Jer

I would definitely recommend the PS2 over everything else right now as a first console. It's inexpensive, has by far the best library of the current systems in damn near every genre and will still have developer support for at least another two years. EA especially will keep porting sports games to the PS2 for years because the installed base is so big. If EA released Madden games on the PS1 until 2005, I guess you can expect them on PS2 until 2010, heh.

Yeah, and not only is the launch lineup usually weak, the first generation hardware itself tends to be all buggy and unreliable. Why would you want to line up or pay crazy money for weak games and crappy hardware? Christmas 2007 for me unless VF5 is totally amazing.

Yeah, I'm just naturally cynical about concept art because developers so rarely deliver anything close to it. Still, that is really beautiful, and Ubisoft knows what they're doing. It gets me excited about the possibilities of an action-adventure game, because I love the Naruto universe. If they can capture the feel of the universe in a game that looks anywhere near that good, it could be amazing. I don't want to get my hopes up too much, though, so I won't be let down, heh.

I hear the fighters are actually pretty good. The one that looks like it plays like Smash Brothers looks like it'd be a lot of fun. It's a good universe to build a fighting game around, so hopefully there'll be more next gen. This new game's concept shots look great, but who knows what that means. It's easy to make good looking renders. Somehow I don't think the finished game will look anything like that. On a related note, does anyone know if they've finally gotten through the filler in the anime yet? I watched religiously until about the 30th straight filler episode, but now I've given up until they start to advance the main plot again. Naruto filler is just brutally bad.

66% of the three directors at Sony were not in their office?! Bah gawd Sony is pure evil!

Heh I find that kind of funny. I hope some of those eBay scalpers get stuck with a PS3 they don't want.

Yeah, but the PS2's price was a much more mass-market acceptable $299 to start, and it was absolutely destroying the competition in sales. I doubt it'll be that long before PS3 drops, especially if sales start to drop. If I had to bet, I'd probably bet the first drop will come around Winter 2007.

It's not going to cost $600 forever Eric. Just wait until the price comes down and the good games start to come out. I guarantee you will buy one eventually. Some art game like Shadows of the Colossus will come out and you won't be able to resist.

Yeah, I'm planning to wait until Winter 07 to buy one. Hopefully there'll be a drop by then. It seems pretty likely, since it'll be really important for Sony to move a lot of units that second Christmas, and I don't think there's going to be unlimited demand if it stays at $600.

Yeah, that's the worst launch in terms of exclusives in a long time. Anyone that buys a PS3 this year certainly isn't doing so for the games. People said the PS2 had a bad launch, but at least it had TTT and SSX that were true quality exclusives. There's nothing even close to that for PS3 at launch.

Haha really? How bad is that? Genesis couldn't even get MK1 arcade perfect; I can't imagine how terrible the SMS version is.

Indeed, because people that are good at fighters don't like SNK fighters because they are bad.

*Reads up on Assassin's Creed* That actually sounds pretty damn cool. I hope they can pull it off and make it into a fun game. Okay, change that to almost never. I'm just remembering all those long arguments everyone had about system power in the PS2/X-Box generation. At the end of the day, though, I can't think of any X-Box game that you couldn't have done on PS2. You just might have had to give up some lighting effects here and there, oh noes! I guess the power difference this generation is a lot bigger, though.

Anyone know when Culdcept is coming out for the 360? I remember hearing that was happening but I lost track of it. Online Culdcept will be the best thing ever.

Yeah, that is interesting. It's probably partly we haven't actually seen the difference in power translate into a difference in graphics most of the time. Not many PS3 games shown at E3 this year looked demonstrably than what was shown for the Wii. MGS4 is about the only one I can think of. That goes back to Sony needing to a much better job presenting their games. I personally could care less about capability because you so rarely see it taken advantage of. I really doubt we'll see a real difference in graphics between the average Wii game and the average 360/PS3 game, even later in the generation. You'll see it in super-high budget games like MGS4 or Gears of War, but that's about it. And you'll never see a difference in gameplay. But then, I'm much less of a graphics whore than the average consumer. Wow those were two really repetitive paragraphs. I'm tired. <3 giant enemy crab.

Yeah probably. I've just started to tune out MS and Sony talking about all-in-one media stations I guess; they always say it and it never happens. That's the one thing I like about Nintendo; I may not particularly like their games, but at least they try to sell their systems as just game systems. I dunno, consumers are still pretty stupid. After E3 2005 there were still a bunch of people thinking PS3 games would actually look like those demos (Omg you will be able to see Jin's pores!!!). Sony needs to do a better job of taking advantage of that stupidity though. E3 2006 was a mess. Showing games early in development that look like they're on the Dreamcast is not a good idea. Sony should have figured that out after how bad Perfect Dark Zero looked on that MTV X-Box 360 demo.

Agreed, and even if it were, it's not like back in 2000 when everyone wanted a DVD player and the PS2 was an easy way to get one. The demand for Blu-ray isn't even there. I don't think selling PS3s to people that want cheap Blu-ray players is really part of Sony's strategy, though, like it was with getting people to buy PS2s as cheap DVD players. Here they're just trying to use the PS3 as a Trojan horse to get Blu-ray players into people's houses. Which is a great idea, except that if it costs the PS3 market share, they lose much more than they gain from the Blu-ray exposure.

Yep, that's pretty bad. Stupid Blu-ray. Without Blu-ray the system would have cost much less, come out earlier and had dev kits in developer's hands earlier. All would be right with the world. I still think PS3 will pull it out and end up as the market leader this generation in the end, but if it doesn't, Sony going with Blu-ray is going to go down as one of the worst decisions in the history of the gaming industry, heh. Doubly so if Blu-ray also fails as a media platform.

I just looked through the launch titles, and damn, I didn't realize just how few appealing games there are. This is the worst launch library in a long time. Hard to believe anyone would pay $1,500 for one of these now. I'll probably wait until Christmas 2007 to get one. It doesn't look like there's really going to be much worth playing during the first year. Maybe VF5, but that's about it. Quite the slow start.

Sony shipped 20 million systems between launch in 2000 and X-Box/Gamecube launch in 2001. I don't think they're going to have too much trouble catching up with X-Box 360's 5 million system headstart. Seriously, the fact everyone realizes that PS3s will be worth huge premium dollars on eBay is a pretty good indicator that the price isn't going to hurt Sony at launch. If 400,000 NA systems at launch and 1-1.2 million NA systems by the end of the year is considered a catastrophic shortage, then obviously people want the system at $600. If Sony produces those numbers, it'll be more than the X-Box 360 sold from launch-Christmas in 2005. The only thing that's hurting Sony at launch is that they can't produce as many systems as they would be able to sell. So yeah, can't say I'm getting a 3DO vibe. There wasn't any demand for 3DO, whereas there'll be demand for PS3 regardless of how high the price or how weak the library.

Yay, spend less money for less quality. Hey, why buy a Lexus when you can buy a Kia instead and save thousands?! Flamebait aside, I am amazed at the amount of online support Wii is getting, not just here but also at huge sites like GameFAQs. I'm very interested in seeing whether that's going to translate into anything with the mass market. I don't really expect it to mean that Wii will actually be competitive with PS3 in terms of total sales, since Nintendo always is more popular on the internet than they are overall. Still, even compared to other Nintendo systems, the Wii online support is pretty extraordinary. Interesting.

Thanks. Heh in that case it almost seems like I should root for BluRay to succeed even though I think it's totally pointless right now (seriously, how many people are saying that DVD quality is too low and something better is needed?), since the better BluRay does the faster manufacturing costs can go down.

PS2 came out in Oct 2000 and I don't think the price dropped until E3 2002, if I remember correctly. But that's mostly because it was still selling like crazy at $299. If PS3 runs into a sales lull earlier because of the price, they'd likely bring the price down earlier. Since the BluRay technology is what's driving the price so high, a more interesting comparison for me is how fast DVD prices started to come down. Does anyone have any idea how fast DVD player prices dropped the first couple years after it came out?

Which means for you it's just price, like I said. Just buy it when the price comes down.

As far as I can tell, the only real complaint about the PS3 is the price tag. People were excited about it until E3, but after the $600 announcement, people turned on it pretty hard. I guess that's understandable since the price is pretty ridiculous, but like all systems it will come down eventually. I don't think too many people are complaining about the library. Just the price.