"An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted." - Arthur Miller

Thursday, May 11, 2006

E3 '06: Sony under Attack

Sony annoucned the new and power of the PS3, it was probably expecting much pats on the back, a bevy of celebration and a glut of consumers that can't wait to get hold of its next gen system. Instead, its apparently having to defend its two tier pricing plan and the cost of the device. Even developers are getting into the mix with Ubisoft Executive Clint Hocking not being particularily pleased with the the "me too" motion control controller that was introduced at E3. Even EA was caught off guard, unawaare of the development of the controller.

Most of the criticsm when all said and done will focus on the price tag of the PS3. It turns out that the difference between the $500 and $600 dollar system isn't just the size of the hard drive. The price difference also comes with certain bells and whistles left out. Turns out if you want to "save" $100 dollars you are giving up not only 40GB of storage but lose WiFi connectivity, memory card reader, and HDMI output. If don't have a high def or never plan to get a high def, that last bit is most likely not important. Leaving it out when annoucning the system though is a little annoying and makes you wonder what other tidbits haven't been disclosed.

Another problem is with Sony's full support of Blu-Ray format which tends to be more expensive and is part of the blame for the overall cost of the system. This is in contant to DVD-HD that Microsoft supports.

Finally, the last complaint is concern over what will be the launch titles? The better the launch titles the better the launch. Nintendo has already annoucned a new Super Mario Bros, Zelda, Metroid and other A-list titles for launch. Knowing Nintendo, not even 1/10th of the proposed launch will be released as planned. Regardless, at least you know the gameplan of Nintendo. Sony on the other hand apparently doesn't yet know what it will release. Based on a report at IGN, Sony doesn't have many titles even close to completion and if they suddenly rush to make launch date, the quality will be effected. You have to many bad quality games at launch and that could effect long term sales ot overcome that inital bad impression.

Suffice it to say, Sony has a bigger hill to climb then they probably initially thought as the 360 and potential of the Wii is stealing all their thunder.

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