PS3 musings
Jul. 8th, 2007 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookzombieReading the literature it appears more and more obvious that Sony have shot themselves in the foot with the Playstation 3.
According to several news reports in the last week, the Nintendo Wii is outselling the PS3 by 4 times in the USA and 6 times in Japan and it is noticeable that the Wii is still selling out regularly in the UK, while the PS3 is always available, despite the Wii being out for some months longer. The Xbox 360 has the advantage of having been out for a year by the time the the PS3 was launched in the UK and while its original set of games was less than spectacular, it has had the chance to make up for this.Also some franchises that were originally PS2 only are now being produced for the Xbox as well, most noticeably Devil May Cry 4, one of the backbone series for the PS2.
I was thinking about this, and my personal opinion (not being a gaming pundit!) is that the root of the problem is arrogance on the part of Sony, particularly around the question of price. The base price for the PS3 is around £475, against something like £170 for the Wii and £270 for the Xbox 360. Work it out: this means that you can buy both of the other consoles for around the same price as a PS3. Okay, the PS3 has a blu-ray DVD player included but there's no guarantee that this is going to win the HD DVD format war, in which case it could end up being as useless as a betamax video recorder. In the UK release particularly there are no scaling options for the PS3 either, which means that it is the equivalent of wanting a Mondeo and being forced to buy a Ferrari.
I can only assume that somehow Sony thought that the PS2 was so popular that they could get away with setting any price they wanted for the PS3 and everyone would beat a path to their door (and bear in mind that Sony already make a loss on each PS3 they sell, so the price isn't likely to fall any time soon). Already I have read one industry commentator talk about the PS3 and the Dreamcast in the same breath...
If you had asked me a year ago I would have be sure that some of my annual bonus this year would have gone on a PS3. But many of the upcoming PC games I really want to play, that would need me to spend £1000 upgrading my computer, are also coming out on the £270 Xbox and the Wii has lots of fun potential. Also there are still good games being released for the PS2. Next year's Final Fantasy XIII and the revised Singstar are not enough to justify the PS3 price tag, so no pretty black box is going to be making its way to my living room in the foreseeable future.
ETA. And just in time to make me look like an idiot, Sony have just knocked $100 off the price of the PS3 in the USA. Which makes it about half the price of the UK version (why is the UK version so much more expensive?)
I was thinking about this, and my personal opinion (not being a gaming pundit!) is that the root of the problem is arrogance on the part of Sony, particularly around the question of price. The base price for the PS3 is around £475, against something like £170 for the Wii and £270 for the Xbox 360. Work it out: this means that you can buy both of the other consoles for around the same price as a PS3. Okay, the PS3 has a blu-ray DVD player included but there's no guarantee that this is going to win the HD DVD format war, in which case it could end up being as useless as a betamax video recorder. In the UK release particularly there are no scaling options for the PS3 either, which means that it is the equivalent of wanting a Mondeo and being forced to buy a Ferrari.
I can only assume that somehow Sony thought that the PS2 was so popular that they could get away with setting any price they wanted for the PS3 and everyone would beat a path to their door (and bear in mind that Sony already make a loss on each PS3 they sell, so the price isn't likely to fall any time soon). Already I have read one industry commentator talk about the PS3 and the Dreamcast in the same breath...
If you had asked me a year ago I would have be sure that some of my annual bonus this year would have gone on a PS3. But many of the upcoming PC games I really want to play, that would need me to spend £1000 upgrading my computer, are also coming out on the £270 Xbox and the Wii has lots of fun potential. Also there are still good games being released for the PS2. Next year's Final Fantasy XIII and the revised Singstar are not enough to justify the PS3 price tag, so no pretty black box is going to be making its way to my living room in the foreseeable future.
ETA. And just in time to make me look like an idiot, Sony have just knocked $100 off the price of the PS3 in the USA. Which makes it about half the price of the UK version (why is the UK version so much more expensive?)
