Sony: PS3 News and Discussion Thread
Go B's Go
Joined: Sep 2004
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From: MA
Originally Posted by Dan Martin
My friend's brother was one of the lunatics who camped outside Best Buy to pick up one of the PS3's last week. He already has a PS1, PS2, and a PSP so he was eagerly waiting for the PS3 to come out. After playing with it all weekend long, he was so not impressed by it that he sold it in the Best Buy parking lot for $1200, walked into the store and bought a 360 with a ton of games. LOL!
Gears of War is a very pretty looking game.
Gears of War is a very pretty looking game.
xbox 360: 400
ps3: 600 sold for 1,200
so he still made a 200 dollar profit along with getting the xbox for free pretty much
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From: Toronto
A Weekend Full of Quality Time With PlayStation 3
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By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: November 20, 2006
Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.
Ever since Mr. Stringer took the helm last year at Sony, the struggling if still formidable electronics giant, the world has been hearing about how the coming PlayStation 3 would save the company, or at least revitalize it. Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun.
Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise.
Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the world’s most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the world’s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other.
The PS3, which was introduced in North America on Friday with a hefty $599 price tag for the top version, certainly delivers gorgeous graphics. But they are not discernibly prettier than the Xbox 360’s. More important, the whole PlayStation 3 system is surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online.
I have spent more than 30 hours using the PlayStation 3 over the last week or so and may have played more different games on the system — 13 — than probably anyone outside of Sony itself. Sony did not activate the PS3’s online service until just before the Friday debut. Over the weekend a clear sense of disappointment with the PlayStation 3 emerged from many gamers.
“What’s weird is that the PS3 was originally supposed to come out in the spring, and here it came out in the fall, and it still doesn’t feel finished,” Christopher Grant, managing editor of Joystiq, one of the world’s biggest video-game blogs, said on the telephone Saturday night. “It’s really not the all-star showing they should have had at launch. Sony is playing catch-up in a lot of ways now, not just in terms of sales but in terms of the basic functionality and usability of the system.”
Sadly for Sony, the best way to explain how the PlayStation 3 falls short is to explain how different it is to use than its main competition, Xbox 360. When I reviewed the 360 last year, I wrote: “Twelve minutes after opening the box, I had created my nickname, was in a game of Quake 4 and thought, ‘This can’t be this easy.’ ”
I never felt that way using the PlayStation 3. With the PS3, 12 minutes after opening the box I realized that Sony inexplicably does not include cables to connect the machine to a high-definition television. Keep in mind that one of Sony’s main selling points has been that the PS3 plays Blu-Ray high-definition movie discs. But high-definiton cables? Sold separately. The Xbox 360, by contrast, ships with one cable that can connect to either a standard or high-definition set.
Then, before you are even using the PS3, you have to connect the “wireless” controller to the base unit with a USB cable so they can recognize each other. If you bring your PS3 controller to a friend’s house, you’ll have to plug back in again. The 360’s wireless controllers are always just that, wireless.
If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesn’t seem too complicated, but the PS3 can’t do it.
In that sense it often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3’s online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, you’ll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you can’t download in the background while you go do something that’s more fun (like play a game). On the Xbox 360, not only are files downloaded seamlessly in the background, but you can also shut off the machine, turn it on later, and the download will resume automatically.
The PS3’s whole online experience feels tacked-on and unpolished. On the Xbox 360 each user has a single unified friends list, so you can track your friends and communicate with them easily, no matter what game you are in. On the PlayStation 3 most games have their own separate friends list and some have no friends function at all. There is a master list as well, but in order to communicate with anyone on it, you have to quit the game you are playing.
There are some high points. The multi-player battles in Resistance: Fall of Man are excellent. The arcade-style action in the downloadable Blast Factor is suitably frantic.
But the list of the PS3’s disappointments remains, from its undersupported voice chat to its maddening cellphone-like text messaging system. (In frustration I ended up plugging in a USB keyboard.) Overall, Sony seems to have put a lot of effort into cramming as much silicon horsepower under the hood as possible but to have forgotten that all the transistors in the world can’t make someone smile.
And so it is a bit of a shock to realize that on the video game front Microsoft and Sony are moving in exactly the opposite directions one might expect given their roots. Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sony’s PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3’s deficiencies.) The thing is, if people want to use a computer, they’ll use a computer.
Through the decades of the Walkman and the Trinitron television, Sony was renowned as the global master of easy-to-use, seamlessly powerful consumer electronics. But recently Sony seems to have lost its way, first in digital music players, in which it ceded the ergonomic high ground to Apple’s iPod, and now in home-game consoles. For now Sony’s technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun.
As a practical matter, given the limited quantities Sony has been able to manufacture, the PlayStation 3 will surely remain sold out throughout the holiday season. If you can’t find one, don’t fret. Sony still has a lot of work to do. As Mr. Grant of Joystiq put it: “Maybe in six months it’ll be finished. Maybe by next fall I’ll be able to do all the cool stuff. I’m still kind of waiting.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/ar...=1&oref=slogin
Article Tools Sponsored By
By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: November 20, 2006
Howard Stringer, you have a problem. Your company’s new video game system just isn’t that great.
Ever since Mr. Stringer took the helm last year at Sony, the struggling if still formidable electronics giant, the world has been hearing about how the coming PlayStation 3 would save the company, or at least revitalize it. Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360, Sony blithely insisted that the PS3 would leapfrog all competition to deliver an unsurpassed level of fun.
Put bluntly, Sony has failed to deliver on that promise.
Measured in megaflops, gigabytes and other technical benchmarks, the PlayStation 3 is certainly the world’s most powerful game console. It falls far short, however, of providing the world’s most engaging overall entertainment experience. There is a big difference, and Sony seems to have confused one for the other.
The PS3, which was introduced in North America on Friday with a hefty $599 price tag for the top version, certainly delivers gorgeous graphics. But they are not discernibly prettier than the Xbox 360’s. More important, the whole PlayStation 3 system is surprisingly clunky to use and simply does not provide many basic functions that users have come to expect, especially online.
I have spent more than 30 hours using the PlayStation 3 over the last week or so and may have played more different games on the system — 13 — than probably anyone outside of Sony itself. Sony did not activate the PS3’s online service until just before the Friday debut. Over the weekend a clear sense of disappointment with the PlayStation 3 emerged from many gamers.
“What’s weird is that the PS3 was originally supposed to come out in the spring, and here it came out in the fall, and it still doesn’t feel finished,” Christopher Grant, managing editor of Joystiq, one of the world’s biggest video-game blogs, said on the telephone Saturday night. “It’s really not the all-star showing they should have had at launch. Sony is playing catch-up in a lot of ways now, not just in terms of sales but in terms of the basic functionality and usability of the system.”
Sadly for Sony, the best way to explain how the PlayStation 3 falls short is to explain how different it is to use than its main competition, Xbox 360. When I reviewed the 360 last year, I wrote: “Twelve minutes after opening the box, I had created my nickname, was in a game of Quake 4 and thought, ‘This can’t be this easy.’ ”
I never felt that way using the PlayStation 3. With the PS3, 12 minutes after opening the box I realized that Sony inexplicably does not include cables to connect the machine to a high-definition television. Keep in mind that one of Sony’s main selling points has been that the PS3 plays Blu-Ray high-definition movie discs. But high-definiton cables? Sold separately. The Xbox 360, by contrast, ships with one cable that can connect to either a standard or high-definition set.
Then, before you are even using the PS3, you have to connect the “wireless” controller to the base unit with a USB cable so they can recognize each other. If you bring your PS3 controller to a friend’s house, you’ll have to plug back in again. The 360’s wireless controllers are always just that, wireless.
If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesn’t seem too complicated, but the PS3 can’t do it.
In that sense it often feels as if the PlayStation 3 can’t walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. In the PS3’s online store (which feels like a slow Web page) you can access movie trailers and trial versions of new games, but when you actually download the 600-megabyte files, you’ll be stuck watching a progress bar crawl across the screen for 20 or 40 minutes. Astonishingly, you can’t download in the background while you go do something that’s more fun (like play a game). On the Xbox 360, not only are files downloaded seamlessly in the background, but you can also shut off the machine, turn it on later, and the download will resume automatically.
The PS3’s whole online experience feels tacked-on and unpolished. On the Xbox 360 each user has a single unified friends list, so you can track your friends and communicate with them easily, no matter what game you are in. On the PlayStation 3 most games have their own separate friends list and some have no friends function at all. There is a master list as well, but in order to communicate with anyone on it, you have to quit the game you are playing.
There are some high points. The multi-player battles in Resistance: Fall of Man are excellent. The arcade-style action in the downloadable Blast Factor is suitably frantic.
But the list of the PS3’s disappointments remains, from its undersupported voice chat to its maddening cellphone-like text messaging system. (In frustration I ended up plugging in a USB keyboard.) Overall, Sony seems to have put a lot of effort into cramming as much silicon horsepower under the hood as possible but to have forgotten that all the transistors in the world can’t make someone smile.
And so it is a bit of a shock to realize that on the video game front Microsoft and Sony are moving in exactly the opposite directions one might expect given their roots. Microsoft, the prototypical PC company, has made the Xbox 360 into a powerful but intuitive, welcoming, people-friendly system. Sony’s PlayStation 3, on the other hand, often feels like a brawny but somewhat recalcitrant specialized computer. (Sony is even telling users to wait for future software patches to fix some of the PS3’s deficiencies.) The thing is, if people want to use a computer, they’ll use a computer.
Through the decades of the Walkman and the Trinitron television, Sony was renowned as the global master of easy-to-use, seamlessly powerful consumer electronics. But recently Sony seems to have lost its way, first in digital music players, in which it ceded the ergonomic high ground to Apple’s iPod, and now in home-game consoles. For now Sony’s technologists seem to have won out over the people who study fun.
As a practical matter, given the limited quantities Sony has been able to manufacture, the PlayStation 3 will surely remain sold out throughout the holiday season. If you can’t find one, don’t fret. Sony still has a lot of work to do. As Mr. Grant of Joystiq put it: “Maybe in six months it’ll be finished. Maybe by next fall I’ll be able to do all the cool stuff. I’m still kind of waiting.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/ar...=1&oref=slogin
sup
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 2,147
Likes: 1
From: NYC
^^ I'm not sure I really like this review. It has some good points, but some of the gripes are pretty minor, in my opinion. It also fails to mention some high points. Voice and video chat are better quality than on the 360, and you can plug in almost any peripheral, even if it isn't sony branded. And he complains about the text entry...is it any better on the xbox?
Drifting
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,311
Likes: 9
From: Seattle, WA
Originally Posted by bkknight369
it would have been a huge mistake for them to miss another holiday season
no doubt, they absolutely had to get it out this holiday season. it's a shame they weren't more prepared though.
Senior Moderator
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 21,672
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From: Toronto
Originally Posted by bkknight369
it would have been a huge mistake for them to miss another holiday season
I just feel sorry for the guys who dropped $5K on this thing. Well, actually.. I dont feel that sorry for them.
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Joined: Apr 2003
Posts: 47,710
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From: Toronto, Canada
How could it have not been ready though? I can accept all the shortcomings, but not the fact that only 400K were made available at launch so close to X-Mas. Whomever was in charge of getting this thing to market should be flipping burgers by Wednesday.
Any one know how many 360's were available at its launch.
Any one know how many 360's were available at its launch.
The sizzle in the Steak
Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 71,436
Likes: 1,877
From: Southern California
hmmm wonder what is worse....getting bad press and reputation for a product that was rushed to market in order to take advantage of the holiday sales, or missing the holiday sales but having a better console?
I'm sure Sony weighed those options, and made their choice. Time will tell how it pans out and if they gain or lose maket share.
I'm sure Sony weighed those options, and made their choice. Time will tell how it pans out and if they gain or lose maket share.
Originally Posted by srika
I feel like getting a 360... shh don't tell anyone. 
all the posts, all the research, all the keeping up with the news... for this. can I get a big fat "meh"..
all the posts, all the research, all the keeping up with the news... for this. can I get a big fat "meh"..
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Joined: Dec 2001
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Originally Posted by srika
I feel like getting a 360... shh don't tell anyone.
all the posts, all the research, all the keeping up with the news... for this. can I get a big fat "meh"..
all the posts, all the research, all the keeping up with the news... for this. can I get a big fat "meh"..
Originally Posted by cmark
Sony's just insulting their loyal fanbase by putting this out with low supply and apparently unpolished hardware and online framework
Safety Car
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 4,001
Likes: 17
From: Renton, WA
Originally Posted by Moog-Type-S
Next MS console in 3-4 years 
Originally Posted by Moog-Type-S
Next MS console in 3-4 years
I'd think more towards 4+ years would be accurate and keeps with the existing cycle gamers have become accustom to.
The sizzle in the Steak
Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 71,436
Likes: 1,877
From: Southern California
Originally Posted by juniorbean
Agreed. The second gen games for the 360 are just starting to come out and developers are just starting to be able to create games to take advantage of the 360's full potential. Not to mention that releasing another system too quickly will simply piss off consumers and fans.
I'd think more towards 4+ years would be accurate and keeps with the existing cycle gamers have become accustom to.
I'd think more towards 4+ years would be accurate and keeps with the existing cycle gamers have become accustom to.
....and that puts HUGE pressure on Sony....are they going to cut their PS3 console life short in order to beat MS to market on the next round of consoles??MS already has a year on them with the 360. If Sony cut their PS3 console life short to beat MS to market, that's gonna piss off alot more Sony fans who are already not that happy to begin with (see 600 dollar consoles, a launch 1 year after the 360, a shortage of systems at launch, and all the other little things like no component cables..etc.)
Lola
Joined: Aug 2003
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From: Toronto
The Creator
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 37,950
Likes: 8
From: Albany, NY
Originally Posted by MSZ
The Creator
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 37,950
Likes: 8
From: Albany, NY
Originally Posted by dom
How could it have not been ready though? I can accept all the shortcomings, but not the fact that only 400K were made available at launch so close to X-Mas. Whomever was in charge of getting this thing to market should be flipping burgers by Wednesday.
Any one know how many 360's were available at its launch.
Any one know how many 360's were available at its launch.
Photography Nerd
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 21,489
Likes: 11
From: Toronto
Originally Posted by MSZ
Now there is a stupid eBayer. He's probably thinking he can resell them on eBay for more money since he got such a great deal
Worst of all (well, not worse then the price I guess, but still), no games or controllers, only the system
Senior Moderator
Joined: Dec 2001
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Originally Posted by MSZ
Originally Posted by MSZ
I'm still laughing here.I just showed this to my wife and she immediately said, why would someone pay $900 for the old Playstation!
Now, she's not dumb, but not a gamer and only knows this stuff b/c of me, and she got it right away.
Poor eBay n00b
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From: Not Las Vegas (SF Bay Area)
Originally Posted by Moog-Type-S
and all the other little things like no component cables..etc.)
what are you talking about no component cables for the PS3, thats how its hooked up to my TV
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From: Not Las Vegas (SF Bay Area)
Originally Posted by Mizouse
what are you talking about no component cables for the PS3, thats how its hooked up to my TV
