@jtsiren

Quote:

jtsiren wrote: However, this unit is manufactured 18.7.2008. The cut-off date for the 90nm/65nm transition by current accounts seems to be 24.7.2008 (lot number 734 onwards - unless the lot number sticker on the box is covered by another sticker in which case the lot number may not be accurate), so it seems that RRoD'd machine still sports the older Zephyr motherboard and 90nm chips.

So your 360 was manufactured in the future?

ChartTrack reported intersing facts (via Kotaku):
Quote:

The PS3 had a big launch in the UK. Sold in big numbers, (so many it's neck-and-neck with the 360 for overall sales this calendar year), surprised a lot of people. Since then, though, it hasn't been doing too well. Not too well at all. It's a bit hard to say just how its done without cold, hard numbers (ChartTrack keep those to themselves), but they have divulged that 55% of all PS3 sales in the country were made within four days of the console's launch. Which was in March. It's now October. That leaves a whole lot of days without a whole lot of PS3 sales.

Again, I point to the hardcore gamer's demand already fulfilled. Nintendo's hardware continues to attract the casual gamer, emphasizing how important it is to make a profit on software and hardware.

I think it's the quality of the 360's lineup that continues to sway gamers who are on the fence. This is ensuring continued steady sales. The launch hype in Europe for the PS3 has come and gone, but the software has always lagged. Heavenly Sword can only move so many units... Lair fell flat on it's face. Hope remains for MSG4. My prediction is that 1 month after MSG4 launches, a 360 version will be announced. It might be on 4 discs...but who cares about that really.

...
I, as of right now, am a fan of Bungie.... Or atleast HALO 3 and one of it's developers.
http://www.bungie.net/Inside/MeetTheTeam.aspx?Person=arroyo
The guy owns a modified '87 Fiero GT. We have something in common. Also, according to the "behind the scenes" stuff on the game, the sound of the Mongoose was made from a moped and the exhaust from a Fiero GT.
Fieros FTW!!!

Last edited by Lou on 01-Oct-2007 at 05:38 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

This is no half-assed low budget 3rd party project, neither is the game being ported from another original target platform. Bungie should have been able to push the XBox 360 to the max, yet it IMO Bungie didn't. I wonder what the real reasons for this is, maybe higher res textures would exceed the storage limitation of DVD, maybe considering the popularity of the game there were fears of mass RRoD incidents or maybe something else. But the topic is interesting from a technical standpoint

Seems to me we agree the topic is interesting on an academic level.

Bungie has said all along that they're not going to push the 360 to the max this is nothing new, well except for the people that hadn't been following Bungie's statements before launch. Games are always trade-offs of developer time + quality + marketability. The question remains had they rendered slightly higher at 720p would it have costed them extra time and $$? If so would the benefit have been seen by more gamers buying Halo3? Probably not. Bungie like any other company wants to maximize profits so perhaps that time and cash were better spent in other areas.

It seems that the 65nm CPUs are already starting to appear in Halo 3 Special Edition Xbox 360's, also the GPU seems to be smaller, at least its memory die is suggesting something has been optimized there as well. There is also a heat sink and a 30% reduction in power usage. Scroll down here:

http://www.xbox-scene.com/

Someone already reported RRoD on a Halo 3 Special Edition Xbox 360:

http://www.n4g.com/xbox360/News-71365.aspx

However, this unit is manufactured 18.8.2007. The cut-off date for the 90nm/65nm transition by current accounts seems to be 24.8.2007 (lot number 734 onwards - unless the lot number sticker on the box is covered by another sticker in which case the lot number may not be accurate), so it seems that RRoD'd machine still sports the older Zephyr motherboard and 90nm chips.

Most Halo 3 Special Edition Xbox 360s apparently still run 90nm. I took a quick look around my home town and lot numbers for these were below 734, so no luck yet - I'm pretty sure all those were 90nm. I am actually interested in getting one of these 65nm Halo 3 SE's, they look nice to my eyes and the new quieter DVD drives and HDMI coupled with the 65nm improvements would be enough for me to upgrade my launch-day model.

Edit: Fixed dates - 7s and 8s were swapped.

Last edited by jtsiren on 01-Oct-2007 at 07:03 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

MikeB wrote: @BrianK Quote: Again how much does this matter? Quite simple, Bungie is owned by Microsoft and has a huge development budget and probably more development time than other currently available XBox 360 or PS3 game. Yet the game is rendering at a resolution than advertised 720p (@ 30 FPS) and provides no AA (which is often claimed to be free, on the XBox 360!). This is no half-assed low budget 3rd party project, neither is the game being ported from another original target platform. Bungie should have been able to push the XBox 360 to the max, yet it IMO Bungie didn't. I wonder what the real reasons for this is, maybe higher res textures would exceed the storage limitation of DVD, maybe considering the popularity of the game there were fears of mass RRoD incidents or maybe something else. But the topic is interesting from a technical standpoint.

Here is the explanation from Bungie:

Quote:

You Owe me 80p! One item making the interwebs rounds this week was the scandalous revelation that Halo 3 runs at “640p” which isn’t even technically a resolution. However, the interweb detectives did notice that Halo 3’s vertical resolution, when captured from a frame buffer, is indeed 640 pixels. So what gives? Did we short change you 80 pixels? Naturally it’s more complicated than that. In fact, you could argue we gave you 1280 pixels of vertical resolution, since Halo 3 uses not one, but two frame buffers – both of which render at 1152x640 pixels. The reason we chose this slightly unorthodox resolution and this very complex use of two buffers is simple enough to see – lighting. We wanted to preserve as much dynamic range as possible – so we use one for the high dynamic range and one for the low dynamic range values. Both are combined to create the finished on screen image. This ability to display a full range of HDR, combined with our advanced lighting, material and postprocessing engine, gives our scenes, large and small, a compelling, convincing and ultimately “real” feeling, and at a steady and smooth frame rate, which in the end was far more important to us than the ability to display a few extra pixels. Making this decision simpler still is the fact that the 360 scales the “almost-720p” image effortlessly all the way up to 1080p if you so desire. In fact, if you do a comparison shot between the native 1152x640 image and the scaled 1280x720, it’s practically impossible to discern the difference. We would ignore it entirely were it not for the internet’s propensity for drama where none exists. In fact the reason we haven’t mentioned this before in weekly updates, is the simple fact that it would have distracted conversation away from more important aspects of the game, and given tinfoil hats some new gristle to chew on as they catalogued their toenail clippings.

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12821

To come back on "how much does this matter". Well, it might be that few people will notice the frame buffer resolution is different from the displayed resolution, but one could wonder how much further the 360 can be pushed. It looks like it's not that "easy" to do another step up like Gears did.

I would say that judging from the recent games (Warhawk, Lair, Heavenly Sword), people are saying the PS3 is on the same level or slightly above the 360 from a technical point of view. Sure a game is more than just the GFX, but there is a heated debate on which of the two is the strongest (and not just between you and me Brian ).

@BrianK

Quote:

Again how much does this matter?

Quite simple, Bungie is owned by Microsoft and has a huge development budget and probably more development time than other currently available XBox 360 or PS3 game.

Yet the game is rendering at a resolution lower than advertised 720p (@ 30 FPS) and provides no AA (which is often claimed to be free, on the XBox 360!).

This is no half-assed low budget 3rd party project, neither is the game being ported from another original target platform. Bungie should have been able to push the XBox 360 to the max, yet it IMO Bungie didn't. I wonder what the real reasons for this is, maybe higher res textures would exceed the storage limitation of DVD, maybe considering the popularity of the game there were fears of mass RRoD incidents or maybe something else. But the topic is interesting from a technical standpoint.

Last edited by MikeB on 01-Oct-2007 at 11:12 AM.

@MikeB

Halo3 in 640p not being HDTV on a technical level would be true. US ranking is 720p or 1080i/p but nothing else. 640p isn't in the SDTV classification for the US either.

There are other games on these platforms which are not necessarily living up to the advertising. The PS3 has similar issues. PS3 pushed 1080p as the ultimate yet was there 1 1080p game at launch? The vast majority were 720p. The Darkness is 540p upscaled. Ninja Gaiden Sigma is 960x720 then software scaled to 720p or 1080p. Rub-a-dub is neither 720p nor 1080p. Call of Duty 3 is 600p for either platform.

Again how much does this matter? In some cases Ninja Gaiden it does for people complain the 1080p is blurier then the 720p game. The consoles scale and various people's sets scale many sets, some plamsa screens for example, don't do either 720p or 1080p but have their own resolutions.

At this point Halo3 not being 720p native is a point of interest. It is much better graphic wise then the first 2 parts, has better AI, is playable, is entertaining, has high rankings at nearly every review site and is the title that's sold the most videogames in a single day ever.

I wonder in a month will there be more PS3s sold or more copies of Halo3, it'll be a close race.

Last edited by BrianK on 01-Oct-2007 at 04:27 AM.

@BrianK

Quote:

As for the PS2 outputting 576p it upscales to that none of the games are made in that resolution so no it's still SD.

Of course it's SD. 480p and 576p are SD. 720p, 1080i and 1080p are the defined
HD resolutions. Anything else are just custom resolutions.
I don't know if PS2 scales up to 576 lines or outputs fully calculated modes.
But I find it strange if it didn't because then it wouldn't be better than PS1, resolution
wise.

Last edited by Samwel on 01-Oct-2007 at 02:05 AM.

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@BrianK

Quote:

As for the PS2 outputting 576p it upscales to that none of the games are made in that resolution so no it's still SD.

Both the PS2 (with software) and PS3 are able to output 576p for PAL games on HDTVs just fine. But PAL PS2 games aren´t rendering in HDTV resolutions with just 576 lines.

Last edited by MikeB on 30-Sep-2007 at 08:02 PM.

@BrianK

Yeah, what happens with Xbox 360 on the wider market is very much open for success - the quality issues (which tend to hit hardcore players more due to their nature) and especially any performance issues are not as important there. Sony is at this time hard-pressed to compete there given Xbox 360's strong performance (to which Halo 3 will add tremendeously) and Wii's stellar performance. Sony seems to now aim for a future, years down the road, victory which may or may not be important depending on how you look at it - down the road there will be new Wii's and new Xbox's probably sooner than a PS4 and thus a whole new market again... Who knows who wins and how.

However, I do wish to acknowledge (and I'm sticking to my guns saying I won't drag myself into debating this here anymore) that for a hardcore player or a gaming enthusiast - latter being the perspective I look things from - both the quality and the performance are issues. The former is a real issue which needs resolving, otherwise playing Xbox 360 just becomes a chore in the long run, and the latter an issue which will dictate how the interest in the system will play out in the gaming crows - remember how Xbox 1 became the hardcore players choice because of its performance. It didn't win the mass battle, but it won the hearts of many. If PS3 eventually gets there with the performance and games, and Xbox 360 is further marred by quality issues, I don't see how gamers wouldn't flock to PS3. They won't TODAY because Xbox 360 is where the games are, but I mean, a year from now or so if the red ring still rules the day and developers can't seem to push the system (perhaps also out of fear of overheating it)...

So, Microsoft, get the quality right and let your system continue to compete for the hearts and minds of gamers, not just the mass-market... I think there is still room to show which system can continue to deliver the best games.

@MikeB

As for the PS2 outputting 576p it upscales to that none of the games are made in that resolution so no it's still SD.

Quote:

""Halo 3’s graphics were not up to par for what they should have been, the games packaging showed signs of being rushed as thousands of gamers reported scratched disks right out of the box, and the fact that hundreds of reports keep flying in that the game locks up."

Graphics are what they are. They're not as good as Gears of War but they're much improved compared to previous Halo games go back and view the page I include on a previous post to see the images comparing all 3. If someone doesn't like the graphics then they don't. Surely graphics isn't the only thing that makes a game it's about gameplay. Halo3 has better graphics then most every PS2 game but I bet you won't dump the PS2 for Halo3 due to graphics, for example.

The packing is an issue. Microsoft had made a package with a new design on a DVD holder. Kinda dumb use what works. But, in shipping discs have become dislodged and scratched as a result. Microsoft quickly admitted to the problem and is replacing all discs with the issue.

Lou is right on here even with the issues this is a popular platform. Sure not as many sold as the PS2 the most popular console ever. But, he 360 did sell the most videogames ever in a single day. Reported 1 day sales were $170M more then Spiderman3's opening weekend. The most impressive launch of a videogame evar.

Estimates are over 4M games sold the first week, we'll see actual numbers later, but still if we have 40K people with problems 99% of people are happy. And while frustrating to have issues Microsoft is replacing the game. Clearly they've learned when there are problems to quickly identify the issue and quickly resolve the problem for the customer. Many stores have 30 day warranties on games so another option is to exchange it for a new copy and you wouldn't even have to wait for Microsoft to exchange the disc.

I think Microsoft's main issue is the quality control. These issues just keep on cropping up - the RRoD obviously won't have a chance in hell of getting remedied truly until smaller chips hit the market and if Falcon isn't 65nm GPU initially, that will be still maybe a year away. Clearly the heat sink alone won't cure the major issue here, that much seems obvious. Halo scratched discs, wheel issues etc. are more icing to that rotten cake, even if a small minority, still there seems to be a major quality control issue at Microsoft.

Now, this doesn't mean people can't enjoy Xbox 360. Many do. I do and will, it has some great games like everyone keeps saying. But unless the quality issues get sorted out, this will eventually shorten the systems lifespan far more than any processing power requirements will - PS2 got to top and stayed there even though it clearly was inferior to Xbox 1, but then PS2's quality issues weren't as severe as Xbox 360's seem to be.

As for the processing power comparisons, I think they are interesting and will continue to follow them. If in the end PS3 provides more power and better games, great! Power to them. With Dual Shock 3 I have less grief with them anyways. Now, wheare are them games...

Now, Halo 3. That I will buy anyways, great reviews. I hope my Xbox 360 holds up. :)

Last edited by jtsiren on 29-Sep-2007 at 01:29 PM.
Last edited by jtsiren on 29-Sep-2007 at 01:28 PM.

@BrianK

Quote:

I believe anything other then 480p is HD

IMO it's better to stick to international agreements to simplify technical discussions.

"Three HDTV standards are currently defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R BT.709). They include 1080i (1,080 actively interlaced lines), 1080p (1,080 progressively scanned lines), and 720p (720 progressively scanned lines). "

@BrianK

Quote:

I believe anything other then 480p is HD

The PS2 can easily output 576p for PAL PS2 games, so the PS2 should be considered to be a HD console?

Quote:

Wow over 100? In the first 24 hours Microsoft reported making over $170M . So that's what almost 3M copies on just the first day? Let's see 500 out of 3M is less then a .02% error. No one likes a bad disc. So really you're complaining about better then 99.9% perfect disc? OMFG!

It seems there are thousands of reports:

"Halo 3’s graphics were not up to par for what they should have been, the games packaging showed signs of being rushed as thousands of gamers reported scratched disks right out of the box, and the fact that hundreds of reports keep flying in that the game locks up."

Interesting read:
http://www.gamerevolver.com/articlenav-52-page-1.html

Of course like many things, the reports read online on the internet are just the tip of the iceberg! (and the tip of the iceberg, is much larger considering there exists more than just 1 website)

Last edited by MikeB on 29-Sep-2007 at 11:08 AM.
Last edited by MikeB on 29-Sep-2007 at 11:07 AM.

@BrianK

uhm, 640x2 = 1280, 540x2 = 1080

@MikeB

Quote:

This may be due to the fact that Halo 3 isn't really a native HD game, but rather a game rendering at 640p

I believe anything other then 480p is HD so 640p is HD and a nice # if you want to double it you get 1080p. We all knew Halo3 wouldn't be a graphics powerhouse but compared to Halo2 it's much more detailed and smoother.

If anyone is wondering what difference there is here are some screenshots

Quote:

A storm is brewing in both the Xbox and Bungie forums, where over a hundred posters have now verified that their copies of Halo 3 are causing disc read errors.

Wow over 100? In the first 24 hours Microsoft reported making over $170M . So that's what almost 3M copies on just the first day? Let's see 500 out of 3M is less then a .02% error. No one likes a bad disc. So really you're complaining about better then 99.9% perfect disc? OMFG!

I think there's a needle lost in a haystack just down the road from your house.

So Halo 3 has been released. The launch was not without its problems regarding XBox 360 defects, but RRoD incidents have been fewer than previously feared. This may be due to the fact that Halo 3 isn't really a native HD game, but rather a game rendering at 640p which may take some workload off the GPU with regard to heat production.

Still:

Defective: Halo 3 Disc Read Errors Rampant

"A storm is brewing in both the Xbox and Bungie forums, where over a hundred posters have now verified that their copies of Halo 3 are causing disc read errors. lockups, and even the dreaded RRoD on their Xbox 360 consoles. From what I can glean from skimming through the 22 pages of replies to the original poster's problem, most of the people affected purchased the standard edition, though a few are reporting having the problem on both the standard and the LE version of the game. Some believe the discs are corrupting the data on the hard disc itself, as some have had their game discs replaced twice or more now with similar results, and removing the hard disc seems to keep the error from occurring with some posters. Some can load the game fine and play it for short bursts before the problem occurs, while others are finding the issue limited to certain game modes. Check out the forum threads for more info on the problems had, and hopefully some official response will be given about the issue soon."

http://kotaku.com/gaming/defective/halo-3-disc-read-errors-rampant-304600.php

Some latest XBox 360 problem reports from NeoGAF:



1 ) "My friend's 360 is still missing after 11 weeks now. He's asking for advice, and he's extremely ####ed off. Mine took three days, but that was obviously before the warranty announcement.

They told him to not contact a lawyer about it, even though he hadn't mentioned anything about that."

2) "Anyone have more info on this? Is MS confirming there's an issue with Halo? Mine threw up the red before I could even finish the first level. I thought maybe I'd be one of the lucky ones whos 360 doesn't suck. So close."

3) "....and there goes my third 'premium' 360, nine months later. After a five hour Bioshock session, next boot up = RROD. No amount of unplugging or fiddling about would get it to boot."

4) "My 2nd 360 kicked the bucket. I bought Halo 3 this morning during a break at work, stayed at the lab 'til 'bout 6:30, came home to finally put the game in to play it and it crapped out on me when the Bungie logo came up. Luckily I bought into an in-store replacement program last year when my first one died (ironically on the very same day Gears of War was released....I seem to have bad luck with these major releases) and was able to swap it out for a brand new unit (date of manufacture was 8/30/07, so I feel pretty good about this trade). Pain in the ass and all (especially on Halo 3 day)"

5) "Mine 3 red lighted again, 1 day into halo 3. This refurb lasted about 3 months."

6) "Mine RRODed today. Kinda ####ed now, it lasted less than four months.

Jesus, how do they get away with this ####?"

7) "My 360 died last night. Called customer service and im supposed to have the box to send it in within a week. Hopefully I will. Luckily im not a big Halo fan so im not upset about missing that. But I wanted to play some more Oblivion. :("

8) "My 360 died the second i put in Bioshock. I have yet to play it. 24 days later and I have still not received my new console. Plus the guys at MS say they only got it in on the 17th, which is absolute BS. It doesn't take 17 days to ship 3 states. "

9) "Got my replacement unit back today, manufacture date 9-11-07. No HDMI though. I can confirm that MS "support" is ridiculous in every way. The service site listed my console as having shipped back. Phone support assured me that wasn't the case. The service site gave me a tracking number and I checked it. It showed my console going to Olympia, WA instead of New York City. I called MS last night and the guy (I called three times to get a U.S. rep) swore my console hadn't shipped yet... then it arrived today "

10) "Alright, so my 360 is still out (though they said it was shipped back to me on tuesday, big help for a halo fan). So on monday I bought a 2nd 360 to play Halo with the plan of selling one of the consoles to my brother when I see him next. Which one should I keep (a.k.a. which one is more reliable and less likely to get the red rings.)

The new 360 with HDMI or the 360 sent back from the repair center??

Thanks to anyone who can help out"

11) "Bleh, my new 360 Premium w/ HDMI that I bought 3 weeks ago just died today. Just started Halo 3 campaign. I can't finish the fight

Seriously, though, this sucks ass."

12) "6 business days and i haven't gotten my box to send in my 360 yet...this has the makings of a nightmare..."

Just a small selection of the past few days to give a overview of the problems people are experiencing.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @Lou Quote: Maybe that IPO stock offering is so they replace each and every sixaxis with a Dual Shock 3 instead of lowering the price. Well Microsoft did take a $ hit to fix their hardware issues. I'd agree Sony should do the same. It appears they fixed the bug that caused rumble to not work on their controllers afterall.

Yeah, the "legal" bug...

In Japan....
Proving that it's software that drives hardware sales:
Quote:

PlayStation Portable: 95,487 Nintendo DS Lite: 79,974 Nintendo Wii: 26,181 PlayStation 2: 13,128 PlayStation 3: 13,101 Xbox 360: 1243 Game Boy Advance SP: 836 Nintendo GameCube: 97 Nintendo DS: 15

thanks to Final Fantasy 7:Crisis Core being released for the PSP to the tune of 500K copies sold. Pokemon's combines sales did outsell it but is listed twice as #'s 2 and 3...

@_Steve_
Well the PS3 will have a 12 year lifecyle anyway
Ofcourse in 4 years, MS will release it's twin dual overhead hex cored Xbox 720 with Ultra-mega HD-DVD drive with DirectX11 capable gpu that can do 4320p and comes with 32GB of RAM and a 500TB HD...only to be outsold by the Wiii (3 i's) with it's standard 1.45Ghz cpu that only supports 720p...sometimes...

@MikeB

Well the last thing I read a few days ago was that Sony were looking to sell off their CPU division to Toshiba (following claims of Patent infringements in their Cell CPU). So I wouldn't hold my breath on a PS4 yet, especially as a lack of software for the PS3 is not doing it any good at all.

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@Lou

Quote:

Maybe that IPO stock offering is so they replace each and every sixaxis with a Dual Shock 3 instead of lowering the price.

Well Microsoft did take a $ hit to fix their hardware issues. I'd agree Sony should do the same. It appears they fixed the bug that caused rumble to not work on their controllers afterall.

@BrianK

Maybe that IPO stock offering is so they replace each and every sixaxis with a Dual Shock 3 instead of lowering the price.

That would be the fair thing to do. I like how Kaz put it as a breakthru... The breakthru was made by the legal department, not the engineering department...

Here's an editorial from www.gamesindustry.biz:
Quote:

Distant Rumbling It would be harsh, perhaps, to suggest that this week's announcement of a replacement for the PS3's much-vaunted SIXAXIS pad represented an embarrassing volte-face for Sony. Harsh, but nevertheless true. The introduction of the Dual Shock 3 and the reversal of a year of public denouncements of rumble technology as "last generation" is a loss of face for the firm. It's also unquestionably the right decision. Dropping rumble support from its controller was never a design-led decision for Sony in the first place, after all. The firm's stances on rumble being too hard to integrate with motion sensing (which Hirai trotted out again yesterday), or simply being a last-generation feature not suited to the new SIXAXIS pad, were developed in retrospect to cover up the reality of the situation - a messy patent dispute with haptic feedback firm Immersion. There was no mention of Immersion during Hirai's TGS keynote, which is perhaps a shame; a little honesty on this front could have gone a long way to confirming his rhetoric about Sony humbly returning to basics. However, the company's settlement with Immersion is the event which opened the doors to the creation of Dual Shock 3; the breakthrough here was made by Sony's legal team, not its researchers and engineers. Of course, Sony should have sorted out this problem before the PS3 launched, rather than leaving users with crippled controllers for the first 12 months of the console's lifespan - and there's no doubt that an overhaul of the controller a year after launch isn't exactly what the firm's bosses would have wanted. However, it's hardly the first time that this has happened. The original Dual Shock controller was introduced during the lifespan of the original PlayStation, replacing a pad which had no analogue sticks and no rumble function, and quickly became the de facto controller. Microsoft, too, has faced an even more similar situation; it replaced the widely derided, oversized Xbox controller with the far more comfortable Controller S model only a few months into the lifespan of the console. In both cases, the change was hailed as a positive move - the Dual Shock launched to rave reviews, while the Controller S was seen as evidence of Microsoft's willingness to listen to its consumers, learn from its mistakes, and adapt quickly to meet the demands of the audience. More than anything else Microsoft has done in the console market, the introduction of Controller S created a reputation as a nimble, reactive company - no mean feat for a firm whose activities in other markets are renowned for being quite the opposite. We don't expect Dual Shock 3 to receive quite the same level of rapturous response. Some early adopters may be annoyed at having to buy new controllers, of course, but the overall response is likely to lie somewhere between "oh, good" and "about time" on the sliding scale of consumer enthusiasm. There will also, of course, be some inevitable sniping from the sidelines about the firm's U-turn on the issue. In the medium to long term, however, the move to Dual Shock 3 is an unqualified positive for Sony. The lack of rumble is not only a stick which its competitors and detractors could use to beat the PS3; it was also the kind of feature which the average consumer understands, and which most consumers want. Haptic feedback may presently be a blunt instrument in terms of user interface, but it has become a standard feature of videogames, and its absence in the PS3 was a definite negative. As to the remainder of Sony's keynote at TGS, it's hard to be particularly enthused about what Hirai had to show - largely because there was very little there which hadn't already taken a public bow at E3 back in July. Hopes that the keynote would unveil key new software for PS3 did not come to fruition - and while the future line-up for the console is stronger than its critics claim, it needs to be stronger still if it's to stand up to the increasingly impressive catalogue on the Xbox 360. Less surprising is the lack of a price cut announcement. As many commentators have noted, late September is arguably a bit too close to the holiday season to cut the price; traditionally, cuts have arrived by early September, in time for retailers to arrange their autumn promotional campaigns. It now seems certain that PS3 will not see a genuine price cut before next Spring, although further "value adjustments" similar to the summer's bundle introductions are likely next month. It's fair to say that the TGS keynote, despite the Dual Shock 3 announcement, was something of a missed opportunity for Sony - especially coming as it did only days before the release of Halo 3, one of Microsoft's biggest hopes for the autumn and holiday seasons. Although the new controller is a positive, and the PS3's line-up is gradually starting to look compelling (although not, perhaps, at the console's high price point), Hirai ultimately fell into the same trap with this keynote as the now-departed Ken Kutaragi did last year. Despite his claim of going back to basics, "basics" in this case should be videogames - instead, the TGS keynote was about future technological possibilities, filled with speculation over virtual worlds, remote play and linked supercomputing power. Such topics play well at academic conferences or in the pages of Wired magazine - but for a global audience of gamers, the keynote once again failed to establish the PS3 as a videogames system of choice. Reports from the show floor at the Makuhari Messe may well help to redress the balance - but for all his fine words about listening to consumers, it seems that Kaz Hirai still hasn't learned how to talk to them.

Where are the games Sony?
HOME got delayed.
No new software announced.

Sony did by the studio responsible for Motorstorm...now patch it to include rumble...