PS3 Slim actually selling

[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...