Japan Analyst Slashes PS3 Forecasts; PS3 Sales Figures 'Not Good'

What exclusives did the PS1/PS2 have that the PS3 doesn't have, outside of GTA (though that was PS2-only...and a timed-exclusive at that)? I guess Dragon Quest and VF...oh, and Ridge Racer as well I guess (unless Namco is going back to PS3-only since RR6 bombed on the 360).

And out of those it lost, does support from Bethesda, iD, Valve, Starbreeze, Team Ninja (NG support mostly), etc., make up for it (remember they were exclusive to MS last-gen)?

It might lose some more exclusives as time goes along (Tekken, MGS, FF, KH, DMC, any DQ, etc.), but they're still PS3-only at the moment AFAIK.

What else is there besides GTA? GTA is kind of by itself. And even then, no one heard about it ~6 years ago, so who knows if there might be a new "GTA" in the next few years (not necessarily on the PS3, but it could be).

Maybe not in the US, but they'll help a lot in other areas, especially Japan. I think if you combine the sales of every GTA game and both Halo games in Japan, you'll get less than 1M copies sold. FFX did about 3M, and FFXII will probably do the same soon (at around ~2.5M IIRC). Warhawk probably wouldn't do all that well in Japan, although GT probably would (1M-2M at least I suppose).

Similar story in Europe, although GTA does very well there as it does in the US. Halo...not so much. And GT is huge there.

It will outsell GTHD...only because GTHD won't sell a single copy. GT5...maybe (both GT3 and GT4 outsold Halo 2 WW...GT3 might have even outsold both Halo games combined).

MGS3 was a bit of a disappointment sales-wise, and even then, no MGS game has outsold either Halo game. Kind of close though.

It could go either way, especially depending on when GT5 comes out and how well the PS3 is doing at that time.

Good thing gamers without HDTVs could benefit from the PS3 using Blu-ray for games.

Now this I more or less agree with. I disagree with your reasoning that led you to this though.

 

So if you want the most affordable option and don't care about all the stuff you can do with it, why quote the price of the premium system when the $499 system is better suited for you? A bit of a pet peeve of mine...especially since I'm planning on getting that system whenever I decide to get a PS3.

Not that $499 is really all that much better (well...it is $100 better, but other than that). The 360 had its struggles selling at $399, so an extra $100 certainly won't do the PS3 any favors. That's why I think Sony has to be very aggressive with price cuts (and they can be if they really want the PS3 to succeed).

 

That's better.

 

So you'll get the $500 PS3, and replace the 20GB HDD with a 200GB HDD for ~$235? Or get a USB HDD assuming you just want to store media on it (or use Linux on it I guess).

As I said earlier, I'm pretty sure that Sony's inclusion of Blu-ray in the PS3 will be more beneficial to gamers (that don't have any interest in HD movies) than their inclusion of a HDD. I certainly care that we'll be getting more than 7GB of storage (and 25GB per layer) thanks to Blu-ray, especially if it helps developers like Hideo Kojima create the game they want to create (Kojima apparently wants to use a DL 50GB Blu-ray disc for MGS4).

Adding Blu-ray to the PS3 certainly does help Sony in the format war, but it is wrong to think that the only benefit of doing this is that the PS3 can play HD movies.

 

I don't think it is all that difficult. If you can hook up the PS3 and setup an online account, switching out a HDD should be relatively easy.

I think there is a guide in the manual, but if not, there are guides online...such as this one:
http://www.gamersreports.com/article/43/

I haven't done it yet, so I can't speak from experience, but it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

 

Keep in mind that you can only use 2.5" SATA HDDs with the PS3, like the ones they use in laptops (not like regular desktop PCs). AFAIK, the largest HDD that fits those specs is like 200GB-250GB. I think some company (Toshiba maybe?) made a mini-breakthrough that allows for much bigger HDDs, but I don't know if we'll be seeing TB HDDs for the PS3 anytime soon...and certainly not at an affordable price.

Of course, you could use a USB HDD depending on what exactly you want to store on the HDD. I think they go up to a TB.

I think this will definitely be a problem for Sony. I'm 100% for the move since I've researched this type of stuff, but it isn't exactly easy to show off why this was a good move to the average gamer. It will be hard enough to show that there is even a difference in graphical/processing power between the PS3 and 360. I imagine it will probably be a few years before they can make this clear (it took that long before it became apparent with the CD->DVD transition IIRC).

If I'm not mistaken, I think over half of the PS3 launch games in the US took up more space than the 7GB limit they'd be faced with if they went with DVD (assuming they reserved ~1.5GB like MS). I think all of them could have been made to fit with enough work (4-5 are just barely over), but there's certainly little breathing room. And these are launch games, not games 2-3 years from now.