Low-End PS3 Comes with HDMI, Cheaper in Japan 173
jayintune writes "2old2play has a nice round-up on the main talking points from the Sony Keynote speech at the 2006 TGS (Tokyo Game Show). Most notably, Sony announced HDMI ports will be included on ALL models of the PS3. Initially, Sony was worried that if they put the HDMI in the lower version, some would complain about having to pay for something they don't want. Apparently they realized people would be more upset without it." Additionally, it's been confirmed that the cheaper PS3 will be even less expensive ... in Japan. For now, it seems this price drop only affects the Japanese Market. For many additional viewpoints on the announcement and keynote, click through to see this post's associated links.
Yawn... (Score:1, Insightful)
Disappointing generation (Score:3, Insightful)
The PS3 will likely deliver the goods, but nevertheless is too expensive. In the end the only exclusives will be metal gear + 100 different japanese RPGs that we've all played different incarnations of dozens of times before.
And the 360 isn't faring much better. The most interesting titles are $5 arcade games (I may pick one up when settlers of cantan is released), and the best games that look good are not only released on the PC as well, but the PC version offers mods (looking at Oblivion and the upcoming Star trek: legacy). Perhaps I wouldn't be so disappointed with the 360 if I wasn't spoiled on xbox media center for my xbox.
Want to know the best bet right now if you havn't jumped onto the ps2/xbox/gamecube generation? Pick up an xbox original and mod it (which is actually not that difficult), install xbox media center, and not only play nes, snes, n64, tg16, genesis, MAME, etc games for free but you'll have an extensive library of great $5-$15 used games available to load onto the harddrive (or rent and steal if you are so inclined). Alot of the xbox games have 480p 16:9 if you have an HDTV, and the only exclusives you will really miss out on are a bunch of square-enix RPGs, which honestly you arn't missing out much on (seriously, did anyone play through more than 25 hours of dragon warrior VIII or kingdom hearts 2 without wanting to rip their eyeballs out?) and katamari damacy (which is a great game, but isn't alone worth getting a console for). Otherwise most games on the ps2 are available on the xbox, and the xbox is a bit more mod friendly (with xbox media center + emulators, etc).
I think what may happen is alot of the people who skipped out on the gamecube may just get a Wii to play gamecube games they missed out on. I actually hope Nintendo does well this generation and doesn't turn into another Sega. I'd hate for the only players in the field to be Sony and Microsoft.
Re:"Price Cut", that sounds nice doesn't it... (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that the new price announced is:
PS3... 47,600 yen
Which as the article states makes the PS3 cheaper than a core XBOX 360 and HD-DVD addon which doesn't include a HD. Seems like competitive pricing there.
Sony will have done market research to find the best price (for them) to sell the PS3. Time will tell how good this strategy is...
Re:Disappointing generation (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, games like Perfect Dark Zero sucked on the 360, but they are finally about to have their 2nd wind of games. Sony has such a convoluded development enviroment I'm sure it will take longer than a year for the really good Sony games to come out.
Also, as a note, last I read Microsoft had sold 6 million xbox 360 consoles in the last year; not bad considering no one had released very good games yet. Now that the platformers are coming, expect it to catch on even more. Microsoft expects to sell another 6 million by the end of the year; thats well before Halo 3 comes into the picture. There are strong rumors that they will add an internal HD-DVD model (for video only) at the highend to compete against sony. Price cuts and die shrinkage are all coming.
Whether or not you like Microsoft, they are in a very good position.
I personally own a 360, and also am planning on grabbing a Wii or two. Both are excellent systems, Sony on the other hand, while I had a PS1, I will never buy a PS3, that thing was engineered by a patent committee looking to force standards on the world; if it was really designed for games it wouldnt have had 2 major delays already (BlueRay standard, and now Blue laser shortages).
more bad marketing... (Score:5, Insightful)
So they misevaluated their market, and the media backlash made them change their minds? Shouldn't this be the kind of element that should've been identified earlier on? As largely mentioned earlier, if they're pushing the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player, it's pretty dumb to "forget" the HD output...
Wow, I keep being surprised by how their marketing department sucks. For a consumer-electronics company, I find this plainly catastrophic.
Or maybe the dept doesn't suck, but they're crushed under other interests, which is just as bad.
Re:more bad marketing... (Score:2, Insightful)
The more articles they get, the more the acronym "PS3" gets into people's minds.
In today's marketing media, companies plan their campaign so that they will "change their mind" a couple of times in order to achieve another slashdot/blog/newspaper article.
A so called bad-design-decision that gets some hype around it, is actually nothing more than a good-marketing-decision in disguise.
Re:Yawn... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Price Cut", that sounds nice doesn't it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, for Japan at least, the basic PS3 is almost the same price as the XBox premium which isn't bad going at all.
Re:Disappointing generation (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. The 360 had a great potential for multimedia but was deliberately crippled to prop up Windows Media Center. I expect some flack at Microsoft thought "if we let this thing store and play movies then who is going to buy WMC? So let's cripple it so it only streams movies!".
One would hope that as Sony is more agnostic on video formats than MS that they might at least allow you to store files on the PS3 and possibly support several major codecs. They might not support Divx though simply because that is what most pirate content is in. But if Sony are really smart, they'd let people play their own ripped content while providing convenient access to their own video store.
Re:Disappointing generation (Score:5, Insightful)
BWAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
*oh my god*
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
*wipes tear from eye*
Note how few of these there will be (Score:3, Insightful)
Sony have already stated that there will only be 100,000 PS3s at launch in Japan. They have also stated that the vast majority of these will be the higher end version. Thus the price cut will be on a very small number of units.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:more bad marketing... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm currently using [mikebabcock.ca] (and plan to continue using) component video cables to my TV and coax digital audio cables to my receiver for the near future. When I buy a new receiver with DTS Master [dts.com] audio support, I'll be going to new audio cables. If and when LCD or Plasma TVs look as good at variable resolutions as my CRT, I might use HDMI for video only.
Yes yes, I know, in a few years, some discs might be encoded so that I need HDCP to play them on my TV at all. For the reasonable future, it would seem that movie companies care more about sales figures though and won't be setting that bit.