PS3 Slim actually selling

[A Black Falcon]

But how long will it last... I think it's a bit too late for Sony to catch up. :)

[etoven]

But how long will it last... I think it's a bit too late for Sony to catch up. :)

Yea, all will be hunky dory for Sony until one of those things goes nuclear and kills us all. I mean it can't be safe putting that kind of hardware in a smaller shell.

I mean what the hell were they thinking?
It's about as smart as putting a nuclear reactor in the middle of downtown Vegas and then hiring a 3 year old to run it.

[alien space marine]

There isn't room for three consoles on this market, Nintendo had its 1st party titles and new gimmicks like the Wii remote to lure new people, It also had the lowest price-tag .

The Ps3 launched late with to many handicaps and was too expensive, The xbox more then often has the superior version of 3rd party games and vastly better 2nd party games.

[lazyfatbum]

This is the start imo, the PS3 is going to take off like crazy and then the console wars will erupt again all between MS and Sony with Nintendo not even mentioned. I think a 360 'slim' might happen but with all of MS's hardware woes they might be content with their finally-final fine-tuned hardware that doesn't red-ring at the drop of a hat. But they're still debating on whether or not the 360 should play Bluray disks which will make things interesting (imo a d/l only HD movie service will eliminate the need).

Expect the PS3Slim to be sold in fat bundles with movies as if it's a movie player first and a console second. Then expect the roll out of the Eyetoy2 campaign with Sony's original humor and spoof-ridden advertising and less of the... whatever the hell their last 3 years have been.

Those PS3Slim numbers are ringing in the ears of publishers and developers who tried in vain to cash in on the Wii-craze with no luck, and who have ignored the PS3 as well. These are its first steps in to taking a serious attempt at the market share. I still dont see the PSP becoming a viable platform but it's here to stay for this generation at least and that of course means Sony will put anything they think will sell on it (porn and Gran Turismo in digitally distributed bliss).

In my heart I hope Nintendo has an ace or two up its sleeve. Otherwise it's going to evolve in to something like a Gamecube with excellent first party support and a lot of heated steam-driven pneumatically pumped shit (and Wii Sports sequels).

[alien space marine]

The red ring of death hasn't happen to me yet, I never heard of it until a month ago, I heard its more likely to happen with the launch 360's.

[A Black Falcon]

Oh, and I don't agree with Lazy. This is a short-term boost because of the lowered price. It won't last and Sony won't get anywhere near Nintendo or Microsoft in the US or Japan. The gap is far too huge and the system has no major upcoming exclusives to help sell it.

Guess again. I guess you also haven't heard of Heavy Rain? Sony's slowly mounting an offensive with several key titles to pigeon-hole a place in 2nd and compete with 360 directly.

As for Blu-Ray, lots of people are still on normal, SD televisions. Demand isn't THAT huge. So no, the PS3 price drop has helped, but it won't come anywhere near catching up in the US or Europe, no way.

You're not doing your homework, demand for HD gaming is so-so but the demand for HD movie players is doing quite well. As of right now most people in the US who own a TV own an HDTV and plan on getting a bluray player "when the price drops". Right now, people are watching standard DVD's on HDTVs but the demand for HD programing and pay-per-view movies in HD is causing cable and satellite companies to devote more and more bandwidth to the data. The next 4 years is going to be a huge turn around. It doesn't mean HD gaming numbers will go up, but it wont hurt them either.

The PSP has been extremely successful hardware sales-wise, actually. It's probably the best selling second place videogame system ever.

You have to be kidding me. It hasn't even produced half the number of DS sales and every gaming store and pawn shop in the world has stacks of used PSP's for sale. It doesn't have a single piece of software on any top list anywhere unless you want to count the "3 million shipped" of Monster Hunter; even God of War on PSP flubbed. You can say the PSP has 50+ million sales but you realize that's people who bought one as an alternative to an ipod (movies, music, web browsing) and promptly regretted their purchase. It's basically what the Wii is going through, except with a handful of better games and the strength of its buzz among casuals and retro gamers.

Game sales have always lagged behind hardware, but hardware sales at least have been much better than I expected when it first came out, really. The PSP Go is completely stupid though, way too expensive for no significant added features and no disc drive. Evidently they aren't dropping the normal system though, so there likely will still be disc releases... and not everything's going to be available on digital download, I'm sure. So what's the point, exactly, aside from getting Sony some absurd profit margin?

Digital Distro is where everyone is going, I give it 10 years to fully infect and MS's planned handheld will use it exclusively and have no physical media drive for video games (but it will have SD and USB so go figure). Sony's going to be attempting the medialess ideal with a few key releases either this year or next. All the shit really hit the fan when a small company figured out to take high res textures and HD sets and shrink them down to tiny, easily distributed and highly compressed files. They're working on Wiiware stuff right now and promise 'unparalleled visuals for a wiiware game'. But the basics are: God of War was going to be a digital only game but Sony feared it wouldn't grab attention that way. Since it didn't grab attention anyway, they're pushing the distro.

If I can find the particular article it mentioned the idea of half and half, you buy a disk or card that contains hardwired game data and then download the appropriate content while it pulls what it needs from the physical counterpart. This comes off the heels of many companies being afraid to attempt digital distro, so you have to buy "half" the game at the store.

[DMiller]

The red ring of death hasn't happen to me yet, I never heard of it until a month ago, I heard its more likely to happen with the launch 360's.

I didn't get mine until over a year after launch and it happened to me just before the summer.

[lazyfatbum]

Oh wow, sorry ABF D: I must be tired. I thought I hit quote but must have hit edit... now I feel bad.

*runs away*

[A Black Falcon]

I did that to EdenMaster once, some time ago... it happens.

Guess again. I guess you also haven't heard of Heavy Rain? Sony's slowly mounting an offensive with several key titles to pigeon-hole a place in 2nd and compete with 360 directly.

It's always something... and when every game fails to do it, it's always the next thing. None of them have done anything to help the PS3 catch up. Heavy Rain won't change that, that's for sure.

They'd have to sell incredibly amazingly well to have even the remotest chance of finishing the generation in third. They're so, so far behind that that will be nearly impossible, really.

August's sales numbers just came out and Sony did do a llot better than they had been, for the first time in nine months they actually sold better than the same month last year, and they were only slightly behind the X360 for the month (though Wii sold better than both and DS way more than any of them, of course). We'll see how much more they go up this month thanks to the price drop... and that applies to MS too, of course, since they also dropped prices.

You're not doing your homework, demand for HD gaming is so-so but the demand for HD movie players is doing quite well. As of right now most people in the US who own a TV own an HDTV and plan on getting a bluray player "when the price drops". Right now, people are watching standard DVD's on HDTVs but the demand for HD programing and pay-per-view movies in HD is causing cable and satellite companies to devote more and more bandwidth to the data. The next 4 years is going to be a huge turn around. It doesn't mean HD gaming numbers will go up, but it wont hurt them either.

I saw a poll recently that evidently at least half of people playing Gears of War 2 online are playing on SD, not HD. And that's an HD console. Obviously over time more and more people will have HD, but it's still very far from ubiquitous. HD TV prices are far too high for it to be anywhere near that.

You have to be kidding me. It hasn't even produced half the number of DS sales and every gaming store and pawn shop in the world has stacks of used PSP's for sale. It doesn't have a single piece of software on any top list anywhere unless you want to count the "3 million shipped" of Monster Hunter; even God of War on PSP flubbed. You can say the PSP has 50+ million sales but you realize that's people who bought one as an alternative to an ipod (movies, music, web browsing) and promptly regretted their purchase. It's basically what the Wii is going through, except with a handful of better games and the strength of its buzz among casuals and retro gamers.

I just said the truth: PSP is the best selling second-place console or handheld ever. And it's not even close either, the next best is the Genesis with just 40 million or so worldwide, while PSP is at 55 million.

You're quite right that not everyone is buying it for games, and the poor game sales reflect that... but many people are. The system's definitely doing better than you say here, that's for sure... though of course you under-rate the Wii even more.

Digital Distro is where everyone is going, I give it 10 years to fully infect and MS's planned handheld will use it exclusively and have no physical media drive for video games (but it will have SD and USB so go figure). Sony's going to be attempting the medialess ideal with a few key releases either this year or next. All the shit really hit the fan when a small company figured out to take high res textures and HD sets and shrink them down to tiny, easily distributed and highly compressed files. They're working on Wiiware stuff right now and promise 'unparalleled visuals for a wiiware game'. But the basics are: God of War was going to be a digital only game but Sony feared it wouldn't grab attention that way. Since it didn't grab attention anyway, they're pushing the distro.

If I can find the particular article it mentioned the idea of half and half, you buy a disk or card that contains hardwired game data and then download the appropriate content while it pulls what it needs from the physical counterpart. This comes off the heels of many companies being afraid to attempt digital distro, so you have to buy "half" the game at the store.

Digital distro? It's not all bad, but I don't want an all-digital-only future. DRM, lack of ability to trade or sell games (not that I do it often, but you want the option), prices that usually aren't lower even though they should be, much less or no competition between retailers when manufacturers are often exclusive to one service and just keep the price high for a long time... no store competition there to get prices low, and no stores that sell games a few bucks cheaper than the others in order to get more sales. And no used games either of course. And no physical media.

I have some digital-distro PC games, and it's okay, but when there is an option I definitely prefer boxed, no question.

I agree that digital distribution is a growing part of the market, and it's going to keep growing, but I just don't see it entirely shoving out retail. I mean, PC has gone very far down the digital-distro road in this decade, but it's not all the way there, and I don't think it ever will be... and as I just said, that's very much a good thing.

I hope PSP Go fails. :) Sell your digital-distro games, sure, but that kind of a price hike for absolutely no reason, and no way at all to play physical media... no thanks. I know some people are big fans of digital distribution (Steam in particular), but I'm really somewhat ambivalent. The convenience is nice, but I really like having an actual product, and actual rights that aren't limited by some stupid DRM...