What do they all have in common? Short answer - Home is a failure, and boring, at this point in time. Note - I am also including the few positive comments, and what *could* improve it is certainly an option for a more realistic or interesting discussion, but I simply see Home, as it is *today*, and another case of Sony ignoring what people want, and don't.

Some quotes from the above:
Quote:

So how is the final release? Has it lived up to the promise of being your one-stop place to chat about games, play mini-games and make new friends? Is there even anything to do? Here's what the IGN PlayStation Team has to say about the matter.Chris' TakeIf I had to describe Home in one word, it would be "boring". Yep, I'm bored to death with Home. I've only found two things that are entertaining for more than about 30 seconds:

Quote:

I haven't found a single thing that keeps my interest for more than about a minute. The theater just shows the same videos over and over, and it's just stuff that I can find online in a much higher resolution. The games in the arcade cabinets aren't very good and are only worth checking out for a second - they're not entertaining enough to really sink any time into. Pool is about as basic as can be. The billiards game in GTAIV was quite a bit better than what you'll find here, and any number of free Flash pool games online are leaps and bounds better than it.

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I know that a whole lot more stuff is coming, like the Red Bull flying game, which looks like it could be OK, but what's here now is, to be perfectly honest, a giant waste of time.

Quote:

After seeing PlayStation Home at GDC 2007 and the handful of events that followed through the months, I wasn't impressed. The social networking application seemed empty, limited, and bare. Why would people want to load a virtual world to find a friend to load another game and launch that title? Now, after a month or so in the beta and taking a few hours to fool with the final product, I can finally weigh in with an informed opinion.PlayStation Home is dumb.Seriously -- as it stands now -- this is a waste of everyone's time.

Quote:

Home has not made me feel like this was something the PlayStation audience needed. Things only get worse; when I went to the Uncharted room, I found a guy standing at the secret room keypad. See, only one person can access the keypad, and this guy had accessed the padand then gone away, thus tying up the keypad for everyone else. He had effectively closed the area. Only one person can play an arcade machine (a machine that has to load), the billboard in Central Plaza is a still image and it's pixilated to hell, and there's one trailer and one music video tied into that trailer that play over and over.As it stands, Home is an empty advertising arm that should be a disappointment to anyone who was looking forward to it.

Quote:

these rooms have nothing to do in them -- reading dossiers in the Far Cry locale and looking at artifacts in the Uncharted space don't do it for me -- and you're being nickel and dimed (49 cents for an origami dog, 99 cents for a chair, etc.)

Quote:

Why was so much of Sony's time, money, and hype poured into this application while the PSP hungers for games and Trophies, the PlayStation 3 has no official Netflix or Hulu support, and the Xbox 360 is permeating the market with advertising? Like all evolving online products, there's hope for Home, but I don't think there's a lot of it. I

Quote:

I've said it since Home was announced, and I'll say it again: Home is perhaps one of the biggest mistakes that Sony has ever made. Plagued with bugs, delays and a significant lack of content, this is a gimmick, a boondoggle that was gambled on by Sony to drag users away to a virtual space that would hopefully compete with the popularity of the Nintendo Miis and the large amount of content delivered weekly to the Xbox Live Marketplace. But there are way too many issues with the service to make it worth anyone's time.

Quote:

Carriage Return? Ice Breaker? Seriously, are these the huge leaps in casual entertainment while you're waiting for your friends to join you? I'll admit, playing pool or bowling could be fun in brief spurts, but that's not nearly enough to keep you coming back for more, or maintain your interest. What's more, there are so few game stations that are open at any point in time that you'll find yourself standing around bored or, for the most part, watching people constantly doing the Running Man or the Robot. Honestly, this is pathetic, and not amusing in the slightest. As it stands, it's an extraneous step that is unnecessary to playing games on the PS3, which is where the attention, development time and money that was sunk in this project should have gone. I want Sony to succeed, but wasting energy into something that will take multiple months if not years to shore up the obvious inadequacies of this virtual existence is a foolhardy maneuver by the company.

Quote:

I think we have to keep in mind, when considering Sony's virtual space software, that Home is indeed just that: an avenue for straight-forward social interaction dressed up in nice clothes. Furthermore, it has incredible potential for growth, if it's continually supported. I'm in full agreement with the general populace that Home should have hit the PlayStation Network a long, long time ago, but now that it's here I'm happy to see it.And I think -- most importantly -- people need to be reminded that the majority of Home's content is free.

ME: (except for being nickel and dimed to death for a new shirt, couch, etc.. :-/ )

A response to the above:
Quote:

The problem with Ryan's attitude is that the internet does everything he is talking about and more. It just seems like the only benefit of home is you would be doing it on your PS3, however this is compared to the hundreds of then negative factors. It basically serves no purpose, it's just a very simplified internet that only PS3 users can use.

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If HOME and LIVE was in the ring at this moment fighting to the death. I Hate to say that Microsoft LIVE would severally kick the truffles out of Sony's HOME.

Quote:

As of right now HOME is a little boring. A few shops has just been open giving beta testers the chance to grab some freebies before we officially start to be nickel and dime to death,

Quote:

What bored me about HOME was the lack of things to do. There are a few arcade games to play in the bowling alley. ... After you run around, play the arcade games, bowl, shoot some pool, talk to girl who was probably a guy, there is nothing else to do.

Quote:

What we found was that the service is definitely still in beta and lacks anything truly magical, as of yet, to make it the success that all of Sony's pre-release talk about the service has painted it to be.

Quote:

Unfortunately, at this early stage of the product, there's not much more than chatting to be done, as the vast majority of content presented is some form of advertisement for other things you can buy for your PS3, and the few bits of interactive games that could be fun often suffer from the same problems real life games have: you can't play because someone else already is. Because of this, a good percentage of the PlayStation Home experience, currently involves waiting.

Quote:

We noticed two things immediately upon entering the public area. First, it was extremely gorgeous. The detail of the PlayStation Home experience on the PS3 far surpasses the blocky visual experience offered by Second Life. Second, we noticed that, just like in real life and Second Life, there were ads everywhere.

(ME: I agree, graphics are decent enough in general)

Quote:

We were looking forward to the Movie Theater, thinking that it might actually have some good content and be an interesting viewing experience. Unfortunately, there was a long wait for the video to download. Once it did download it plays at the front of the theater with the lights up and with everyone's chat balloons popping up in the way. There is no way from a seated position looking at the screen for you to easily access the full screen view. We had to walk up to the front of the theater, look up at the screen, and then select fullscreen, which needless to say is a very counter-intuitive and unrealistic movie going experience. Once the video started, we found it to be far from the high HD quality of movie previews that we have already been able to freely download from the Sony PlayStation Store in the default PS3 interface. Also, the content was again all previews of Twilight and a music video from the movie. In short, the theater experience was again more advertisements.

Quote:

So, the Home beta has opened it’s gates the public (ala gmail), and it’s exactly what I expected it to be. It’s a glorified 3D chatroom used as a vehicle for ads and micro transaction sales for worthless crap.

Quote:

I usually have some good things to say about stuff I generally dislike, but Home is worthless. It’s slow (not just talking about download speeds), boring, and it has Twilight trailers. It was a clever idea, but it’s poorly executed and it's true intentions are depressing. I have no interest in spending time in Home, and I especially don’t plan on buying any trendy clothing for my horrendous looking avatar. Perhaps with time it’ll bloom into a beautiful rose. For the time being, it’s a waste of time. But hey. It’s free.

Quote:

Ever since its announcement, Playstation Home has been called the Xbox Live killer that will make the PS3’s online far superior to the Xbox 360’s. However, if the beta is anything to base an opinion on, Sony didn’t created an Xbox Live killer; they created something completely different from an online system that probably shouldn’t have been hyped up as an Xbox Live killer in the first place. Positives The characters and the environment look really good. You start out in an apartment open to the sea and everything looks very realistic. The Home characters also look realistic, which contrasts the Avatars and Miis nicely. Negatives There’s so little do as the Home beta only gives you a few areas to explore. Not only does that make it boring fast, but it defeats the purpose of a beta: there should be enough content in a beta to make us want to test it out for long periods of time. Of course, one of the few areas you can explore is a mall, where Sony attempts to separate you from your money to buy virtual chairs, clothes, etc.

A good summary:
Quote:

Ultimately, we found much about PlayStation Home to be pretty, but disappointing. There is a clubhouse feature where you can purchase your own club to be proprietor of for $4.99, which might be interesting for a while until Sony starts charging a monthly fee for the right to run a clubhouse come March 2009. Right now the entire experience feels too much like a prettier version of Second Life with Sony hiding behind every plant and building trying to sell you something and not giving you enough free things to freely enjoy the experience.

ME:
Whether or not Sony actually *learns* anything here, like adopting micro-payments, or making silly things entirely free, plus actual content people *care* about that you can't get better elsewhere....remains to be seen. It *could* in time turn into something interesting, but right now, it's far from being there.

One idea, assuming Sony realizes few want to pay $1-$5 for Home garbage, would be to earn 'Home Credits' via trophies (something which we were told would show up in your 'apartment,' yet still doesn't. Use the Six Axis instead of canned 'dance moves.' Make *good* community games available, and learn that a fixed, versus virtual number of them, (eg, only 6 bowling lanes), isn't going to cut it if you expect thousands online, instead of dozens.

I have no issues if Sony wants to allow instant download of games, like an extended PSN Store, from within Home, and perhaps 'in Home demo only' for some titles, but the rest are simply insane.

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

I think both the Home critics as well as NXE critics here (on AmigaWorld.net) probably could do with taking a step back and regrouping.

MikeB continues to compare NXE and Home in many of his postings, which I think is silly. Both have obviously very different purposes, although they might offer some of the same features. NXE is a more Wii-inspired extension of the Live as is, Home is trying something more a kin to Second Life. Different strokes for different folks. I don't think Sony would be wise to try and do all NXE-like features via Home, they need to keep things separate enough. On the other hand, if Home kicks off truly some day, Microsoft faces competition from one more platform exclusive.

As for the Home critics, I think there are valid points, but overall we don't know where it is going to lead. I know MikeB can be overly enthusiastic and his preference shines right through everything he says, but there is no need to expect Home to remain as simple as it seems to be. Time will tell, but Sony was wise to label it as beta for the moment. People certainly do like virtual worlds and have been known to spend money in them as well, although yes, microish payments might be more useful.

The problem with Blu-ray is that for the average person, it offers very little new. Sure it has better image and better sound, but no normal user is going to hear the sound difference with their equipment and image resolution will only become apparent when screen-sizes and viewing-distances are something more than usual - and taking in consideration how many people really have a hard time seeing any quality difference in image either, this is real issue. Blu-ray might offer marginally better extras in time, but I wonder how many are going to notice. It does not offer any better convenience, in fact convenience is less if you consider firmware updates, compatibility problems, profiles etc.

Different for DVD back in the day. Full SD resolution and lack of analogue artifacts (compared to VHS) certainly contributed to an improved image that could be seen on regular TVs as well. A lot people moved up to 5.1 surround sound via cheap "home theater kits", which a normal person can differentiate from old stereo sound (try to get them to hear a difference with 7.1 Blu-ray TrueHD though...). Also extras and the extreme convenience factor of going from rewind-hampered bulky casette to a shiny small disc with chapter skip and all. DVD just was the perfect storm and it rightfully took the world. VideoCD and LaserDisc tried, but lacked the perfect marriage of quality, features, convenience...

And Blu-ray is facing increasing competition from online distribution, something DVD did not have to worry about when competing with VHS. One reason Blu-ray seems to be doing better in Europe and Japan may be that online distribution is in much earlier/poorer stages here than in the U.S. due to studio policies/priorities/distribution rights etc.

So, Blu-ray might do just fine. But if it does, it does not necessarily do so because it offers all that more for the regular consumer. It might do well just because sometimes market forces can manage to introduce a new technology and sell it to the market even though many have no immediate need for it. Like how many people have 3G phones but never use 3G features...

Obviously those with big screens will wish for Blu-ray to do well, because for them it actually offers a huge improvement over DVD.

Last edited by jtsiren on 25-Dec-2008 at 11:21 PM.

And let's not forget that retail really needs things like Blu-ray. DVD margins are shrinking and the last thing retail wants to replace it is immaterial online downloads/streaming that bypass conventional retail altogether.

We are bound to see strenghtening support for Blu-ray at retail level, assuming it continues to grow and sell of course.

Did those plans for major U.S. retailers to diss DVD in favour of BD materialize?

@minator

Quote:

What's the point? Upping the GPU without the upping the CPU only leaves you with bottlenecks. The next gen will be a lot easier and cheaper than this gen, they don't have to design a completely new architecture this time, they just need to improve the current one. With the Xbox possibly going with Larrabee there's no way Sony can not improve the CPU.

Of course there are always bottlenecks in any system. If a better GPU allowed one to use the Cell's potential better and allowed it to produce better than 360 graphics, instead of talking about it, then Sony could possibly be onto something. Certainly the Cell will improve in that time too. IBM has shown Cell with higher Ghz ratings than the PS3 is using. Certainly those could be used too.

I think we both agree that likely the PS4 will be more evolution with the Cell as a basis rather than revolution.

What Larrabee is and how it performs will be interesting. It may be a screamer but will it be cost effective for a console? Will it be power usage effective? And of course we all know what companies say now may well change by time of shipment. This happens to Intel or AMD or Sony or .....

@jtsiren

Quote:

jtsiren wrote: I think both the Home critics as well as NXE critics here (on AmigaWorld.net) probably could do with taking a step back and regrouping. MikeB continues to compare NXE and Home in many of his postings, which I think is silly. Both have obviously very different purposes, although they might offer some of the same features. NXE is a more Wii-inspired extension of the Live as is, Home is trying something more a kin to Second Life. Different strokes for different folks. I don't think Sony would be wise to try and do all NXE-like features via Home, they need to keep things separate enough. On the other hand, if Home kicks off truly some day, Microsoft faces competition from one more platform exclusive. As for the Home critics, I think there are valid points, but overall we don't know where it is going to lead. I know MikeB can be overly enthusiastic and his preference shines right through everything he says, but there is no need to expect Home to remain as simple as it seems to be. Time will tell, but Sony was wise to label it as beta for the moment. People certainly do like virtual worlds and have been known to spend money in them as well, although yes, microish payments might be more useful.

Bear in mind, I've stated several times Home *could* be improved, and indeed, discussing *how* it could rise above todays ad infested boredom, I'd certainly welcome. I remain doubtful that Home will 'evolve into a success,' but I'd find it difficult to be more of a flop than it is today, so...'only way to go is up'?

Sony has missed the mark so many times by now, I simply have little faith they'll do what the *customers* want, versus trying to cram something else down our throats. I would *much* rather see Sony/PS3 successful than MS, however, there are lessons to be learned by both companies.

Last edited by wegster on 26-Dec-2008 at 04:36 AM.

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@jtsiren

Quote:

jtsiren wrote: And let's not forget that retail really needs things like Blu-ray. DVD margins are shrinking and the last thing retail wants to replace it is immaterial online downloads/streaming that bypass conventional retail altogether. We are bound to see strenghtening support for Blu-ray at retail level, assuming it continues to grow and sell of course. Did those plans for major U.S. retailers to diss DVD in favour of BD materialize?

Quick search on walmart.com , totally open to not getting just movies, but 'blu-ray' vs 'dvd': 1274 vs 13000+. Doesn't mean too much without similar data from 6-12 months ago, and 6-12 months from now, but there's certainly 'more than enough' DVDs in the retail chain still today.

The Dark Knight certainly did well, as mentioned, though.

Going back to I think it was your comments, RE: next gen Xbox...it might be interesting to see if anyone comes up with a 'shop on demand.' Not quite video on demand to your set, but walk in with storage of some sort, to the store, and have it burned on the spot. I don't expect it to happen, as then the movie industry would have to 'deduct' the cost of packaging, etc, but it would be a win for consumers before 'everything on demand' hits, for both movies and games.

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@BrianK

Quote:

What Larrabee is and how it performs will be interesting. It may be a screamer but will it be cost effective for a console? Will it be power usage effective? And of course we all know what companies say now may well change by time of shipment. This happens to Intel or AMD or Sony or .....

Interestingly, there are definite similarities to the Cell, although workarounds for some of current Cell shortcomings (SPE local storage size, etc):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(GPU)

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@jtsiren

Quote:

MikeB continues to compare NXE and Home in many of his postings

WTF? I said the exact opposite! How can you ever state that? Yes, Home covers about everything NXE does, but goes far far beyond what it does. They cannot be compared feature by feature as NXE is far too limited.