Blu-ray players will probably see significant price drops throughout the year (possibly down to ~$300 IIRC), so I wonder if it will be as good of a deal as it might seem right now ($500-$600 PS3 versus $800-$900 BR player, or $400-$500 PS3 versus $300-$600 BR player).
I'm not actually sure what price point I'd look at the PS3 for - in all honesty it doesn't even have to be 300, it could be more; it will depend on the games/price combination. At this point, I'm enjoying the 360 and Wii, particularly with all the third party games now going multiplatform, that I can hold out for a PS3 for a while.
Yeah, mine is on life support as well. I played ff12 all the way up to before the final boss and it froze on me every time(and I tried everything). Luckily there's youtube so I was able to get some closure there. Want to play bully eventually. Right now I'm juggling Disgaea 2(okay) and Okami. Okami is friggin awesome. Definitely on par with zelda tp. I can get a new PS2 from a store near me for a 100 bucks, so eh, no biggie. Bout the cost of a new controller and dvd player anyway. But I want to milk my fat PS2 for as long as possible.
Some more talk about an early price cut: http://www.thestreet.com/pom/pomrmy/10345639.html More at link.
Bad PS3 sales are still better than great Blu-ray player sales, at least so far. I'll have to look into it again, but I think the LTD hardware sales for HD players are around 100K-500K (for each, not combined).
Putting it in this thread - sony's reaction to the 3 motnh delay in its european launch: what a joke.
Time for Sony to hire Tony Snow as their new spokesperson. I got my Wii a couple weeks ago, and am loving it. I honestly have no real urge to get a PS3, though I do plan on purchasing one eventually. The Wii is just plain fun and a great system for certain games (Tiger Woods Golf is awesome). The PS3 is the same thing as PS2, just with phenomenal graphics. The Blu-Ray player will be nice to have, but for now I'm more than content with my upconverting player. Evan
A lot of unexpected things happened so soon compared to the comments half a year ago. People were saying they'd buy the premium model at 500 after discovering the launch price. Now those same people might want it at 400. I think 20GB will be dropped than be sold at 400. I also thought the Wii price was too high, and a drop would come soon. Now... I don't think they'll cut the Wii this year. Their surprise success knocked any chance of that, but if they cut the price now, they hurt their chances to be competitive five years down the line. Holding out lets them drop two or three more times while the costs to build the things drop even quicker. They could also add or remove a launch game.
Sony should probably get rid of all the PR people (Tretton, Karakker, Reeves, etc.), and use the money that would have gone to their salaries to put in a price cut. I usually just read their responses to get a laugh, and will only take these responses seriously if one of the higher-ups is talking (Harrison, Stringer, maybe Kaz, etc.). Kutaragi interviews are sometimes in-between, depending on what he is talking about. But he's gone missing apparently, so doesn't really matter. I will say that the European launch should go much better than the launches in Japan and NA. Better firmware, way better supply (warehouses full of PS3s, and the warehouses themselves are made of PS3s), much more content on the PS Store, and a much better selection of games and Blu-ray movies. Maybe Reeves was trying to point that out, but that still doesn't keep the delay from being disappointing IMO.
Since a couple of you guys posted in this thread and I don't feel like making yet another thread... For those of you that own a PS2 but don't have a next-gen console, would you have bought a PS3 if the PS2 business stopped in 2006? IOW, you didn't have any reason to play a PS2 in 2007 basically. I know in a lot of articles (including the last one I linked that got me thinking about this), the success of the PS2 is sometimes seen as a hindrance to the success of the PS3, basically taking away attention from the platform (GOW2 bigger than MotorStorm for example). Judging by this thread, it seems like some of the PS2 gamers are willing to continue playing their PS2s for another year or so, giving Sony a chance to make the PS3 more appealing to them (either by cutting the price or by releasing better games). I would think that if these gamers were "forced" to buy a next-gen console today, a good portion of them would not pick up a PS3. Perhaps I'm missing something.
PS3 is just way too expensive for as little as I would play it and there are so many good used games for 10-15 bucks for the PS2. The graphics on the PS2 are definitely looking dated, but games like guitar hero show that it doesn't really matter. I don't really like that game, but I have a bunch of friends that love playing it all the time. Honestly i'm not all that impressed with the 360 either -- at this point I would definitely take the Wii over the others. It's also lame that the PS3 doesn't have the rumble feature ~ hard to believe they couldn't have worked something out.
Seems like blu-ray prices will come down really fast if Sony wins the format war -- then you're stuck with a giant computer [PS3] to play little disks.
If the PS2 dried up in 06 I still wouldn't buy a PS3. My guess is the continued success of the PS2 is actually a life raft for Sony until the PS3 is right-priced. Without the continued success of the PS2, Sony would be dead in the water. Surely there are people who have delayed buying a PS3 because of the PS2 but they are relatively few in number. Nintendo will not cut the price of the Wii until they stop becoming scarce, which may not be until 2008 unless they ramp up production rapidly. Cutting price during a time of scarcity makes no business sense at all.
The thing about it is, the PS2's game library is so kick ass that even if no games came out for it in 06 and beyond, I'd still have a good selection of "new to me" games for years. But taking away even those games, no, I still wouldn't have bought a PS3 for retail price. It's just not worth it right now and I'm not really convinced it ever will be. If I really felt the urge to get something new, it'd be the DS.
Yeah, that's pretty much how I see things. I've seen some people say that Sony should stop pushing the PS2 since it is eating into PS3 sales, but it seems kind of like the opposite to me. By continuing to push the PS2, they are providing a "life raft" until the PS3 is more affordable, as you said. This wouldn't guarantee they would buy a PS3 later on (not even close), but it would be better than trying to push the PS3 into their hands right now. Seems like no one here would bite, myself included; FWIW, I'd probably stick with PC games as I said earlier, or I'd try to find a Wii. So yeah...guess I'm not crazy. Thanks for the feedback everyone.
You're not missing anything. Whoever said the massive library for PS2 provides a ton of "new to me" games was right on the money. There are literally many, many games I'd still like to play on the PS2. Most of these are Greatest Hits and/or can be bought used, so the price of the games themselves isn't even an issue for me. For example: I'm probably only about half-way through with FFXII. I have (unopened)Greatest Hits copies of Black and Star Wars: Battlefront II sitting on my dresser. I've stalled with FFXII and haven't touched the others because of school and working eat up the vast majority of my time. I have also yet to play anything in the Devil May Cry series (I have the first one, bought used, that I haven't touched for the same reasons as above), and I'd love to find a copy of Icos, and I've still got to get God of War II, which I'll probably wait to go Greatest Hits at the rate I'm going.... IOW, I've got probably a hundred reasons (read: games I haven't played yet) to stay with PS2 for at least a couple more years, whether Sony drops support or not.
FWIW, I was trying to come up with a hypothetical situation where PS2 owners would basically be forced to pick up a new system in order to continue playing games. Maybe Krazy Ken setting off a device that caused all the Emotion Engines to disappear by causing a time warp into the 4th dimension. I do agree with you and CriscoKidd about the PS2's library though.
I'm just going to put this here: [NEWS]1.6 is out. I'm downloading it now. RFOM releasd a new patch this week for online play also.[/NEWS] You can return to writing sonnets for your 360's now.
