Microsoft Sides With Nintendo Against Sony

rafemonkey writes "Looks like Microsoft loves the Wii. The Washington Post has an article in which VP Peter Moore says that since the PS3 is so expensive, gamers might as well get an Xbox 360 and a Wii for the cost of one Sony console." From the article: "Microsoft predicted on Tuesday it will have 10 million Xbox 360 consoles in the market before Sony launches the PS3. The high-end Xbox 360 sells for $399, but it does not include a built-in high-definition DVD video player that comes with Sony's PS3. Sony plans to sell a premium PS3 model for $599 when it debuts in North America on November 17, and Nintendo has not yet disclosed pricing for Wii." On that last note there is much speculation that Nintendo is aiming for a $249 price point. Sony's Kaz Hirai has in turn responded that the PlayStation 3 is priced for consumers, who are getting a lot for their money.

News pros

[Grrr]

...that comes with Sony's PS3

Uh, not yet.

<grrr />

Sony's tricks again....

[yeoua]

"We felt that if you want to save something on your Memory Stick, most people have those readers on their PC, which is easily adaptable to the PlayStation 3 with a USB cord," said Hirai. "The only difference is HDMI - and at this point, I don't think many people's TV's have that. The ultimate result, to my eyes anyway, is there's not a discernable difference between what you get between HDMI and other forms of high definition."

This seems utterly bizarre. Over the course of the PS3's development, Sony has promised quite a bit, and yes they did include most of what they said (Cell, Blu Ray), but one of the biggest bits of HD. And now the president says there aren't enough TV's to warrant putting HDMI on the low end PS3?

Wasn't Nintendo getting flak for just this for the entire time that they said that HD wasn't yet the norm? Granted... Nintendo's max resolution still pales to the PS3's max resolution even without the HDMI.. but BluRay movies with the DRM bit set won't even work at max resolution on the low end PS3. Perhaps this was the point of the delay over the DRM announced previously.

Re:OH!....

[TrekCycling]

Hmmm...

Disgaea
Phantom Brave
La Pucelle Tactics
Guitar Hero
Katamari Damacy
We Love Katamari
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
God of War
Shadow of the Colossus
Resident Evil 4

and on and on and on....

There are many PS2 exclusives or games exclusive to PS2 and maybe the Cube.

Overall, though, your point is well taken. Most of the games that the mass populace loves (i.e. Sports, Racing, etc.) are available on both systems. So while it *is* kind of a wash there are games that break through this. Games that are worth playing.

Re:$249

[windowpain]

$199 in 1984 dollars is $368.34 in 2005 dollars according to this inflation calculator [westegg.com]. (2005 is the latest year for which they have data.)

Re:Oh yeah, one more thing: TFA is wrong.

[Bagels]

Um. No. They got the prices right - $300 for core, $400 for premium on the 360. Prices were higher back in the early days when stores decided to only sell the 360 bundled with ridiculous numbers of games and accessory crap. The price of the HD-DVD expansion hasn't yet been announced. And Sony's online service is ostensibly free, but you'll note that they carefully never actually mentioned online multiplayer - just "community" stuff that the (free) XBox Live Silver already delivers. Sony also seems to be intect on microtransactions hidden everywhere in their system. I will grant that they will likely have free online play, but they clearly worded things very carefully so that they could slither out of it if they felt so inclined.

Anyhow, I already enjoy honest-to-goodness free online with my DS. Nintendo's probably got my money for the next gen, though I'll keep Microsoft's proposal here in mind in case I feel a need for more "hardcore" games in the future.

Re:Wii is great if you like Mario, Zelda, and Samu

[conigs]

Wii needs more 3rd party support.

You mean like these [ign.com]:

Activision - Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, Marvel: Ulatimate Alliance, Call of Duty 3
AQ Interactive - Boxing Action
Atari - Dragon Ball Z Budokai: Tenkaichi 2
Atlus - Trauma Center: Second Opinion
Buena Vista Games - Disney's Chicken Little: Ace in Action Disney's Meet the Robinsons
Capcom - Resident Evil series
D3Publisher - SIMPLE series
Electronic Arts - Madden NFL '07, Medal of Honor Airborne
Hudson - Bomberman
Koei - Sengoku Action
Konami - Elebits, Soccer game
Majesco - Bust-a-Move Revolution
Marvelous Interactive / Natsume - Harvest Moon Heroes, Legend of the River King
Mastiff - Mr. D Goes to Town
Midway Games - The Ant Bully, Happy Feet
MTO - SAN-X All-star Revolution
Namco Bandai - Final Furlong, Mobile Suite Gundam, Digimon, One Piece Ulimited Adventure, Tamagotchi
SEGA - Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, Sonic Wild Fire
SNK - Metal Slug Anthology
Spike - Necro-Nesia, Jawa
Square Enix - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
Taito - Turn it around!, Let's go by train!, Cooking Mama -Cooking with International Friends
Tecmo - Super Swing Golf Pangya
THQ - Avatar: The Last Airbender, SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab, Disney/Pixar Cars
TOMY - Battle Action
Ubisoft - Open Season, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Red Steel

Yeah, I sure with they had at least some third-party support. While I'm not necessarily defending the quality of some of these games (I'm not necessarily a Spongebob fan), the point it that third-party support exists.

Re:I bet he said that...

[thebdj]

First, the Wii is more powerful then an X-Box or a PS2. The Gamecube already is on par with or passes both systems and the fact that Wii has more powerful hardware pretty much guarantees it to be better then that. Remember, Nintendo took a bunch of hardware most people thought would make a poor system and turned it into a Gamecube. The PS2 reminds me of many things, but power is not one of them. All three (that is right three) of the last generation of consoles were more powerful then the PS2. For those missing one, it is the Dreamcast.

Do you think that Nintendo is crimping on AI, physics or what not? You know what games require the most AI and physics? They are almost certainly first-person shooters, something Nintendo isn't the most well-known for. Also, the Nintendo processing power should be able to handle these things just fine anyway especially for now. The processing power of 360 and PS3 is slightly overkill for current games and the biggest boost they are getting and needing now is the graphics processing.

If you wanted realism, why not stick to the PC? I mean they definitely have the processing power for the AI and physics and you can upgrade them. Oh, there is also the fact you can still watch/listen to TV while playing your game. That is if you can handle doing both at one time.

If Nintendo does launch at $249, I think they made a lot of choices easier. $600 for PS3, $400 for 360, or $250 for Wii. Hm, seems pretty easy to me. I expect the price of Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) to drop faster then the consoles will. Remember, the PS2 was a cheap DVD player at the time, now it is a pretty expensive and not a well featured one. Since Blu-Ray was the only truly tempting thing in the PS3 (at least for me), I will play the wait and see with commercial players.

Mod parent DOWN where it belongs

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 Stupidity

How the fuck did this ever get above 1 to start with? Everyone and their damned dog knows that Core = $300, Real system = $400. Except for this cock jockey, who doesn't understand what a BUNDLE is.

Re:Oh yeah, one more thing: TFA is wrong.

[cosminn]

The stripped down 360 costs $399, the higher-end costs $499

Nope. [bestbuy.com]

The core is $299, the "regular" is $399. There are bundles that go even for $800+, but that's not the point.

and that's without the HD-DVD.

For now. MS is already losing money on the XBOX hardware, they'll add an HD-DVD player when the time comes, right now most people don't even have HD-TV, why would you need the HD-DVD? Not to mention games will also be more expensive for HD-DVD since the disks cost more.

Plus, Sony's online play is free,

Sony has an online play? I wouldn't compare the fact that it's free compared to $50, but how much you actually get for it. Given XBOX Live already has built a large community, and is rapidly increasing, the $50 are worth it. Plus Sony is _announcing_ it's free, given the greedy bastards they are we'll see. They'll have a free sign-up but get very little and probably charge the same or more for the equivalent.

All Sony has to do is throw in a couple games and they'd have MS beat already.

Wrong...all Sony has to do is release a console, and then they can actually start playing catch-up

I tend to agree with the article. PS3 has so far nothing to offer me the XBOX360 doesn't. The people who buy Nintendo consoles do it cause they're huge SmashBros et. al fans. The market targeted by Nintendo is different than the one MS/Sony is going after.

Re:$249

[thatguywhoiam]

$199 in 1984 dollars is $368.34 in 2005 dollars according to this inflation calculator.

That's an interesting link... just for kicks I plugged in the 'typical' launch price for a console, $299, at year 2000 inflation... this is what I got back:

What cost $299 in 2000 would cost $332.05 in 2005.

That's what the low end PS3 should cost. All other things being equal. $330 and $399 for low and high-end configs respectively would have looked pretty good.

Re:Spin, Spin, Spin

[Dirtwalker]

Did you fail to read the part where Hirai reports he is unable to confirm whether the PS3 will be able to play Blu-Ray DVD movies... ..."Some observers have questioned whether Blu-Ray movies will be playable on the PS3 once motion picture companies enable copy protection on the discs.

Hirai said it was "too early to speculate at this point" about such problems."...

So what good is the Blu-Ray DVD player in the PS3 if you won't be able to play the copy protected movies which are sure to be the only ones available in retail outlets??

Spin alright... Sony is spinning out of control.

Re:I bet he said that...

[Anonymous Coward]

>While I have great hopes for the Wii and its controller, I've never found the I/O device to a game to have too much of an impact on my enjoyment.

Ok then. Go and play Quake or Unreal Tournament with a keyboard only. No mouse.

There's a reason First Person Shooters suck on consoles: the damn controllers aren't made for them.

Re:You mean "Tricks Sony"?

[Dan Ost]

the core model is far crappier than the premium

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the only differences between
the core and the premium were smaller hard drive, no card media reader,
no wifi, and different TV-out.

20G hard drive is huge by console standards (don't know what 60G would
be used for.
USB wifi and card readers are readily accessible if you decide you need one later on (the core PS3 still has 4 USB ports).

Is the TV-out difference really a big deal?

What am I missing?

Re:You mean "Tricks Sony"?

[jchenx]

Well, "far crappier" is relative. I was mostly comparing to the difference between the core and premium 360, which is essentially a different set of AV cables, and an HD or no HD (which you can upgrade up from). To go from the PS3 core to premium, you'd need to upgrade to the larger HD, buy a WiFi adaptor, buy a memory card/stick adaptor, and buy the HDMI add-on ... assuming they all exist.

As for the question whether or not the TV-out is a big deal, I assume you mean the HDMI output. There's an open question as to whether or not the PS3 core will be able to output Blu-ray movies to their full potential, since it won't be able to utilize HDMI. Technically, you're supposed to use HDMI, but it looks like most content companies are backing off that requirement. Note that MS is in the same boat, since their HD-DVD add-on won't use HDMI output either.

This is mostly a moot point since many HDTVs apparently don't have an HDMI input. The funny thing is that most Sony fanbois *were* downplaying that fact, trying to trumpet up just how necessary HDMI output was, because the original PS3 specs had TWO of them, while no other console even had one. But now Sony and their fans are backpedaling, since the core version doesn't have it, and they're trying to defend the core version as not being totally worthless.

Personally, I don't really care. My HDTV does have HDMI input, but I highly doubt I'm going to be buying that many HD-DVD or Blu-ray discs, until I know which format wins ... and that won't be known for a while.

But if I were to get a PS3 (and I probably will at some point, since I'm a sucker for Square-Enix fans), it seems like a no brainer to get the premium one. The core one has just too many open questions, and it's only $100 cheaper. But $600 is a lot of money, so I'm going to be waiting until well into 2007 or even later.

Re:You mean "Tricks Sony"?

[jchenx]

I asked this question initially on an earlier article, and got a pretty good answer to it: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185334&c id=15296698 [slashdot.org]

In short, yes technically HD-DVD and Blu-ray require HDMI. But there are several articles out there (Google it, I'm lazy) that mention several Hollywood studios not enforcing this, at least initially.

You know, the following conversation could have theoretically taken place at Sony:

1 year ago
Sony Pictures: So, you tell us, should we enforce HDMI for our movies?
Sony Entertainment: Yes! Totally! Only the PS3 will have an HDMI output. Do it and the 360 and Revolution will be screwed! We'll be the only console that can play movies in HD! MwaHAHAHA!

1 month ago
Sony Pictures: Okay, we just finished our prep work. All of our Blu-ray discs are going to require HDMI.
Sony Entertainment: Oh, didn't you get the memo? You need to scratch all of that. The core PS3 isn't going to have HDMI.
Sony Pictures: WTF? Make up your mind guys!

Re:it is a sign microsoft is scared

[Blakey Rat]

Microsoft just realizes that the Wii isn't targeting the same market that the Xbox 360 targets, it's that simple. I mean, this is like a designer of top-end Audi saying, "sure, if you want a less expensive car, the Toyota Camry's pretty nice." He's not sniping any of his own sales, because people who are looking into buying an Audi are not the same people looking into buying a Camry.

There's no need for all this conspiracy theory crap. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.