499 PS3 WILL play Full HD

Im still not getting the PS3 because of either price.

 

Who cares

 

^^ i agree, who really cares? i can buy a separate dvd player that'll cost less and i"ll have my wii. all for a cheaper price then a PS3 and X box 360.

 

Good news, now all Sony needs to do is re-insert wifi into the basic system, and I would actually think about getting that one relatively sooner than waiting for the 60gb one to come down in price.

 

GOOD! The whole HDMI and HDCP thing is a load of crap anyway.

Now my 24'' LCD Monitor will play HD Video

 

Now they just have to fix the price and Im sold.

 

I thought Sony's big thing about Blu-ray using HDMI only (originally) was because they said component has typically been used in ripping high-quality movies, including HD sources. So wouldn't this give pirates a chance to already crack the format?

 

Standard DVDs are still popular. PS3 playing something that is not popular yet is pretty useless as of now. Not worth the $500 price tag. It's not even good to get a PS3 and use it for DVDs since it could damage the system.

 

It's still not good to use a console primarily as a DVD player.

By the time the new DVD formats take over (which may not even happen), a DVD player for them will be substantially cheaper and more efficent than a PS3.

It doesn't matter how many people buy HD TV's, it matters how many people who play games own them and how many will play games on them. It won't be the same.

Getting a PS3 as a BR or HD DVD player is pretty useless at this time. It's still unsure if BR and HD will catch on. Standard is still popular, especially at the prices they're going for today. Sony isn't going to be very successful if they emphasize that their console can play something most people don't care about.

 

Now if only Sony can stop it crapping out after a few months they will be set

By the way Z, your signature quote should be Sony's new marketing campaign.

 

I dont have a HDTV so it wont really matter if the 500$ psp3 have the HD stuff or not.

 

I must be lucky then, I got my PS2 the day of launch and it has never broken at all. The only thing I have had to replace was one controller and that's because it broke while I was moving.

 

If a high price isn't bad enough...

Sony's PS3 May Launch With Fewer, Less-Powerful Game Titles
May 16 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 introduction in November may be hampered by fewer and less-powerful games because the company hasn't given final technical details of the new console, according to video-game publishers.

THQ Inc. decided it didn't have enough information to make a version of ``The Sopranos'' for PS 3, according to Chief Executive Officer Brian Farrell. Other developers will release a first batch of games that don't use all the power of Sony's new Cell processor, Sega of America President Simon Jeffrey said.

Sony's delay in providing details and access to the new chip shortens the time that game-makers have to perfect titles before the PS3 hits store shelves. Some games will be delayed, while others won't have features that take full advantage of the machine's power. With fewer titles ready, video-game companies may make less sales during the Christmas holiday season.

``A lot of developers have not gotten the kits,'' Jeffrey said in an interview last week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. ``There certainly will not be a lot of titles available.''

Sony, the world's biggest maker of video-game players, demonstrated the PlayStation 3 for the first time last week and said the console will go on sale in North America on Nov. 17. Versions with a 20-gigabyte hard drive will sell for $499. Machines with a 60-gigabyte drive will cost $599.

PS3 will launch with as many as 15 titles, Kazuo Hirai, chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment, said in an interview last week. Sony is starting to give video-game companies the final prototypes and software, allowing for plenty of time to prepare games for PS3's debut, Hirai said.

``I don't think there will be too much of an issue,'' he said.

Games' Impact

Popular games for the PlayStation 2 helped Sony beat back a challenge from Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp.'s first Xbox in the last round of console wars. A lack of titles limited sales of the original Xbox until ``Halo'' came out. This time, Microsoft will have a one-year head start with its Xbox 360 by the time PS3 arrives. Xbox 360 had 18 games on the day of its launch in November 2005.

``With ongoing strong games sales, we believe the Xbox segment could become profitable in calendar 2007,'' wrote Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst Rick Sherlund in a research note yesterday. Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, may cut the price of Xbox 360, which sells for as much as $399, by $100 in the next year to press its advantage, Sherlund wrote.

Some publishers are unwilling to risk the high cost of developing for the new console until they know more about its capabilities, said Mike Hickey, a video-games analyst for Janco Partners in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

Development Costs

``Developing for Sony's platform is incrementally more complex than what you're looking at for Microsoft or Nintendo,'' Hickey said. ``With costs that could go over $25 million a game, you're not seeing third-party content where it needs to be at this stage to have a successful launch.''

Shares of Tokyo-based Sony fell 90 yen to 5,240 yen in Tokyo yesterday and have gained 8.7 percent this year.

Developers need the design information to decide what new features they can put into games. The development kits give publishers a working version of the machine with similar processors, hard drives and other components. They are updated until Sony settles on a final version.

A particular concern, Jeffrey said, is that developers haven't been given Sony's new Cell processor for evaluation.

The chip will make the console about 35 times faster than the PlayStation 2 and will render details such as how a light reflects in a character's eye, or strands of hair moving after a gust of wind. PlayStation 3 also includes a high-density disk with about 10 times the storage capacity of a DVD.

`Too Risky'

THQ is releasing versions of ``The Sopranos,'' based on the HBO television series, for PS2 and for Xbox 360, Farrell, 52, said. Calabasas Hills, California-based THQ balked at developing the game for PS3 until more information becomes available, he said.

``It was too risky to do it,'' Farrell said in an interview. ``It made no sense.''

Not everyone is complaining. Robert Kotick, chief executive officer of Santa Monica, California-based Activision Inc., the second-largest U.S. video-game developer, said his company hasn't had problems developing with the kits Sony provided.

``While we may not have the final, final hardware, we know what the processor's capacity is,'' Kotick, 43, said in an interview. ``We have active development under way.''

Bigger rival Electronic Arts Inc., No. 1 in the U.S., hasn't had problems creating PS3 titles either, President Paul Lee said.

``We're happy with the development kits,'' he said.

Late Kits

Microsoft also was late getting the final Xbox 360 kits to developers, UbiSoft Entertainment SA Chief Executive Officer Yves Guillemot said in an interview. He said Montreuil-Sous-Bois, France-based UbiSoft, Europe's second-largest maker of video games, is proceeding with development for PS3.

``We won't be able to take advantage of all the components of the machine, but it was the same last year,'' Guillemot said. ``It's a challenge for the publishers.''

Sony, the second-largest maker of consumer electronics, had 64 percent of the market for the previous generation of consoles, Merrill Lynch & Co.'s Kash Rangan said in a May 2 note. Microsoft garnered 16 percent and Nintendo Co. had 13 percent. Kyoto-based Nintendo, maker of the GameCube, will begin selling its new Wii console in the fourth quarter.

It's easier for larger game publishers to develop titles for the new console because they can assign more people to study the prototypes and figure out how to use the capacity, said Jeff Brown, spokesman for Redwood City, California-based Electronic Arts. Electronic Arts has more than 5,000 employees at its development studios. Tokyo-based Sega has about 50.

First-generation games offered for the new PlayStation won't use more than 20 percent of the Cell chip's capabilities, Kotick said. That's typical for a new platform because developers need several years to learn how to use the technology, he said.

``This is the most sophisticated piece of consumer hardware ever,'' he said.

 

I am still not picking up a PS3 right away

 

Oh well. None of the games coming out at launch will use the full power of the PS3, just like none of the 360 games did either. The full power of any system won't be realized until the developers have been using the system for a couple of years at least. It's always been this way.

 

Well, PS2 had one of the worst launch lineups ever and it didn't hurt (although it also didn't have any competetion for a year and the entire PS2 libary). As far as HD-DVD, I highly doubt it'll catch on because DVD still looks great and people aren't going to be ready to change formats yet. Also when PS2 came out DVD players were already dropping in price big time. I think the price hurdle, lack of launch games and a potential shortage of hardware could really hurt the PS3's launch, which in turn will scare 3rd party developers from giving full support to a platform that is already being called hard to develop for. Me, I'm perfectly happy with my Xbox 360 for next gen gaming and DVD player for watching movies, but I want something innovative as well, so I'm going to pick up a Wii.