PlayStation 3...Let's Get It Started





As you may know, there were some small, tiny, miniscule PS3 announcements made today. I'm excited, but not. Here are my comments on some of the bullet-pointed news:

- GLOBAL RELEASE NOVEMBER 11th
Hello clusterf****. Microsoft's global release wasn't a great idea. Manufacturing problems led to huge shortages. Sony had loads of problems producing enough PlayStation 2's for that system's 2000 launch in the US. Seems like there are potentially a lot of things that could go wrong in manufacturing with this machine -- newness of Blu-Ray and the mess of other tech crammed into the ugly thing. (Yes, I think the PS3 is UGLY. Perhaps even FUGLY. There, I said it.) That said, the anticipation and demand for machines is going to be through the roof. Crazier than Xbox 360. I'll pre-order this time, but if it's anything like 360 that won't even guarantee anything. Why do I want one? I have an HDTV -- this'll be my one (and probably only) Blu-Ray player.

- Price will not be less than 50.000YEN (~$425USD) [Note that Japanese prices are usually higher. SPECULATION is that it will be $349-$499 USD]
Eh, this is pretty good for what you get. Then again, what the hell is going to be the price of the games, that are all supposedly going to be on Blu-Ray discs? $60 games has already been a bitter pill to swallow on the X360. I should start saving the pre-order money now, eh? I expect the bundles will be crazy.

- Sony plans to produce 1 million PS3s a month; 6 million PS3s for FY2006 (by the end of March 07)
I call BS on this. No way. No frickin' way. Come back in a year and let's see if they actually reached the 6 million mark. Did they even do 6 million in the first year of PS2 availability? It's gonna be crazy. I'd be surprised if this came true.

- "basic" online service free, no details yet (and apparently free for games as well unlike XBLS)
- The online service will be working off of GameSpy technology (co-development with Sony Online Entertainment)
SOE? Bleh. I predict that this will not be as good/robust as Xbox Live. But, all the same, it'll be good to see some competition in the online console space with services like this. It'll force people to be competitive and hopefully drive prices for downloadable microtransaction content down. That's what I'm hoping, anyway.

Time for 1UP to update that Everything We Know About PS3 feature, eh?

Posted: Thu - March 16, 2006 at 02:06 AM         | |

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